Wizard 6 Reviews

Douglas Bey was a budding young psychiatrist, in his early 30s and fresh out of residency training at the famous Menninger Foundation when his induction notice arrived. His time of military service included a tour of duty in Vietnam at the height of the war, 1969-1970, reflections on which form the heart of this book. Although socially tolerant, Bey was politically conservative ("somewhat to the right of Genghis Khan...") and not opposed to military service. Having come from a rather strict academic family (his father checked out the IQ of any woman his sons seriously dated), with a strong urge both to achieve and to prove himself as a man, joining the military at a time when this almost certainly meant service in Vietnam was one of the ways young Douglas asserted his independence.

Bey was one of a small group of psychiatrists assigned to combat divisions (Wizard 6 was his radio handle). Each of these divisions had one psychiatrist, one social work officer, and several social work and psychology techs. These teams of mental health specialists found themselves in the strange position of helping others adjust to an environment that was itself plainly bizarre. Bey relates these initial impressions in a masterful chapter, "Stepping Through the Looking Glass," drawing the comparison to the Lewis Carroll classic. As just one example among many of the young doctor learning the rules by which this strange world was governed, Bey relates a time early in his tour in which he was requested by a military court to evaluate a prisoner charged with criminal offenses. Bey dutifully wrote a lengthy evaluation, stating in as many ways as he knew how that this prisoner suffered from a personality disorder, not a mental illness, and was therefore likely to repeatedly criminally offend. Surprised that the court let the man off, Bey found out that the court had not read his evaluation at all, but surmised from the heft of it that this man had genuine psychiatric problems. However, they were so miffed at having to let this criminal offender off the hook that they really threw the book at the poor guy following in the docket!

There are many very interesting features of this memoir. Bey deals very forthrightly with issues of racial, class and cultural differences in relation both to military justice and to psychiatric and mental health issues. He approaches these issues with a clear, personal point of view, but is refreshingly aware of the strengths and limitations of his own perspectives. Although he faced shelling and danger along with the rest of his camp, he fully understood the position of privilege he enjoyed as an REMF (Rear Eschelon MFer - Bey deftly conveys the vulgarity of the atmosphere without trying to scandalize the reader) as opposed to those directly on the front lines. He also recognized the peculiar position he and his fellow medics were in as relatively high-ranking officers who had no long-range military career goals. Their indifference to military protocol was sometimes comical, sometimes rebellious, sometimes useful in getting things accomplished outside of channels, but it was also always a position of privilege.

From a clinical perspective, among many important points, I found most interesting Bey's narrations of what he terms 'counterphobic pimping' that went on among the male soldiers, both officers and rank-and-file. Any male in our society has experienced this ritual, and likely actively taken part in it at some level - find your buddy's weakness and nail him to the wall with it! 'Ranking' on each other is the term my friends used for it. In Bey's narrative, this ritual was taken to extreme lengths in Vietnam, not as a way of tearing each other down - as is sometimes its functions in civilian life - but rather as a ritual of building up each others' courage in the face of real danger. While males are socialized to keep their fears of personal inadequacy unspoken, or even unconscious, through this ritual one's buddies would verbalize each and every one of these fears (and then some!) and thus make them part of an open ritual. In short, this male ritual contained, in Bey's view, a very important aspect of coping with a largely untenable situation. Of course, this does not rationalize the use of this male ritual in any and all situations. Bey understands that particularly in common civilian interactions, the `female' style of conversing directly with each other about one's anxieties is socially, psychologically, and emotionally more mature. But it is especially good for we sensitive, therapied types to recognize that in some situations, this male ritual also may have its positive effects.

One of the things that surprised me in this memoir was the almost complete absence of any discussion of politics. Although Bey does suggest that he was politically very conservative (part of his rebellion, I suspect) and generally supported the war effort (albeit, with grave doubts about the way the war was being conducted) candid discussion of war politics simply does not come up, either in the direct talk among the officers or in Bey's own interpretive narrative. The closest to this is one episode in which, at the behest of a black fellow officer with whom he was very close, Bey attended a meeting of black enlisted men and relates the speeches presented there, which focused on their anger and resentment at fighting for the freedom of Vietnamese while having freedoms denied to them in the USA. This episode is related, however, not in the context of discussion of the war itself, but of racial tensions within the military. The main sense one gets here is that, aside from brief episodes of extreme action, the war was experienced by the soldiers themselves - or at least the REMFs - as grindingly boring. I suppose this strikes me so strongly exactly because, as I remember those years, heated discussions about the war, for it or against it, more or less consumed us stateside, and this brings home again the chasm of difference in perspective between those who actively participated in the war and those, like me, who did not.

Bey ends his book with some very insightful chapters on coming home and the `lessons' of Vietnam. He manages this without being preachy or melodramatic. For himself, he just wanted to come home, put it all behind him, and get on with building his psychiatric career - which he did amazingly successfully for years, only to find that the ghosts of Vietnam, mingled with his own personal and family ghosts, had to be reckoned with after all. Facing up to the voice of his own unconscious, inner counterphobic pimper, Bey changed his style of practice and has become much more at ease with his accomplishments, strengths and vulnerabilities. He relates this phase of spiritual growth not in a way that sets himself up as a model for others, but in a way that encourages the reader to say, "Yes, I can do that too!"

Daniel Liechty, PhD., DMin., ACSW, LCSW School of Social Work, Illinois State University