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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 9, No. 6
Publication Date: June 25, 2022
DOI:10.14738/assrj.96.12527. Steinmetz, C. H. D. (2022). Wars and Psychology: A Critical Perspective. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(6). 221-
240.
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
Wars and Psychology: A Critical Perspective
Carl H. D. Steinmetz
Director of Expats & Immigrants, Amsterdam, Netherlands
ABSTRACT
In this article we try to answer the question what the contribution of psychology is
to the prevention and deterrence of wars. It should not be forgotten that in the
twentieth century alone almost every year a new war started somewhere in the
world. Added up over many centuries, the number of perpetrators, victims and
witnesses must be immense. The bold thesis launched here is that almost every
family (through living relatives and ancestors) on earth carries a story about a war
and what that war has meant to the family and ancestors. This article uses a
literature review. This study teaches us that psychology, too, as a scientific and
practice-oriented study, lends its ears to big money. This took off in the United
States of America where psychology gets a huge boost around the two world wars
in the twentieth century. In this article, that psychology is also called negative
psychology, a psychology that views the human mind and human behaviour
primarily from the perspective of "misery. This is mainstream psychology.
Fortunately, it is not all doom and gloom. Humanity is saved by positive psychology
where hope, resilience and sources of power of (groups of) people are central. The
psychology or Transformation and Reconciliation developed by Tutu and Tutu is a
wonderful example of this. In short, the contribution of psychology to the
monitoring and maintenance of peace can be called meagre. Indeed, on top of all
that, psychologists will have to deal with the "laws" of epigenetics. A solution will
have to be found for the "cruelty" transmitted through DNA by wars from person to
person. One possible research direction in this regard is the study of
intergenerational trauma. Central to this is the right to self-determination of every
human being and every group of human beings.
Keywords: war psychology, positive and negative psychology, Transformation and
Reconciliation, Russian War
Many people on earth have been subjected to atrocities by governments, militias and terror
groups. Today, we also have private military compagnies, commercial armies of veterans and
former Russian officers of the military intelligence agency (GRU) and federal security agency
(FSB)1, such as the ‘Russian’ Wagner Group that pillage, murder, torture and rape relentlessly
in Syria, Libya, Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the “little green men” in Eastern
Ukraine. Different words are in vogue for these atrocities. Well-known words are genocide, war,
invasion and occupation.
This article is not about these individual and collective atrocities themselves. But it is about the
contribution of psychology before, during and after these atrocities. Best known to the public
at large is the therapeutic care given to veterans. Less well known is the psychological and
1 https://www.csis.org/npfp/russian-private-military-companies-syria-and-beyond
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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 9, Issue 6, June-2022
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
sociological research on perpetrators of, for example, genocidal regimes. In this article, a
distinction is made between victims, bystanders and perpetrators. Bystanders may assist
victims or support perpetrators in committing individual and/or collective atrocities. The
article also asks whether psychology is also committed to promoting peace on earth or whether
psychology is primarily reactive.
DEFINITIONS OF WARS
In practice, there are many definitions of war (Van der Dennen, 1980). In principle, wars can
arise between nation states and also between parties in the same country or between peoples
in different countries.
“War is a species in the genus of violence; more specifically it is collective, direct, manifest,
personal, intentional, organized, institutionalized, instrumental, sanctioned, and sometimes
ritualized and regulated, violence. These distinguishing features and dimensional delineations
are not limitative. It should be perfectly clear, however, that war, or the state of belligerence, is
a very special category of violence (Van der Dennen, 1980).”
Wars are also taking place in former colonised countries where Western powers have drawn
borders with compasses and rulers and this across peoples. A war is also defined on the basis
of motives. An example of this is the current war of Russia against the Ukraine (official launch
in February 2022). This war was preceded by the war in the Crimean peninsula (excluding the
Ukrainian-ruled part of the Arabat Peninsula). Crimea was annexed by Russia in February- March 2014, as part of the Russo-Ukrainian War) of Russia against Ukraine, with a call to
restore the pre-1917 Great Russian Empire (Russian Revolution). This imperialistic Great
Russian Empire was established by Russia, which colonised the nomadic peoples of Siberia and
other parts of Russia from Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Russian atrocities have been
documented in Russia since Ivan the Terrible (1530-1584).
