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I've often wondered if the traditions around warfare that we read about in ancient classics like the Iliad were intended to reduce PTSD. For example, after ever

I've often wondered if the traditions around warfare that we read about in ancient classics like the Iliad were intended to reduce PTSD. For example, after every military action, there are always games and feasts, with a lot of communal time with fellow survivors and some "play re-enactment" like boxing matches or running races. The soldiers never, ever just demobilize and go home to their homesteads. Mental phenomena like disturbing dreams are taken seriously (albeit through the lens of the religious practice of the time) and openly discussed. Am I projecting, or did the ancients know a thing or two here?

canadiantim 3y ago
That's a great insight, I think you're onto something there
captainkrtek 3y ago
That makes a lot of sense. Would seem quite important for people involved in conflict to have time to decompress with others who can relate instead of just being plopped back into normal everyday life unadjusted.
- polishdude20 3y ago
  Modern Veterans pubs seem to be something similar.
082349872349872 3y ago
The Māori Haka (and related polynesian dances) always seemed to me like they take physical manifestations of a severe adrenalin dump and, catlike, turn them into something where one can say "I'm doing this on purpose". (speaking of the Iliad: who accompanies Ares/Mars? Phobos and Deimos)
spacemark 3y ago
Interesting observation, there may be some truth to it!! A while back I read a really interesting Reddit comment by someone researching PTSD in ancient history. Here it is https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1j6ssm/comment/cbbvfib https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1j6ssm/comme...
- philwelch 3y ago
  This is a really good comment that touches on some thoughts I’ve been pondering for awhile now. In psychology, there is a concept of “culture-bound disorders”. Traditionally, these seem to be very unusual disorders that are extremely common in some cultures but not in WEIRD cultures. I think maybe the psychologists are getting this backwards; maybe some of the proper disorders in the DSM are actually culture-bound to WEIRD culture, and I think the specific way PTSD is normally described may be one of these. This isn’t to say that other cultures don’t have stress reactions, but they have different stress reactions that crystallize in forms that are more “normal” to their cultures, the way textbook PTSD is effectively “normal” to our culture. I’ve read about cases where well-meaning Western counselors show up to natural disasters expecting the survivors to have textbook PTSD symptoms. At first, people hear these counselors asking about PTSD symptoms and are genuinely confused, but apparently with enough contact, the suggestion from an authoritative sounding western medical practitioner implying that this is how they should be feeling in that situation can end up inducing those very symptoms.
  - jclulow 3y ago
    It's really hard to read this comment as anything but a quiet suggestion that perhaps PTSD is a result of mental health workers and not the result of trauma. What seems far more likely is that people trapped in cultures that have not really developed a strong mental health response (e.g., 20th century America) have few if any resources available to help people with their literally invisible condition, and they have been trained through stigma and other "culture-bound" behaviours to keep their problems to themselves and show that stiff upper lip.
    - philwelch 3y ago
      > It's really hard to read this comment as anything but a quiet suggestion that perhaps PTSD is a result of mental health workers and not the result of trauma. I’m sorry you struggled and ultimately failed to understand what I was saying, because I actually clarified this specific point: > This isn’t to say that other cultures don’t have stress reactions, but they have different stress reactions that crystallize in forms that are more “normal” to their cultures, the way textbook PTSD is effectively “normal” to our culture.
philwelch 3y ago
Probably, yes. There are also case studies from members of American Indian nations who fought in modern wars and, when returning home, participated in their nation’s traditional warrior rituals; this also seems to help. It should also be mentioned that ancient warfare has a lot of important psychological differences to modern warfare. Most tactics entailed standing literally, physically, shoulder to shoulder with your comrades in common purpose. People instinctively feel safer in the company of other (friendly) people, which is conducive to traditional formation tactics but not conductive to modern dispersal tactics, where you need to stay a safe distance apart from the next guy so you aren’t both killed by the same grenade or landmine. Speaking of grenades and landmines, ancient warfare was not as loud and concussive and cacophonous as modern warfare. Its hard to say for sure which is worse—much has been written about the primal human fear of cold, sharp steel—but the constant, deafening gunpowder and explosives of modern warfare are certainly very different. In the First World War, the term “shell shock” was coined, based on the theory that the repeated concussive impact of artillery shells landing nearby could cause some soldiers to experience not just psychological symptoms but also the neurological effects of repeated brain trauma. Later on, people assumed shell shock was just PTSD, but my understanding is that they might have been onto something about the traumatic brain injuries all along. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if people also got a lot of traumatic brain injuries fighting in a phalanx, too. But on the gripping hand, if you’re fighting in a phalanx, you can actually do something! You don’t have time to just sit around thinking about how you might die the way you would sheltering from a modern artillery bombardment. You’re not at the mercy of terrifying forces much bigger than you are, you’re facing off at close range against a bunch of guys fundamentally no different from you, with a bunch of weapons that are fundamentally no different from yours. Unless they have elephants and you’ve never seen an elephant before, but even they weren’t as scary as you’re probably imagining. When I say “elephant” you’re probably thinking of gigantic African elephants, but nobody ever managed to tame and ride into battle. Instead they used smaller elephants; they were bigger than horses and plenty scary but there were ways to deal with them. If you were a citizen-soldier of a Greek city-state, the comrades you fought shoulder to shoulder with would be fellow members of your peacetime community. You’d probably live your entire life within the same group of people and if you fought, you’d fight alongside them. There seems to be a lot of value in veterans maintaining social bonds with each other. This is what groups like the VFW were for, except for the ancients, there wouldn’t really be a need to go out of your way to join the VFW because the actual, specific men you fought with would still be your peers in your normal social milieu. Also, modern warfare probably entails a lot more sleep deprivation. Partly to cope with this, modern soldiers are much more dependent on various stimulants; amphetamines and are out of fashion but nicotine and caffeine are very popular. Modern culture also has much stronger taboos against violence. In earlier times (and I’m talking about even the 20th century or so), fistfighting was a normal part of life, slaughtering animals for food was something many if not most normal people were accustomed to doing from time to time, and people weren’t as squeamish about this sort of thing. I’m not saying this is a better way to live, but if you take a 21st century kid who might have never even squished a bug and then get him to use 21st century technology to kill people and blow things up, that’s a really big leap. Not every culture has our universal violence taboo. I’ve even read that in some nomadic and tribal cultures, men engaged in warfare practically as sport. They didn’t go raiding their enemies out of some sense of duty or competition for resources; it’s just normal behavior in their culture and if anything they enjoy it. In a lot of modern western accounts, people have admitted complicated feelings of guilt for enjoying the thrills of battle. Not every culture has hangups about this sort of thing. So all in all I would guess that modern wars push people much farther than ancient wars did. They are operating much farther away from the normal parameters human beings evolved for (which probably were extremely violent by modern standards), in alienated and atomized modern cultures that were designed to scale beyond traditional Dunbar-scale bonds of group identity, inside of a value system that categorically taboos the kind of violence inherent to warfare, using modern weapons that have significantly more violent effects, frequently outside of normal circadian rhythms and under the influence of high doses of stimulants.
sershe 3y ago
I think I've read in on Acoup blog somewhere, it's not a given that ancients had PTSD. E.g. Roman writers complain a lot about all aspects of warfare from fear to tedium, so it's not like they are trying to hide their supposedly then-socially-inappropriate feelings, but they never write about PTSD; it might just be a modern phenomenon. One theory is that warfare was seen as inherently good and proper, "normal" occupation until very recently.

