Men and Stress in Vietnam [Hardcover]

Peter G. Bourne (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Imprint unknown; 1St Edition edition (May 8, 1970)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0700001794
• ISBN-13: 978-0700001798
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,192,328 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dr Peter G. Bourne is a Visiting Fellow at Green Templeton College, University of Oxford, Vice Chancellor Emeritus of St. George's University, Grenada, West Indies, and chairman of the board Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba (MEDICC). He was born in Oxford, England and educated there at the Dragon School. He received his MD from Emory University in Atlanta and an MA in anthropology from Stanford. He was a captain in the US Army assigned to the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR). He spent a year in Viet Nam where he was awarded the Bronze Star, Air Medal and Combat Medics Badge. His studies on the psychological and physiological aspects of stress described in his books, Men, Stress and Viet Nam (Little Brown) and Psychology and Physiology of Stress (Academic Press)are considered classics in the field of psycho-endocrinology.

Early in his career he was a member of the faculty of Emory University Medical School as an assistant professor of psychiatry and of preventive medicine and community health. In that capacity, as well as teaching, he directed a program to rehabilitate arrested alcoholics in the city jail and subsequently founded and directed the first community mental health center in the State of Georgia. In 1971 he was appointed director of the Georgia Narcotics Treatment Program, an agency providing statewide drug abuse treatment services. He worked for then Governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter and was instrumental in convincing him to run for president of the US. He was a deputy campaign director for Carter's successful 1976 race.

As Special Assistant to the President for Health Issues in the Carter White House he led the fight to get the administration's national health insurance plan through the Congress. He simultaneously held the job of director of the Office of Drug Abuse Policy (ODAP) the position generally referred to as the "drug czar" where he was responsible for coordinating the law enforcment, treatment, and foreign policy aspects of of America's drug policy. He also established for President Carter national commissions on World Hunger and Malnutrition and on mental health. He served as an official emissary of the presidentin negotiations with heads of state or government of several nations and represented the US government on the governing bodies of several UN agencies, including UNDP, WHO, UNICEF, and the UN Cmmission on Narcotic Drugs.

As an Assisatnt Secretary General at the United Nations he established and ran the "International Drinking Water and Sanitation Decade" (1980-1990) that in ten years rpovided clean drinking water to 500 million people worldwide. In that capacity he launched the global campaign to eradicate dracunculiasis, caused by guinea worm: a program now near to reaching total success. After leaving the UN for the rpvate sector he was aprtner in Tropica Dvelopment Ltd. a company devoted to the creation of business enterprises to improve health and economic development in Third World countries, especially in Africa. He served also as a consultant to and on the boards of several non-profit organizations including, Save the Children, Health and Development International, Global Water, and the American Association for World Health. He has visited more than fifty countries in a professional capacity.

Dr Bourne used his wide network of international contacts to help then-Congressman Bill Richardson to secure the release of prisoners being held in Iraq, Cuba, Bangladesh and other countries.

In 1995 he directed a year-long, foundation-supported study of the impact of the US embargo on Cuba resulting in a report "Denial of Food and Medicine: The Impact of the US Embargo on Cuba". He now chairs Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba (MEDICC) an organization that in the last five years has sent over fifteen hundred USA medical studnets and public health students to Cuba for electives as part of their academic program. The organization also publishes MEDICC Review, the only English language, peer-reviewed journal on Cuban medicine and health care.

As Vice Chancellor of St. George's University, where he had previously been chairman of the psychiatry department, he established a school of veterinary medicine, created a program in public health (giving and MPH), started a multi-disciplinary Institute for Caribbean and International Affairs and created, in collaboration with the UNiversity of Plymouth in the UK, a new marine biology program. He expanded the existing medical school and increased its efforts to recruit from developing countries as well as enlarging the college of Arts and Sciences to try to meet the Caribbean educational needs. During his tenure there were students from 80 countries. He also established on campus the Shell Cricket Academy a key training facility for the future of West Indian cricket.

He currently divides his time between Washington, D.C., Green Templeton College at Oxford UNiversity and his farm in Wales where he has 75 llamas and a half dozen bison.

