From the author: September 1 is not only the beginning of the school year. This is also the date of the start of one of the bloodiest wars of the 20th century. Continuation of the article on post-traumatic stress syndrome. Author - Svetlana Oskolkova. Source - author's blog "Your Psychologist" I remember on May 9, I published a post dedicated to the consequences of people staying in a war zone and PTSD. The disease of war. There was quite a strong reader reaction. From obviously interested to downright hostile. It is clear that the topic is complex and not entirely pleasant. A topic that people tend to turn a blind eye to. Noteworthy are the comments of one lady, which came somewhat later than the general discussion. Here you, the author, are generalizing, one of your clients against several warriors I know. Like, they are alive, absolutely healthy, as active as possible and do not strive for silence and solitude in the wilderness. Businessmen. Not attracted, not noticed, not included. You have psychotherapists surrounded by not entirely healthy types, but in the rest of the world everything is fine. He fought, they say, shot for the good of the Motherland at the one whom this Motherland pointed to, and nothing in his soul moved from this. This is the job of the military. Tough work, complex, but so necessary for the state. The opinion of that reader requires careful consideration. Because it is quite typical for the average person. But really, why is the author, that is, me, so bold? What if I’m really generalizing, expressing my personal, purely subjective opinion, misleading readers? Am I exaggerating, creating anxiety and tension out of nowhere?! There are not enough arguments and objective data. Well, you will have arguments. Most people, having learned that, among other things, I have a long history of working in a psychiatric hospital, begin to chuckle nervously and ask childishly direct questions. Like, “how are the “crazy people” there, haven’t they escaped yet?!” They fall into full regression. Then, having calmed down a little, they begin to become interested in schizophrenia and hallucinations. Like, what is this and where did it come from? And isn't it inherited? Well, in third place in popularity is usually the following. Pronounced in a voice that breaks with fear and curiosity. “Have you seen the murderers?!! I have seen the murderers.” And more than once. Serial, intentional, unintentional, in a state of passion, intoxication and for delusional reasons. Men, women, young boys and tender young maidens. And also rapists, pedophiles, “perverts” of all stripes. And this is what I have to tell you. In most cases, outwardly, they are no different from other, completely peaceful and law-abiding citizens. No “bloodthirsty” gaze, no mark of sin on the brow, greasy hair and hands trembling from carnivorous excitement. Nothing like what we are used to seeing in Hollywood movies. You will sit next to each other and have a nice conversation for hours, but you won’t even notice anything. If they don't tell you. So what's the difference? Where is this line that separates a peaceful person from an aggressive person, capable of asocial acts and even murder? Why do some people still become criminals, while others do not? And why large-scale armed clashes and conflicts arise, leading to the mass death of hundreds of thousands of people. For what reasons do calm and quite friendly people “suddenly” boil over and start killing neighbors, co-workers, and random passers-by? District to district, nation to nation, state to state? These questions have long worried psychologists, sociologists, and political scientists. People who have no special knowledge in these areas are also worried. And there is always a temptation to blame aggressive behavior on primitiveness, lack of appropriate upbringing, gender, genotype, some internal depravity of an individual, mental illness, national characteristics, and so on, so on, so on. Like, not all people are like that, only certain, special ones. They must be identified, branded, and then expelled. Then peace will reign throughout the world. Sweet and cute illusion. Dangerous, too. Various psychological schools try to explain the presence in humansaggressive tendencies in their own way. Classical psychoanalysis – the presence in each of us of the death instinct or “thanatos”. Jung's analytical theory - “getting stuck” or activating certain archetypes (shadow or trickster, for example). Behaviorists blame everything on the encouragement of aggressive behavior in childhood by parents or educators. Humanists explain the appearance of aggressiveness by a significant discrepancy between our ideal self (dreams and self-image) and the real one. And so on and so forth. Extremely different explanations. But they still have something in common. It turns out that no one is safe from having this terrible beast inside them. Everyone has it. It’s just that for some the animal prefers to be awake, and for others it prefers to sleep. But when in my practice I try to explain this to clients, I always encounter active resistance. I already wrote about this. They don't believe it. This has not been proven, just a theory, not supported by anything. But words cannot be touched, weighed, or measured. Empty reasoning of abstruse psychologists, greatly divorced from reality. Give us numbers, facts, not philosophical reasoning. Yes please. One of the most famous experiments to study human behavior under conditions of subordination was conducted in 1963 by psychologist Stanley Milgram from Yale University. Milgram tried to clarify the question: how much suffering are ordinary people willing to inflict on other, completely innocent people, if such infliction of pain is part of their job duties? Initially, the experiment was conceived as an attempt to explain the tragic historical fact of the participation of ordinary German citizens in the destruction of millions of innocent people. On the battlefields and in concentration camps. During Nazi times. This experiment is also called the Eichmann test. Named after the notorious Nazi criminal Otto Adolf Eichmann. Milgram even planned to go to Germany, whose inhabitants, he believed, were very prone to obedience. But in order to “debug” some aspects of the experiment, the first wave of tests was carried out in New Haven (USA, Connecticut). And then it turned out that there was no need to go to Germany. The Americans turned out to be very submissive and aggressive. But why am I telling you all this? Read about this social psychology experiment for yourself. It makes sense to take a look. The results were stunning and completely unexpected for both psychologists and psychiatrists. 