Importance of psychological resilience in the clash between West and Russia (22 May 2016)

 

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Importance of psychological resilience in the clash between West and Russia (22 May 2016)

In the West, so proud of the values it allegedly promotes, many people do not understand why some some western people like and support Russia. In this cold war, which has in reality never stopped, misunderstanding between the two blocks is increasing, and might look quite strange when you consider the geographical, historical and civilizational links between Europe and Russia through the centuries. How can two peoples which should be so close, be so distant? And how can this growing abyss announce the military advantage of one side on the other?

If you have a look at the western countries, from a psychological and sanitary point of view, the results are really bad. Western people live in a consumerist, individualistic society, where cowardice is the norm, and a lot of people have psychoses or neuroses and take a lot of psychotropic drugs (sleeping pills, tranquilizers, antidepressants, etc). Fear rules their life: fear of unemployment, of migrants, of the dangerous Russia, and especially the fear of themselves which pushes them to avoid what is frightening them so much by all means from compulsive shopping, to drugs, alcohol, never ending parties, etc. The aim is to escape, to think about nothing, and especially what is frightening them so much. How did it happen?

If we take a look at the work of Carl Gustav Jung, the answer is crystal clear:

“As scientific understanding has grown, so our world has become dehumanized. Man feels himself isolated in the cosmos, because he is no longer involved with nature and has lost his emotional "unconscious identity" with natural phenomena. These have slowly lost their symbolic implications. Thunder is no longer the voice of an angry god, nor is lightning his avenging missile. No river contains a spirit, no tree is the life principle of a man, no snake the embodiment of wisdom, no mountain cave the home of a great demon. [...] His contact with nature has gone, and with it has gone the profound emotional energy that this symbolic connection supplied. This enormous loss is compensated for by the symbols of our dreams. They bring up our original nature—its instincts and peculiar thinking. Unfortunately, however, they express their contents in the language of nature, which is strange and incomprehensible to us. »

By cutting itself from any form of spirituality (previously linked to religion), the West lost an important psychological “toolbox”, which did the link between the subconscious and the conscious by providing the “translation” dictionary of the unconscious symbols, which were then understandable by interpretation. And if you take a look at a psychoanalyst session, you will find elements of confession or of the discussion that some people had with their priest to try to solve their problems! The person talks and one tries to find the lost dictionary to understand what is wrong.

Without this psychological toolbox, western people have lost the contact with their subconscious, their inner self, leading eventually to a split between their subconscious and their conscious. Add to this the erasing of the traditions and history of western peoples, and you remove one of the last psychological stability factors which remained. This split between people and their roots, as well as between their conscious and subconscious, is the cause of the neuroses and psychoses epidemic we currently see in western countries. But psychosis or neurosis indicates clearly an unstable psychological state, a fragility, a vulnerability which can be easily used by an enemy.

Put a psychological unstable person in an intensive stress situation (like a situation of war for example) and you obtain a very explosive mix. You have a good chance to see the person running away or psychologically collapsing, being unable to do anything.

Now take a look at the situation in Russia (and in the Russian world generally). Russians (I speak here from an ethnic, cultural and linguistic point of view), living in Russia or in the neighboring countries, have perennial traditions, values and religion. This rooting gives them a greater psychological stability, which adds to their strength of character forged by centuries of difficult life. Altogether, it gives them a greater stability and thus a greater psychological resilience, because they still have access to this psychological “toolbox” and they have deep and strong roots, which implant them into their history, both personal and collective.

To quote Jung again:

“Myths of a religious nature can be interpreted as a sort of mental therapy for the sufferings and anxieties of mankind in general—hunger, war, disease, old age, death.”

We can see this resilience here in Donbass. Where people continue to live under shellings and refuse to leave. Some of them clearly say that their only protection lies in God, that they pray him every day, and that thanks to him they are still alive while the house next door has sometimes been completely destroyed by a shell. They manage to smile and even laugh at the terrible and sometimes grotesque situation in which they are. They manage to show an incredible solidarity, while they have little, and those who are on the front are short of everything. Without this extraordinary psychological resilience, the Donbass people would have collapsed long ago, and its resistance to the Kiev junta with it. If the Donbass people resists and inflicted bitter defeats to the Kiev army, yet much more numerous and better armed, it is because it has this psychological stability and resilience that are sorely lacking in the Ukrainian army.

  

ROA before battle

Any good military leader knows that the moral and motivation of his troops are crucial factors which can often seal the victory or the defeat of an army. And in the confrontation which appears between the West and Russia, the West has a severe handicap which puts at risk its victory dreams against a country which remains unbeaten since centuries against invaders.

Christelle Néant