Abstract
Embodied Imagination (EI) is a psychotherapeutic technique in which a dream or memory environment is reexperienced in a hypnagogic state as a composite of its many perspectives simultaneously. While this method has been employed by mental health professionals to treat trauma survivors, there is scant documentation of its use with combat veterans. This case study focuses on the role of EI in helping a high-ranking Marine work through the stressful memories of war and the indecisiveness that marked his civilian life. Only in the last 6 months of his 2-year treatment could he reveal the recurring intrusive memory and nightmare of a high-risk mission he had authorized as a commanding officer in Afghanistan. The memory of certain decisions he had made on this mission left him with lingering guilt, shame, and doubt. Key to this process was the embodiment of a safe place that contained the patient, allowing him to integrate the more difficult parts of the memory without retraumatization. While EI is similar to other methods for working with nightmares, its emphasis on the non-self-perspective through the exploration of ego-alien images—while hewing closely to the original images—may be unique. EI appears to be a method that encourages posttraumatic growth.
A Case Study of Subclinical PTSD
“Christopher” (pseudonym), a high-ranking Marine, first came to see me because his mother and sister ordered him into psychotherapy. They felt he had changed since returning from Afghanistan 3 years earlier, becoming emotionally more distant and rude. After working with him as his clinician, I concluded that he probably would never have sought mental health counseling on his own. It would take almost 2 years of working with this affable, high-functioning young man on what, at the time, seemed like relatively minor family and employment issues before the fuller and deeper impact of his time in combat began to emerge.
The emotional scars of combat are more widely recognized than in the past and more information is available about posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than ever before—partly because more of today’s veterans have been exposed to multiple deployments and have survived more life-threatening experiences than any previous group of veterans. Still, for many returning veterans like Christopher, the negative effects of war go undetected and untreated (Golding, Bass, Percy, & Goldberg, 2009). This is especially true for those who appear to be highly functional and do not meet the formal criteria for PTSD (Paulson & Krippner, 2010). Even when they have a seemingly smooth transition back to civilian life, becoming responsible students, workers, and family members, afflicted veterans often suffer nightmares and flashback memories in silence. These disturbances may reflect and reinforce a failure to realize their fullest personal and professional potential. Having secured Chris’ permission, I will describe our work, focusing on the therapeutic role of the Embodied Imagination (EI) method in overcoming the nightmares and intrusive memories that Chris eventually revealed to me, which, in turn, helped resolve the indecisiveness that marked his civilian life.
The Embodied Imagination Method
EI is a method of working with dreams and memories developed by Jungian analyst Robert Bosnak in which a patient reexperiences a dream or memory environment as a composite of its many perspectives simultaneously (Bosnak, 2007). The technique draws from disparate influences such as analytic psychology, neuroscience, alchemy, ancient incubation practices, method acting, and complexity theory. By entering a hypnagogic state (a state of consciousness that naturally precedes the onset of sleep), individuals using EI artificially flash back into a dream or memory of a previously experienced life event. Bodily responses to images, viewed as a form of intelligent communication, are integral to the technique. While new insights emerge, the process initially bypasses the intellect. Instead, an expanded body awareness—based on a change in interoception as well as a shift in the experience of external stimuli—is the catalyst for change (White & Fischer, 2012).
Whereas mental health professionals have used EI to treat trauma survivors, there is scant documentation of its use with veterans. Systematic outcome research that compares this approach to other techniques for treating traumatic nightmares is needed to help identify the specific benefits and limitations as well as the unique and shared components of each modality. Such techniques include Imagery Rehearsal Therapy (Moore & Krakow, 2007), Prolonged Exposure Therapy (Peterson, Foa, & Riggs, 2011), Cognitive Processing Therapy (Williams, Galovski, Kattar, & Resick, 2011), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR; Shapiro, 2001), and Somatic Experiencing (Levine & Mate, 2012).
Two aspects of EI appear to be unique among these kinds of treatment modalities: first, its exploration of multiple perspectives of the same dream or memory—especially the non-self-perspective as a source of new intelligence—and second, its focus on hewing as closely as possible to the phenomenon of the original image. In contrast to those methods that stress conscious interpretation of the dream or memory images, much of the work in EI is initially done on an unconscious level, with spontaneously occurring images. This may make EI simpler and faster to implement than other methods.
