Afterwar:
Healing the Moral Wounds of Our Soldiers

with
Nancy Sherman

Wednesday, September 16th, 2015

5:00-6:00pm
Mortara Center for International Studies

Movies like American Sniper and The Hurt Locker hint at the inner scars our soldiers incur during service in a war zone. The moral dimensions of their psychological injuries--guilt, shame, feeling responsible for doing wrong or being wronged-elude conventional treatment. Georgetown philosophy professor Nancy Sherman turns her focus to these moral injuries in Afterwar. She argues that psychology and medicine alone are inadequate to help with many of the most painful questions veterans are bringing home from war.

Trained in both ancient ethics and psychoanalysis, and with twenty years of experience working with the military, Sherman draws on in-depth interviews with servicemen and women to paint a richly textured and compassionate picture of the moral and psychological aftermath of America's longest wars. She explores how veterans can go about reawakening their feelings without becoming re-traumatized; how they can replace resentment with trust; and the changes that need to be made in order for this to happen-by military courts, VA hospitals, and the civilians who have been shielded from the heaviest burdens of war.

2.6 million soldiers are currently returning home from war, the greatest number since Vietnam. Facing an increase in suicides and post-traumatic stress, the military has embraced measures such as resilience training and positive psychology to heal mind as well as body. Sherman argues that some psychological wounds of war need a kind of healing through moral understanding that is the special province of philosophical engagement and listening.

Reception to follow. Light refreshments will be served. 

Book will be available for purchase. 

Professor Nancy Sherman received her BA from Bryn Mawr College and her PhD from Harvard. She received her MLitt from the University of Edinburgh. From 1997 to 1999 Ms Sherman served as the first Distinguished Chair in Ethics at the US Naval Academy, designing the brigade-wide required military ethics course as well as laying the groundwork for the new Stockdale Ethics Center. She has taught at Yale, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Maryland and has trained in psychoanalysis at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute. Since 1995, she has consulted for the U.S. Armed Forces on issues of ethics, resilience, and posttraumatic stress, lecturing at the Uniformed Services University, Walter Reed Army Hospital, the National Defense University, and many other military academies, bases, and veterans groups throughout the U. S. as well as abroad.  Read more...

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Accommodation requests related to a disability should be made by September 7, 2015 to Alex Phelan, Program Assistant, Mortara Center for International Studies, 202-687-8107. A good faith effort will be made to fulfill requests.