The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam: “If dissident veterans couldn’t be dismissed as unauthentic or "not real men,” their credibility could be impugned in another way, by raising doubts about their mental stability. Ultimately, this is the course that events would follow, a course that led to establishment of a new psychiatric diagnostic category, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and the marginalization of Vietnam veterans.“