The Wounds That Follow Them Home

By Emily Ireland

Editor’s note: In-text citations have been removed to align with The Havok Journal’s formatting. Full references remain listed at the end.

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We have spent decades trying to defeat the psychological consequences of war, yet many Veterans continue to suffer because the deepest wound may not be psychological alone.

Dr. Eduardo Duran is a Vietnam War Veteran and retired clinical psychologist whose work for more than four decades has challenged conventional understandings of psychological suffering, particularly among Indigenous communities and Veterans. Drawing upon clinical experience, Indigenous wisdom, history, spirituality, and depth psychology, he developed the concept of the soul wound to describe injuries that reach beyond the mind and into a person’s identity, meaning, relationships, community, and spirit.

After completing his Ph.D. at the California School of Professional Psychology in 1983, Dr. Duran was hired by an American Indian community to establish a mental health clinic. As he arrived, however, he found none of the customary structures a Western-trained psychologist might have expected. He didn’t have an office, appointment schedule, or even a list of patients to see. People would just come by to talk to him when they wanted to.

He began his practice feeling profoundly disoriented and uncertain about what the community expected of him or how he was supposed to proceed. He responded by doing what he had been trained to do. He distributed diagnostic surveys and prepared clinical questions, assuming these familiar tools would help him find direction. The surveys came back blank. Community members responded with “What gives you the right to ask us all these stupid questions?” They didn’t want to answer the survey questions; they just wanted to talk with him. He had no choice but to let go of the diagnostic methods and begin by listening to what they had to say.

Through the act of listening, the patients started to get better, and what they wanted to talk to him about, what he listened to, were their dreams.

One day, the person who had hired him told him that no one would be coming to see him. Instead, she took Dr. Duran to visit an Elder named Tarrence, who lived at the top of a mountain and was paralyzed from the neck down. Dr. Duran was frightened and did not want to go. Based on the clinical framework through which he understood the situation at the time, he suspected that the Elder might be experiencing psychosis or schizophrenia and even wondered whether he was being neglected or mistreated by the community.

Still, Dr. Duran climbed into the truck and traveled through the wilderness to meet him. He arrived nearly overcome by fear, but the encounter transformed him. Over the following three years, Tarrence became his mentor. Through that relationship, Dr. Duran gained a depth of knowledge and wisdom that challenged the boundaries of his Western education and informed the groundbreaking body of work he would later develop, a small part of which we hope to share here.

Dreams and the Psyche

According to Dr. Duran, the dream is a portal through which the human psyche may communicate, and the dream itself may be engaged with as part of resolving problems. In his work, dreams are an important part of the therapeutic process.

As Dr. Duran points out, the Greek word psyche translates directly as “soul,” while psychology literally translates as “study of soul.” The term psychotherapist, therefore, may be understood as “soul healer.” Modern psychology, he argues, seeks to eradicate psychopathology, a word that literally translates as “soul suffering.”

Although the therapeutic use of dreams remains comparatively underexplored in contemporary mainstream clinical psychology, Dr. Duran incorporates them into his work because this is where his patients led him. Guided by their needs, he listens as they recount their dreams, describe how the dreams affect them, and consider whom they may be encountering within them. This becomes especially significant in relation to postwar trauma and the spirits of those connected to events in the war zone. Veterans have often described dreams related to what happened there and to what is now more commonly referred to as “moral injury,” which Dr. Duran also calls soul guilt.

When the wound of the Warrior involves guilt, betrayal, the dead, a shattered moral identity, or the loss of one’s relationship with the sacred, the language of symptoms may not reach deeply enough. Some Veterans are not simply living with psychological trauma. They are carrying a wound to the soul.

In Healing the Soul Wound, Dr. Duran describes a composite case involving an American Indian Veteran whose return from war was marked by depression, substance use, the loss of a hand, thoughts of ending his life, and dreams inhabited by people connected to wartime deaths. Previous treatment had not addressed what continued to trouble him, and the dreams returned with persistence that suggested something remained unfinished.

