Posttraumatic stress disorder is a severe mental problem usually suffered upon witnessing horrific or traumatic experiences. It is a common problem with soldiers, including John Rambo.
Description[]
PTSD, as it's commonly referred to, is usually when someone has reccuring nightmares or conscious flashbacks of and event or multiple events they witnessed. Victims of child abuse, sexual molestation, rape, and soldiers exposed to hostile fire and brutal violence often have alienation, rage, depression, mood swings and a change in personality following the experience that triggered the disorder. It is most severe in soldiers.
In the case of John Rambo, his flashbacks are to at least two prominent incidents he experienced: the first is the torture he suffered from North Vietnamese or Viet Cong operatives after he'd been captured. Rambo specifically recalls bamboo bars used to hold him in a gaol-type pit in the ground where animal feces was dumped on him. He also recalls, perhaps more vividly, being slashed across his chest several times while strung-up crucifixion-style.
The second event is likely more tragic: while in Saigon and hanging out with a good friend in a local tavern, Rambo, while buying a couple of beers, watched his good friend Joey be horrifically injured when a young Vietnamese boy detonated a small bomb hidden in an shoeshine box. The explosion blew off most of Joey's lower half at the waist, leaving Rambo feeling powerless to help his friend.
When Rambo is being processed by Sheriff Will Teasle's men, they treat him very sadistically and cruelly: Teasle's most belligerent deputy, Art Galt, threatens him several times and, fully unprovoked, hits Rambo with his baton in the lower back. They then spray him with a high-pressure fire hose and prepare to shave him with a straight razor without water, soap or shaving cream. Rambo immediately flashes back to the slashes made on his chest while a POW and, though he relaxes his tense stance for a moment, he breaks free and viciously attacks Galt and the other deputies and escapes the station.