[Contributions and difficulties of the social approach in psychiatry: apropos of the American Forces and veterans in Vietnam. 3. Pathogenic and therapeutic problems in veterans]

Abstract

Especially among a wide psychiatric population, the risk of a mingling between etiology, pathogenesis and description, peculiarly between correlations and explanations, is an important stumbling-block. However, like as acute war diseases, the part of a previous psychical vulnerability appears to be less important than the classical one which is played by "stressors", chiefly in case of their summation. Here, interfere not only combat "traumas", but also the circumstances of the readjustment after returning. In spite of interesting contributions to the mechanisms of traumatic neurosis followed up after Vietnam conflict, the reflection about intrusive-repetitive syndrome does not seem to have given rise to new developments. Concerning the therapeutics, the opinions about the results achieved--particularly with psychotherapies, in fact delicate and protracted--are more pessimistic than that of the authors.