Abstract
The chapter is devoted to the study of the peculiarities of social and personal identity of the participants in the armed conflict in Ukraine, in particular the formation of the personality's detachment. The level of social detachment of the veterans, the participants of the armed conflict in Ukraine, is investigated, their attitude to significant aspects of life is determined, the degree of intensity of adaptation processes is revealed, the peculiarities of the adaptation period of a personality are analyzed. The study involved three groups of subjects: Group 1 includes volunteers that are citizens of Ukraine who voluntarily joined. Group 2 includes mobilized persons – the citizens who were obliged to appear on call to the military commissariats. Group 3 are professional servicemen. The study showed that all three groups of the participants require social and psychological rehabilitation, which makes it especially urgent to develop ways and means of providing psychological assistance to this category of people in order to prevent and restore their psychological health.
TopIntroduction
The problem of social detachment of a person in modern society does not lose its urgency. This is especially true for people who were exposed to psychogenic factors, the sources of which were military actions. Participants in the armed conflicts deserve special attention. The armed conflict in Ukraine has been going on for several years, which has led to the emergence of a significant number of victims. At the same time, many of those who took part in the hostilities, return home and find them in a psychologically difficult state due to the impossibility of social adjustment. Participation in hostilities always has its “price”. According to the statistics of various wars - mental disorders, in the theater of conducting the combat operations, account for from 6% to 12% of the personnel and up to 30% - of the total number of combat losses, which are sometimes accompanied by partial or complete loss of combat capability (Karaiani, 2003).
It is known that the psychogenic losses of the United States Army during the Second World War amounted to more than 17%, during the war in South Korea it was observed in 24.2%, and in Vietnam it took place in 30% of servicemen. Among the wounded and crippled, who accounted for 42%, about 100,000 veterans committed suicide at various times, and between 35,000 and 45,000 combatants still lead a closed life (Nazarenko, et al., 2019).
After the war in Vietnam, the United States had non-battle casualties among veterans much greater than during the fighting, in particular due to alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide, criminalization of ex-servicemen, which was proved in the works of foreign experts: Mc.Daniel E.G., 1988, Macleod A.D., 1991; O’Brien L.S. Hughes S.J., 1991; Solomon Z. et al., 1994 (Daniel, Baskett, & Weller, 1988) (Hoge, Castro, Messer, & al, 2004) (Macleod, 2021) (South Texas Veterans Health Care System Reference: IC3 Overview Briefing, 2013) (Solomon, 2021).
Nowadays in Ukraine, there are still many participants in hostilities with a broken psyche, which may become a new “lost generation”. Returning home after performing their duties in a war zone, almost 93% of the Ukrainian military need highly qualified psychological assistance (Nazarenko, et al., 2019) (Matios, 2018).
One of the significant consequences of participation in hostilities is the violation of social and personal identity, which is manifested in the formation of detachment of the individual. All this prevents its harmonious socialization, development of communicative abilities, full self-actualization. After all, a person is a social being, and therefore only through the prism of social existence he reveals himself, shows his best qualities, realizes his intellectual, creative potential, and acquires invaluable life experience.
Each individual is looking for such forms of activity that would give him the opportunity to fully realize, to reveal their essential strengths, to meet biogenic and social needs, including the need for respect and recognition. If there are objective or subjective obstacles to meeting these needs, there is an increased risk of social and psychological maladaptation of the individual, reduced self-esteem and, consequently, self-exclusion from social life, weakening ties with him. The factor of subjective alienation contributes to further de-socialization. S. Freud was one of the first psychologists who used the concept of “detachment”. He associated this phenomenon with the pathological development of personality and noted that self-detachment leads either to the neurotic loss of one's own “I” - depersonalization, or to the loss of a sense of the reality of the world – de-realization (Freud, 1977).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Readaptation: Is restoration of regulatory mental reactions that meets the requirements of normal living conditions on the basis of restructuring formed under the influence of psychogenic factors of inadequate perception of extreme conditions. In a general meaning, the concept of “readaptation” means the readaptation of a person to environmental conditions.
Social Detachment: Is a specific, special person’s relationship with the world around him, which is characterized by the fact that the subject is aware of everything that surrounds him as the opposite of himself, and this applies both to other individuals or social groups with their own norms, attitudes, and values and to the subject himself or to the results of his own activities.
Participants in Hostilities: Are the persons who took part in the implementation of combat missions to protect the Motherland as a part of military units, formations, associations of all types and branches of the Armed Forces (Navy), guerrilla units and underground and other formations both in wartime and in peacetime.
Identity Crisis: Is a special period of personality’s formation, during which a person is in search of his place, role, and purpose in society. This period is characterized by such a psychological condition of a person in which he feels the loss of his own ego-identity and he faces the problem of self-determination.
Attitude Towards Himself: Is a unity of content and dynamic aspects of a personality, a measure of awareness, emotional and value acceptance of himself as a responsible beginning of social activity.
Social Adaptation: Is a system of measures aimed at adapting a citizen, who is in a difficult life situation, to the rules and norms of behavior accepted in society, and to his environment of life.
Post-Traumatic Stress: Is a severe mental condition that occurs as a result of a single or repeated events that have a powerful negative impact on the psyche of an individual.
Meaning of Life: Is a concept that denotes the goal of life, a person’s purpose. The driving force of human behavior, human desire for self-fulfillment; central life motive, that reflects what a person lives for.
Feeling of Guilt: Is a negatively colored feeling, experiences, the object of which is deeds, actions of the subject, which seem to him to be the reason of negative consequences for other people or even for himself.