Simulated War: Remediating Trauma Narratives in Military Psychotherapy

Abstract

How have the politics of therapy been reconfigured during the so-called Global War on Terror? What role have the new virtual reality therapies that so resemble other forms of military simulation played in this reconfiguration? In this article, I draw upon feminist science and technology’s (STS) theorization of human-machine interaction into order to interrogate how contemporary therapies for treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) reconfigure agency in the practice of healing. Analyzing trauma therapy as a site of reconfiguration, I show how new exposure-based therapies for PTSD—both with and without virtual reality—configure aspects of human subjectivity, such as memory, affect, and behavior, as objects for technological intervention. Through comparative analysis of different modalities of PTSD treatment, I show that the politics of therapy is especially enacted through the therapeutic remediation of trauma narratives: the mediational practices through which a traumatic memory is made available for therapeutic reworking. Therapeutic remediation practices configure therapists, patients, and nonhuman actants as subjects and objects with different forms of agency.

Technology as a paradigm to investigate war

“…When soldiers return from the battlefield, doctors are waiting to use virtual therapeutics to 'fix' them, where their post-traumatic experiences become a site of virtual exposure (Ibañez, 2016). Virtual reality machines have been controversial to the extent that they are regarded by some as the dream-making site to desensitise one's post-traumatic reactions and to reconfigure one's self in seeking a virtual adaptation to repetitive enactments of trauma (Brandt, 2016). As can be seen from the Russian-Ukraine war (Ignatius, 2022a(Ignatius, , 2022b, the use of artificial intelligence is making it possible to analyse vast amounts of data in real-time, allowing commanders to make better decisions on the battlefield.…”

Stuck in a cul de sac of care: Therapy Assistance Online and the platformization of mental health services for college students

“…In a sense, this is a version of "remediation" (Bolter and Grusin 1999;Manovich 2013), which uses digital platform technology to not just mediate but also to rework the relationship between the therapist and the patient. Brandt's (2016) work on therapeutic remediation examines "the mediational practices through which a traumatic memory is made available for therapeutic reworking" (p. 1, see also Crawford-Holland 2019). In her study of Bravemind-a virtual reality simulator used as part of posttraumatic stress disorder treatment in members of the military-Brandt suggests such remediation is biopolitical: "What is seen as a wound, how these wounds are treated, and whose wounds receive treatment, are questions that point to sites where care divides the world" (p. 8, see also Pinchevski 2018).…”

Moral Injury and the Psyche of Counterinsurgency

“…This same economy has tended to admit the suffering of non-Western participants in war, including civilians, only on the narrowest of terms, as largely voiceless and inarticulate victims whose psychological disorder makes them, in keeping with the reasoning of counterinsurgency, their own threat to societal or global order (Howell, 2012;Khalili, 2013;Pupavac, 2001;Ticktin, 2016). By claiming clinical and cultural authority to define war trauma, any diagnostic and therapeutic technology dictates the terms of war itself: what is normal and exceptional, what is worth attention, where responsibility is located and when it is absolved, what details are elicited, overlooked, or ignored, what is a tragic inevitability and what is out of bounds for discussion (Brandt, 2016;Terry, 2009).…”