Warring Identities

Drawing from 26 life story interviews of recent American veterans, this paper analyzes the identity struggle faced by soldiers returning from Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom and reentering the civilian world. Instead of examining veterans’ problems as a consequence of post-combat mental illnesses such as PTSD and major depression, we analyze the contrast between the participants’ identities as soldiers and their identities as civilians. We find that the postwar transition causes adverse mental health effects that stem from contrasts between the military’s demands for deindividuation, obedience, chain-of-command, and dissociation and the civilian identity expectations of autonomy, self-advocacy, and being relational. Veterans’ reintegration to civilian society is further hindered by a culture that is perceived (by veterans) as having decreased understanding of the soldier/veteran experience itself. These identity conflicts—what we term warring identities—have an important yet understudied effect on veterans’ combat-related mental health problems.

Journal of Military, Veteran and Family Health

Introduction: To date, investigations of Veterans' transition to civilian life aft er military service have tended to focus on the experiences of those with mental or physical health diffi culties or on employment challenges and homelessness. Th is study aimed to gain a deep understanding of Veterans' transition to civilian life, the challenges they face, and the adaptive and maladaptive ways in which they manage them. Methods: A narrative approach was used to aff ord the Veterans an opportunity to share their experiences through their transition story. Six male Veterans residing in the Chicagoland area who had left the military between 1 and 12 years earlier were interviewed using a narrative approach. Results: Narrative analysis led to the emergence of three master narratives: narratives of the challenges, narratives of readiness, and narratives of continued military values. Th e narratives the Veterans shared highlighted not only the importance of practical readiness for transition but also the need for a fundamental addition to how Veteran transition is considered that includes psychological considerations of the impact on identity and the potential for existential crisis. Discussion: Appraising transition only in terms of measurable factors such as employment, living conditions, and health likely overlooks those experiencing psychological challenges and sub-clinical mental health diffi culties. Th e proposed fundamental addition has implications for work with Veterans in various health care settings and for existing transition programs, including a consideration of the role of identity.

Зборник радова филозофског факултета у Приштини, 2015

The paper discusses how war veterans perceive themselves and how they answer the question "Who am I?". War veterans face many challenges in the process of re-socialization from a state of war and war traumatization to a peacetime society. There are several reasons why their re-socialization is a slow process: the first one is that a war engagement is in itself a highly stressful situation which carries traumas of different degrees, the other reason is the changed system of values in relation to war engagement. Namely, at the time they went to war, they had a strong social support, but at the time of their return and today this support is lost to the point of judgment. And the third reason which limits their re-socialization is the situation of social transition they found on their return from war, which specifically means that a large percentage of the population in general, and thus the war veterans after returning from the war, lost their jobs, creating a large social group of "transition losers". Such a condition often generates an identity crisis. This set of socio-cultural circumstances together with the ontological insecurity carried by war trauma generate an identity crisis, which is manifested among the respondents in nihilistic answers when responding to questions about their own personality. Studying the identity of war veterans, it was found that a strong attachment to the veteran identity is dominant. In fact, this paper discusses the different ways in which this attachment is re-fracted in the personality and identity of subjects, from negative attitudes to the pride in belonging to a group of war veterans and personal fulfillment in the activism in associations of war participants.

Frontiers in Sociology, 2024

This article takes its starting point in a longitudinal interview study that began in 2013 with the aim of investigating identity reconstruction during the transition from military to civilian life. Annual follow-up interviews were conducted for 3 years, after which there was a break for 7 years until 2023 when a new interview cycle was conducted. The article presents the findings from this interview round. The purpose of the study was to describe the ways in which military identity had impacted the selves and lives of the participants. An inductive approach was employed in the analysis and an abductive approach used in the interpretative phase. The results showed, among other things, that a military identity, containing a particularly strong work ethic, had grown salient over the years. This military identity salience amplified the perception of a contrasting civilian work ethic, which generated moral frustration and even conflict. It was seen as imperative to maintain consistency between a military work ethic and the identity standard as a civilian employee rather than to modify the behavior to another standard, i.e., a civilian standard. These results were counterintuitive given the earlier interview cycles. A military work ethic was generally a powerful asset but could have negative health outcomes, manifesting as burnout. The results reflect the challenges in operating multiple identities tailored to contrasting moral regimes. Future longitudinal qualitative and quantitative research approaches to selfidentity work among former service members are warranted.

250 Total number of words: 6778 Acknowledgement: We are grateful to the participants who shared their often distressing interpreted experiences with the authors. REINTEGRATION POST-DEPLOYMENT IN VETERANS 2

Purpose -Ex-service personnel face numerous and significant problems upon discharge from the forces. The purpose of this paper is to explore experiences of the transition from military to civilian life and to identify some of the barriers and facilitators to re-employment.

