| For 36 years, Bob Chegal exhibited signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) along with bouts of depression, anxiety, and anger. Chegal also had a recurring dream. In it, a boy stood before Chegal, his mouth moving soundlessly. Though, in Chegal’s words, “just a little boy,” the child was the first Viet Cong Chegal ever killed.
Chegal bounced between therapists, but could never seem to confront the demons that plagued him — if he hadn’t been referred to Dr. Ed Tick, he might never have. Tick’s unorthodox approach to PTSD treatment is an amalgam of Western psychology and Eastern spiritual practice. War, argues Tick, is a wound to the soul itself.
Together, Tick and Chegal journeyed to Saigon, a city that, Chegal says, hadn’t changed much in 36 years.
“Sandbags, green uniforms and AK-47s everywhere,” Chegal remembers. “I’d heard about flashbacks and thought, ‘Oh, what a crock.’ But, man, these were real.” Though not always a pleasant experience, it was returning to Vietnam that allowed Chegal to accept and forgive the country and himself. He can recall with perfect clarity standing on the steps of a Buddhist temple in South Vietnam and turning to find the boy who had haunted his dreams.
“It was like our souls were talking,” says Chegal. “Does that make sense? He was thanking me for letting him go home.”
Which begs the question: Souls?
According to Dr. Tick, Chegal’s account is not unique; vets who undergo his treatment frequently complain of both haunted dreams and of losing souls themselves. His new book, War and the Soul (Quest Books, 2005), begins with an account of a man who has “lost” his soul at the Battle of Khe Sanh.
“That we don’t even really understand what a soul is shows some of the lost, troubled nature of our society,” says Tick. “If we had a mature, sophisticated idea of a spiritual world, it would change everything.” Especially, says Tick, the way we treat our veterans.
Currently, the Department of Veterans Affairs combines individual and group psychotherapy with medication in order, according to VA practitioner Miles McFall, to “suppress and sometimes cure PTSD symptoms.” But, Tick says, that’s not enough.
“There’s a difference between managing PTSD and addressing it,” says Tick, who holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychotherapy; the problem, he says, goes beyond war.
“When the Western world made the transformation from the pagan to the early Christian era, it lost around 2,000 years of holistic healing as old, complex, and sophisticated as [the Chinese tradition],” says Tick. Western epistemology, for all that it offered, effectively fought a war against spirituality. The result?
Says Tick, “We think we’ve become the dominant force in a dumb, empty, meaningless universe.” According to Tick, modern war — in its often indiscriminate and unmitigated brutality — is a natural extension of a soulless worldview.
War’s original function, as a means of defense and a rite of passage, have been compromised by the swapping of “spirituality for power, control, and domination.”
Tick invites participants to invoke the people who haunt their dreams. “The dead in dreams want something,” he says.
Veterans under Tick’s care have also performed restorative and philanthropic work; in 2004, Bob Chegal and others returned to Vietnam to build a school. Since his visits, his nightmares have stopped.
Tick has recently received a grant to conduct a case study and obtain empirical data in order to substantiate the efficacy of his treatment.
“Beyond my work with veterans, I want to bring back the concept of the soul to this society,” says Tick. Doing so, he says, could change the world. |
