A bit of weekend meta

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

Hi everyone.  Well, if anyone's in the mood for thinky thoughts this weekend, I thought I would pose a nice cheerful question about trauma for us to discuss. 

I am no specialist at all, but I have read that some psychologists who work with and write about post-traumatic stress among combat veterans make the point that, while most people understand that suffering injury, violence or terror can traumatize a person, it is less well-understood that inflicting injury, violence, or terror can also be a very traumatic experience.  There are veterans who suffer post-traumatic stress because of actions they had to take during war, even if those actions did not result in damage to them personally or someone they cared about.  Some of the symptoms can be recurrent memories of the event (they can happen in dreams or the person can feel they are reliving the event), and also the person may react badly to simuli that remind them of the event.  I'm curious as to whether you think Kara or Lee were traumatized - or could have been - because of violence they had to inflict?  When I think about Kara in Leoben's "dollhouse," she clearly *both* suffered and inflicted violence/terror, and I'm curious as to what you think most affected her.  What about Kara and Lee being asked to assassinate Cain?  Lee and the Olympic Carrier? 

Additional question: do you think the way pilots usually fight - from a distance, inside their Vipers, rather than hand to hand or face to face with bullets - made more immediate violent confrontations (Lee with the Centurions in Valley of Darkness, Kara with Simon in The Farm, both of them with their former shipmates in the mutiny) more difficult to deal with?  Or do you think they seemed comfortable with their training and unphased by more on-the-ground combat situations?

Comments

[damao2010.livejournal.com]

Interesting questions.

I don't think the fact they fought from a distance, from inside their vipers, made their body to body confrontations more difficult. I mean, in real life, I guess it makes perfect sense for a pilot to be less prepared than, say, a marine for this form of combat, but in the context of the show, I don't see much difference, because when do marines get the chance to go face to face with the enemy?

I do think, however, the distance element helps to decrease the post traumatic effects of killing and harming others. It must be easier to kill when you do not hear, see, smell or touch the pain, blood and gore of dying. I believe the fact that they didn't really see their enemy as people, as living beings (at least for the most part of the show), also helped.

That is not to say they didn't experience that sort of effect, though. I think they did so mostly for what they had to do to other humans - in the mini, when Lee and Laura had to abandon those ships to the cylons, when Kara and Lee had to shoot the OC, when the marines had to shoot civilians during Tigh's shot at command, when they fought human guards on NC...

Longwinded thoughts on trauma (including discussion of child abuse and suicide)

[scifishipper.livejournal.com]

I think you raise a lot of interesting points about the effects of trauma on soldiers. In general, military training goes very far to buffer soldiers against the traumatic experiences of killing the enemy. That said, it really often comes down to specific experiences and individual personalities and ways of dealing with stressors that predicts (in some cases) how a person will react to traumatic materials. No one can be assured to survive a traumatic situation without a psychological impact. Most people will have some reaction to traumatic stimuli, the question is how much does that stimuli effect the witness/participant? One of the factors in identifying PTSD involves the real belief that one's life is in danger - that impending death or physical harm is imminent. Without that factor, it is unclear how much inflicting emotional/physical harm to someone else would contribute to PTSD. While I am no expert for soldiers, it can often be the accumulation of severe stressors that decreases a soldier's ability to cope with particularly difficult events. If you've been inoculated to routine military events, it might take a lot to become finally traumatized. A civilian, on the other hand, would be more likely to be traumatized by a one-time traumatic event.

Given that basis, I'd say that the routine killing of cylons would not pose many problems for either Kara or Lee. Cylons are the enemy and they are not even human. I can see that the deaths of their comrades would contribute to a hardness and willingness to kill the enemy, either by hand-to-hand combat or blowing up raiders from a viper. I think they did those things without much remorse or thoughts that remorse would be appropriate.

