What can we learn from a military psychiatrist--trained to treat those returning from war with post traumatic stress disorder--opening fire on his fellow soldiers and humans, killing twelve, injuring 31 more?
It seems that Major Nidal Malik Hasan was tremendously stressed by the prospect of being deployed, having heard the horror stories of war from the soldiers he treated. And he cracked on Thursday November 5th at the military base in Fort Hood, Texas, going on a killing spree that has traumatized military families and shocked the nation.
There might be huge lessons here--about human nature, about war and fear. But there may be a more banal one as well.
Shrinks aren't perfect. They're human. Flawed, imperfect humans in whom others put their faith, sometimes misguidedly. Thankfully we have never before heard a story of a psychologist or psychiatrist going postal in such a way-and hopefully we never will again. But as people talk about the event at the office, at the bus stop, in the deli, a theme is emerging: "A shrink. Can you believe it?" "Doesn't that take the cake-a psychiatrist going nuts?"
We expect mental health professionals--psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses--to be mentally healthy, for starters. Above and beyond that, many of us idealize, and even idolize, the doctors from whom we seek solace for our emotional, psychological, and psychiatric pain. In our transference, they become gods and goddesses who can do no wrong, who know all, and who will help. We believe in them because we have to--we need faith that they have the power and the goodness and the knowledge to make us whole again.
It is a particularly difficult truth to assimilate, then, that one of them could lose it. We tell these people all. We trust them, profoundly and implicitly. Our lives, our secrets, our pasts and futures, it often feels, are in their hands. To contemplate that a doctor we trusted could be unworthy of that trust, human, imperfect, dangerous even, resonates as an unspeakable betrayal and a terrible wrong.
No, your psychologist will not turn out to be a mass murderer. But it might feel like a crime to discover that he is imperfect, petty, cheats on his wife, lies on insurance forms, has bad moods in session, worries about a shrinking patient load, takes on a client he is really unqualified to treat because he needs the money, or is just a plain jerk in his life outside his practice. The mental health profession, it is often said, attracts not only those who want to help, but also those who have been harmed, those who are hurting, even those who are mentally unhealthy.
Nidal Hasan is not your typical psychiatrist, and your typical psychiatrist is far from a homicidal sociopath. Many are compassionate, incredibly well-trained, and capable of literally saving your life. But why are we so surprised that someone with psychiatric training, someone who heals for a living, is so undone by fear and demons that he kills just like a civilian? What do we expect of psychiatrists in a war zone, anyway? The lessons of Nidal Hasan may be many and profound. But one of them may be a simple case of recognizing that war is hell, and trauma is hell, and mental illness is hell, and sometimes even a shrink who has slipped through its nets can't fix it. So he does much worse.