canadiantim 3y ago

That's a great insight, I think you're onto something there

captainkrtek 3y ago

That makes a lot of sense. Would seem quite important for people involved in conflict to have time to decompress with others who can relate instead of just being plopped back into normal everyday life unadjusted.

polishdude20 3y ago
Modern Veterans pubs seem to be something similar.

082349872349872 3y ago

The Māori Haka (and related polynesian dances) always seemed to me like they take physical manifestations of a severe adrenalin dump and, catlike, turn them into something where one can say "I'm doing this on purpose". (speaking of the Iliad: who accompanies Ares/Mars? Phobos and Deimos)

spacemark 3y ago

Interesting observation, there may be some truth to it!! A while back I read a really interesting Reddit comment by someone researching PTSD in ancient history. Here it is https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1j6ssm/comment/cbbvfib https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1j6ssm/comme...

philwelch 3y ago
This is a really good comment that touches on some thoughts I’ve been pondering for awhile now. In psychology, there is a concept of “culture-bound disorders”. Traditionally, these seem to be very unusual disorders that are extremely common in some cultures but not in WEIRD cultures. I think maybe the psychologists are getting this backwards; maybe some of the proper disorders in the DSM are actually culture-bound to WEIRD culture, and I think the specific way PTSD is normally described may be one of these. This isn’t to say that other cultures don’t have stress reactions, but they have different stress reactions that crystallize in forms that are more “normal” to their cultures, the way textbook PTSD is effectively “normal” to our culture. I’ve read about cases where well-meaning Western counselors show up to natural disasters expecting the survivors to have textbook PTSD symptoms. At first, people hear these counselors asking about PTSD symptoms and are genuinely confused, but apparently with enough contact, the suggestion from an authoritative sounding western medical practitioner implying that this is how they should be feeling in that situation can end up inducing those very symptoms.
- jclulow 3y ago
  It's really hard to read this comment as anything but a quiet suggestion that perhaps PTSD is a result of mental health workers and not the result of trauma. What seems far more likely is that people trapped in cultures that have not really developed a strong mental health response (e.g., 20th century America) have few if any resources available to help people with their literally invisible condition, and they have been trained through stigma and other "culture-bound" behaviours to keep their problems to themselves and show that stiff upper lip.
  - philwelch 3y ago
    > It's really hard to read this comment as anything but a quiet suggestion that perhaps PTSD is a result of mental health workers and not the result of trauma. I’m sorry you struggled and ultimately failed to understand what I was saying, because I actually clarified this specific point: > This isn’t to say that other cultures don’t have stress reactions, but they have different stress reactions that crystallize in forms that are more “normal” to their cultures, the way textbook PTSD is effectively “normal” to our culture.

