Odysseus in America by Jonathan Shay Page A

an abrasive comment like, “I’m all right. What the fuck’s your problem?” if someone asked if there was any way his pattern of constant overtime or multiple jobs was related to his war experience. Their pattern of arriving at work earlier than anyone else is often in the service of avoiding contact: two veterans in our program have worked for different public utilities as solo service men or installers, and arrived earlier than anyone else so as to be in the truck and gone from the yard before others arrived. Both considered themselves very good at what they did and were openly contemptuous of the attitude, dedication, and competence of their fellow employees. The families of such veterans have often done quite well—financially—but frequently will tell youthat the veterans never brought themselves home with their paychecks. They were absent, emotionally aloof, irritable, and perfectionistic as parents and husbands, with the marriages often ending in divorce.
    After World War I and again after World War II, the German government’s approach to post-combat readjustment to civilian life was work, work, and more work. There was little in the way of disability pensions, nothing in the way of treatment for combat trauma, but a great deal in the way of vocational training, job placement, and veterans’ preferences. Even the most grievously wounded were trained to do
something
and put to work. From the point of view of economic reconstruction, this was a “success”—I find myself wondering how much of the German post-World War II “economic miracle” was the product of the convergence of government policy and the workaholic strategy to keep a lid on the memories and emotions of war. When it was published in the United States,
Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character
was just one of a full shelf of books on combat trauma. When it was translated into German 4 it was greeted with astonishment as something previously unheard of, a startling new perspective. Germans are just now beginning to wrap their minds around the idea of combat trauma, having suffered—as well as caused—so much of it in the first half of the twentieth century.
    Workaholism is a
very
successful strategy for keeping a lid on things, for those whose luck and makeup permits it to function reliably. While the numbers for the economy may look good, the families and the veterans themselves bear hidden costs that economists measure very badly. 5
    I do not feel comfortable recommending efforts aimed at
preventing
workaholism, in the same way that I’d endorse any reasonable strategies to prevent alcoholism and drug abuse among returning war veterans. But to sanctify workaholism as an unmixed blessing, something to be encouraged or even somewhat coerced, as in the German rehabilitation practices, seems profoundly wrongheaded to me. My goal is a flourishing, good human life for veterans, their families, and their communities.
    Odysseus has served us as a metaphor of the veteran—in this instance in the workplace, where by not trusting anyone, by trying to do it all himself, by making a mission out of it, he fails and loses the job. However, he also stands very well for exactly what he his, the commodore of a flotilla, who does not trust anyone beneath him to do anything right, and thus micromanages and fails to take care of himself. When this leader breaks, people often die. In the episode with the King of the Winds miraculously no ships are lost in the hurricane, but they easily could have been.

7 A Peaceful Harbor: No Safe Place
    Six men on each ship in Odysseus’ flotilla have died in the pirate raid on Ismarus; the Cyclops ate six more from Odysseus’ own vessel. Visits to the lands of the Lotus Eaters and the King of the Winds at least have cost no more lives. But now the twelve ships of despondent men pull their oars, clueless and chartless, away from the island of