Treatment Begins
On the day I was to have my first session with Chris, I felt anxious. I had worked with other veterans before, but had few personal ties with individuals in the military—even fewer with those who had seen combat. I knew that in order to help veterans heal, I had to bridge the experiential and cultural divide between military and civilian life, opening myself to the deepest and most humble form of listening and learning.
As I opened the waiting room door, Chris slowly unfolded his muscular 6 feet 2 inch frame from my couch, stood and firmly shook my hand. He walked into my office with self-confidence, but when he began to speak, his face registered a subtle bafflement about what he was doing there—a first clue of the contrast between his powerful self-presentation and the complex vulnerability that was working underneath. Almost immediately, it became clear that Chris defied the stereotype of the combat veteran recruited off inner-city streets, eager for a structure missing from his family life, and for better educational and career prospects. Chris came from privilege and was well-educated; at the end of his career as a Marine, he was selected for a highly sought-after, high-level government position in Washington, DC. At the time of his treatment, he was working as a financial advisor at a world-class investment firm. And despite the tensions that brought him into psychotherapy, his family was close-knit and well-intentioned in their desire to support him.
In response to my initial questioning, Chris rattled off a brief narrative of his deployment, 4 years before. He was one of those 9/11 Marines, he told me, who felt compelled to join the military out of college as a patriotic response to the terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. He chose to become an infantry officer because he knew this would put him on the front lines. He was glad that instead of having to serve in Iraq, he was sent to Afghanistan where the stated two-pronged mission of finding Osama bin Laden and nation building seemed clearer and more legitimate to him. For 1 year, he commanded a 100-plus infantry unit that performed over 100 intelligence gathering and security patrols along the Pakistani border. “I could have died a couple of times,” he casually informed me.
Over the next 18 months, our individual sessions revolved mostly around current concerns with his family of origin, work, and romantic relationships: his resentment toward his buttoned-down, critical father, his overinvolved mother, and underachieving younger sister; his ambivalence about his current career path, and his former fiancée with whom he remained in regular contact. Chris interspersed talk about these here-and-now issues with fleeting references to his war experiences—compared with other veterans, he said, he had had it easy. Except for some hearing loss from exposure to the loud noise of artillery and improvised explosive devices (IEDs), he returned physically unscathed.
When he first came home, he had felt “jittery and hypervigilant,” but these symptoms soon abated significantly. He was able to work and had a wide, supportive social circle. His gratitude for his personal fortune and relatively successful transition back to civilian living seemed to sensitize him to his fellow veterans’ suffering. He was in touch with many in his unit, a few of whom were struggling with various combinations of alcohol and drug abuse, suicidal thoughts, and severe money and relationship problems. He befriended other veterans wherever he ran into them—whether at his country club or the gas station. Over and over, he expressed appreciation for my help, telling me that I could bump him from his weekly meeting if it was the only time I could schedule a paying client. I actually found my work with Chris intrinsically rewarding and wondered to myself if he had a strain of survivor’s guilt that interfered with feeling entitled to the benefits of his military service and ultimately, to fully embracing his post-combat life.
At the time I saw him, Chris did not exhibit patterns of the severely traumatized that characterize the estimated 10% to 25% of veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (Moore & Penk, 2011). He was not easily agitated, startled, or angered. Neither did he dissociate from his emotions or thoughts in an obvious manner. There were virtually no signs of clinical depression, and he did not abuse drugs or alcohol. And as a frequent public speaker, he was—at least superficially—able to talk about his war experiences.
In the next months, however, fragments of darker material began to appear: the front of his vehicle blew up on his first day in Afghanistan and he and his men were only saved by the device that scrambled enemy signals controlling the bomb; he survived a helicopter crash after the engine malfunctioned; and he witnessed a young girl get accidentally shot as she was caught in cross-fire. She did not die, but he felt anguish that the permanent effects of her severe injury that, as he said, “ultimately rendered her as good as dead in that culture because she had lost her utility as a worker.” These stories hint at the potentially traumatizing nature of war on the human psyche. Eventually—and most important for our work together—they also provided a context for the lingering guilt, shame, and doubt Chris felt about certain decisions he had made as a commanding officer.
The Therapeutic Experience
In this early period of treatment, when Chris touched on these memories, he would quickly skid off them and back into the problem of the moment. While these problems seemed tame in contrast to those associated with full-blown PTSD, nevertheless, they pointed to a subclinical posttraumatic pattern that returning veterans often experience. Chris was riddled with indecision and ambivalence: Should he stay at his sedentary job, which provided financial security, but left him feeling ungratified, or should he take a steep pay cut to join the FBI, where he could make a difference and draw on the leadership skills he developed in the military? Should he try to win back his ex-fiancée—who had left him because he could not commit to marriage, and yet would not let her go—or push himself to finally move on and find someone new? He had no idea, he said, about how to make such decisions. Like an ever-tightening rope, these preoccupations bound him to a constricted life that lacked a sense of forward movement.
