AUSTRALIAN MILITARY HISTORY –

‘Moral Injury: Unseen Wounds in an Age of Barbarism’ is foundational reading for all chaplains and other military professionals interested in understanding and healing moral injury, or even better helping to avoid it in the first place.

Physical wounds are visible and can usually be treated.

Other wounds impact the psyche and soul. These ‘unseen wounds’ can be more difficult to identify and understand, their treatment is often more complex and longer-term, and their pain may take months or years to emerge. What is recently labelled ‘moral injury’ is not new to soldiering. Soldiers throughout history have been put in situations where they act in ways that are inconsistent with their moral values, or witness such actions. But the dilemmas of contemporary warfare arguably make these resulting interior moral wounds more prevalent.

Professor Tom Frame brings his background as a Naval Officer and Anglican Bishop to the Defence Force to edit Moral Injury. He invites together the contributions of 18 military officers, historians, ethicists, chaplains and psychologists.

Chapters begin with historical perspectives from the experience of ‘shell shock’ and atrocity propaganda from WWI. Notably for example, in WWI soldiers had a slow boat home to decompress, but today a flight gets them home much more suddenly.

• xv, 278 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 24 cm #210525
• Military ethics — Australia
• Sociology, Military — Australia
• Combat — Moral and ethical aspects — Australia
• Soldiers — Job stress — Australia
• Australian