Thousand-yard stare
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The thousand-yard stare (also referred to as two-thousand-yard stare) is the blank, unfocused gaze of people experiencing dissociation due to acute stress or traumatic events. The phrase was originally used to describe war combatants and the post-traumatic stress they exhibited but is now also used to refer to an unfocused gaze observed in people under any stressful situation, or in people with certain mental health conditions.[1]
The thousand-yard stare is often associated with shell shock, combat stress reaction, and other trauma-related mental health conditions.[1][2][3]
Origin
The phrase was popularized after Life magazine published the painting Marines Call It That 2,000 Yard Stare by World War II artist and correspondent Tom Lea,[4] although the painting was not referred to with that title in the 1945 magazine article. The painting, a 1944 portrait of a nameless Marine at the Battle of Peleliu, is now held by the United States Army Center of Military History in Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, D.C.[5] About the real-life Marine who was his subject, Lea said:
When recounting his arrival in Vietnam in 1965, then-Corporal Joe Houle (director of the Marine Corps Museum of the Carolinas in 2002) said he saw no emotion in the eyes of his new squad: "The look in their eyes was like the life was sucked out of them". He later learned that the term for their condition was "the 1,000-yard stare". "After I lost my first friend, I felt it was best to be detached," he explained.[6]
See also
References
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- ↑ Life magazine, 6/11/1945, p. 65. link
- ↑ Jones, James, Tom Lea (illustration), (1975). - "Two-Thousand-Yard Stare" Template:Webarchive. - WW II. - (c/o Military History Network). - Grosset and Dunlap. - pp.113,116. - Template:ISBN
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