War and the Soul: Healing Our Nation's Veterans from Post-Tramatic Stress Disorder

As a peace activist from way back and also the father of a Marine who has had two tours of duty in Iraq, I found this book to touch my heart, open up conversation between my son and me and give me a better understanding of the struggles our vets face. A couple days after reading this I had a chance to talk about it with my Marine son and used the insights I had found here to open the deepest conversation we have had in years. The soul-dimension of war is seldom considered, but Tick's treatment makes it clear that there are real and important struggles being faced by vets from all our previous wars. I gained a wealth of knowledge and understanding, and highly recommend Tick's book to parents, spouses, children and friends of returning vets, as well as the vets themselves.

Dr. Edward Tick has written a book that gathers wisdom from our mythic ancestors about healing the aftermath of war. As a Viet Nam Veteran I have suffered with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD and Dr. Ticks book War and the Soul has been the only out of many books I have read that truly address the fact that PTSD is a wound that occurs in the soul of the soldier. I have needed this kind of healing for forty years. During the time of reading the book I wept too many times to count. I have yellow highlighted more than half the book. I am a practicing psychotherapist and believe that the essence of what is needed to heal our veteran's wounds has been excavated out of history and illuminated by Dr. Tick. His articulate understanding and collection of experiences with veterans makes his work invaluable to those who have the courage to recover their souls. I believe as Dr. Tick does that PTSD is an identity disorder. Dr. Tick proposes that the ancient role of warrior is one our veterans need today in order to bring meaning and direction back into their lives. In today's world warrior are intensely needed.

Ed Tick has written an important new book, one that stirred up the deepest emotions in me, helping me remember where and who I was in those Vietnam years. It is wonderful the way he reminds us that there is another way to bring back soldiers and help them re-enter ordinary society: the way of indigenous peoples, with ceremony, ritual, prayer, and rites of self-discovery. If we followed the traditions of our more ancient ancestors, as Ed encourages us to do, we would turn soldiers into spiritual warriors who could help heal not only themselves but our society which also exhibits the worse signs of shell shock and war neurosis. As we watch men and women return from Iraq, we need a book like this now more than ever. . . so that they, and those of us at home, can realize our need for true spiritual warriors.

It appears that Dr. Tick got in over his head. He started out using traditional psychotherapy to treat Vietnam Veterans suffering from PTSD. Fortunately he had the sense to realize that PTSD was more than a mental health issue and, seeing he was in over his head, he learned how to swim. The currents carried him far from shore, to places where he could see that behind the emotional wounds of his clients were spiritual wounds and that what needed healing were their souls, where such wounds are inflicted. He discovered ancient methods for healing such wounds, and adapted them to the current times. He also discovered that the impulse toward making war emerges from a deep and primitive place in the collective unconscious, and has more to do with initiation into noble and honorable spiritual warriorhood than the massive death and destruction which modern warfare has achieved. He concludes that war cannot be waged for power or domination without causing great spiritual harm to those who wage it. War can only be waged in an honorable fashion, with great respect for one's enemies and for the purpose of protecting of one's home and family from immediate threat, if such harm is to be avoided. This just might be the book to end all wars if enough of us pay attention to it.

I am a combat vet of the Viet Nam era. I purchased a copy of Dr.Tick's book WAR AND THE SOUL last week. I can't begin to express how deeply it affected me as a veteran, a father and as a man. Edward Tick has brought out into the open the essence of the problem with the aftereffects of war. We are of the "don't talk about it and it will just go away," generation. I'm referring to the loss or corruption of every mans' soul as a result of the horrors of war, and the lack of a true warrior class in America as DR. tick describes it. Like no other terror on earth, war is so traumatic that indeed one's soul may be lost forever. However, it does not have to be that way. We indeed may regain intimacy, trust and a purposeful life if treated as humans with souls, not like men having to be drugged with antidepressants to keep us away and out of public sight. Edward Tick's book is from his soul, from many years of providing psychotherapy to veterans and winning the way back from nightmares and terrors for them. He dares to practice psychotherapy in an intimate surrounding, never trying to be detached from the one he is serving. He has felt the wounds of the flesh and mind as closely as possible without actually being in the war. Detachment is not his style as is the norm in psychological therapy. That is a big reason his methods work. Combat vets know instinctively who to trust and that usually does not include psychotherapists that are just interested in their job. They must be interested in the men and women they treat. WAR AND THE SOUL touched my soul, made me cry and smile. I saw and felt the same fears and changing attitudes of vets fortunate to return to Viet Nam with Dr. Tick. Dr. Tick, indeed, helped me find my soul again and the warmth of my loving wife, intimacy long lost and a renewed vigor for life. I am a fortunate person for I have traveled back to Viet Nam twice with Dr. Tick and his book is true. Sincerely, Robert Cagle