At the invitation of the Department of Professional Education in Technology and Design of the Faculty of Arts and Fashion of KNUTD, on April 19, 2024 , a public lecture by Olena Sushyi, Doctor of Science in Public Administration, Associate Professor, Chief Researcher at the Institute of Social and Political Psychology of the National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine, visiting researcher at Matej Bel University in Slovakia, was held as part of the Psychology Week.
During the lecture “SOCIAL DYNAMICS OF TRAUMA: DOES WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU MAKE YOU STRONGER?” Olena Volodymyrivna presented the original concept of the societal dynamics of collective trauma, as well as the author’s experimental methodology developed to analyze the societal dynamics of trauma as a dynamic component and the socio-psychological state of the mass (collective) consciousness.
The lecturer proposed a system of theoretical views and ideas that reveal the content and essence of trauma as a multidimensional phenomenon of mass consciousness and social life, as a long-term cumulative process that unfolds in specific historical, social, political, and cultural contexts, and as a “place” where the past, present, and future intersect.
According to the authorєs hypothesis, traumatic experience does not dissolve or disappear but it accumulates over time, and each subsequent traumatic event, layered on top of the previous traumatic experience, multiplies their traumatic impact. The intertwining of different temporal and spatial traumatic experiences constitutes an invisible semantic layer of being as an individual who spends his or her entire life searching for the meaning of his or her existence in answering the questions: “What can I know?”, “What should I do?”, “What can I hope for?”, and is mastered from generation to generation in the questions “Who are we?”, “What is important to us?” and “What principles do we follow (in reality)?” by the community that determines the meaning of its existence as a nation and a state.
The speaker noted that social transformation processes in Ukraine in recent years have been taking place in a self-fueled social crisis. This has had a specific impact on the processes of group (national) identity formation, the formation of democratic values and attitudes, and the crystallization of social institutions and institutional practices. And step by step, it has led the country to the situation we are in now: the Russian-Ukrainian war.
The material of the lecture became the basis for reflections on our resilience, namely the skills and ability to survive in extremely difficult turbulent conditions.
We sincerely thank Olena Sushiy for an interesting, informative and useful lecture! We look forward to further fruitful cooperation!
22.04.2024
