The Spitting File: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam is a 1998 book by sociologist Jerry Lembcke. The book argues that the common claim that American soldiers were spat upon and insulted by anti-war protesters upon returning home from the Vietnam War is an urban legend intended to discredit the anti-war movement. Lembcke's book argues, further, that posttraumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is a socially constructed diagnostic category that disparages the image of Vietnam veterans and provided another way to discredit the many veterans in the anti-war movement. Lembcke writes that this discrediting of the anti-war movement was foreshadowed by Hermann Göring's fostering of the stab in the back myth, after Germany's defeat in Europe in 1918.