philwelch 3y ago

Probably, yes. There are also case studies from members of American Indian nations who fought in modern wars and, when returning home, participated in their nation’s traditional warrior rituals; this also seems to help. It should also be mentioned that ancient warfare has a lot of important psychological differences to modern warfare. Most tactics entailed standing literally, physically, shoulder to shoulder with your comrades in common purpose. People instinctively feel safer in the company of other (friendly) people, which is conducive to traditional formation tactics but not conductive to modern dispersal tactics, where you need to stay a safe distance apart from the next guy so you aren’t both killed by the same grenade or landmine. Speaking of grenades and landmines, ancient warfare was not as loud and concussive and cacophonous as modern warfare. Its hard to say for sure which is worse—much has been written about the primal human fear of cold, sharp steel—but the constant, deafening gunpowder and explosives of modern warfare are certainly very different. In the First World War, the term “shell shock” was coined, based on the theory that the repeated concussive impact of artillery shells landing nearby could cause some soldiers to experience not just psychological symptoms but also the neurological effects of repeated brain trauma. Later on, people assumed shell shock was just PTSD, but my understanding is that they might have been onto something about the traumatic brain injuries all along. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if people also got a lot of traumatic brain injuries fighting in a phalanx, too. But on the gripping hand, if you’re fighting in a phalanx, you can actually do something! You don’t have time to just sit around thinking about how you might die the way you would sheltering from a modern artillery bombardment. You’re not at the mercy of terrifying forces much bigger than you are, you’re facing off at close range against a bunch of guys fundamentally no different from you, with a bunch of weapons that are fundamentally no different from yours. Unless they have elephants and you’ve never seen an elephant before, but even they weren’t as scary as you’re probably imagining. When I say “elephant” you’re probably thinking of gigantic African elephants, but nobody ever managed to tame and ride into battle. Instead they used smaller elephants; they were bigger than horses and plenty scary but there were ways to deal with them. If you were a citizen-soldier of a Greek city-state, the comrades you fought shoulder to shoulder with would be fellow members of your peacetime community. You’d probably live your entire life within the same group of people and if you fought, you’d fight alongside them. There seems to be a lot of value in veterans maintaining social bonds with each other. This is what groups like the VFW were for, except for the ancients, there wouldn’t really be a need to go out of your way to join the VFW because the actual, specific men you fought with would still be your peers in your normal social milieu. Also, modern warfare probably entails a lot more sleep deprivation. Partly to cope with this, modern soldiers are much more dependent on various stimulants; amphetamines and are out of fashion but nicotine and caffeine are very popular. Modern culture also has much stronger taboos against violence. In earlier times (and I’m talking about even the 20th century or so), fistfighting was a normal part of life, slaughtering animals for food was something many if not most normal people were accustomed to doing from time to time, and people weren’t as squeamish about this sort of thing. I’m not saying this is a better way to live, but if you take a 21st century kid who might have never even squished a bug and then get him to use 21st century technology to kill people and blow things up, that’s a really big leap. Not every culture has our universal violence taboo. I’ve even read that in some nomadic and tribal cultures, men engaged in warfare practically as sport. They didn’t go raiding their enemies out of some sense of duty or competition for resources; it’s just normal behavior in their culture and if anything they enjoy it. In a lot of modern western accounts, people have admitted complicated feelings of guilt for enjoying the thrills of battle. Not every culture has hangups about this sort of thing. So all in all I would guess that modern wars push people much farther than ancient wars did. They are operating much farther away from the normal parameters human beings evolved for (which probably were extremely violent by modern standards), in alienated and atomized modern cultures that were designed to scale beyond traditional Dunbar-scale bonds of group identity, inside of a value system that categorically taboos the kind of violence inherent to warfare, using modern weapons that have significantly more violent effects, frequently outside of normal circadian rhythms and under the influence of high doses of stimulants.

sershe 3y ago

I think I've read in on Acoup blog somewhere, it's not a given that ancients had PTSD. E.g. Roman writers complain a lot about all aspects of warfare from fear to tedium, so it's not like they are trying to hide their supposedly then-socially-inappropriate feelings, but they never write about PTSD; it might just be a modern phenomenon. One theory is that warfare was seen as inherently good and proper, "normal" occupation until very recently.