The Influence of Society on the Psyche: A Comparative Study of Adolescents in Post-Communist and West European Democratic Societies

This project was designed as a qualitative research study. It was carried out in two phases. Initially, beginning in 1990 just after the Communist system had collapsed, a pilot study was conducted involving Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Russia as representative of Communist societies and Austria as representative of a democratic society (Schmidt, Lalouschek, and Przyborski, 1994). The second phase of the research began in 1996, in which a small sample consisting of Russian and Austrian adolescents were given in-depth interviews. The intention was to examine the impact of different societies and their influence on the adolescent psyche. Sixteen adolescents, eight from the former Soviet Union and eight from Austria, were matched in terms of age (sixteen years), gender, background and educational status. The interviews were then analysed by a research team whose members came from diverse cultural backgrounds, most of whom were experienced in psychoanalytic methodology. Though the sample size was small, distinct differences emerged between the two groups. The Russian adolescents that were interviewed tended to be rather rigid, affectively sparse and uniform, whereas the Austrian group seemed more lively and differentiated. The qualitative differences between the personality structure of the two groups were understood in the following way. In the Russian interviews there seemed to be evidence of the use of an over-adaptive survivor self, used to regulate anxiety. The researchers introduced a term 'the impersonal self' to describe the quality of depersonalization as portrayed in these interviews. The impersonal self seemed to be a form of both individual and social defence, utilized to deny the recognition of personal needs. In trying to explain its origins, the researchers speculated as to whether or not it was the result of the influence of the former Communist culture aiming to create a 'collective man'. However, in the Austrian interviews, there was no evidence of a unified trait running through the interview material. Interpretation of the findings is based upon a Western psychoanalytic perspective in thinking about adolescence. Theoretical concepts were applied, such as Fonagy's concept of mentalization, the Kleinian distinction between the use of primitive and mature defence mechanisms, and the Winnicottian ideas of 'the facilitating environment' and of 'transitional space'. The findings raise questions as to how conducive the highly regulated socialization practices of the former Soviet Union were, both for identity and for personality development.