T-invariant continues its series featuring anonymous accounts from Russian scientists and academics on how their lives and work have transformed under wartime conditions and increasing state repression. In this installment, a psychotherapist and candidate of psychological sciences explains why current events are reviving old traumas—and how the suppression of unprocessed history leaves society unprepared for present challenges.
Since 1990, I’ve practiced psychotherapy, working with personality disorders and existential crises. Over time, I’ve come to see how the pioneers of our field—Freud, Jung, and others—began with a clinical approach but gradually shifted toward philosophical psychology. Current events have only reinforced this perspective.
February 2022 was a catastrophic shock for society. My clients reacted in deeply personal ways, shaped by their psychological structures and the specific struggles that brought them to therapy. For most, the war shattered their sense of normalcy—upending ideas of safety, life’s challenges, and even the fundamental stability of existence.
I primarily work with young and middle-aged adults undergoing radical life transitions, including those who fled abroad. Since the invasion, I’ve observed a slow, uneven adaptation. Humans can’t sustain a perpetual state of crisis; the mind seeks equilibrium.
But not all adaptation is healthy. Some adjustments become maladaptive—persistent distortions of personality and daily life that demand clinical attention. Others, however, foster growth. My work now involves untangling these complex, individualized responses.
War, of course, stifles development. Yet paradoxically, trauma theory teaches us that upheavals can also alleviate neurotic symptoms. When familiar structures collapse, so too might the rigid patterns that once trapped a person. A patient’s neurosis often depends on a specific lifestyle, relationships, or self-concept. Sudden chaos can offer an unexpected escape—a chance to redefine what matters, to heal.
Consider hypochondria: Many people obsess over morning pulse rates, weight fluctuations, or minor aches. But when survival itself is at stake, these fixations sometimes dissolve. The mind, forced to confront real danger, discards imaginary ones.
Suddenly, the unthinkable becomes real—the possibility of death in an instant, a bomb reducing your home to rubble. This confrontation with mortality forces urgent questions: “Where do good and evil lie? What is my responsibility? Whose side am I on? How must I act to remain a decent human being?” Such concerns shatter the mundane neurotic cycle, replacing it with raw existential anxiety.
Facing life’s ultimate realities can paradoxically be healing—akin to the clarity some terminal patients describe. As one client reflected: “If I’d felt this weight of responsibility sooner, I wouldn’t have wasted years in childish self-absorption. Now, knowing each step matters, I finally feel alive.” These awakenings don’t occur automatically, nor are they guaranteed. But the potential exists.
Yet we must resist romanticizing this dynamic at a societal level. For most, war remains an unmitigated catastrophe—stealing lives, inflicting suffering, coarsening souls, and severing irreplaceable bonds. No philosophical silver lining justifies such devastation. Russian society, too, has been thrust backward by this war; its moral and psychological recovery will be long and arduous.
As for my clients as a whole, I believe the situation varies greatly from person to person. Reactions span a wide spectrum, and it’s difficult to identify a typical response—though what they do share is intense stress. At the same time, stress has diagnostic value. The way a person experiences extreme stress can reveal their character and personality structure. In calm circumstances, people tend to be more or less alike: we strive not to stand out. That is a feature of social behavior.
War brings out what a person is already predisposed to. Will they, under stress, feel greater solidarity with others, experience empathy, and act accordingly? Or will they withdraw from anything unpleasant, narrowing their awareness to only what they can handle in the moment? Will they search for someone to blame, someone to hate? Or perhaps they will try to impose their own order—even an order of power—seizing control where possible, subjugating those within their reach, and forcefully establishing a hierarchy where someone is in charge and they themselves occupy a defined place? These are not universal traits but rather patterns specific to certain personalities, emerging as a reaction to stress.
Another crucial factor is that people respond to stress based on prior traumatic experiences—things they endured earlier in life, stressors from childhood that have since been forgotten. A powerful shock can plunge them back into those emotions, into a state of helplessness. This applies not only to those currently suffering war-related trauma on the front lines but also to those absorbing psychological wounds through the media—trauma that may manifest much later.
When I first started practicing, I encountered many cases linked to the Soviet-Afghan War. Take, for example, a veteran who returned to the peaceful setting of a provincial city. He boards a tram and passes a road construction site: jackhammers pounding, workers laying asphalt. The cramped tram, the sound of the drills, perhaps some other sensory trigger—suddenly, he is overwhelmed by flashbacks to combat. In a state of uncontrollable rage, he shoves people aside, fighting his way to the exit, injuring others in the process. Eventually, he is detained and hospitalized in a state of partial delirium.
