TALKING WITH
RICHARD STROZZI HECKLER
_________________________________________In late July 2002, the Fort Bragg Army base in North Carolina announced that it would re-evaluate its family counseling programs after the disclosure that four Army wives had been killed by their husbands in the previous six weeks. Two of the killings were part of murder-suicides; three of the suspects were Special Operations solders who had returned from recent duty in Afghanistan. In a fifth homicide involving base personnel, the wife of an Army officer was charged with his murder.
While an Army spokesman said it would be “a reach” to connect all the recent domestic violence to the war in Afghanistan, the tragic news nonetheless raised questions about the stress that soldiers and their families face as an inevitable part of the military lifestyle. NEWSWEEK reported that the occurrence of domestic violence in the military is twice that of civilians, and noted that critics say the armed forces are slow to report and confront the full dimension of the problem — in part because federal convictions of abusers would mean the loss of their right to carry guns, making them useless as soldiers.
Psychologist and former Marine Richard Strozzi Heckler has an unusual perspective on the military state of mind, as he has been called upon several times to attempt enhancing it by non-ordinary means. The first experiment took place in the fall of 1985, when he participated in a six-month classified experiment to introduce “inner technologies” to a contingent of the Army’s Special Forces — twenty-five Green Berets. Those inner technologies included martial arts, meditation, and biofeedback.
Heckler, who taught both physical techniques and and psychological values to the soldiers, could not have been better qualified for the Trojan Warrior Project. The child of a military family, Heckler grew up to be an accomplished athlete, attending college on a track scholarship. He served in the Marines before acquiring his Ph.D. in clinical psychology. Later he would become a master of the defensive martial art called aikido, which focuses on the “blending” of combatants’ energy.
After the initial experiment that Heckler describes in his book In Search of the Warrior Spirit (North Atlantic Books), he has taught inner technologies to the Navy SEALS and to Marines at Camp Pendleton near San Diego. At his northern California ranch, Heckler and his wife Ariana run a consulting firm called the Rancho Strozzi Institute.
________________________________
You’ve written that the central paradox of your work involved teaching values of “wholeness” to soldiers who are generally trained to regard their enemies as abstractions, not human beings. Can a Green Beret experience his full humanity and still be a good soldier?
HECKLER: The Army wanted to see mental and physical improvements and better communication. One of the officers overseeing the project used the term “holistic soldier” to describe its objectives. But I don’t think the Army understood how deep such training could go.For instance, the Army wanted the Green Berets to be able to concentrate well after two nights without sleeping — as if we could reach into their heads and develop such a specific skill with meditation practice. While such powers can be developed, it requires revitalizing the whole person. That means feeling oneself more deeply, and to feel oneself more deeply means feeling others — including your enemies — more deeply. It also means developing more independence in thinking, which is antithetical to the institution of the Army, and most other institutions for that matter. It’s a dilemma common to society at large. To be honest, I don’t have the answer.
What’s the difference between the contemporary military mentality and the psychological archetype of the warrior? The traditional meaning of the latter usually has to do with self-mastery; that is, a warrior knows that the real enemy is within. Is this philosophy something you attempted to convey to the Green Berets?
HECKLER: These men regarded self-mastery as a primary virtue, in the sense of challenging themselves to learn new things and improve their performance. But the kind of work we were doing meant they had to face their character weaknesses and their shadow side. Once you start confronting your own demons, it gets a lot harder.Here’s an example. As trainers we had our own informal uniform, but sometimes I wore a pink polo shirt instead. This just drove the guys crazy; they began to see something of themselves reflected in that pink shirt, an aspect that could be both soft and powerful. That was foreign to them. They also reacted aggressively toward me because they were beginning to feel a new longing: to release their vigilance, ease up on their psychological armor, their rigid paranoia, to accept themselves as people who were good enough just as they were.
Do you think that soldiers who begin to understand the anger within themselves will stay in the military? Does anger have something to do with becoming a soldier in the first place?
HECKLER: The Green Berets were as genuinely dedicated to the notion of service as anyone I know. They wanted to help, and they wanted to enact loyalty to a cause. They were well-trained, strong, bright men who wanted to be put to use. They worked in a very patriotic context, meaning that the country’s policy-makers are supposed to assign them an enemy to fight. But now more than ever there’s a real chance to redefine the notion of “enemy” and the notion of “cause,” and develop a new kind of warrior for the military — or the police.Traditionally, the military has been the place for our ritual of manhood to take place. For me, Marine boot camp was a tremendous initiation. But it’s becoming clear that we can no longer afford war as a ritual proving ground. We have to create rituals for men so that we have a sense of transmission from an elder to a youth — a ritual that grants full membership in the tribe, so to speak. The military could still do that, by integrating Outward Bound-type experiences, solo treks, and vision quests with meditation retreats. I feel these kinds of changes could be instituted in one generation. Whether a man works for IBM, serves in the Army, or does massage therapy, his need for ritual and initiation is pretty much the same.
I once asked a Special Forces medic if he regretted not being in a war, and he said, “Not at all. But I’m always curious to know how would I perform under fire. Would what I’ve learned really work out on the battlefield?” This man had no blood lust, but he still wanted to be tested. That desire runs deep in us and has to be addressed. That’s why you can’t train and fund an army with the idea of “keeping the peace.” They’ll always want to use their training, and they’ll start flexing their muscles. I think a lot of coups in militarized countries arise largely from the desire of soldiers to see if their training will work. During the Tokegawa period in Japan, encompassing four hundred years of peace in a martial country, the samurai trained in calligraphy and flower arrangement. The training was martially disciplined but the output was in a different direction.
It’s probably going to be a while before the Green Berets take up calligraphy and flower arranging.
HECKLER: Yes, that would be a real stretch for them. At the same time, there is a noble precedent for such a thing. A true warrior is oriented toward life and creativity, not death and destruction....
