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Author's Synopsis
Michael Joyce got off on playing in his band, chasing girls and completing his Ph.D. In Psychology. Then the Vietnam War heated up. Drafted, commissioned as an officer, he soon found himself in the jungle taking a life at close range. Strangely, he didn't seem to mind, feeling nothing one way or another. He experienced the same innocent calm in subsequest kills, much the way a cheetah must after slaughtering it's prey.
This book is in a fictionalized memoir form. It is a lifelong clinical case history and adventurous tale about the development of war related PTSD. 90% of war related sufferers of PTSD come from impaired and abusive childhoods and Michael Joyce is no exception. He is wonderful and awful, talented and yet desturbed. He suffered from a chronically abusive violent father and and an unresolved oedipus complex with his mother resulting in a fixation on women. We see his demons and criminal behavior, along with a buoyancy and loving generosity toward people.
This study is necessarily graphic and purposely not sanitized in our efforts to be clinically accurate. Therapy sessions, ongoing symptom discussions and examples of desturbances are included.
Michael Joyce barely survives his year in Vietnam. Wounded twice, shot down and constantly exposed to fear, helplessness and horror. He suffers from PTSD and yet is highly decorated. Volume II and III of this trilogy sees his post war lifelong struggle with PTSD yet he successfully works for the VA as a Clinical Psychologist treating combat veterans with PTSD.
This is a must read for students of psychology, the human condition, and unique war influences. At the same time it is presented as a tip of the spear page turner. Many of us, years later, are still not home from war.
Format(s) for review: Paper and Kindle
Review Genre: Fiction—Historical Fiction
Number of Pages: 572
Word Count: 195,050