Chris was so uncomfortable about moving on with his life that he had unconsciously recreated his barracks in his home, renting a tiny, bare apartment with a single dark window and using a single dish and set of utensils to eat the same chicken dinner night after night. A clear future in the civilian world eluded him. At one point, he calmly confided in me that since he had defied the odds by surviving so many life-threatening situations in combat, he had occasional premonitions of dying young.
In their book, Haunted by Combat, Paulson and Krippner (2010) refer to a similar “flattened sense of real life fulfillment” felt by many returning veterans. They can find themselves yearning for the external structure to their daily lives that the military provided them. Back in the civilian world, the freedom to make independent decisions, both large and small, can be daunting. In Chris’ case, his survivor’s guilt combined with a sense of missing the intensity and meaning created by the high-risk demands of war deepened the rut in which he had landed. It was becoming apparent that the understated way he spoke about his indecisiveness in work and love betrayed a more entrenched paralysis. The cursory nature and the jarringly casual tone of his combat anecdotes reflected a need to shamefully conceal their psychologically damaging impact.
Mindful of this need as well as of the general importance of moving slowly with trauma victims to protect against retraumatization, allowing the memories to unfold in their own time, I did not push Chris (van der Kolk, 2012). I knew, as well, that we came from different cultures. First, I was a civilian. Most often in civilian culture, physical aggression is considered to be inappropriate. To kill is murder. In contrast, success and survival in the military dictate the tactical use of aggressive force necessary to defeat the enemy. Desensitization to death is part of the training. Second, I was a mental health practitioner. Mental health culture values emotional expressiveness and an openness to asking for individual help. Military culture prizes emotional suppression and personal sacrifice for a collective cause. Given these differences, I needed to build trust by demonstrating to Chris how much he could teach me. I waited for an opening.
The discovery that “Shelley” (pseudonym), Chris’ ex-fiancée with whom he was still emotionally involved, had been engaged to another man for some time without telling him was what finally cracked his memory vault. His sense of betrayal led to deeper self-reflection. Once Shelley was no longer available, he realized that she had been a bridge between his military and civilian identities. She had met him when he was still on active duty, but had just returned to the United States. She was the only woman who knew Chris the soldier as well as Chris the financial advisor. He could not imagine an intimate relationship with someone who did not know about that part of his life; but once he left the Marines, he felt unwilling to talk about his wartime experiences with other women. Consciously, he felt that he did not want to burden them or receive their pity. I believe that unconsciously, he had created a post-combat persona that covered up his disturbing memories, letting them hibernate, surfacing only in mild insomnia and anxiety. It was at this point that the most distressing memory came pouring out.
The Memory
Soon after he is deployed to Afghanistan, several convoys from Chris’ unit are hit by IEDs, causing severe injuries to at least a dozen of his men. Intelligence sources identify “Ali” (pseudonym), a tribal leader of a nearby village who was responsible for deaths and injuries to other units, as the offender. Reports indicate that this leader and his clan are forming a militia.
Chris is ordered to do something to stop this widening threat to his unit. Taking off-road trails, Chris has his troops hike uphill for 2 days toward the village with the aim of capturing Ali. Both the territory and terrain are hostile. The territory is rife with Taliban fighters; the terrain is unshaded, rocky, and steep; each man is leadened and sweltered under the weight of equipment and clothing; food and water are scarce; the air is thin and adrenaline is running high.
A day and a half into their trek, they are hours away from the village. The radio operator turns to Chris and confesses: “I forgot to charge the extra batteries!” Immediately, Chris recognizes the danger. Without the use of a radio, there is no way to call for backup air support if they are ambushed or come under fire. The success of this mission and the safety of his 18- and 19-year-old soldiers hinge on a single, dying battery with only 8 hours of juice left. How can he tell his troops that they have to go back without losing credibility?
As the commanding officer, Chris feels responsible for this error. To save face, he forges ahead without revealing the problem to anyone. Once in the village, the unit’s translator informs Chris that Ali and 20 clan members have taken off to a nearby mountaintop and are refusing to come down. Under extreme pressure, Chris reviews his options. He makes another quick decision: they will lure Ali back down from the mountain by setting his family home on fire.
