Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character

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Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character

4.25 of 5 stars 4.25 · rating details · 373 ratings · 53 reviews

In this strikingly original and groundbreaking book, Dr. Shay examines the psychological devastation of war by comparing the soldiers of Homer's Iliad with Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Although the Iliad was written twenty-seven centuries ago it has much to teach about combat trauma, as do the more recent, compelling voices and experience...more

Paperback, 272 pages

Published October 1st 1995 by Scribner (first published 1994)

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Jun 04, 2013 Colin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Because of this book, I am more alive to the *Iliad*, and the truths it tells about war. But what stays with me most from *Achilles in Vietnam* are the individual narratives of suffering and loss. In the last days I have thought constantly of one man's tender description of his "goofy" friend, the meal they'd planned to share, and how in the next moment that friend "disappeared" on a mine. There is a profound analysis of human experience-- of how much friendship means, and how devastating a stro...more

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Jan 22, 2011 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: war, literary-criticism

Jonathan Shay is a psychotherapist – and impressive amateur classicist – who has spent decades treating Vietnam veterans with severe PTSD. In this fascinating book, he analyzes what he sees as the moral breakdown of Achilles in terms of factors common to the Vietnam War. The first section of the book outlines these factors: a betrayal of “what’s right”; the shrinkage of the social and moral horizon; grief at the death of a special comrade; guilt and wrongful substitution; and going berserk (a cl...more Jonathan Shay is a psychotherapist – and impressive amateur classicist – who has spent decades treating Vietnam veterans with severe PTSD. In this fascinating book, he analyzes what he sees as the moral breakdown of Achilles in terms of factors common to the Vietnam War. The first section of the book outlines these factors: a betrayal of “what’s right”; the shrinkage of the social and moral horizon; grief at the death of a special comrade; guilt and wrongful substitution; and going berserk (a clinical condition, not slang). In each of the chapters he describes these conditions as revealed through years of treating veterans, often quoting transcripts of therapy sessions, and analyzes their presence in The Iliad. In the second section he goes through soldiers’ common reactions to these conditions, again drawing from Vietnam veterans’ accounts, and demonstrates the same reactions in Achilles. It’s convincing and utterly compelling.

I’m no classical scholar, but I have read The Iliad many times and can appreciate his deep understanding and meticulous examination. His book is worth multiple readings. In fact, Achilles in Vietnam has filled a role in my understanding similar to movies of favorite novels, like “Gone With the Wind” – now I can’t read The Iliad without this as context and subtext! I also was stunned by the descriptions of combat in Vietnam — both the conditions of guerilla warfare against the Viet Cong and common U.S. military practices seemed designed to inflict maximum psychological damage on our soldiers. Be forewarned: this is not for the faint of heart. If you’ve studied the Vietnam War then much of this will be familiar. If not, brace yourself; the accounts are from men whose combat trauma was debilitating enough that they sought professional help. Also, Dr. Shay quotes veterans’ words verbatim, and the profanity is almost as stunning as the substance. I have no tolerance for profanity and felt like I needed to wash out my head with a power hose, yet at the same time I couldn’t help feel sorry for both the lack of education that often produces such a low level of language and the obvious crutch that profanity was for these men; if the eloquent can’t find words to describe such horrors, what hope had they? (Not all the interviewees swear four or five times in a sentence; there are distinct levels of language corresponding to levels of education, a fact that the Vietnam veterans I know are quick to assert.) The final section of the book focuses on PTSD and possible healing, with less analysis of Achilles; nonetheless, it’s fascinating reading.
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Dec 07, 2009 Zeus_slayer101 rated it 3 of 5 stars

Achilles in Vietnam is a study of the impact of PTSD on the human personality, using The Iliad to illustrate the impact of this problem with emphasis on the reasons why Vietnam was more traumatic for many veterans than other conflicts have been. This was a good book to read along with The Iliad and helped me bring out some of the underlying themes throughout Homer’s text.
This book contained some very keen observations in it. You just have to fight through all of the boring psychology jargon and...more

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Nov 24, 2008 Charlie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: psychology, pop-academic

