Psyc 190: Warriors at HomeIntegrating Past and Present

Dr. Elena Klaw

Goals for Today Film Clip: How to Fold A Flag Why tell the story of vets? Narrative Narrating the self discussion

Why Tell the Story of Vets? Education: Creates community of support,

reduces stereotypes.

Psychotherapy: Repeated tellings in a nonjudgmental context habituate the teller to the painful details of the memory and allows him/her to integrate the memory and the emotions.

Reduces self blame, anger, despair and self destructive behavior.

Narrative Memory is both a representation of the event,

what we we were able to understand and process at the time of an event, what we were told, and our feelings about what happened.

Ideas about sequence may come later as we take memory out of limbic system and process it with language.

Narratives are thematic stories we tell ourselves about our role in life events, the choices we had or have, come from the stories we have heard and/or lived.

Narrating the Self

Partner Interview: Who are you ? (Imagined Self) Who could you be? (Possible Self) Who are you afraid to be? (Feared

Self) Who do you want to be? (Ideal Self) What do you need to be who you

want to be??

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA):

“First and largest nonprofit, non-partisan education and advocacy organization for America's newest generation of veterans.”

Goal to provide help and support to vets. Community of Veterans: a private, online,

social network exclusively for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Cross between a 21st century veteran's hall and Facebook”