Billy Pilgrim and PTSD

It is undeniable that there are certain ways in which Billy pilgrim being unstuck in time parallels PTSD. The sense in which he has no choice but to constantly experience the war, and the ways in which these experience tend to occur (or recur) based on experiences that remind him of the war. The fact that he didn't start speaking about Tralfamadore until after the plane crash and the ways in which it mirrors some of Kilgore Trout's novels gives us reason to believe that Billy's beliefs might be a sign if severe trauma. In addition the constant chorus of "Billy Pilgrim says" means it isn't necessarily established within the universe of the novel whether Tralfamadore actually exists or not. While it's probably a common and perfectly acceptable reading of Slaughterhouse-5 to say Billy's time travel is a metaphor for PTSD, and the philosophy as a testament to how horrible war is. I would argue that such a reading is very likely to undermine the validity of Billy's philosophy, and that that isn't necessarily a bad thing just something we need to be aware of.
Even leaving out all the problems our society has with mental illness and the ways in which labeling Billy PTSD can be seen as giving him a status as an abnormal person who's perspective must be fixed, regarding his philosophy as a testament to the damaging effect war has on people undermines his philosophy.  The article we presented on Thursday Gothic "Un-representations’ of Terror in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-5 does just this. While the article doesn't focus on the relationship with PTSD the idea that Billy being forced to adopt this philosophy as a form of denial of the terror of war because answering the question "why" with regard to Dresden would have consequences so powerful Billy must deny them changes Billy's realizations about the nature of reality into denials of it's nature. It could almost be seen as a defense mechanism by us against the prospect of having to apply Billy's philosophy to our lives, if Billy's mindset, which forces him to give up trying to give meaning to the events of his world, is just a result of the horrors of war then it is simply a sign that we shouldn't engage in war anymore because it leaves people this jaded. The flip side of this is that then because we have never been exposed to the horrors of war and because billy's philosophy is only a product of trauma not a real insight into our world we don't have to give up on trying to answer the "why me" questions, a thing that I doubt any of us are willing to give up on.
Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing, many people might find Tralfamadorian philosophy paralyzing and fatalistic rather then comforting and so want to use it is a testament to the wrongs of war then a legitimate philosophy. I think it's just important to realize how  easy it is to undermine his philosophy by emphasizing it's traumatic origins (though talking about the origin of any of Billy's mindset makes little sense in the context of non linear time), and so we should be wary of overemphasizing the PTSD aspect of billy is we want to treat the philosophy seriously.