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PBS’s recently aired posthumous tribute to George Carlin included a video clip of the legendary comedian expounding on the various wordage used over the years to label symptoms of what was originally called shell shock but nowadays is known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). |
Carlin’s premise is that the revised jargon serves to gloss over the unpalatable cause-and-effect dynamic that accounts for combat-related psychological damage. According to Carlin, the linguistic deception deprives veterans of badly needed care.
In his book, Packing Inferno: The Unmaking of a Marine, Iraq war veteran Tyler Boudreau offers another take on the subject. Boudreau rejects the “D” for “disorder” in PTSD because he feels it suggests a flaw in the warrior rather than recognizing the warrior is a normal person who has endured abnormal experiences.
At first I thought the two perspectives conflict with one another; Boudreau worries that the PTSD appellation unduly connotes human defects whereas Carlin complained it downplays the condition’s severity. But on second thought, I realized they are both right, and the seeming polarity is really just a reflection of different but not oppositional intent.
A who’s who of Carlin’s contemporaries as well as younger comedians appeared at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to honor one of the most respected performers of all-time. Among them was Richard Belzer who acknowledged Carlin’s daughter, Kelly, seated in the balcony, and mentioned her favorite quote is something Mark Twain said: “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”
As Carlin did, Boudreau demonstrates Twain-like attention to the nuances of language, and a prodigious talent for enlightening the public. That skill will remain indispensable as the dialogue over post-traumatic stress continues in the coming months and years.