ABSTRACT
Moral injury sits uneasily on the line between individual pathology and communal responsibility. Understanding moral injury as the devastating collapse of a basic sense of trust and human connection helps to understand the importance of the fraternal bond between soldiers in combat. The trauma of moral injury exceeds the capacity of the mind to process it effectively, and fundamental confusion is one result. Focusing on the psychiatric symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) risks leaving those suffering moral injury to wander like the Ancient Mariner in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem. There has been a movement away from simply focusing on the psychiatric symptoms covered by the diagnosis PTSD to an exploration of something called “moral injury”. PTSD occurs typically in response to prolonged or extreme trauma, and is a fear-victim reaction to danger. PTSD is “a sensory experience which awaits a name that will permit the patient to ‘suffer’ it, so that he may learn from experience”.