He is married to Dr Mary E. King, professor of Peace and Conflict studies of the University for Peace, and a fellow of the Rothermere American Institute and of Mansfield Collgee at the University of Oxford.

For more see www.petergbourne.co.uk

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A psychiatrist's view of the Vietnam War, May 19, 2008

By 

Bernie Weisz "a historian specializing in the... (Pembroke Pines,Florida U.S.A.) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

"Men, Stress, and Vietnam" by Peter Bourne is a fascinating book that records Bourne's personal experiences and impressions in South Vietnam from Oct. 1965 to Oct. 1966.Wizard 6: A Combat Psychiatrist in Vietnam (Texas A & M University Military History Series, 104) Bourne, a psychiatrist, covers areas from his specialty to other branches of medicine, as well as anthropology and sociology. One center of my own concern when I review books about the Vietnam War is to try to find statements that point out our folly in being there in the first place. With Bourne's book, it popped out on page 1. Bourne compares our ill-fated involvement with a fable that Bourne writes: "Once upon a time a fish and a monkey were caught up in a great flood. The monkey, agile and experienced, had the good fortune to scramble up a tree in safety. As he looked down to the raging water he saw the fish struggling against the swift current. Filled with a desire to help his less fortunate fellow, he reached down and swooped the fish from the water. To the monkey's surprise, the fish was not very grateful for this aid". This oriental fable colorfully illustrated the way in which the altruistic efforts of advanced countries to induce cultural changes are frequently viewed by the recipients of their efforts in the underdeveloped nations of this world. This seems to be happening in Iraq now. Desert War: The New Conflict Between the U.S. and Iraq Blinded by our own intentions, our technologically advanced country is incapable of adequately comprehending any culture but our own (Democracy vs. a Muslim ruled society that for the most part views Americans as "Infidels") and is unable to accept the fact that the changes we seek in Iraq might be inappropriate to a social framework we do not understand. Muslims on the Americanization Path? Since the aid we offer is done in a generous and humanitarian spirit, it is difficult for this country to accept our failures or the seeming ingratitude of this Muslim country we wish to help. The involvement of the United States in South Vietnam was a classic example of the kind of relationship that the aforementioned fable warned against. It has led to the commitment of billions of wasted taxpayer dollars and shamefully the waste of more than 58,000 American men and women who lost their lives there. Only rarely mentioned are the tens of thousands of Vietnamese, both North and South, who also lost their lives in that war. In addition, 5,241 dead are rarely mentioned from other countries that also fought in S. Vietnam alongside U.S. troops from 1962-1973. Robert Blackburn, in his book "Mercenaries and Lyndon Johnson's More Flags" notes: "The free world countries which sent ground troops to South Vietnam and their totals killed in action were: Republic of Korea, 4,407, Australia and New Zealand 475, Thailand 350, Phillipines, 9". Other areas of interest Bourne touches on is combat psychiatry and the study of stress, a paradigm of 4 different individuals that lived in Saigon that had 4 different views (pro, con, indifferent, opportunistic, etc.) of the war. Also examined was American and Vietnamese psychiatric casualties and how they were dealt with, how dust off helicopter ambulence crew members dealt with life and death, hair raising stress of flying into hot and hostile combat zones to extract the dying, dead and severely wounded. Bourne also conducted psychological studies of 3 groups in Vietnam. They were the 20,000 Australians and 5,200 Korean troops, the Montagnards (they were nomadic, hill-people that were indigenous to the countryside and pro-American) and the Special Forces troops that went out into the boondock rural countryside and set up remote bases and went on "hunter-killer" and assssination missions. Bourne's chapter on the Special Forces is extremely violent, brutal, graphic and memorable. However, for my purpose, the most interesting part of the book was Bourne's treatment of the war itself. Bourne points out that the Vietnam War was unique because of the technological refinement of destructive tools science provided for men to kill each other. Wiring Vietnam: The Electronic Wall The highly efficient M-16 and later AK-47 rifles elevated the individual soldier to a new status as a formidable agent of destruction in his own right. Power Check---Commo Check, My Tour in Viet Nam Bourne compares the impact of the helicopter with it's rapid mobility in transporting men from highly secure areas into the most intense jungle