Beyond PTSD: Moving Military Trauma out of the Realm of Psychiatry and into an Arts-Based Education and Community-Oriented Framework

Guided by the question: “what is military trauma, really?” this two-part research project is underscored by the assumption that hegemonic bio-medical framings of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and resulting treatment approaches fall short and that military trauma is significantly more complex, gendered, morally injurious and community-based than popular culture and well-intentioned “de-stigmatization” campaigns suggest. Employing a feminist and mad-informed existential embodied phenomenological methodology, the initial stage of this research involved in-depth narrative interviews with nine veterans of the Canadian Armed Forces who participated in the recent war in Afghanistan and with three health care workers who specialize in veteran care. In order to move conversations about military trauma out of the realm of psychiatry and into an adult education and community-oriented framework, the data from the interviews was transformed into a research-based play that was written with the express objective of transcending individual experiences of madness into a critique of culture, systems, and dominant practices and convictions. This play also seeks to offer a counterpoint to popular naturalistic and documentary approaches to creating research-based theatre that lay claim to an “aesthetics of objectivity” as the “view from nowhere” such approaches assume, is both impossible and undesirable. Drawing instead on mad approaches to storytelling, feminist theory, magic realism and expressionism in the visual arts, and Brechtian theatrical estrangement devices, this play embraces embodiment and subjectivity and encourages deep emotional and intellectual engagement. The playwriting process necessitated a secondary research question: “How might the creation of a ‘mad aesthetic’ in research-based theatre disrupt both biomedical ways of conceptualizing military trauma and objectivist attempts at representing mad stories?” In order to answer this question, the play also upends classic war hero narratives and the militarized hyper-masculine ideals they propagate. Such narratives and ideals risk further isolating traumatized veterans from their own experiences, knowledge, and coping strategies as well as from members of the public who have not been to war but who, if given access to the deep nuances of military trauma and moral injury, might be vital allies in helping veterans who are suffering transition from military to civilian life.

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