Jennifer Percy

Truth be told, I found this book pretty confounding. It is ostensibly about PTSD, how we've failed (and continue to fail) to understand what it really is, what it does to the afflicted, and how--if possible--it can be overcome. The author stumbles onto a good metaphor for PTSD: demons. The study of PTSD becomes demonology; its cure "deliverance." So far, so good.

PTSD is likely an affective response to theodicy. That is, once you've really witnessed evil, perhaps even perpetrated it, how do you cope with that experience--that fact--about yourself? Some ecstatic protestant sects understandably treat it as a theological problem. Exorcism.

But yet there's something off about this book. In a bad way. It's not creepy-bad, just disappointing-bad. So much more could have been done exploring the metaphor, teasing it out, exploiting it! Percy could have exhausted the subject in the way that those living with PTSD experience exhaustion. This might have been a good, even excellent, performance from both a writerly and non-fiction perspective. However, Percy over-performs when she mistakes metaphor for metonym; slipping from observer into participant in the ritual of "deliverance." There's very little traction to save her from (credible) accusations of narcissism; she may be haunted by the trauma she hears about, but it is crass of her to presume that her haunting resembles anything like the haunting of the soldiers who are her "subjects."

Percy is so on the fence about the validity of the religious experience that it makes her deaf to the necessity of it. But even placebos serve a purpose.… (meer)

A remarkable book that is both terrifying and terribly sad. Percy does a remarkable job of showing how little we know and understand about psychology, and the human mind (which comes across as being both terribly fragile and remarkably powerful). The book is about current war veterans, but the brilliance of Percy's book is the way that she relates what is happening today among a group of people who believe that there is an actual war against demons going on right now to the consequences of other traumatic and violent events (including King Philip's War and WWI).… (meer)