Combat kills and destroys. Can it also shape some soldiers for the better?

One of the more enduring portraits of the modern military veteran is a soldier afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder. A few different versions exist — there’s the angry, crazed vet (think Robert De Niro’s ex-Marine Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, and Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo), and the outcast, woebegone ex-soldier (like Gary Sinise’s alcoholic Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump). Vietnam-era caricatures, all.

The fact that PTSD is something that plagues many people at some point in their lives — car-crash survivors, victims of violent crime, men and women who abruptly lose a loved one — gets lost amid the power of an entrenched narrative. “Veteran” and PTSD go together in our... Leer Más