Symbolic Expression in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Vietnam Combat Veterans in Art Therapy

Between 1964 and 1973, 2.8 million members of the United States Armed Forces, including 7,500 to 55,000 nurses, served in Southeast Asia. Of these, 1 million were in active combat or exposed to "'hostile, life-threatening situations," and 58,000 were killed in action. More than 115,000 veterans have died since returning from Vietnam. That is twice as many as in the war itself. Possibly 3(F/ of these deaths, which some sources (Tracy, 1982) claim to occur at the rate of 28 per day, were from suicide. The most conservative estimates indicate that at least 700,000 male and female veterans now suffer severe emotional problems related to their war experience, This paper describes an art therapy program that I designed as an alternative treatment modality for Vietnam veterans who were dealing fifteen years later with the psychological sequelae of combat. It presents five ways in which their dualistic approach to self-representation manifested itself artistically, and describes conscious and unconscious attempts by the veterans to integrate the polarities symbolically.