Lost in a Sea of Terms: Moral Injury and Civilian Appropriation of Language and Diagnosis

Since the 1994 publication of, “Achilles in Vietnam: Combat trauma and the undoing of character,” (J. Shay), Moral Injury as separate from Post-Traumatic Stress– has become terminology of increasing importance in supporting military personnel and veterans grappling with critical internal, psycho/spiritual challenges at odds with their self-defining moral core. Because definitions for Moral Injury vary and have yet to coalesce into set standards within disciplines, researchers see room to “do theory” but in ways that, rhetorically, may hamper the kind of close research and ready application of healing protocols veterans need. I explore how academic borrowing of civilian-oriented analysis frameworks, like “A MacIntyrean account of chronic moral injury: Assessing the implications of bad management and marginalized practices at work,” (Abadal and Potts 2022), risk moral injury being misconstrued. I dissect these discoursal differences and their impacts, attending especially to how veterans studies and military chaplaincy practices in moral injury can resist civilian appropriation that risks obscuring fundamental avenues of healing for veterans.