Vietnam was the US combat mission that entirely crossed the line from war-run-as-military-campaign to war-run-as-incorporated-buisness-hierarchy. Those who organized the war tactics (not to mention the larger war stratgies) were too often out of touch with what was happening in the field. Shay spent decades of his life working as a psycholgist with combat trauma paitents who had served in Vietnam. His utilization of the ancient Greeks' war attitudes as a point of contrast to Vietnam attitudes is...more Vietnam was the US combat mission that entirely crossed the line from war-run-as-military-campaign to war-run-as-incorporated-buisness-hierarchy. Those who organized the war tactics (not to mention the larger war stratgies) were too often out of touch with what was happening in the field. Shay spent decades of his life working as a psycholgist with combat trauma paitents who had served in Vietnam. His utilization of the ancient Greeks' war attitudes as a point of contrast to Vietnam attitudes is unnessessary if, the reader's first interest in this book is a deeper understanding of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Shay has enough experience and insight with this issue to compare the wrecked lives that resulted from Vietnam with anything he likes.
The term REM was Vietnam combatant slang for Rear Echelon Motherfuckers. While political pundits like to blame the so called "liberal" media for losing the war a vet might suggest that it was lost by the REM's. A point of example of this mentality is given when Shay asks a client (whom he had come to know for many years and consequently trusted to be open minded with painful subjects) what that client thought about the idea that America somehow won nearly every significant battle but lost the war. In response the client fixed Say with a cold eye and drew his finger accross his throat making a signed language response of, "I'd just as soon kill ya than talk about it". Vietnam was a disaster from the battle ground all the way back to those who organised the invasion.
To poperly understand what America was doing there at all we must take a closer look at cold war politics and our historic competition with the USSR for global economic dominace. This will provide the only rational explanation for our "defensive" invasion of a nation that posed absolutely no direct military threat to American soil. Contrasted with the passion and righteousness that fueled combatants in WW II or the ancient Greeks in their battle with Troy, Vietnam was just business and the collatoral damages and "externalities" were the lives of the soliders who survived the hell of jungle combat. (less)

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Sep 28, 2012 David Sarkies rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Polticians, Managers, Bureaucrats

Recommended to David by: Amazon (That is where I first discovered it)