65% of the subjects, under the influence of the experimenter’s commands, “shocked” their “partners” to the last. Those. they could freely bring the person sitting in the next room to death. Why doubt it if the “senior” ordered it!? And only 12.5% ​​of participants stopped their actions at the first sign of dissatisfaction on the part of their “neighbor.” Subsequently, Milgram's experiment was repeated in Holland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Austria and Jordan. The results were the same as in America. There were no significant differences by gender, age or nationality. Women were no less zealous with electric shocks during the tests than men. The myth about the lack of aggression among women was indirectly debunked. Everyone has this "beast". There are no absolutely non-aggressive people. You just need to get into the conditions when he wakes up. And then any charming housewife in a checkered apron can start swinging a rolling pin left and right. And you can kill with a fork. According to Milgram, the findings indicate the presence of an interesting phenomenon: “This study showed an extremely strong willingness of normal adults to go unknown how far, following the instructions of an authority.” Who is our authority? Well, well, the very first and most important? Parents, of course. “Daddy or Mommy” was allowed to do what I had long wanted, but was previously prohibited. When we grow up, the boss at work, the director of an enterprise, the head of the administration, the president of the country become a parent. Now the ability becomes cleargovernment or other leaders to obtain obedience from ordinary citizens. Authorities put a lot of pressure on us and control our behavior. Because somewhere in our souls we are still children who prefer to avoid responsibility. Those trying to hide behind some kind of broad, bossy back. And children, I repeat, are very aggressive. And the more charismatic and odious the leader, the greater the willingness of the overwhelming majority of the population to follow his orders. Including shooting, killing, torturing, raping. And what to do with the notorious German guilt, if any nation is capable of similar acts? People in uniform, by the way, are maximally subordinate to authority. Higher in rank, position and rank. They are required by law to obey. Otherwise, everything in the army will stop “working.” Moreover, the official duties of servicemen include ensuring order and lawfulness. The question is what is order and legality. And why do we follow them, contrary to the voice of reason, education or humanity. The fact is that there is another experiment. The Stanford prison experiment was conducted in 1971 by American psychologist Philip Zimbardo. It was funded by the US Navy and was designed to explain conflicts in military correctional facilities and in the Marine Corps. The purpose of the experiment was to study a person’s reaction to restriction of freedom and life in prison. And also observation of how and to what extent a social role imposed from the outside changes a person’s behavior. A group of young people was recruited, approximately equal in their physical indicators. After a preliminary examination and a series of psychological tests, they were randomly divided into two teams. I repeat - the participants in the experiment were divided into guards and prisoners absolutely randomly! Volunteers playing the roles of jailers and convicts lived in a mock prison set up in the basement of the Stanford University psychology department. Prisoners and guards quickly adapted to their roles, and, contrary to expectations, they themselves began to create truly dangerous situations. Bullying, beatings, sexual humiliation, severe physical restraints. Every third guard was found to have sadistic tendencies, and the prisoners were severely traumatized. Two “convicts” were withdrawn from the experiment ahead of time due to a sharp deterioration in their health. The experiment was completed six days later, on an emergency basis, on the initiative of a third party. And classified as unethical. Read all the details of this psychological madness above. Very instructive. The results of the experiment demonstrated the high receptivity and obedience of people to new styles of behavior imposed on them. When there is a justifying ideology supported by society and the state, we are capable of absolutely anything. With no exceptions. It's scary to even think about. In psychology, the results of the Stanford prison experiment are used to demonstrate the predominance of situational (external) factors on the emergence of aggressive and submissive behavior in a person, as opposed to personal ones. In other words, it seems that the situation influences a person's behavior more than the internal characteristics of the individual. It is external circumstances that awaken the beast. They wake you up, not give birth. Here are the facts, figures and quite material research. If you wish, you can watch a documentary about the psychology of human behavior in conditions of subordination at this link. By the way, both experiments are mentioned there. There are two more feature films that reenact the Stanford Prison Experiment. German, from 2001, and American 2010. I personally looked at the German version, in my opinion, it more accurately reflects the picture of what was happening. I warn you, all the films are not very easy to understand. And now, reinforced by new knowledge about the nature of human aggressiveness, let’s speculate about the causes of PTSD. The origins of this most notorious disease of war. Imagine."