M551sheridan- I appreciate your thoughts on the matter, thanks for the post. It is true I will never know what soldiers go through, regardless of how much I study the area. Hopefully this will not prevent me from contributing to the growing body of knowledge. Of course, not being part of the 'club' does make it harder for people to trust and talk to me, even fill out a form, knowing full well I will never really understand. And that is something I will just have to work around.
13BrigPvSk- Thanks for the reply.
I will attempt to answer your questions on here, but if you want further elaboration I am more then happy to pm you so as to not clog up the forum with essays that might annoy other users.
You are either very well read and take an active interest in the literature, or you have a Psychology Masters (at the very least).
You are of course right, the brief description given above is a snippet of what I am looking at, I will actually post into this message a rough draft of the overview of my research so you can see where I am coming from.
Thank you for bringing Stephen Joseph to my attention. I understand he has covered the notion of resilience as a preventative measure to PTSD and coping strategy. Hopefully this summary below further explains my perspective: (Please note, this is very rough, so note the lack of references and brief description for many of the suggestions. I suspect the grammar might be a bit basic too, but you get the idea.)
In 1975 General S.L.A Marshall changed the worlds view on combat forever when he published his work Men Against Fire. Within this text he suggested a startling fact: In WWII only 15-20% of soldiers were firing their weapons. After conducting hundreds of interviews Marshall declared that Man, as a general principle, had a resistance to killing. His subsequent work is reported by the works of Grossman (2005) to have altered the way the military trained combatants, subsequently overriding this resistance and increasing rates of fire to 50% (in Korea) then 95% (In Vietnam). This work went virtually unchallenged since its introduction after WWII, and spawned the work of Grossman, a military Psychologists who’s work elaborated upon this theory. Grossmans articles and book won critical appraise, becoming mandatory reading for the CIA, FBI, Army, Air Force, Marines and countless police academies across the globe. But simply, it is defining the governments training and understanding of the solider and police officers.
Recently however a great deal of criticism has been directed at SLA Marshalls findings. Although a great number of these are directed at his unscientific method of collecting data, other studies have failed to replicate his findings. This has lead to a inernational debate over this notion of a resistance to killing, putting Grossmans ‘resistance to killing’ theory under threat.
This study however, would seek to go beyond this and analyze the very nature of Grossmans theory of resistance to killing, which as will be discussed is ambiguous, contradictory, and at best overly simplified in nature.
Using Interviews and transcripts Grossman hypothesizes the following:
· Mans resistance to killing has been thoroughly documented during wars in history.
· The nature of this resistance is a type of instinctive, biological predisposition based on a Freudian concept of understanding the collective, connection of individuals through a common trait of being human.
· The Military utilize classical conditioning and social learning process to brain wash soldiers into killing, without giving thought to the traumatic consequences of go against such a resistance.
· The military and police force need to pay attention to this resistance, and what It means to kills.
· Within the military exists a 2% which Grossman suggests are capable of killing without this implicit resistance. He argues against the notion of Psychopathy, and suggests these types are a natural soldier, a type of empathic killer, which is useful within the military. An environment a sociopath/Psychopath (he incorrectly uses the terms interchangeably) cannot flourish.
Aim of proposed research
The proposed research will investigate the notion of social Identify and Identity theory to investigate this resistance to killing, with the aim of explaining soldiers justifications for killing the enemy, as well as being able to predict soldiers ability to kill the enemy without serious trauma, based on certain identity traits and reinforcements of such traits.
An integrated approach to identity and social identity has been well documented as a means to accurately predict and understand individual’s behaviors, feelings, thoughts and actions.
Social Identity and identity theory suggests that the individual can form many identities over a lifetime that collectively and individually shape their behavior. These desired and sort after identities shape the way an individual can respond in a group and to an out-group in a manner, which can cause extreme prejudice and conflict.
A individual can thus be shaped by their culture and surroundings and seek to build an identity around such environments. If the environment encouraged a passive almost taboo culture to killing, then it is suggested that the individual will base their identity around that group norm. Whilst the opposite can be true for cultures such as warrior tribes, and more recently close knit combat units such as the United States Marine Corps. Research has suggested that identities within soldiers are extremely important in shaping soldiers lives and understanding depression, stress and motivations.
This research will consist of the following three components:
· Can identity more accurately describe and explain this concept of a resistance to killing then Grossmans Freudian, abstract existential collective existence? Does the Military use identity strengthening techniques (such as battle mind) to further reinforce this desired behavior that is part of a soldiers duty?
· Does this resistance exist at all? Taking into account recent criticisms to Marshall and Grossmans theory, can it be suggested that ones culture and society, and thus identity is a better explanation.
· A third and less detailed component will begin to explore this concept of empathic killer as appose to the Psychopath involved in the commando roles as described by Grossman. Research on this will be limited in scope and be classed as both secondary data and component to the research.
Method
This research will utilize veterans from both combat and non-combat roles to better understand this identity approach. This research will also look at training orientated soldiers in an attempt to understand their understanding and use of identity building as a means to encourage the motivation to kill the enemy, if need be.
Relevance, goals, and contribution to the literature
Grossmans work is affecting the way government bodies are training and forming a belief of how soldiers and police officers are trained to kill, naturally affecting the general populations perspectives of said groups. This has not come without outcry from various police academies who believe to much emphasis is placed on conditioning and the automatic approach to killing that Grossman suggests, which is suggest to be inflammatory. This research can further help clarify the process of identity in motivating the factor in killing the enemy.
Grossman suggests that this automatic trained response to killing is causing soldiers and officers to suffer trauma that needs to be addressed. PTSD rates among soldiers contradict this suggestion. This would further add clarity to the growing research on PTSD.
It has been suggested that building and encouraging resilience among individuals is becoming an increasingly useful way in preventing soldiers from developing PTSD. There has been increasing evidence that such resilience has been used within the civilian population during mass emergencies and disasters. Identity reinforcement is a large and critical factor in this resilience building, and as such, this research can add to the growing body of research in preventing PTSD. The Militaries ‘battle mind’ may be an important component to this.
This study will attempt to be able to predict soldiers ability to kill the enemy and accept such acts without need for stress induced times off, based on certain identity traits and reinforcements of such traits.
Challenge the relevance of Grossmans literature to the modern day all voluntary Military which identity as a soldier/warrior/peacekeeper may vary significantly to a mandatory service soldier.
