1985

Establishment, following act of Congress, of VA “national center” to develop a model treatment program for PTSD, which was based on the “psychodynamic core” of a repetition compulsion, with recovery based on recall and disclosure of the traumatic memory (H. Young, 184-185). “In many cases, symptomatic behavior is altered at the moment that the patients arrive at the inpatient unit. . . . While the staff attributes the changes to their therapeutic practices, it is doubtful whether this is the best explanation. The changes are more plausibly attributed to the patients’ adaptation to daily life in a highly structured social environment, in which prescribed behavior, including nonviolence, is a precondition for continued treatment. . . . For the therapists, the most unequivocal evidence of progress is that most long-stay patients eventually provided satisfactory narratives and interpretation” (186-187).