Kennedy was killed in Dealey Plaza. Dallas has been blamed for the assassination but the name of the plaza derives from George Bannerman Dealey, publisher of the Dallas Morning News from 1885 - 1940. A statue of him is there and would have been among the last things JFK saw. The newspaper was and still is very much a part of the establishment of Dallas. Nobody identifying with the establishment of Dallas would have killed him there. A citizen of Dallas killed Kennedy but it was not 'you and me' as the Stones' song 'Sympathy for the Devil' had it.
What have you learned from Veterans? I am a veteran and psychology student now and just curious.
ReplyDeleteEarly in my VA practice, I had a patient who, during WWII, crash landed 3 times in Europe, once was trapped under his plane with highly flammable aviation fuel spilling around him while other airmen successfully struggled to free him. I suppose my view had been that the armed services promoted a solipsistic view toward others. Out of strength and boundaries and shared potential need/ideals, sharing, empathy was easier. I think also that knowing violence, they could, as the famous Roman say, 'Nothing human is foreign to me,' and, counter intuitively perhaps, have less need to separate themselves from others by having a disparaging attitude. Somewhat reluctantly perhaps they knew that people could be disparaged. On the other hand, being injured in the exigencies of combat be it physically or by 'over learning' of dangers in PTSD tended to reduce ongoing 'social and industrial capacity' to use a rating board term. And of course my learning of psychiatric practice was significantly with veterans as patients. In a sense they helped me to have a socially helpful role as did the airmen who rescued the transformative patient for me mentioned at first. Furthermore I learned, if one can credit their reports, of history.
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