Abstract
The history of studies on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has its origins in combat exposure. South Africa has a politically violent combat history between statutory and non-statutory forces, now integrated into a unified South African National Defence Force (SANDF). Despite ongoing combat trauma, there have been very few psychological studies or comprehensive treatment models addressing military family dynamics in Africa. The study comprised nine Black members (n=9) in SANDF on their lived experiences of continuous traumatisation and its influence on family relationships. The current study is grounded in hermeneutic phenomenology, which asserts that knowledge is produced through interpretation. Data were collected through individual semi-structured interviews and analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). This approach aimed to illuminate the familial relational trauma experienced by Black SANDF service members as a result of persistent combat-related complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD). This study uncovered how the soldiers themselves employed rigid psychic defenses in an attempt to ameliorate trauma-induced psychic organisation. However, these defenses have perpetuated a core relational pattern of suffering, resulting in fragmentary self-object relations for the soldiers. The self-object impairment perpetuated in soldiers' family dynamics has compounded the extent of vulnerability to persecutory abandonment, isolation and rejection. This, in turn, exacerbates the symptomatology of traumatisation with continuous traumatic reactivation of past unresolved combat psychic wounding. The struggle to integrate psychically and emotionally into the family unit manifested as conscious and unconscious symptoms of undiagnosed persistent CPTSD, profoundly affecting familial relationships. The findings highlight the pressing need for object-relationally targeted psychological interventions focussed on emotional integration within Black military families.