Dear Mr. Junger,
I went to a funeral mass for a friend last week. As I listened to the priests—one from Africa, the other from South America, and bathed in Catholic ritual with the large extended family and members of the local congregation, it occurred to me that you missed something else in your interesting analysis of PTSD and our tribal nature in your recent book, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging.
You argued that most of the men and women coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan who claim PTSD have not experienced combat, and that what they are really experiencing is a homecoming reaction. You say that they have lived for a time in a highly interdependent military culture in which small groups of people have jobs, meaning, and each other. They serve together in foreign lands—and then return to the competitive, individualistic, wealth driven scene at home.
I said last week that I agreed with much of your argument, Read The Article