Veteran and Family Reintegration (Paperback) | Released: 14 Jun 2016

The military experience offers a domain of inquiry about the human condition that can often be instructive about other life spheres as well. Accordingly, this book covers a wide spectrum of study that can help us to better understand the lives of military personnel, veterans, and their families. The book is organized in three sections. - The first section looks at the need for the proper treatment of veterans and military personnel who have experienced different forms of trauma, such as moral injury. This opens the door for new clinical approaches that consider the moral and existential aspects of trauma, rather than strictly the physical dimension. - The second section looks at the impact on an individual's identity as a result of traumatic change, such as the suffering of amputation or loss of limb. Some of the regimens explored here include somatic engagement and the importance of reflection and self-affirmation. - The third section is focused on the challenges of military spouses, given that the well-being of military families has only received scant scholarly attention in the past. This includes an important quantitative survey with metrics to assess the unique stresses experienced by military spouses. In sum, this book aims to provide an overview of a wide range of scholarship in the realm of contemporary veteran and military family issues. Each of the chapters are based on the groundbreaking research of seven doctoral graduates of Fielding Graduate University, edited by Miguel Guilarte, PhD and Barton Buechner, PhD.
About the Author: Barton Buechner, PhD, the co-editor of this book, served as a Naval Officer for 30 years, and has worked extensively with veterans' programs since 1993 with the State of California Department of Veterans Affairs, the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, and various local and national nonprofit organizations. Bart is currently an adjunct professor in the Masters in Psychology with Emphasis in Military Psychology program at Adler University, serves on the Boards of Directors of the Chris Kyle Frog Foundation and the Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) Institute for Personal and Social Evolution, and is the Veterans Knowledge Community representative for Region IV-E of the National Association for Student Program Administrators. He is a member of several veterans' organizations including the Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA), the American Legion, and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA). His scholarly interests include theories of communication, social construction and transformative learning, and the disciplines of phenomenology and somatics. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, the U.S. Naval War College, Case Western Reserve University, and Fielding Graduate University, where he earned his doctorate in Human Development in 2014. Miguel Guilarte, PhD, co-editor, has been on the faculty of Fielding Graduate University for almost 20 years. Over time he has served in various capacities, including as Associate Dean in the Human and Organization Development program. He is a founding faculty member of the Veterans Connection group at Fielding, with the support of students and alums who have wanted to make veterans more welcomed at Fielding. He has supervised many doctoral dissertations and research studies on veterans at the University of Michigan and at Fielding, including studies of "atomic veterans" during and after World War II, and studies about more recent conflicts. Some of his intellectual interests include post-traumatic growth, transformational learning, group psychodynamics, leadership studies, social network theory, and creativity and innovation. Recent work focuses on the dynamics of listening, dialog, discourse analysis, and culture in the postmodern public sphere. He has degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale University, as well as a doctorate in sociology from Columbia University.