On Ajax and the idea of PTSD

So I recently shared my piece on a play about Ajax that I attended . if you haven't attended one of these, or if you need to read it, here it is in a most recent translation. Nevertheless, as with all pieces made, beaten into a certain length and of limited scope (it has to be thus, since we need to allow the reader to focus on one thing, right?), I want to add to it. See, the piece only deals with my reaction to the Theater of War (TW) and the audience's views of the play and rifts between people up to and including the rift between veterans and civilians. I left out my view of the play itself and about the interpretations themselves (if that makes sense, mainly the piece focuses on the world outside the play) because there wasn't enough space to deal with them. 
But I'm thinking that the idea of moral injury is a little too disparate to matter and either needs to whittled down or made into something worthwhile. A more studied version of PTSD, TBI, is not mentioned, mainly because the Greeks didn't have issues with explosions. 
Of course, this gets to my final issue with the play, in that we try to shoehorn everything to what the Greeks experienced. 
Not to say I don't like the Greeks and their work. Like I said before, they, with the use of their mad gods, really do convey a lot of reality to us (and do it better than many other genres out there). But with this play, Ajax, is it really about PTSD?[1]
First, moral injury can be several things. At its more basic we're talking about having a prior set of values disrupted by something traumatic one sees that forces them to rethink that moral viewpoint of the world. 
Fair enough. 
Here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia page:

Moral injury can also be experienced by those who have been transgressed against. For example, when one goes to war believing that the purpose of the war is to eradicate weapons of mass destruction, but finds that not to be the case, the warrior can experience moral injury due to a sense of betrayal. Those who have seen and experienced death, mayhem, destruction, and violence and have had their worldviews shattered – the sanctity of life, safety, love, health, peace, etcetera – can also suffer moral injury. This injury can also occur in the medical space – among physicians and other emergency or first responder care providers who engage in traumatic high impact work environments which can affect their mental health and well-being.

This is something easily applied to the veteran. We all think of a veteran as having seen or done something far too horrific to explain and being unable to deal with it. I think when that's combined with the lies that have gotten us into some wars, we're can easily see that the rationale for doing something will wither away and we have nothing but what we've done. 
In a similar way, it can be applied to the medical field, in that people who work in a hospital will see a lot of traumatic things and can suffer the consequences of their decisions and suffer moral injury. 
Okay, and that's what the play and TW hinted at. 
But the play really dealt with a different example of it. Ajax is a battle hardened warrior and he has no qualms about what he did in battle, or those he killed (a war of choice, mind), [2] but rather is infuriated with those who have denied him the armor of his friend, Achilles, even though he helped bring it back. Instead the contest has little to do with the battle skills (or what he did) of Ajax and instead he loses based on an oratory contest. 
So part of the issue, or his rage, comes from being cheated out of his rightful winnings. 
This was construed as the two separate moral systems. One in battle, and one at home. One can be good at a certain system and not the other (usually the case, I suppose). 
Ajax then plans to kill these officers for doing him wrong, but Athena (again, the Greeks have a way of showing how impersonal forces prey upon the powerful and weak alike) makes him mad. Here she makes him believe that he's killing these superior officers, but instead murders and tortures sheep and shepherds. 
Is the Goddess of war giving us an example of what "war" can do to a great warrior? Athena thus being a stand in for the forces of war? Why else turn him into a sheep-torturing fool? Laugh, she says, to Odysseus (who won Achilles' armor), at your foe. 
Is this, then, madness, or an example of how the violence of war can come home to roost with the target anything but the intended enemy?
Is the officers making up some rules in a contest to deny Ajax his rightful ownership of his friend's armor an example of the usual betrayal in war? 
What I mean is that now that they have gotten all the use they need from Ajax's fighting, they can cheat him out of what he morally deserves and, furthermore, because the goddess of war is what she is, she makes him mad, rather than allowing him to kill the mortal powers that be? This shame of both failing to kill the mortal powers that be and instead killing helpless sheep is then what makes him kill himself.
An easy comparison is that some soldiers coming back from war and acting out some madness. Fights. Accidents. Killing animals, even. Or perhaps being cheated out of honor in the odd way "civilian" life can make happen. Or perhaps seeing the lies of the war for what it was?
Or maybe the need for suicide comes when, Ajax, powerful on the battlefield is made mad and helpless in "civilian" life by Athena. Then the difference in these two power structures and one's place in them could be the issue. 
But I'm not sure I would place this as major reasons for PTSD, though I'm sure they play a part.
Well I suppose that, ultimately, I'm not sure I understand the play as much as I thought, but I would like to hear what you have to say.

EDIT: So someone linked me to a piece of audio from NPR that helps to unpack the thought behind war then and now (the piece has more than just the play Ajax in it). Go ahead and read it. It's about the anger at superior officers for letting warriors down. Or, it seems to focus on the pain experienced rather than any other parallel similarity.

For example, that the brotherhood of war is something that will never be replicated in civilian life is something that speaks to the rift between civilians and warriors. Yet I don't see that in this play. I do see the betrayal of troops by those in charge, but in a different way these days.

Oh, and I wanted to add something about the medical field. Many there were talking about the trauma seen in a hospital, etc, telling us about the rift between them and "civilians" or expectations of outcomes of their work.

Something in me wants to buck this narrative, however true it may be (for those in the medical field or in the "warrior" field) in a worldview sense of the word. I'm reminded of an article in the LRB "Don't join a union, pop a pill" (or don't change the status quo, pop a pill, or don't discuss systematic issues, talk about what you had in common with ancient royalty) where systematic issues (and our system is sick, make no mistake about it) are viewed in the prism of an individual having to deal with some random psychological phenomenon.

That TW reading which I went to had been talking about the rise in suicides in the medical field (as well as burn out). The same has been said for veterans. Thus a play about a soldier killing himself really seems like the right way to go, I suppose. And yet it doesn't. Does it?

Suicides are up for our nation, not just explained by a handful of fields in, admittedly, high stress jobs. Maybe everyone is a little Ajax? Maybe it's something more. 

We've come a long way since the Greeks, as great as their stories are, and though I see some parallels, I hope we can move from the focus on the individual to the system. Not one person talked about redoing the medical system. The same goes for the forever wars. Mission accomplished, I imagine.


[1] For now I'll leave my idea (not original, I'm sure) that PTSD is a range of things (more than a linear range, too) and will have to be further studied because what I'm hearing now doesn't make as much sense as I would have thought (and also, that the manifestations of PTSD, in less known forms like domestic violence, have yet to be studied and would certainly not be dealt with within the framework of what the Greeks knew, though they sensed a little more about it than I thought. 
But for now, let's look at it as a result of TBI as well as moral disruptions that can't rationalize away what was done, or what was done that wasn't enough to save a friend, or what was done to an enemy for the wrong reasons (or reasons that weren't enough afterwards)
[2] Indeed some have even examined Achilles reaction to battle and there is no qualms about killing or being killed, which is another frame of mind entirely. But it has been applied to soldiers who have to get through the idea of being killed and thus of killing. This, I wouldn't say, is PTSD, but it could lead to it, I suppose, once that moral view is upended or has a tough time "coming home".
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