Sociological Research Online, 2018

Promoting positive transition to retirement and cultural adaption for ex-service personnel has been identified as a priority for both social-science research and for public health policy in the UK. The Royal British Legion aims to provide support to service and retired service personnel, but to date the transition to retirement experiences of older (60-plus) ex-service personnel remain under-researched. In this article, we employ a symbolic interactionist theoretical framework to examine older servicemen’s experiences and identity challenges post-retirement from the British armed forces. Data were collected primarily through semi-structured, focus-group interviews with 20 former servicemen. Here, we focus specifically upon the challenges encountered by these ex-servicemen in the retirement transition from military to civilian life, a time of identity flux of sociological interest. To navigate this period of identity change and challenge, many participants constructed a ‘modified military self’ through involvement with the Royal British Legion as a key social support network. For many retired personnel the Royal British Legion offered a form of identification and group identity that resonated strongly with earlier experiences of comradeship in the military.

2020

Post-9/11 US military operations have been unique compared to earlier operations given their longer active-duty tours and more frequent deployments with briefer periods of non-combat for its personnel (Baptist et al., 2011). The types of warfare and injuries sustained by this military cohort also are different than those seen in previous conflicts (Kang et al., 2015). Moreover, today's military members all are volunteers, older, and more likely to be married with children than those in previous military engagements. Such inherent features of these conflicts and of its personnel have correlated with higher rates of behavioral health problems and general life dissatisfaction among returning veterans (Mental Health

Clinical Social Work Journal, 2010

The discourse on psychosocial reintegration of combat veterans in the United States has largely been confined to discussions of the best treatment for those diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. Yet analysis of the data indicates that all combat veterans are changed by their experience. It also indicates that the current medical model of treatment is insufficient. The author suggests that another model is called for; one that benefits from psy- choanalytic insights on war and violence. A model that supports veterans’ experience of changed consciousness might best help them form a coherent narrative that con- nects their past lives and combat experience to their lives going forward. She argues that this approach may not have been taken because the same mental processes that cause combat veterans to split off their experiences also cause society as a whole to distance itself from them. Clinicians can be most effective when they create a link to the veteran by acknowledging the veteran as part of society, not a split off aberration, and recognizing the universal role of aggression within and without in creating the war that the veterans fought, and shaping the social response to their return. Literature drawn from psychoanalysis, cognitive neuroscience, and clinicians from the global south is combined with that of military psychiatry and global relief and development to support these positions.

Frontiers in Sociology , 2024

As service members transition from deployment to civilian life, they are also expected to reintegrate into society. An important part of this process is to "soften up" veteran or warrior identities and open up the self for both existing and new identities, mindsets, and ways of life. Past research has shown that the warrior mindset, in particular, can have negative health implications in the long run. The mindset can be costly, not only for the individual and their loved ones, but also for the healthcare services and other agencies. This article draws from a recent interview study with 24 deployed Swedish veterans suffering from deteriorating mental health without receiving a clinical diagnosis. Purposeful sampling was conducted with the support of the medical staff at the Veterans' Clinic at Uppsala University Hospital. Participants had been screened for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) but had not received a clinical diagnosis. This constitutes a large and understudied patient group in the clinic. The medical staff selected patients based on the following criteria: deteriorating mental health, increased suffering related to PTSD symptoms, and issues related to moral issues, existential concerns, and identity. The sample included veterans from both the Swedish Armed Forces and other deploying agencies. Of the 24 interviewees, 19 were from the Swedish Armed Forces (16 men and three women), and five (four women and one man) were deployed by other agencies. The number of overseas deployments varied widely, with some interviewees having completed 1-2 deployments, while others had completed 3-8. Additionally, some interviewees had interrupted planned or ongoing deployments for various reasons. At the time of the interviews, none were serving full-time in the armed forces; all were veterans. The interviews took place during an intense wave of COVID-19 infections in Sweden in early 2022, so the majority were conducted via videoconference. The participants' veteran identities were abductively analyzed through the mask of secrecy, the stoic mask, and the mask of denial, which are elements of the "Mask of the Warrior." This mask functions to safeguard mission focus, to endure, to execute tasks in extremely stressful situations, and to solve operational tasks during deployments and combat operations. The analysis of the interviews suggests that certain elements in these powerful veteran identities can serve as breeding grounds for suffering later in life. The veterans in the study tended to be stoic about their deteriorating mental health, kept the suffering to themselves, and denied the harmful aspects of their deployments. Thus, the Mask of the Warrior played a counterproductive role for the individual, their friends and family, and life in the aftermath of deployments. Another implication of secrecy and denial occurred on the societal or macro and system levels due to the absence of sufficient insight, knowledge, and understanding of veterans among personnel within the healthcare system and other agencies. This made it difficult for the healthcare system, and other relevant agencies, to offer adequate care and to understand the participants' health issues during sick leave. The perceived absence of societal and organizational rewards and benefits for veterans who risk their mental health and lives during deployment can be seen as a failing implicit work contract. This lack of recognition may lead to the corrosion of character.