The Railway Man: A Case Study on PTSD and its Treatment

Running Head: THE RAILWAY MAN
THE RAILWAY MAN
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1THE RAILWAY MAN
The Railway Man is a deeply unsettling film given the background of the protagonist,
Eric Lomax. This film is an adaptation of the book of the same name, by the same person.
Throughout the film Lomax shows severe signs of POST TRAUMATIC STRESS
DISORDER. This essay will be exploring the backdrop of his story, which he narrated to me
while I was counseling him, and the trigger points that have haunted him for years, to help
me come to a conclusion about the exact chain of events that made him who he is. This essay
will also be tracing ideas of treatments that I will design as his counselor to help him combat
the POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER and settle into a better life, where his trauma
does not violently get in the way of normality.
To begin, the personal history of Eric Lomax was traced to get an idea about the
events that triggered such severe POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER. He narrated
grew up in Scotland and was extremely interested in trains even as a boy, to the extent of
becoming fully aware of timetables and the railway system of Great Britain. It is on a train
that he met his wife, Patti Wallace. Their friendship developed over the fact that the woman
was just as interested in railways like him. All was well until she realized that he has frequent
nightmare and behavioral issues because of the trauma that he suffered as a soldier
(Teplitzky, 2013).
The back-story that he communicated with me was that of him and his comrades
being captured in Singapore, by the Japanese during World War II. They were forced to
construct the Thai-Burma railway line in 1942. The conditions were very inhuman and it was
extremely difficult on them. Eric, being the mechanic that he was, had made a radio receiver
that was quite small in size to remain updated about the World War. That was discovered by
the Japanese who were enraged because it was an act of rebellion on his part as a prisoner of
war. That led to him being isolated from the rest and tortured, incessantly. He tried to reason
with them by telling them that that device can only receive and not send, yet they water

2THE RAILWAY MAN
boarded him and psychologically tormented him so that he admitted his wrongdoing. He was
particularly tortured by the interpreter, Takashi Nagase, who had pushed him to edge of
misery form which there was no return. This man was there in all his nightmares and his
memories continued to torment him well after the war was over.
Lomax informs me that Takashi Nagase was still living, even after thirty five years,
and alive and Lomax could not bear it, and his reaction was only natural. The reason of his
torment was still alive and he felt like the person deserved to die. He had even decided to
confront and kill the man, hoping that it frees from all the trauma which was only getting
worse. He felt threatened an unsafe even in his own home. He slept on the floor and even
talked to his own self. He is extremely strict about where he keeps things and loses his temper
if he does not find his things in their correct place. He sometimes hallucinates that there are
Japanese soldiers who are trying to escort him away and torture him. He suffers from vivid
flashbacks of all the times that he was tortured. He had difficulties in differentiating between
the real and past (Weathers et al., 1993). He often screams and cries out, while yelling, “Not
the water.” He also has recurrent somnambulistic attacks and sometimes feels safe with the
rest of his house, except the kitchen, untidy and often finds himself evading responsibilities
and not paying the bills he is supposed to pay. When the debt collectors had shown up to his
house to collect his debts, he had shown a knife to them as he had assumed that they were the
Japanese who had come to take him away.
These issues that are displayed by Lomax can easily fit the description of POST
TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as described by the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-5’s (American Psychological
Association, 2013). It is a psychiatric disorder that occurs in people who have experienced or
been witness to some traumatic event that have left them a lot of stress in the later stages of
their life. In order to assess the trauma that has happened to the Lomax, I will be utilizing the