A bit of weekend meta
Hi everyone. Well, if anyone's in the mood for thinky thoughts this weekend, I thought I would pose a nice cheerful question about trauma for us to discuss.
I am no specialist at all, but I have read that some psychologists who work with and write about post-traumatic stress among combat veterans make the point that, while most people understand that suffering injury, violence or terror can traumatize a person, it is less well-understood that inflicting injury, violence, or terror can also be a very traumatic experience. There are veterans who suffer post-traumatic stress because of actions they had to take during war, even if those actions did not result in damage to them personally or someone they cared about. Some of the symptoms can be recurrent memories of the event (they can happen in dreams or the person can feel they are reliving the event), and also the person may react badly to simuli that remind them of the event. I'm curious as to whether you think Kara or Lee were traumatized - or could have been - because of violence they had to inflict? When I think about Kara in Leoben's "dollhouse," she clearly *both* suffered and inflicted violence/terror, and I'm curious as to what you think most affected her. What about Kara and Lee being asked to assassinate Cain? Lee and the Olympic Carrier?
Additional question: do you think the way pilots usually fight - from a distance, inside their Vipers, rather than hand to hand or face to face with bullets - made more immediate violent confrontations (Lee with the Centurions in Valley of Darkness, Kara with Simon in The Farm, both of them with their former shipmates in the mutiny) more difficult to deal with? Or do you think they seemed comfortable with their training and unphased by more on-the-ground combat situations?
I am no specialist at all, but I have read that some psychologists who work with and write about post-traumatic stress among combat veterans make the point that, while most people understand that suffering injury, violence or terror can traumatize a person, it is less well-understood that inflicting injury, violence, or terror can also be a very traumatic experience. There are veterans who suffer post-traumatic stress because of actions they had to take during war, even if those actions did not result in damage to them personally or someone they cared about. Some of the symptoms can be recurrent memories of the event (they can happen in dreams or the person can feel they are reliving the event), and also the person may react badly to simuli that remind them of the event. I'm curious as to whether you think Kara or Lee were traumatized - or could have been - because of violence they had to inflict? When I think about Kara in Leoben's "dollhouse," she clearly *both* suffered and inflicted violence/terror, and I'm curious as to what you think most affected her. What about Kara and Lee being asked to assassinate Cain? Lee and the Olympic Carrier?
Additional question: do you think the way pilots usually fight - from a distance, inside their Vipers, rather than hand to hand or face to face with bullets - made more immediate violent confrontations (Lee with the Centurions in Valley of Darkness, Kara with Simon in The Farm, both of them with their former shipmates in the mutiny) more difficult to deal with? Or do you think they seemed comfortable with their training and unphased by more on-the-ground combat situations?