Introduction by the Thematic Editor
Dear Readers,
We are pleased to present a new thematic issue of our journal entitled “Crisis Psychology Today”.
Crisis psychology is a relatively new field within Russian psychology. Its emergence dates back to 1989, when psychologists in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus responded to a government initiative aimed at providing psychological assistance and support to children and adolescents affected by the Chernobyl disaster. The lack of an adequate theoretical framework and effective practical approaches to helping individuals in crisis prompted researchers to develop a distinct area of psychology with its own conceptual foundations and specialized crisis intervention approaches. This field was later formally designated as “crisis psychology” in 1997.
The issue opens with an article by Leonid A. Pergamenshchik, who invites readers to revisit the phenomenological tradition in Russian psychology (G.G. Shpet, L.S. Vygotsky, F.E. Vasilyuk). This tradition places the concept of lived emotional experience at the center of understanding an individual's relationship to life events and views it as the key mechanism guiding a person safely from psychological trauma toward personal growth.
The thematic issue “Crisis Psychology Today” is primarily composed of contributions by Belarusian psychologists, demonstrating both the theoretical and practical capacity of contemporary psychology to address pressing real-world challenges. The common thread uniting these papers is the encounter between the individual and a life crisis, viewed through the lens of the event-based approach. The issue includes articles by E.Yu. Kozhenevskaya on the birth of a child with developmental disabilities, S.A. Yangibaev on experiences of sexualized violence, L.A. Vertinskaya on approaches to analyzing traumatic experience, and E.A. Petrazhitskaya on attitudes toward perinatal loss.
The article by R.V. Kadyrov, a long-standing collaborator of Belarusian psychologists, fits naturally within the scope of crisis psychology, as it focuses on the strategic approach to crisis intervention as a system of psychological assistance. Crisis intervention is presented as a method of brief psychological support characterized by specific requirements regarding timing, setting, and therapeutic techniques.
Leonid A. Pergamenshchik's article, “Lived emotional experience as a Mechanism for Overcoming Crisis Life Events: Phenomenological, Hermeneutic, and Cultural-Historical Foundations”, examines the role of lived emotional experience in understanding and implementing helping interventions in crisis psychology. The article presents a theoretical comparative analysis of the three major approaches to understanding “lived emotional experience”—the phenomenological, hermeneutic, and cultural-historical. The integration of these approaches makes it possible to conceptualize “lived emotional experience” as a process through which individuals reinterpret a crisis event, discover effective ways of coping, restore the integrity of their existence, and identify opportunities for personal growth along their life path.
L.A. Vertinskaya's article, “Trauma as the Plot of a Life Story”, is methodologically well structured. Using transcribed interview material, the author presents an example of narrative analysis of a life story, demonstrating both the considerable potential and the distinctive features of the qualitative approach to studying individuals who have experienced psychological trauma. Through reconstructing the structure of a single case, the author illustrates a method for consistently restoring the sequence of events as experienced by the narrator while taking into account the narrator's current perspective, which influences the selection and interpretation of life events. Thus, the study of life stories grounded in traumatic experience makes it possible to examine the disruptions and ruptures that are often experienced first and foremost as an inability to speak—as speechlessness, as a response to a past that refuses to recede because of its enduring traumatic impact.
E.Yu. Kozhenevskaya's article, “Sibling Relationships as a Resource for Family Psychological Safety in the Context of a Crisis Associated with Raising a Child with Developmental Disabilities”, presents the findings of a doctoral study devoted to families raising children with developmental disabilities. The author reports that the number of children with developmental disabilities in Russia has increased by 17% over the past decade. This trend reflects, on the one hand, improvements in diagnostic practices and, on the other, the growing need to expand and enhance psychological support for families raising such children. Identifying and mobilizing families' internal resources is therefore one of the key directions for psychological assistance. The choice of an appropriate methodological framework—a systems approach to family psychology, which conceptualizes the family as an emotional system (M. Bowen) with its own structure (S. Minuchin), where interaction patterns change in response to stress and depend on the behavior of each family member (P. Boss)—enabled the author to distinguish three family subsystems: the marital, parental, and sibling subsystems.
The presence of typically developing children, who together with a child with developmental disabilities constitute the sibling subsystem, is regarded as one of the family's internal resources, since sibling interactions influence the family's overall emotional climate and may have therapeutic value for parents. The study demonstrates that the explicit attitude of the typically developing child toward a sibling with developmental disabilities performs an important regulatory and stabilizing function within the family system. This attitude reflects the family's internal dynamics and serves as a mechanism for adapting to crisis situations associated with raising a child with developmental disabilities. As emotional tension is redistributed within the family, marital, parent–child, and sibling relationships become closely interconnected, forming a comprehensive model of the family's response to stress. One particularly interesting finding highlighted by the author is that the typically developing child serves as a stabilizing force within the family system regardless of how successfully the family has coped with the crisis associated with raising a child with developmental disabilities. The child's behavior becomes an important factor in maintaining family equilibrium and facilitating the family's adaptation.
S.A. Yangibaev's article, “Shame as a Barrier to Overcoming the Consequences of Trauma in Victims of Sexualized Violence”, addresses an important issue that has received relatively little attention in Russian psychology. Indeed, unresolved, encapsulated trauma may accompany an individual throughout the course of life, manifesting itself in unexpected ways, most often through psychosomatic symptoms. The author's well-justified choice of narrative analysis as the methodological approach made it possible to identify and preserve the unique characteristics of survivors' life stories, explore and describe their subjective experiences in depth, and capture their individual meanings. After all, the same emotional phenomena—fear, anxiety, and shame—are experienced and interpreted differently by each individual, making it essential to document these differences for subsequent analysis and the development of effective psychological support. It can therefore be argued that the use of narrative interviews expanded the scope of the empirical study (the only approach capable of adequately investigating the experience of psychological trauma) by incorporating a therapeutic component into the research process.
The relevance of E.A. Petrazhitskaya's article, “Transformation of Time Perspective as a Criterion of Posttraumatic Growth in Women with a History of Perinatal Loss”, is determined by the high prevalence of perinatal loss, its adverse impact on women's psychological well-being, and the still insufficient attention this issue receives from psychologists.
Based on the findings of a doctoral study, the article proposes that the disrupted parameter of “time perspective” in women with a history of perinatal loss should be considered a criterion for assessing the transition from posttraumatic stress to posttraumatic growth. The study makes a meaningful contribution to understanding the mechanisms underlying recovery from the negative consequences of perinatal loss and may serve as a basis for improving psychological support for women who have experienced such a loss.
In his article, “Crisis Intervention”, R.V. Kadyrov draws the attention of crisis intervention specialists to empirically identified stages of the posttraumatic period that require an individual's adaptive response: the acute stage, the stage of external restructuring, and the stage of integration. The author identifies the key characteristics of the strategic approach to crisis intervention, including timeliness, intensity, short-term orientation, goal-directedness, and consideration of the individual's response to a difficult life situation. He also outlines the essential competencies required of crisis intervention specialists to maximize the effectiveness of psychological assistance: accurate assessment of the individual's crisis state, the ability to think and act quickly, a focus on brief interventions, the use of simple yet effective helping techniques, and an emphasis on restoring safety and a sense of control. The article will undoubtedly be of interest to both researchers and practitioners in crisis psychology, as well as to social workers and volunteers involved in providing assistance to individuals affected by extreme events.
Thematic Editor:
Leonid A. Pergamenshchik
Doctor of Science (Psychology),
Professor, Department of Social and Family Psychology,
Faculty of Psychology,
Maxim Tank Belarusian State Pedagogical University