Shelves: sociology

I found this to be one of the toughest books that I have read to date and pretty much halfway through the chapter on grief I almost found that my brain had literally fried and felt that I needed to put it down. Now, I have never been to war and never experienced war, but when Shay says in his introduction that this books will have a tendency to bring flashbacks to combat veterans he was not kidding. As I suggested, I am not a combat veteran and I found this book very hard going myself, and in a...more I found this to be one of the toughest books that I have read to date and pretty much halfway through the chapter on grief I almost found that my brain had literally fried and felt that I needed to put it down. Now, I have never been to war and never experienced war, but when Shay says in his introduction that this books will have a tendency to bring flashbacks to combat veterans he was not kidding. As I suggested, I am not a combat veteran and I found this book very hard going myself, and in a way, reading this book also brought about flashbacks from my past, and I would hardly say that I suffer from PTSD or have had a hard life compared to many others in our society.
Jonathan Shay is a psychiatrist that works with Vietnam vets helping them cope with civilian life and helping them (I feel that the word recover would be an inappropriate word since there are some things that one can never recover from, such as having your leg removed, and in many cases psychological trauma is not something that can be healed) live with the psychological trauma that is likely to be with them for the rest of their life. When somebody once coined the phrase (I cannot remember who it was but I believe it was some American General in World War II) War is Hell, he wasn't kidding, and the stories that we are told from the Vietnam Vets who had agreed to have their story told in this book goes a long way to demonstrate this.
As I read through this book the nagging feeling that kept gnawing away at me was whether the United States, in the way that they run their army as one would run a corporation, can really expect to be able to win a modern war. The way the army is constructed may be able to win a war where two nations throw armies up against each other, such as what happened in World War II, and even in Korea, but when the war that one is fighting is against insurgents who continually melt back into the civilian population, then the way one fights a war and constructs the armed forces, but be reviewed. An army is not a police force and a police force is not an army, and the Americans discovered that when they attempted to use the national guard to attempt to put down anti-Vietnam protests in the United States. The police's role is to protect the order of society and to thoroughly investigate crimes to make sure that the real perpetrator is arrested. However, the job of an army is to defeat the enemy, in effect to shoot first and ask questions later.
One of the problems that Shay has pointed out, and this is something that is not new because this is the way wars have been evolving over the last half a millenium, is that the commanders are becoming more and more removed from the battlefield, to a point where they do not see that action and do not understand the nature of war. Von Clausewitz indicated this in his book 'on war' when he talks about the concept of the fog of war. The best way to describe this is that what may look good on paper does not necessarily work on the ground. It should be interesting to note that when a general actually joins the troops and leads the troops (as opposed to directing the troop from a bunker behind the lines, or even thousands of miles away) the effectiveness of the army actually increases, and we only need to look at Napoleon's successes to be able to see that.
However the nature of war has changed a lot since Napoleon's day. As technology advances we continually distance ourselves more and more from the enemy, to the point where it is almost becoming like a computer game. Shay talks about how the modern Judeo-Christian ethic seeks to demonise the enemy to make the enemy easier to kill. To some people it is easier to kill a dog than a human because the dog is not a human, so to get other humanity's resistance to killing another human, we turn the enemy into an animal. However, the opposite also works true by turning the human into an animal (namely the soldier) the human loses all concept of their humanity, and becomes like the animal. Of course, the problem that there arises is that the human can no longer return to human society, a concept that is explored elsewhere.
I particularly appreciated his discussion of the way troops were trained. On particular movie that I have seen about the Vietnam war clearly brings this idea out (the movie is Full Metal Jacket) and that is where the trainer (and in cases commanders) are constantly focusing on where the person is failing rather than their successes. The belief is that by constantly denegrating the soldier makes for a better soldier. This is not the case (and I shall explore this when I discuss the nature of warfare and the corporation below). In Full Metal Jacket, the poorest performer in the group ends up shooting himself in the toilet, and we learn from this book that this is not as far fetched as it seems. We are told the story of a helicopter pilot that was torn to pieces for refusing to do something, then going out and killing himself.
Shay refers a lot to the Illiad in this book, and uses the story to show us what war is about. There are a lot of differences, but there is also a lot of insight into the effect of war upon the individual. Remember, in the Ancient World, all males were warriors so all males had experienced war. Tragedy was a way to help the citizens to cope with returning to civilian life. Also, we note, that the main characters in the Illiad are all commanders, and they are all involved in the fighting. This is not the case today. Where the commanders in the Illiad know what it is like on the ground, the commanders today do not. As such, the orders that are passed down come from people, in many cases who have not seen or experienced action, and expect the soldiers to obey them. I remember when I explored a military position after completing university, I discovered that I could walk into the army at the rank of major, which meant that I would never have to see combat action, and with my law degree, I would be dealing with people who had seen action with no understanding of what it would have been like to have been out there. Fighting a war on the ground requires quick thinking and a willingness to do things on the spur of the moment, however the chain of command does not allow the soldier to do this. The soldier must obey his commanding officer, and any deviation from that is punishable. They say that the back bone of the American Army is the chain of command, and by ignoring the chain of command will undermine the army. However, as we have seen in Vietnam, and more recently, in Iraq, it was the chain of command that proved to be the armies undoing.
Now, I will speak of the idea of the corporation as the army. Having worked in the corporation, I have seem many elements that have come out of the book. We take the idea of the manager as the commander. When you are on the floor, you may be exposed to direct customer contact, and in some positions that can be really draining. However, the higher up the managerial chain, the less customer contact you have. However the higher up you go, the more you are expected to have the people beneath you perform to a high standard. If the people beneath you fail, you fail. However, consider an irate customer screaming at you, and you are not permitted to terminate the call because the customer is everything. The customer pays the company money, and it is expected that the customer continue to pay the company money, however it is not the manager's job to take the call. The company has upset the customer, however the person on the floor is expected to resolve the complaint, and sometimes, even to convince the customer to upgrade their services. In some companies (McDonalds for instance) the managers are expected to be on the floor and to deal with customers alongside the staff, however many others do not.
I have also seen instances where beratting employees with the belief that that creates a better employee is used. This, once again, is not the case. Granted, if an employee that makes a mistake is not shown the mistake, then the employee is not going to learn. However, by constantly hammering the employee for their mistakes, without actually acknowledging what the employee has done right, and rewarding the employee for what they are doing right, will end up destroying the employee. The same goes with religious institutions. We get so caught up with trying to create better people by hammering them for their mistakes, that we actually are blind to the damage that we see that is being done to that person.(less)

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May 30, 2010 Kelly rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is strong antidotal medicine for those who are prone to generalize about what makes Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) a universal phenomenon among afflicted combat veterans, rather than a conflict-specific condition. The war in Vietnam, like all wars, was universal in this respect: the ways it destroyed lives were as unique as the lives it destroyed. Jonathan Shay explores these specifics by comparing them to the descriptions of combat trauma poetically rendered in Homer's epic of...more

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Nov 19, 2007 Dave rated it 5 of 5 stars

This was a great book in conjunction with The Iliad. He compares PTSD symptoms in Viet Vets he counsels to descritions in The Iliad. Very intense depictions of modern PTSD copied verbatim from transcripts with the vets. One man describes leaving his house at night carrying a steak knife, walking down dark alleys hoping someone will threaten him. This is real.