Something similar may be unfolding internally for many people: a rupture in reality, a disconnection from context, the reawakening of old trauma—because this war does not unfold in a vacuum. I have worked with refugees from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, with clients who fled Baku after the well-known events, others deeply scarred by the Georgian conflict, and so on. Now, that past trauma is resurfacing.
At the societal level, however, war and aggression have, for some time, been perceived as unthinkable. The experiences of the Afghan War, the two Chechen Wars, the Georgian War, and other conflicts had been suppressed—until suddenly, the impossible happened, something that “should never have occurred” and “had never happened before.” As a result, the collective perception we are dealing with is profoundly unstable and unhealthy.
It suggests that historical memory is short, that society as a whole is quick to repress the past. This suppression of unprocessed history—of events that were never truly reckoned with—leads to a lack of preparedness for the challenges of the present. I believe that a conscious engagement with historical experience helps people adapt better to new upheavals, to find their bearings without collapsing into disarray—even if not immediately.
Historical memory, including family history, is not a luxury or a hobby but a prerequisite for psychological resilience. Those who lack this resource are more likely to become disoriented, prone to dramatization and hysterical reactions—viewing current events as apocalyptic.
This is crucial when it comes to personal engagement with one’s past. As for the psychology of responsibility at the societal level, let us turn to the film “White Sun of the Desert”, beloved in Soviet times. One reason for its enduring appeal, I believe, lies in its protagonist, Comrade Sukhov, who embodies a remarkably mature psychological type—a man who remains composed while others teeter on the brink of breakdown. The only exception is Said, who is equally balanced, though more exotic to our sensibilities. Sukhov, on the other hand, appears no different from you or me. Notably, it hardly matters which side he is on—the Reds or the Whites. His composure is intrinsic. He demonstrates maturity in his dealings with women, with others, even with those who shout and shoot.
To me, the Civil War as a whole resembles a gallery of immature types: psychopaths, hysterics—on both sides—impulsive personalities quick to draw their revolvers and issue ultimatums. And I think the secret behind the film’s staggering success answers the question of what we lack today. The vivid imagery—the burning oil tanker, the ship rigged to explode—calls for greater restraint, for reason and measured action. The problem, however, is how to convey the “advice” to be mature. One might suggest working on oneself, never losing sight of the whole, for there is always the temptation to focus only on the area under one’s control—a stretch of the front, a social cause, and so on—while losing sight of the self in its entirety.
I believe the line between good and evil, between destruction and creation, between health and sickness, does not run along the frontlines, between parties, nations, or military blocs. It runs solely within each individual. This invisible boundary must be guarded carefully, for people cross it all too easily. Swept up in collective movements, aligning with one side or another, they assume their actions are thereby justified. They convince themselves that if they are on the “right” side, everything they do is right—that rage and destruction become permissible.
If a society has leaders—including opposition leaders—they ought to consider this. Too often today, I hear: “If you doubt, you are a traitor, and that warrants contempt.” Or worse: “As a leader, I must never doubt, for doubt is weakness that my enemies will exploit.” Such notions are widespread; we all experience these impulses at times. But maturity lies precisely in tolerating one’s own doubts, enduring them, admitting to them—and extending that same tolerance to the doubts of others.
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When discussing Russia’s chances of becoming a normal, civilized, tolerant country, I would avoid fixating on Russia as some eternal symbol to be identified with.
In this regard, I am drawn to the words of Maximilian Voloshin from his seminal poem “The Poet’s House”, written in Crimea, which concludes with these lines:
Learn my country’s simple catechism:
as Greece came and went, as did the Genoese;
so Europe too and Russia will not last.
The vicious scourge of civil tumult
will fade and evaporate on the breeze.
New nets are set in life’s creeks and currents;
the days decay, and man advances.
Yet sky and land remain eternally
the same..
(Translated by Graham J. Harrison)
These lines were wrought by a man who endured in Crimea the shifts of power, the changing flags, the terror. There is something unhealthy in fanatically identifying oneself with symbols.
The Russia of the future will be a country of people living on a certain territory, shaped by traumatic experience, yet bound by culture and language. People remain people, no matter what happens, and each retains the capacity for growth—and the responsibility that comes with it.
Can we say that the value of progress will ultimately outweigh the value of stagnation for them? I believe they have no fewer opportunities than those in other nations. Fundamentally, they are no different—for better or worse.