Attachment to Killing

Five former Vietnam combatants diagnosed as suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were selected for an in-depth, videotaped interview. They are like other victims of trauma in that they have experienced terrible events outside of usual circumstances and reexperience such events in dreams and in “flashbacks.” They also feel detached from society, they have future foreshortening, they are hyperalert, and sleep poorly (American Psychiatric Association, 1987). They generally live dysphoric, chaotic, and unrewarding lives with little affection from women. All had “normal” lives prior to combat.

While others with PTSD, including other veterans of Vietnam and other conflicts, experience distressing intrusive recollections, some consciously avoid reminders of a stressful past. These five veterans are representative of a much larger group: those who experience positive excitement when reviving memories of mortal risk and killing. They repeatedly stimulate memories of events that sundered their lives as the means of dispelling anomie. They all reject without hesitation the hypothetical possibility of a rewarding peacetime life if it can be bought only by erasing wartime memories

Clinicians involved in therapy with former combatants agree that such seeming paradox is common. Van der Kolk, Greenberg, Boyd, and Krystal (1985) present a hypothesis regarding conditioning models and the possible physiologic reward systems involved. This present attempt moves toward a more embracing theory, based on, to great degree, sources outside of the usual psychotherapeutic constructions. Established, ethologic, evolutionary ideas are drawn on to augment understanding of aspects of intra/ inter-psychodynamics.

There is a general assumption that traumatic memories and intrusive flashbacks that reilluminate aspects of a painful past are