How Captain America Symbolizes PTSD

Captain America was meant to represent freedom -- freedom from fascism, obviously; but his personal efforts to move forward in life also represent achieving freedom from the shackles of your own past.

Captain America in the Golden Age was pretty untroubled and generic personally, but to be revived in the 60s alongside the disabled Donald Blake, the neurotic Spider-Man, the bickering Fantastic Four, and the fragile Tony Stark, Steve Rogers would need to be humanized with a strong hook. The selected hook appears to have been being stuck with the trauma of his ordeals in the war, manifesting in recurring nightmares, loneliness, and severe unresolved grief regarding the death of Bucky Barnes. He became a man out of time not just literally, but emotionally.

These elements aren't minor -- they're heavily detailed and emphasized. There are even stories where his trauma goes beyond ancillary characterization and instead makes up the plot. In Captain America #107 (If the Past Be Not Dead...!), Steve's psychologist Dr. Faustus tries to defeat him by giving him medication that makes his nightmares even worse and gives him hallucinations (which are sometimes a PTSD symptom (Lyndon & Corlett, 2020)). In Jim Steranko's run of Captain America #110, #111, and #113, Steve takes Rick Jones as his new partner to replace Bucky, as if Steve has a pathological struggle to let Bucky go. Additionally, the role of Sharon Carter as his love interest indicates further difficulties in letting the past go, since Sharon resembles the woman Steve was in love with back in the 40s.

Where I believe the heart of Captain America's resonance during this period lies is in the metaphor of the iceberg. PTSD is a bit like time-travel: your nervous system feels like you're still in the past and continues to produce reactions to past events as if they're currently happening. What better term for this phenomenon is there than "being frozen in the past"? Captain America's efforts to acclimate to the present-day are like continual efforts to thaw from the iceberg -- he hasn't fully melted yet, but he's always trying to. His nightmares, his grief, his gravitation towards Sharon, and his loneliness are all patches of ice that have not yet softened to water. And even mundane things like Steve's unfamiliarity with modern technology speak metaphorically to his inability to ground himself fully in the present. Every instance of distance being placed between Steve Rogers and his modern setting elicits thoughts of trauma trapping victims in the past and keeping them away from the current moment. The iceberg is a great symbol for this.

For the sake of being comprehensive, I would mention that there is an actual "Freeze Response" in certain PTSD victims, in which neither a fight nor a flight response were suitable for a traumatic situation, and the nervous system instead opts to freeze, to play dead, to go rigid and immobile, possibly to minimize the chance of being spotted by a predator. I don't think Captain America displays this despite my view that him being frozen in ice relates figuratively to PTSD, nor do I think that Jack Kirby would have had this more catatonic brand of shellshock in mind when characterizing him. Maybe that's just because the comics were action stories and his character had to constantly appear mobile and combative. In fact, Captain America in that era constantly spoke about feeling cooped up in Avengers Mansion and craving action, wanting to fight, thriving on battle. If anything, this indicates to me a prolonged Fight Response rather than Freeze -- Steve's need to fight activated during the war and more specifically during his final fight against Baron Zemo, then he was frozen, and that need to fight stayed activated all the way into the current day, and he still can't turn it off to some degree. He obviously doesn't resemble a typical PTSD victim, but he's a bit like a depiction of PTSD viewed loosely through the lens of superheroics. Note that his weapon is a shield, which is a defensive tool, and trauma responses are all basically defensive, survival methods.

I feel that this simple way of viewing the character and viewing the iceberg helps Captain America cohere into a better symbol of someone fighting post-traumatic stress. When dealing with PTSD it can often feel like you're trying to melt your own iceberg; and having a character undergo the same difficulties while still doing his best to be a hero is inspiring. You can also take the metaphor of the iceberg more broadly and more simply: moving forward in life in any capacity requires unfreezing yourself from your past state.