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Dec 11, 2007 James rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Adolescents and adults

Shelves: culture-and-politics, military, psychology, reference, literature, poetry, philosophy

A powerful study of the impact of PTSD on the human personality, using the Iliad and other classic literary portraits of traumatized warriors to illustrate the timelessness of this problem with special emphasis on the reasons that the Vietnam war was a more shattering experience for many veterans than other wars have been.

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Apr 07, 2011 Michael Burnam-fink rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, academic, vietnam, 2011

This book is a tour de force of psychological analysis and literary criticism. In it, Dr. Shay blends the Illiad with the heartbreaking words of veterans to develop a theory of post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD is caused by a breakdown in themis, the internal sense of "what is right" that allows people to belong to an ordered society. Confronted by the betrayal of their superiors, the deception of the enemy, grief at the deaths of close friends, the privations of the battlefield, and finally...more

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Jun 17, 2012 Thomas rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: western-canon, military-history

Homer is ever present in modern culture, but his power is often reduced to a kind of cartoon. The Iliad becomes a sword-and-sandals Hollywood cliche and the Odyssey becomes the original road movie. Shay brings the Iliad back to reality by shining a new light on the ferocious pain of Achilles, pain that today might be called PTSD, but which Shay calls "moral injury."

Shay reads the Iliad as a psychologist and observes in Achilles some of the same symptoms that he sees in his patients, many of who...more

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Sep 25, 2007 cathy marked it as to-read

This author just won a McArthur grant. I'm very curious about this one in the context of narrative therapy for PTSD treatment.

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Nov 05, 2011 Steve Woods rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: vietnam-war, ptsd

This is a really interesting and valuable book. The author is a classicist, who is very familiar with Homer's Iliad dealing with the Trojan wars, an a psychiatrist who has had extensive experience dealing with Vietnam veterans who suffer from chronic combat related ptsd, (as I do). It has been very difficult to work my way through the effects of my war experience on my psyche and as a result on my life. There have been many admissions to veterans' facilities and many hours of work with psycholog...more This is a really interesting and valuable book. The author is a classicist, who is very familiar with Homer's Iliad dealing with the Trojan wars, an a psychiatrist who has had extensive experience dealing with Vietnam veterans who suffer from chronic combat related ptsd, (as I do). It has been very difficult to work my way through the effects of my war experience on my psyche and as a result on my life. There have been many admissions to veterans' facilities and many hours of work with psychologists, psychiatrists and counselors. None seemed to do me much good from my point of view, simply because they did not understand what they were dealing with nor how to treat the veterans concerned. Ultimately anything I have been able to achieve in developing ways to manage my life have been down to me.

In that process I have become convinced that it is the deconstruction of the sense of self that leads to the damage of the soul so evident with Vietnam ( and I have no doubt Afghanistan and Iraq) veterans and this book confirms that view. The author has also thrown light on issues that relate to that deconstruction of the soldier's sense of self that I had not thought of. Through his reference to an ancient Greek battle he has been able to show the commonality of the soldiers' experience and through contrast to point up issues that were fundamental and potent in the mental and emotional trauma inflicted on veterans during the Indo China war.

There were specifics of the American experience that did not relate to Australians who participated because our approach to soldiering was different but the fundamentals remain the same. Primary among these was the sense of betrayal we all felt. Betrayal particularly by our politicians who lied us into war for their own political ends and by a wider society which just dismissed our service as inconsequential at best and as somehow morally flawed at worst. This book should be mandated reading for anyone involved with veterans who suffer in this way.(less)

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Aug 08, 2008 Beth rated it 4 of 5 stars

I recently accepted a fellowship in the treatment of PTSD among combat veterans and decided to read Dr. Shay's book in preparation for this position. But first, I read The Illiad, upon which Shay bases his book (I recommend this before you read Achilles in Vietnam so that you can compare your take on the classic to Shay's). Basically, Shay is considering the traumas endured by Vietnam (and other combat) veterans within the context of Homer's classic. He effectively compares and contrasts the cur...more

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Nov 25, 2011 Stephanie rated it 4 of 5 stars

A scholarly but sensitive analysis of combat trauma and what made Vietnam, specifically, so horrific for our troops. Very eye opening for me. It helped me to understand what our guys go through in war today as well, and I am really curious about this now because of my job. Not for the faint of heart, the book has some graphic stories from his patients that really put things in perspective. It's an amazing though difficult read. I put it down for a couple of weeks more than once.

