" Alterations in time sense begin with the obliteration of the future but eventually progress to obliteration of the past.... [At first they] cultivate memories of their past lives in order to combat their isolation ... [and then they] lose the sense of continuity with their past. The past, like the future, becomes too painful to bear, for memory, like hope, brings back the yearning for all that has been lost. Thus prisoners are eventually reduced to living in an endless present.

For combat soldiers, the temporal horizon shrinks as much as the moral and social horizon. Only getting through now has any existence. With this loss of a meaningful personal narrative that links past, present, and future comes a shrinkage of volition. "

― , Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character