Healing at the wall: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Coleman, S. E. (2002). Healing at the wall: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Doctoral dissertation, Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2002). UMI No. 3067634.

This dissertation uses a hermeneutic template to examine the healing that occurs at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The experiences at the Wall and the offerings left at the Wall are analyzed from the depth psychological, particularly Jungian, viewpoint. In this research, letters left by visitors to the Wall are examined for evidence of healing. Other offerings that have been collected by the National Park Service are looked at for the indications of healing they contain. First hand experiences of visitors are used to provide further evidence for the healing and to allow examination of what causes the healing.

Many visitors report that a pilgrimage to the Wall resembles a mythical journey to the underworld. The Wall represents a journey into an underworld realm because the Vietnam War was notorious for darkness, the Wall itself; s made of black granite, and the pathway to the apex of the memorial leads the visitor downward into the earth. Because of the underworld direction, the visitor is able to face the pain caused by the war in a more conscious manner.

The alchemical images of the experience at the Wall are also analyzed. The visitor approaches the Wall feeling heavy with the darkness of the war. This experience is compared to the alchemical process in which the dark, raw material is processed in the nigredo, expelled in the mortificatio and putrefactio processes, and brought to wholeness and healing in the coniunctio.

The collective and individual experience of the American people is interpreted psychologically from cultural, historical, and sociological viewpoints. The backdrop of other wars, the political need for a war, and the cultural and spiritual poverty during the Vietnam War years provide a lens through which Jungian psychological concepts examine the themes. Carl Jung's writing about World War II Germany is used to further understand the extraordinary repression and shadow projections activated by the Vietnam War. The healing power of the Wall is based largely on its ability to contain the shadow projections. As it provides containment, the healing of wounded individuals and a divided country occur.