After definitively identifying Ali’s house, Chris orders his soldiers to round up and evacuate Ali’s four wives and 10 young children and places snipers and other soldiers in defensive positions. He has two of his soldiers light kerosene-soaked rags and throw them into each side of the mud house. It erupts in flames. Chris excitedly grabs his camera and starts recording the action. He catches the eye of one of Ali’s young sons, who is watching Chris videotape his burning house. Terror streaks across wide eyes.
In that moment, Chris drops his camera in anguish. “What are we doing?” he asks himself. “Shit, how stupid do we look? Our whole process is wrong. This kid is watching Americans burn down his house while they film it. If I were him, I’d grow up hating Americans. He may become the next Osama bin Laden!” The boy’s frightened gaze triggers a nearly insurmountable internal conflict between his role as a patriotic soldier fighting to defend the innocent, and this innocent child suffering at his hand.
Bursts of close-range assault rifle shots pierce the air, derailing Chris’ train of thought and filling him with dread. Thinking they are under attack, the Marines take cover—finally realizing that the explosions are coming from unmanned munitions stored inside the burning house. He gets word that Ali sees his house being razed. Through his translator, Chris threatens to take the tribal leader’s wife with him if Ali doesn’t come down to talk. Smoke is everywhere, nerves are frayed, his men are ready to burst. The now homeless children’s eyes are following every move in the chaotic scene. Chris senses that his Marines are edgy enough to kill the next thing that moves and push the whole village to pick up guns and riot. With no radio power, a lot of guys could die.
Finally, Ali begins a slow, lone descent from the mountain. Chris turns to “Mac” (pseudonym), his second-in-command officer, a macho guy always gunning for a fight, and says: “Detain Ali and prepare to go.” Mac responds in a near-insubordinate manner, aggressively questioning this command and swearing under his breath. Chris knows Mac wants to stay to “complete the job,” to take on the clan that remained on the mountain. Instead, Mac flex-cuffs and blindfolds Ali and gets the troops to hike out of the village with their captive. Chris overhears one of Mac’s Marines ask: “Sir, what are we doing? Why are we leaving the village right now?” He hears Mac’s cutting answer through his headset: “I don’t know. The captain doesn’t want to stay and fight.” Chris is angered and humiliated by this blatant challenge to his authority. He questions his own fighting spirit. But he does not take the bait and his men bring Ali with them as they return to base.
Listening
As I listened to his harrowing story, I realized that Chris’ difficulty making decisions after he returned home was linked to his quick decision making despite doubts as a Marine in combat. I was impressed by Chris’ self-reflection in the heat of this action—and by the nuanced complexity of his internal reactions as he maintained a decisive command over his troops. Even now, beneath his self-possessed demeanor, this accomplished man was racked with the haunting burden of a series of decisions he made that endangered the lives of his troops and made him question the war, along with his competence as a leader. He was left with a no-win sense of shame—on the one hand, for proceeding with an order that risked the lives of his men in order to preserve his reputation, and on the other, for aborting the mission before some of his men considered it complete.
No one died that day, but the specter of what could have or should have happened differently haunted him. He asked himself, “How can I be 24 years old and in a position to make these decisions?” This question became the disturbing refrain accompanying him throughout the operation and beyond. The tortured replaying of this incident first came to Chris in the form of a recurring nightmare. Studies of Vietnam veterans by van der Kolk, Hartmann, and others (Hartmann, 1996) have shown that unlike ordinary nightmares, posttraumatic nightmares are graphic, repetitive reprisals of actual events. Ernest Hartmann (1996) suggests that these nightmares are more like intrusive memories than ordinary nightmares. In fact, by the time Chris was able to retell this experience to me, the frequency of the nightmares had decreased, but the memory continued to intrude into his waking life on a daily basis. Although his recall was repetitive, involuntary, distressing, and disruptive, it was not a full flashback memory. Flashbacks are so overwhelming that the event is relived as if it were happening in real time, unrecognized as an imaginal event rooted in the past.
