War has always shadowed my life. I was born shortly after the end of World War II, which served as a reference point for my generation until Vietnam. General Eisenhower, the first president I remember, served as the Cold War hardened. I remember asking my father why we were not building a bomb shelter in our basement as a friend's father was doing. Troops, ships and aircraft were deployed around the globe. The Cold War could also be hot: The Korean War was fought to push back communism. That was the 50s.
The 60s began ominously with the Cuban missile crisis. The decade erupted with the massive expenditure of people and treasure in Vietnam. For many, that war brought into open conflict ideals held by the World War II generation and its children. That war in Southeast Asia continued until the middle of the following decade.
Domestically, especially in the 50s and 60s, the fight for civil rights brought our own unfinished Civil War front and center—where it is again today.
Cold War deployments continued until the collapse of the Soviet empire in the late 80s.
The 90s began with the Gulf War U.S. troops were again fighting on foreign soil. The first decade of the 21st century, saw rapid deployment cycles as our all-volunteer army fought grinding, drawn out wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Since September 11, 2001, our service members have been a key element of the many-tentacled War on Terror
Absorbing this reality in my gut, I decided to edit a special section for TAP on war
In this issue, TAP publishes two articles. On the cover is an edited interview I held with psychoanalyst Harold Kudler, who in the fall of 2014 was appointed chief mental health officer for the Veterans Health Administration of the Department of Veteran Affairs. We explore the mental health services of the Veterans Administration and the influence of Kudler's psychoanalytic training on his VA work. Prudy Gourguechon's article, titled, “Preliminary Thoughts on a Civilians' Project: Coming Home from Our War” on page 20, considers our psychological investment, role and responsibilities as civilians when we send men and women to war.
Two more articles will appear in the next issue of TAP: One by Will Braun on organizing a theatrical reading of Freud's entire Civilization and Its Discontents—twice—at the Judson Memorial Church in January 2015, and another by Neil Altman on how he used Melanie Klein's work to understand and facilitate his actions opposing the American Psychological Association's role in the United States government use of torture as part of the War on Terror.
Today, with an all-volunteer military, many Americans have detached themselves from responsibility for our wars and for the veterans we have sent to fight them. This is a profound cultural change from the mass national mobilization of World War II. Civilian detachment is due in part to the heated polarization over the Vietnam War and not unrelated to the end of the draft. Our four authors seek to have us once again engage as whole citizens responsible for a whole country and its government.
Michael Slevin, M.A., M.S.W., a former TAP editor, graduated as academic associate from the Baltimore Washington Institute for Psychoanalysis, where he completed the Adult Psychotherapy Training Program. He works at Sinai Hospital of Baltimore and has a private practice.