Over There

The Trauma of T. E. Lawrence

His well-known “melancholia” was likely a case of PTSD.

Slate has partnered with Brooklyn Brewery and RISC to bring its hit war correspondent interview series to our readers. In this second installment, Steve Hindy, founder of Brooklyn Brewery and a former Associated Press foreign correspondent, sits down with Scott Anderson, veteran war correspondent and author of the book, Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East.​

T. E. Lawrence​—like recent veterans of wars in the Middle East—emerged from battle a psychologically changed man. In the clip above, Anderson discusses the now-well known funk that Lawrence fell into after the war, and talks through what was frustration, what was disappointment, and what, most likely, was PTSD from the very real trauma he suffered in battle.​​​