combat and back to security again in minutes with the chariot that transported Roman Legions into combat for the first time 3,000 years ago. Another interesing topic Bourne explores was how exceptional news coverage deluged the public with up to date information about the ("living-room") war demanding that citizens form personal impressions on all aspects of our involvement. Reporting Vietnam: Media and Military at War This is also occurring now with our war with Iraq. A more sophisticated and informed public asked Kennedy, L.B.J. and Nixon about the reasons for this war (which were never satisfactorily answered). Undoubtedly, Bourne explains that the major reason for the development of the anti-Vietnam war movement in the U.S. had been the decision of the government to permit it to exist. The Strength Not to Fight: Conscientious Objectors of the Vietnam War - in Their Own Words Currently, the American public scorned Bush about the issue of "weapons of mass destruction" and how they never turned up in Iraq. 2005 Guide to the First Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom, Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction, Liberation of Iraq and the Toppling of Saddam Hussein, ... Marines: Photos, Videos, Reports (DVD-ROM) As in Vietnam then, and Iraq now, the effects of administration policy on the civil population (lies and deception about the conduct and goals of the war) is one of a negative impact on the attitudes and morale of the fighting man (read Cecil Currey's "Long Binh Jail" and his discussion of the practice of "fragging", "dapping" and heroin use amongst U.S. forces in post Tet Vietnam). Bourne presents an interesting argument with his discussion of the odd way the U.S. became heavily involved in the Vietnam War with the "Tonkin Gulf Incident". Supposedly, 2 Vietnamese Patrol Boats "attacked" 2 destroyers(the "Maddox" and the "Turner Joy") in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam in August,1964. Point of No Return: Tonkin Gulf and the Vietnam War (First Battles) North Vietnam was known for not having a navy,and a patrol boat is highly unlikely to attack a destroyer (it is 1/100 the size, not to mention it's extremely limited firepower) and members of the rader team aboard the 2 destroyers "weren't sure" this actually happened (is this a bad joke?). Read about this false pretext that resulted in 56,000 dead Americans in Joseph C. Goulden's book "Truth is the First Casualty:The Gulf of Tonkin Affair-Illusion and Reality" or rent a documentary at a video store by former Secretary of War Robert S. McNamera called "The Fog of War". The Fog of War: Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara With Iraq, what set this country off was the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the Pentagon and World Trade Centers. Bourne notes that when a war starts in this country, like Pearl Harbor and W.W. II or Iraq and 9/11, the leaders of this country ask the population to regress to a childlike role, trusting the leaders omnipotence to deal with the danger at hand. The greater the crisis (9/11 and Pres. Bush), the more willing the regression. If the survival of the society is genuinely threatened the people will virtually relinquish all their rights to the leaders. If the danger is not clearly apparent than there will be more open resentment to the imposition of such restictions. What was the danger to the U.S. in our war with Vietnam? Was Ho Chi Minh threatening world conquest like Adolf Hitler? How about Kennedy's "Domino Theory? (if we allow Communist North Vietnam to swallow up South Vietnam, other countries between Vietnam and the United States (e.g. the Phillipines, Guam, Hawaii, and finally onto the shores of California) will fall like "domino's" to communism). Come on, this war was rediculous! Bourne also explores from a psychological point of view how the transition from a "peace set" to a "war set" is immeasurably facilitated and more readily accepted if it can be sudden and clear cut. Examples were declarations of war by the U.S. after:the mysterious explosion and sinking of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana Harbor by Cuban insurgents in the "Spanish American War" (1898), the torpedoing and sinking in international waters of innocent U.S. citizens in international waters by German U-boats (the "Luisitania") bringing the U.S. into W.W. I (1918), the sneak attack of Pearl Harbor by Japan signalling America's entry into W.W. II (1941), and although a U.N. "police action" the North Korean surprise invasion of South Korea igniting America's entry into the "Korean War" (1950). Accomplishment of such a transition from peace to war with the aforementioned examples is the primary internal function of an official declaration of war. This never occurred in the Vietnam War. Prior to Vietnam, after a declaration of war there was the imposition of harsh repressive measures such as the immediate incarceration of political... Read more ›