Rather than treating the dream figures only as disturbing images to be eliminated, Dr. Duran invited the Veteran to approach them as real presences with whom a relationship might still need to be resolved. Through active imagination, prayer, culturally appropriate ceremony, and symbolic offerings, the Veteran began to ask who they were, why they had come, and what they required of him. This work also brought forward a deeper conflict between his identity as an Indigenous man and his service within institutions connected to a history of violence against Indigenous peoples. As the Veteran engaged in these moral, spiritual, and cultural dimensions of his experience, he reported that the dreams began to change, his relationships improved, his reliance on substances diminished, and his desire to remain alive grew stronger. Dr. Duran does not present the case as an immediate or permanent cure, but as an example of what may emerge when a Veteran’s dreams are heard as meaningful communication rather than regarded solely as symptoms.

“There might be some curing that happens, but that’s not the most important thing. . . The most important thing, I think, is healing, because healing goes with you even into the spirit world.”

Dr. Eduardo Duran

According to Dr. Duran, modern psychology’s failure to recognize the soul creates a fundamental inconsistency that will not allow healing without it. He states that his approach, which understands therapeutic treatment as a healing process rather than an attempt to quickly fix an immediate problem or merely reduce symptoms, may be used regardless of diagnosis.

Within many Indigenous traditions, a person is understood as more than the thoughts that pass through conscious awareness. Healing therefore needs to reach emotional, spiritual, relational and embodied dimensions of the self.

The effects of trauma may become more complex when an individual turns to alcohol or other substances to lessen emotional pain. Physical health concerns may also contribute to the person’s difficulties and complicate the overall clinical picture. Chronic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, respiratory disease, and coronary illness are prevalent in many affected communities and are often associated with prolonged stress. Within Duran’s framework, these interconnected physical, emotional, and spiritual burdens may also be understood as expressions of the soul wound.

Ritual as Transformation

America can learn how to better welcome its Warriors home. Dr. Duran points to the military’s rich ritual traditions of uniforms, initiations, salutes, formations, funerals, and ceremonial gun salutes. Flags, public ceremonies, handshakes, blessings, and expressions of gratitude are all meaningful ways of properly bringing our Warriors home. Yet we seem far more prepared to send our service members to war than to help them carry what followed them back.

Ritual has been woven into this country since its founding and remains deeply ingrained in military life, as it should be. Dr. Duran argues that Western society may be capable of understanding the importance of war ritual if we can recover the fractured part of our collective memory that once recognized its power. We use ritual all the time, especially in moments of profound transition such as funerals, yet he believes ritual should also help Warriors transition out of war and return to ordinary life.

Dr. Duran further suggests that those on the opposing side of war may possess their own cultural understanding of such practices. Both sides, he proposes, might benefit if the rituals of war could be followed by a ritual of brotherhood and sisterhood, acknowledgment, and shared humanity. Such an act could offer recognition to the dead, the living, and the experiences that continue to accompany our Warriors home. Perhaps some of the ghosts that remain within a Warrior’s mind could then be laid to rest, allowing a stronger, healthier, more whole person to emerge, better able to live fully and experience joy in the present.

Dr. Duran recounts the return of a young Warrior who was met at the airport by members of his community. They welcomed him with gifts, blessings, and words of gratitude, placing their hands on his shoulders and physically receiving him back into the community as they told him, “Welcome home.”

References

1. “Transgenerational Trauma, Soul Wounding and Effects on Families and Communities: The Impact of History on Present Day Chronic Illnesses,” by Eduardo Duran, conference presentation transcript from the 2010 Advances in Indian Health Conference, transcribed by Tech-Synergy (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Indian Health Service, Division of Diabetes Treatment and Prevention, 2010).
2. Healing the Soul Wound: Trauma-Informed Counseling for Indigenous Communities, by Eduardo Duran, 2nd ed. (Teachers College Press, 2019).
3. “‘All Conditions Normal’: Working with Veterans,” by Eduardo Duran, in Healing the Soul Wound: Trauma-Informed Counseling for Indigenous Communities, 2nd ed. (Teachers College Press, 2019).
4. “Healing the Soul Wound,” interview with Eduardo Duran by Natalie Bell (CIIS Public Programs Podcast, Nov. 4, 2016), https://www.ciis.edu/podcast/eduardo-duran-healing-soul-wound.

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Emily Ireland is the founder and CEO of Hardcore Healing, Inc., inventor of Light Touch®, and a Diplomate of the American Institute of Stress. She brings more than two decades of experience in craniosacral therapy, functional anatomy, integrative movement, and wellness research, with a focus on nervous-system regulation, resilience, and recovery. She also leads the Hero Resilience Initiative, which works to expand access to Light Touch® for first responders, veterans, and others in high-stress service communities.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.