Applying the Method
A Safe Place
To help contain the pain and help integrate more stressful parts of the memory, EI often starts at a place within a disturbing dream or memory that is experienced as relatively safe (Bosnak, 2013). I help Chris enter a hypnagogic state to revisit the physical and emotional landscape of his memory. By slowing down the remembering, I guide him in a careful, sensory exploration of his surroundings. A safe place is revealed: At a rallying point outside the village, Chris sits on a large rock in the shade of a grove that has cropped up around a stream. He keeps both hands on his M16 rifle, draped over his left shoulder. Along with the other Marines, he removes his heavy boots and socks, cooling his tired feet in the water as it trickles down from the mountains—a brief respite from the grueling assignment. Chris sits in the safety of my office, sensing the cool calm of the Afghan oasis. He reports feeling a lessening of pressure combined with the alertness he has to maintain, aware that he is in hostile territory. He feels this mixture of relaxed-but-alert most intensely when he imagines soaking his bare feet in cool water. I ask Chris to practice recreating this state in his imagination for the week between sessions without moving beyond this point in the memory.
Peripheral Vision
Chris’ shame is encrusted in his narrative. He first feels shame when he puts his own reputation before his men’s welfare and decides to continue the mission. The moment leading up to this tacit decision is pivotal—when the radio operator tells him: “I forgot to charge the batteries.” If Chris can identify with the radio operator’s shame, he might indirectly dissolve his own. Identification with a perspective other than self is an essential aspect of the EI method. Slow exploration of the sensory details of an ego-alien image facilitates a type of mimesis, through which the dreamer or the one remembering “transits” to an unfamiliar body along with its associated subjective state (White & Fischer, 2012).
In this case, helping Chris identify with the radio operator by way of a transit also illustrates EI’s use of peripheral vision—allowing Chris to stay in the traumatic environment by moving him away from the center of his habitual perspective, where the shame might be too intense to bear (Bosnak, 2013). With this in mind, I help Chris focus on the radio operator, who happens to be literally off to his side: Still at the resting point, Chris becomes aware that “Smith” (pseudonym), the radio operator, is fidgeting as he kneels on the ground. His restless movements stand out against the stillness of the other Marines. He is tweaking the radio antennae and rummaging through the extra pouches in his bag. He notices the way Smith grips the two dead batteries the size of bricks in each hand and slams them onto the ground. His awareness of the radio operator increases until he is possessed by Smith’s stricken presence. Chris senses Smith’s disappointment in himself—how hopeless and bad he feels—and he experiences it as tension in the stomach.
With each session, Chris’s narrative expands as he is embodied by one more subjective state, each a different perspective of the same memory. Our work is evoking a fully realized environment, complete with an astonishing level of detail—like the feel of hot dust on Chris’ tongue and the sound of particular voices in word-for-word dialogue. In this way, the method builds on the well-established finding that the central details of stressful events often are remembered with great accuracy and clarity (van der Kolk & Fisler, 1995). As Chris relays the event in the present tense, I can feel his immersion.
Burning Down the House
Next, I have Chris jump cut to the point when he decides to burn Ali’s house as a ploy to bring him down from the mountain. Chris senses how he, his second-in-command officer Mac, and his platoon sergeant stand together a few hundred feet from Ali’s house, which is the largest in the village. Chris feels keenly how dwindling battery power makes burning this house the only practical option. Mac and the sergeant, ignited by their own burning drive for action, pounce on the idea. Chris absorbs their excitement. Peering inside, he sees women and children. He also notices pottery, a rocking chair, and other decorative objects that mark the household as upper class. In less than 5 minutes, the Marines evacuate and plunder the house. Then they set it on fire. Smoke spews out. Chris grabs a camera to capture the moment. His thrill turns to doubt when he notices the terrified face of one of the evacuated children watching him record the destruction.
I have Chris slow down this transitional moment by imaginally zooming in on the 7-year-old boy. Chris sees the boy barefoot and enrobed, clutching his mother with his right hand and holding a water bottle in his left. Chris imagines the boy wondering: “Where will I sleep tonight?” He could end up hating all Americans because of this one action. In an instant, the alarm in this boy’s eyes becomes a fierce mirror for the futility of this operation and, in a broader sense, the entire war. In the tension in his shoulders, Chris feels the shocking descent from the high of instinctual aggression to the low of moral self-questioning, the fleeting feeling of futility and sadness. Suddenly, Chris hears 20 rounds of bullets discharging nearby. I help Chris tune into the deafening bang-bang-bang of discrete shots, so distinct from the rhythm of the Marines’ own M16 weapons. He crouches, three fingers on the pistol grip of his rifle, his index finger and thumb around the trigger, ready to fire. He leaps to his worst fear: “It’s someone firing from inside the burning house . . . if Marines are shot, they will die. The battery . . . we can’t get help. We’re not prepared.” He feels this adrenalized, helpless fear most acutely in the holding of his breath in the solar plexus.