“Now that Russia again attacks a neighbour - after, to stay with the last century, Japan (1905),
Poland (1919), Finland (1939), the Baltic States (1940), Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia
(1968), Afghanistan (1979) and Georgia (2008) - the question arises: is there a Russian
Sonderweg2? Is there such a thing as a 'typically Russian' form of state, whereby one's own
population is oppressed and neighbouring countries are invaded. And if so, how did this come
about? (Funnekoter, 2022)”
Finally, wars are also defined on the basis of their genesis. For example: ‘due to the construction
of unnatural reservoirs, my country does not have enough water to irrigate its agricultural
land’. Van der Dennen (1980) makes this large number of definitions clear with the following
remark:
2 Sonderweg is the designation for the thesis that Germany had its own anomalous development from aristocratic rule to
democracy. Most characteristically, in the nineteenth century, the acquisition of economic power by the bourgeoisie did
not result in the acquisition of political power. That remained in the hands of the princes and the nobility.[1] This is said
to have caused the persistence of a preference for authoritarian leaders and ultimately made possible the rise of National
Socialism and the associated horrors of the Holocaust. The Sonderweg thesis has been criticized for assuming that the
existence of a Sonderweg presupposes the existence of a normal, obligatory path to democracy. Link:
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderweg
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Steinmetz, C. H. D. (2022). Wars and Psychology: A Critical Perspective. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(6). 221-240.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.96.12527
“Even casual inspection of the literature reveals the following, incomplete, list of ‘war’ terms:
limited war and total (or all-out) war, cold war and hot war, local war and world war, controlled
and uncontrolled war, accidental war and premeditated war, conventional and nuclear war,
declared and undeclared war, aggressive or offensive war and defensive war, general war and
proxy war, international war and civil war, tribal and civilized war, preventive or pre-emptive
war, protracted war, absolute war, war of liberation, war of conquest, war of commerce, war of
plunder, revolutionary war, political war, economic war, social war, imperialist war, guerrilla
war, psychological war, strategic war, counter-insurgency war, dynastic war, monarchical war,
ritual war, agonistic war, sacred war, instrumental war, genocidal war.”
“Singer and Small (1972), and Deutsch and Senghaas (1973) call according to Van der Dennen
(1980):
“war” any series of events that meets the following three criteria:
Size: it results in at least 1000 battle deaths (not counting, therefore, the indirect victims
through famine, lack of shelter, and disease).
Preparation: it has been prepared in advance, and/or is being maintained, by large-scale social
organizations through such means as the recruitment, training and deployment of troops the
acquisition, storage and distribution of arms and ammunition, the making of specific war plans
and the like, and
Legitimation: it is being legitimized by an established governmental or quasi-governmental
organization, so that large-scale killing is viewed not as a crime but as a duty.”
This article is not only about the role of psychology before, during and after a war but also about
the role of psychology before, during and after a period of peace.
The President of the American Psychological Association -Major Robert M. Yerkes- wrote in
1918 an article with the title “Psychology in Relation to War”.
“In Europe, psychologists have served conspicuously in the great war but psychology has done
little. In this country, for the first time in the history of our science, a general organization in
the interests of certain ideal and practical aims has been effected. Today American psychology
is placing a highly trained and eager personnel at the service of our military organizations. We
are acting not individually but collectively on the basis of common training and common faith
in the practical value of our work. At the first call American psychologists responded promptly
and heartily, therefore the length to which the development of our work has progressed and
the measure of service which has been attained.”
Mockingly, the definitions of peace are as follows:
“These formulations are reminiscent of Ambrose Bierce’s sardonic definition of “peace” as: “a
period of cheating between two periods of fighting” (Devil’s Dictionary), or Orwell’s famous
dictum from 1984: “Peace is War.”
“Notions of some limbo between war and peace are either contradictory or unintelligible”. Or,
as it was stated in classical times: “Inter bellum et pacem nihil medium (Wells, 1976).”