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Therapy Pitfalls With Vietnam Veteran Families: Linearity, Contextual Naivete, and Gender Role Blindness
Family therapists should welcome an emerging trend toward a more systemic perspective in treatment of male¹ veterans having post-Vietnam adjustment problems. In their recent overview of psychotherapies for Vietnam veterans, Scaturo and Hardoby (1988) noted that historically, the bulk of the literature on war trauma and postmilitary adjustment has been psychodynamic in orientation (Ferenczi, Abraham, & Simmel, 1921; Hendin, Pollinger, Singer, & Ulman, 1981; Kardiner & Spiegel, 1947), with little attention paid to the family perspective. Some early writing on family therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) attempted to moved toward a broader conceptual focus by suggesting that the family be the desired unit of treatment (Figley & Sprenkle, 1978; Stanton & Figley, 1978). These authors presented cogent arguments that therapists should be alerted to "interpersonal systems' aspects of veteran stress responses" (Stanton & Figley, 1978, p. 288) and that therapists should "look for rules which tend to perpetuate the disorder" (Figley & Sprenkle, 1978, p. 57). Unfortunately, despite these systemically informed insights, Vietnam veteran treatment literature has generally remained intraphysically oriented. The therapist wishing to intervene with Vietnam veteran families faces a number of potential therapy pitfalls that have been poorly addressed. This article will attempt to elucidate three potential problem areas through examination of trends in Vietnam veteran literature and presentation of a representative therapy case.
