The Concept of the Extreme Situation and Its Types

The concept of the extreme situation and its types. Psychosomatic manifestations of exposure to an extreme situation. Psychogenic signs that have a destructive, damaging effect on the human psyche. Models of a subject's behavior under conditions of social tension. The extreme situation and the dynamics of its development. Psychopathological changes after trauma. Ways of adapting after an extreme situation. Factors of stress resistance in extreme situations. Self-regulation.

Extreme situation (lat. extremus — extreme, critical) — a suddenly arising situation that threatens, or is subjectively perceived by a person as threatening, life, health, personal integrity, and well-being , both of the person himself and of those significant to him. An extreme situation characterizes a specific set of circumstances in which extreme values of subjective factors essential to life are observed: the physical health and activity of the person or the social group to which he belongs.

The extreme situation is understood by us as unexpectedly arising, unfamiliar conditions of human existence for which the person's psychophysiological organization is not prepared. In social science there is still no unified theoretical position regarding the particulars of mental activity and human behavior under such conditions of life.

An extreme situation (from the Latin extremum — extreme, limiting) is a situation that unexpectedly presents a person with difficulties that require the maximum mobilization of his capabilities.

To understand the mechanism of action of extreme situations, it is important to have a clear idea of their types and varieties. There are several classifications of the types of extreme situations according to the following criteria:

• • scope of action: interstate, state, regional, local, site-specific;
• • the dynamics of development and the time required to eliminate the consequences: strategic ones that rapidly lead to catastrophic consequences, slowly developing ones, and operational ones with a local character of consequences;
• • the type of damage caused: direct and indirect damage, with human casualties, with material damage;
• • the source of origin: natural, domestic, industrial-technological.

At the level of content, the following are extreme situations:

• • space and aviation flights;
• • deep-sea diving;
• • being in hard-to-reach areas of the globe;
• • being deep underground (in mines);
• • natural disasters: floods, fires, hurricanes, snowdrifts, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, rockfalls, mountain snow avalanches, landslides, and mudflows;
• • testing new, highly complex equipment;
• • transportation, industrial, and environmental disasters;
• • military actions;
• • epidemics;
• • domestic disasters, for example fires of a high degree of complexity;
• • criminal situations: acts of terrorism, hostage-taking;
• • political coups of a reactionary type;
• • mass unrest, etc.

By degree of extremity, all situations are divided into:

• • normal — involving ordinary difficulties;
• • para-extreme — difficulties approaching the limit;
• • extreme proper — the difficulties experienced require the full mobilization of a person's capabilities;
• • hyper-extreme — the difficulties are excessive, exceeding a person's capabilities, forcing him to act "no matter what."

Any normal situation can turn into an extreme one, even because of a carelessly spoken word, newly received information, or a person's emotional state. Extremity is an objective-subjective phenomenon. The same situation can be normal, para-extreme, extreme, or hyper-extreme for different people. This depends, to a decisive extent, on the characteristics of the personality, the degree of its preparedness for different conditions of existence, and its psychological state at the given moment. Thus, a parachute jump is undoubtedly extreme for a person doing it for the first time, whereas for a master of parachute sport it is an ordinary, habitual action. A person who is composed, alert, and has mobilized his strength is ready to meet any dangers and surprises, but he may flinch and experience a momentary fright and confusion on hearing a telephone ring nearby when he is in a state of relaxation (the folk saying is psychologically accurate: "Being caught off guard undoes even the bear").

Empirical Interpretation of the Extreme Situation

The empirical definition of an extreme situation includes the following aspects :

• the event-based nature of the situation;
• life-threatening danger, the menacing character of the situation;
• extreme demands on the individual's personality (the actual meaning of the situation determines the formation of specific personal structures);
• the presence of potential or real consequences for the person: threat, moral and/or physical harm, loss, suffering, and resilience in various spheres of life (physical, mental, social, spiritual, existential);
• the specific character of communication and activity in the extreme situation (as well as in the pre-situation and post-situation);
• the life stance of a person who finds himself in extreme conditions;
• the phenomenon of TET (trans-ordinary existential transience), which consists of interrelated syndromes of entry, sojourn, and return.

The definition of an extreme situation serves to interpret accidents, extraordinary incidents, disasters, emergency situations, and the like. Viewed from the standpoint of semantic analysis, the concept of an extreme situation is often described using vivid, emotionally charged adjectives, namely: traumatic, natural, catastrophic, going beyond the norm, difficult, anomalous, and the like. Examples of extreme situations include the following: technological disasters, natural disasters, wars, terrorism, violence, accidents, special conditions of life, and the like.

The nature of the threat characteristic of an extreme situation can be either objective (for example, being in a burning room during a fire) or subjective (for example, experiencing a loss).

An extreme situation implies a departure from the individual's habitual, "normal" experience. In other words, an extreme situation places a person in conditions to which he is not adapted and for which means of psychological defense have not yet been developed. The person turns out to be unprepared to act appropriately under the circumstances that have arisen. In determining the intensity of an extreme impact on the psyche and a person's reaction to stress, specialists resort to the concept of a norm. It is assumed that there exists an average statistical norm for a person's level of adaptation to the environment. Events of an unusual origin that disrupt the habitual course of life, cause harm to the individual, and go beyond the average statistical norm are considered extreme.

The degree of extremity of a situation is also determined by the strength of the emergency event and the level of its novelty and unfamiliarity for the person. What makes a situation extreme is not only the objective threat to life and health, but also the subjective experience and the person's attitude toward what is happening. The perception of the same incident by different people is not universal in character but depends on numerous factors — personality type, the nervous system, the level of adaptation to stress, and so on.

An extreme situation significantly alters the habitual course of life, destroys the basic sense of security and trust in the world and the feeling of control over one's own life and the events occurring in it, and depletes the individual's adaptive potential. Such reactions can lead to the formation of mental disorders — traumatic and posttraumatic disorders, neurotic states, and others.

Factors of the Extreme Situation[

There are a number of factors, stressors, that define an extreme situation :

• emotiogenic effects on the psyche associated with the danger, difficulty, novelty, and uncertainty of the situation;
• a deficit of necessary information;
• an excess of contradictory information;
• excessive mental, physical, and emotional strain;
• unfavorable climatic conditions (cold, heat, oxygen deficiency);
• pronounced deprivation of needs (especially basic ones: hunger, thirst).

Structure of the Extreme Situation

An extreme situation has a triadic structure :

• negative extreme situation — suffering for the person
• indifferent-stable extreme situation — a trial for the person
• positive extreme situation — the formation and growth of the personality and its being

In the conception of M. Sh. Magomed-Eminov , the general psychological understanding of the extreme situation is linked to the transformation of the personality (including changes in personal semantic structures and constructs) under conditions of transition from an everyday to a non-everyday mode of human existence. Extremity is examined within the paradigm of life — death (being — non-being), which implies a dual meaning of the phenomenon of extremity: an extreme situation can carry both negative and positive aspects for a person's personality.

Synonymous Concepts

There are definitions found in the works of various authors that are synonymous with the concept of the extreme situation:

• critical situations ;
• difficult life situations ;
• acute situations ;
• tense situations ;
• anomalous situations .

Furthermore, it should be noted that the concepts of extreme situation and emergency situation are not equivalent, since an emergency situation is characterized only by an objective threat to a person's health, life, and well-being. Therefore, an emergency situation is a particular case of an extreme situation.