Drone operations constitute a pure case of perpetration-induced traumatic stress.

Evidence

Closer to our own times, the psychologist Rachel McNair has suggested expanding the overly narrow notion of PTSD by defining a condition called “Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress” (PITS). Noting that recent literature has focused almost exclusively on the traumas inflicted on passive victims by external forces, she tries to isolate the active component of the anxiety, the one that stems from the fact of having been the agent of violence, in fact a perpetrator of it. Within the mixed experience of a soldier, it is hard to sort out one particular element from the rest, but McNair studies cases of pure perpetration, for example the nightmares of executioners haunted by images of the last moments of their condemned prisoners. She does not cite the case of drone operators, as her book was published too early for that, but it looks as if that might be a good means by which to test out her idea, for it presents a case of pure perpetration, armed violence reduced solely to its active aspect and without any vital threat to its perpetrator. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 389

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s core interest in the psychic transformation of drone operatives; connects to debates about drone operator trauma. — connects to: Assumed drone-operator trauma serves to legitimize them as real soldiers; Drone psychopathology lies in produced compartmentalization, not operator trauma — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 427; Drone technology produces a combined morale-buffering effect on operators (+8 more)
• DEFINE: Introduces PITS as a distinct diagnostic category separating perpetrator trauma from victim PTSD.
• SEED: An essay angle: are claims of drone operator trauma a genuine clinical category or a discourse that legitimizes the killer’s own self-justification?

Related

• A diagnosis of perpetration-induced stress is needed for drone operators. (similarity 0.95)
• Drone technology structurally rules out existing trauma diagnoses. (similarity 0.95)
• Drone psychopathology lies in produced compartmentalization, not operator trauma (similarity 0.89)
• The psychological effect of drone killing on operators remains empirically unresolved. (similarity 0.85)
• Assumed drone-operator trauma serves to legitimize them as real soldiers (similarity 0.83)
• Media accounts of drone pilot trauma lack corroborating evidence (similarity 0.83)
• The media narrative of traumatized drone pilots has no empirical basis. (similarity 0.83)
• Drone technology produces a combined morale-buffering effect on operators (similarity 0.83)
• Media emphasis on drone pilot trauma legitimizes them as classic soldiers (similarity 0.82)
• A drone operator killed more people than he thought himself capable of (similarity 0.81)
• Drone operators experience home and warzone as simultaneous parallel universes (similarity 0.81)
• Drone war turns strategic evaluation into disconnected body counts. (similarity 0.80)
• A few hundred drone operators’ moral feelings can be dismissed as irrelevant (similarity 0.80)
• Eliminating reciprocal exposure to violence makes drones look like cowardly weapons. (similarity 0.79)
• dronization of soldiers was a precondition for the pure drone (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• The psychological effect of drone killing on operators remains empirically unresolved. #qualifies (0.70) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 391
• Drone war turns strategic evaluation into disconnected body counts. #expands (0.60) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 282
• Drone-weaponized remote control radicalizes war into one-sided killing from safe zones #expands (0.60)
• Drone warfare fuses killing and caring into a single integrated gesture #complicates (0.50) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 461
• Drones fuse killing and caring into an integrated humilitarian power #complicates (0.50)