Edward Tick - War and the Soul: Healing Our Nations Veterans from Post-tramatic Stress Disorder

Praise for Edward Ticks

War and the Soul

Ed Tick not only provides a fascinating look into the minds and souls of veterans affected by post-traumatic stress disorder, but he also illustrates how healing the ailment can be achieved.

G ARY A CKERMAN , US Congressman

War and the Soul is a healing book that rises from the battle for the heart of this culture. Veterans souls utter the anguish of wounds for which there is no medication. Ed Tick weaves the mythic background that alone can create understanding of these living tragedies. He offers both ancient and contemporary practices that can treat the loss of soul and the traumatic legacies of war and terror.

MICHAEL J. MEADE, author, Men and the Water of Life;
Director, Mosaic Multicultural Foundation

This is no ordinary brilliant book. It is a document that leads us to the possibility of healing from the wars that devastate so entirely that no one is safe. This book can save our lives.

DEENA METZGER, author, Entering the Ghost River:
Meditations on the Theory and Practice of Healing

Ed Tick has been my teacher for twenty-some years. Since the Vietnam War, he has been bringing his knowledge of healing cultures to bear on PTSD. These days the focus is too often on the strictly clinical, but Dr. Tick dares to bring in soul. If you are treating those suffering from deep trauma, or if you are a relative, a friend, or just an interested, caring person, you owe it to yourself and to your client or loved one to read this book.

FRANK L. HOUDE, retired Lt. Colonel, US Air Force

As the world hangs in the balance, Ed Tick illuminates the path that could pull humanity back from the brink.

KENNY AUSUBEL, Founder, Bioneers Foundation;
author, Seeds of Change; editor, Ecological Medicine

Dr. Tick brings to the task a deep compassion for the worldwide legion of war victims. Beyond that, he brings a scholars sense of history, a visionarys gaze into the heart of darkness, and a poets grace to make these poignant stories of personal agony somehow affirmative of the human spirit.

STEPHEN LARSEN, Ph.D., Psychology Professor Emeritus, SUNY;
author, The Shamans Doorway and The Mythic Imagination

Americans need to understand the message from our men and women in uniform whom we have sent in harms way. They are speaking to us in this pioneering book, War and the Soul.

LOUISE CARUS MAHDI, Jungian analyst; author, Betwixt
and Between, Crossroads, and The Real St. Nicholas

Silence perpetrates war and its consequences. Ed Tick pierces the silence around PTSD. With this book, the healing begins.

LOUIE FREE, Founder, Free Radio Limited; radio host,
WASN 1500 AM (northeast Ohio / western Pennsylvania)

Ed Tick shows us how war tears away at the soul of soldiers and how it impacts the collective soul of the world. If we all read this book it would change the face of war in our world and inspire us to find peaceful ways to create change.

SANDRA INGERMAN, author, Soul Retrieval

Walking through hell with his heart wide open, Ed Tick takes us on a journey of transformative power. Using history, mythology, psychology, story, and insight born of years of helping veterans, Tick allows us to bear witness to the agony as well as the healing of those who have endured the horrors of war. It is a journey from darkness through shadow and, patiently, tirelessly, into the light.

RICHARD GELDARD, Ph.D., author, The Travelers Key
to Ancient Greece and The Essential Transcendentalists

Also by Edward Tick

Sacred Mountain:

Encounters with the Vietnam Beast (1989)

The Practice of Dream Healing:

Bringing Ancient Greek Mysteries

into Modern Medicine (2001)

The Golden Tortoise:

Viet Nam Journeys (2005)

WAR
AND THE
SOUL

Healing Our Nation's Veterans from
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder

E DWARD T ICK , P H .D.

Learn more about Edward Tick and his work at www.soldiersheart.net

Find more books like this at www.questbooks.net

Copyright 2005 by Edward Tick

First Quest Edition 2005

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book.

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While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

For additional information contact

Quest Books

Theosophical Publishing House

P. O. Box 270

Wheaton, IL 601870270

Sitting Bulls song (in opening paragraph) reprinted from Stanley Vestal, Sitting Bull: Champion of the Sioux (Norman & London: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 95. Fragment from Erechtheus by Euripides (epigraph to Part III) reprinted from Constantine A. Trypanis, ed. and trans., The Penguin Book of Greek Verse (London: Penguin Books, 1971), 256.

Cover photograph: Robert Ellison/Black Star

Cover and book design by Dan Doolin

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Tick, Edward.

War and the soul: healing our nations veterans from post-traumatic stress disorder / Edward Tick.1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographic references.

ISBN 978-0-8356-0831-2

1. Post-traumatic stress disorderTreatment. 2. Post-traumatic stress disorderPrevention. 3. VeteransMental healthUnited States. I. Title.

RC552.P67T53 2005

ISBN for electronic edition, e-pub format: 978-0-8356-2029-1

6 7 8 9 10 * 12 13 14 15

For my beloved children
Jeremy, Gabriel, and Sappho,
and for our future

Y e tribes, behold me.
The chiefs of old are gone.
Myself, I shall take courage.

SITTING BULL,
Song on the occasion of becoming chief

Contents