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Dec 21, 2010 Stephen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Scholarly genius. A rock-solid read overlapping the Iliad with the Vietnam War and how, throughout history, combat soldiers have been dealt the burden of PTSD as a byproduct of war, beginning with his analysis of Homer's Achilles to which, Shay says, his lost of character after the death of Patroclus, is the ultimate tragedy of this most classic work. Although I would disagree on some points, the main emphases are sound, fascinating, and profoundly well done. Kudos to Shay for this great book.

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Dec 24, 2008 Mary rated it 5 of 5 stars

More than any other, this book and its companion Odysseus in America helped me to fully understand not just what had happened to my son because of war but also why. Not why they went to war but why they had to change to survive it.

Written by veterans themselves and woven by Shay into the Iliad it is beautiful and poignant and heartbreaking. Everyone who loves a veteran or a soldier should read these books

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Apr 06, 2012 Tim rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: assigned-reading

Shay's account of PTSD among Vietnam veterans is eye-opening to the horrors faced by soldiers both during and after the war. His juxtaposition of quotes from his patients and lines from The Illiad are well done and includes insightful analysis of the two. I found a frightening similarity between many of the Vietnam experiences and those of the recent wars in the Middle East. The military has learned, since Vietnam, to drastically curtail what the media can show of the war. In recent wars, this s...more

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Jun 14, 2009 Eric rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: outside-reading

Good book, read the first part, it is the best written. The second parts may be of interest to psychiatrists or medical people who are working and having worked with PTSD patients, but not of general interest. The first part is interesting to anybody who has read the Iliad and would like to gain a psychiatric insight into the Rage of Achilles.

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Jun 18, 2012 David Litwack rated it 5 of 5 stars

The definitive work on Vietnam era post traumatic stress. The Author compares the way warriors (soldiers) dealt with the hardship of war in Vietnam and in the Trojan war, based on the Odyssey. The book is filled with moving vignettes, dialog from the Odyssey compared with actual discussions between Vietnam vets and the author.

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Jan 21, 2012 Mary Gail O'Dea rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a moving, evocative and important book. Shay is a psychiatrist at the Boston VA where he has worked with Vietnam Vets for years. Using the Iliad as a metaphor for war, Shay passionately yet clinically portrays the ongoing impact of Vietnam on the soldiers we sent there.

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Jan 22, 2011 Heidi rated it 5 of 5 stars

This was another one of those required readings, for a course on writing, but the subject was Troy to Vietnam. The first time I had this Professor he showed us how not only did the men in Vietnam had PSTD but also that Achilles had suffered from it also. This book was great to read along with the Iliad, brings you to a new place in classic literature.

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Feb 17, 2013 Barbaraleah rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: reread

A fascinating and haunting explanation of how war decimates our soldiers' lives. This is exceedingly relevant in light of the suicide epidemic that has hit our war veterans. They deserve better than they are receiving. This is a definite reread.

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Jan 23, 2013 Lian Tanner rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

Two and a half stars. It's a fascinating topic and Shay's approach seems both original and useful - I say 'seems' because I'm in no way an authority on this. What lets it down is his writing - turgid and hard to read.

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May 29, 2012 Andy is currently reading it

Good so far. This looks at the nature of trauma of warriors, and the way soldiers are created by breaking down the societal norms against killing/murder, creating an internal conflict and moral dilemma.

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Dec 11, 2012 Adam Wahlberg rated it 5 of 5 stars

Stunning work -- comparing the soldiers of The Illiad to the vets in Vietnam, what they come home with in terms of PTSD. Amazing insights and such a contribution to the scholarship in this area.

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Jul 15, 2011 Mari Stroud rated it 5 of 5 stars

It's half a treatise on the nature and treatment of PTSD and half literary analysis of The Illiad. And by-God, this weird little book pulls it off without the slightest hint of visible effort.

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Apr 12, 2012 Mayalekach rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is incredibly painful to read, but incredibly fascinating. It will change the way you think but it will also put you in a bad mood... At least you're not in combat.

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Sep 29, 2012 David Cain rated it 5 of 5 stars

Fascinating insights into the veterans of the Vietnam conflict, a brilliant reading of the Iliad and some clues to the treatment of trauma and PTSD.

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Oct 16, 2010 Derek is currently reading it

It is a good factual book that compares the traumas of war. Achilles in Vietnam gives a good comparison between Vietnam and Troy.

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Jan 29, 2009 Suz rated it 5 of 5 stars

This really deepened my understanding of both the Illiad as well as of PTSD and the experience of being a soldier.

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“Melodramas of moral courage provide satisfaction through the comforting fantasy that our own character would hold steady under the most extreme pressure of dreadful events. [But we must face] the painful awareness that in all likelyhood one's own character would not have stood firm.” — 5 people liked it

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