for Rolling Stone

Chris Merkle had no intention of revisiting the traumatic events he experienced in war. After three tours in Iraq and four in Afghanistan, there was plenty to process – but his concern was moving forward, not revisiting the past. “I’m a Marine,” he says now, from his home in Los Angeles. “We’re taught to do our jobs, to accomplish our mission. We’re not going to sit around and talk about our feelings.” He’d come here, to Dr. Albert “Skip” Rizzo’s lab at the Institute of Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California, after months of working with a therapist with little result. “She was a great therapist,” Merkle says, “but she couldn’t do anything if I wasn’t willing to talk about my experience. And I just wasn’t.” (continued)