However, if a soldier has a history of previous trauma, like Kara's for example, they have already been subjected to stressors that are more likely to weigh on the coping skills from the outset. Kara, in particular, has some typical acting out/externalizing ways of coping with stressors that work for her. Put her in an actual war and she seems to excel - many of her experiences as a traumatized person can work in her favor. What they cannot do, however, is help her heal. I believe that the accumulated stress of the entire war, the several years of running and death-defying stunts and near-misses, not to mention a lack of interpersonal security strongly contributed to her seeming more and more out of control. Her internal resources for coping with stressors was being depleted crisis after crisis without much to reinforce them (as everyone else was also depleted).

So, enter Leoben and the dollhouse. Wow. I feel like she'd have very little chance of getting out of that situation without significant trauma (and she didn't, of course), both from the psychological torture she experienced and from the intimate killings of eleven (?) Twos. She had blood on her hands and the very image of her sitting formally down to dinner with a bloody knife speaks to a dissociation that often occurs when trauma becomes too great. She'd simply split off from herself to deal with the horrors of her experience (something she likely learned as a child dealing with parental abuse).

In her instance, the psychological torture was designed to do what it accomplished: to make her question her very nature (and some might say, her humanity). Repeatedly killing someone to try to get free is absolutely traumatic. In every sense of the word, he appears human, and beyond that, has systematically returned each time to worm his way deeper into her subconscious. I believe at some point she would absolutely break and feel that urge to commit suicide (and I'm disappointed that they removed that scene in the bathroom). She was in tremendous psychological pain. She needed it to end. It is not an uncommon outcome for victims of torture (during and after the torturous events).

(cont)

Re: Longwinded thoughts on trauma (including discussion of child abuse and suicide)

[scifishipper.livejournal.com]

I would also add that much of what Kara and Lee experienced would be classified as acute traumatic stress instead of PTSD (which takes place well after the traumatic situation has passed - technically six months after). Kara, however, undoubtedly suffered PTSD from her childhood and that very much came into play when the stressors became too great to master.

I agree with Claudia that the human-related actions, such as the OC and the mutiny would have weighed heavily on their minds, but I am not sure they'd rise to the level of PTSD. Lee's panic attacks were short-lived and a reasonable outcome for that difficult event. I don't see that it led him, in particular, to have PTSD.

In the end, if the humans were evaluated, they would all have had PTSD from the initial attacks to some varying degree. Once the war ended, PTSD was an assured thing for many, although the shared sense of victory and survival would have helped in the healing process.

Anyway, I hope this makes some sense. I guess I was feeling chatty! :D

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

Everything you say makes a lot of sense to me -- I think you're right that it was conflicts with other humans that would be the hardest to face for both of them. Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts on this! I also agree that both Lee and Kara seem to be okay with more immediate forms of conflict, not just Viper fights, though I think Kara started out more comfortable with it than Lee. Now that I think about it, the series said early on -- Bastille Day, I think -- that she was a great shot outside the cockpit as well as in it, with sniper training and everything. Lee seemed to me a bit more unprepared and shaken when he had to face the Centurions in "Valley of Darkness" outside of his Viper. I just remember him saying to the nervous crewman that he didn't think he was cut out for this kind of thing, either, and then chanting to himself "headshot, reload, headshot" in a way that showed he was terrified of losing control of himself and doing it wrong. But I think that probably had less to do with being afraid of up-close-and-personal violence, and more to do with the idea that he didn't have a routine for this kind of fighting the way he had for Viper combat. Clearly after the Centurion incident he seemed to have more confidence in himself during those kind of situations.

Re: Longwinded thoughts on trauma (including discussion of child abuse and suicide)

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

Wow, thank you so much for sharing your analysis and insights, I really feel like I understand some of Kara's overall emotional arc better now, and I certainly see more in the "dollhouse" storyline than I did before (it didn't really work for me up until now, but I think this will make it seem more realistic the next time I watch it). I'm really glad you felt chatty, that was fascinating! Thank you!

Re: Longwinded thoughts on trauma (including discussion of child abuse and suicide)

[scifishipper.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! I think the dollhouse story as it stands alone is a little high on drama and low on explanations/content (standard RDM), but I'm glad my comment might have shed some light on some of what I think he was portraying and why the dollhouse, in particular, might have worked so well on Kara. There are other perspectives on the dollhouse, certainly, but that's mine in a psychological nutshell. :)