Leaving the Scene: Courage or Cowardice?
Part of Chris still wondered if he had the mettle to stay and take on the clan that remained on the mountain. By leaving after he detained Ali, Chris wondered, had he given them propaganda that would inspire them to kill other U.S. soldiers they might later encounter? Or was he displaying mature leadership by considering the low battery and prioritizing his men’s safety? Because the former view seemed best perceived through the lens of Mac, I decided to help Chris make a transit to this aggressive, second-in-command officer. Through Mac, Chris can identify with the wartime morality that wants to kill. Until Chris is embodied by the urge to attack, it will continue to attack him, making him feel cowardly. If Chris fully identifies with this aggressive nature, he can then let go of his self-doubt about not asserting it in this instance. It is Mac who can help Chris process the internal conflict between these aggressive and self-restraining forces.
I take Chris to the point when he orders Mac to ready his Marines to leave the village. Chris focuses on Mac as he and his men file out of the village. When they reach the poppy fields on the outskirts of the village, Mac is 75 yards ahead of Chris. He notices the deep timbre and contemptuous tone of Mac’s voice as he hears him say to a Marine: “The captain doesn’t want to stay and fight.” Through the quality of Mac’s voice, Chris begins to sense the noncompliant energy behind the officer’s statement. Mac knows that every Marine on the mission will hear this statement. Mac wants them to identify Chris, not himself, as the gutless officer behind the decision to leave. Mac is angry with Chris and is itching to fight the enemy. Mac knows that he can make this statement because the captain would never get into a public radio fight with him. Mac feels empowered. Chris senses the power and the desire to fight most intensely in Mac’s smile.
The Composite
Over a several-month period, Chris and I carefully constructed a memory body, composed of a network of five different perspectives: safety in the soaking feet, shame of incompetence in Smith’s stomach, futility in the shoulders, terror in the held breath, and blood-thirst in Mac’s smile.
I instruct Chris to practice recreating this embodied composite several times a day and for 20 seconds before going to sleep, simultaneously holding each subjective state in their respective anchor points in his body. Separately, these individual states are variations of experiences Chris already knows. It is holding these disparate states together in the waking body that leads to change—that expands consciousness to mirror the extreme complexity of Chris’ wartime experience. As a result of consciously holding each of these states in his body, he can no longer deny any single part of that experience. Through this composite, a new adaptive system that can withstand and flexibly respond to current life becomes possible.
Letting Go and Moving Forward
We met four more times after finishing this piece of work. Chris reported that after practicing the composite regularly, he felt more relaxed and, as he put it, “at peace with the circumstances of the mission.” Chris also reported that his nightmares and intrusive memories had stopped. During this period, he moved from his habitual guilt- and shame-filled ego perspective to one that included greater self-understanding and compassion. In letting go of this aspect of his past, Chris was able to embrace his future by becoming more decisive.
Treatment ended because he finally decided to leave his unsatisfying job for more promising work in another state. Instead of ruminating about his ex-fiancée, he started expressing hope about finding another significant relationship. He became enthusiastic about replacing his lair of a home with a more spacious, light-filled apartment. He also reported the following breakthrough dream: Carl Levin, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, calls him at work. He looks at Chris’s military record and says: “I see you served in Afghanistan and are against the war. What can we do to move things along?”
Although we had no time to fully work this dream, it is a stirring culmination of treatment. In contrast to Chris’ recurring nightmare, this dream is a vivid example of Ernest Hartmann’s concept of recontextualization (1984). No longer plagued by the literal replay of the waking-life trauma, the dreaming mind instead places the event in a new context, expanding to include other themes and images. In this dream, Chris is back in the States. One of the country’s senior politicians, an expert in military affairs, has tapped him for policy advice based on his service in combat. He is no longer a victim of shame, but someone who can help “move things along.”
This nod to his leadership potential is a sign of what Tedeschi and Calhoun (1995; Calhoun & Tedeschi 2012) termed posttraumatic growth, in which positive personal changes result from actively struggling to deal with a traumatizing event. Chris’ reevaluation of his political views provides further evidence of such authentic growth, as described by Paulson and Krippner (2010), in that he individuated from a conventional, conditioned military stance to one that was more authentic and in accordance with his experiences. A recent follow-up conversation I had with Chris confirms continuing growth. While at times self-judgment about his past creatively creeps into his dreams, he is no longer mired in that Afghan village. He is moving along.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declares no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.