Visualization of Fear, or Fear Makes the Wolf Bigger Than He Is
摘要
The typology of anxiety and fears has been considered in a dynamic temporal aspect, focusing on how people's fears have changed over the past few years. The aim of the study is to analyze the content of pictograms (“draw to remember”), the accompanying comments, and the psychological interview. The study examined the personality aspects of pictograms as reflections of the subjects’ current fears, serving as a form of visual imagery of fear. We decided to explore the current fears—this became the central idea of our study. The research was conducted at a private psychiatric clinic in Moscow since the beginning of the Ukraine conflict in 2022 and up to the present day. A total of 120 pathopsychological reports were analyzed, involving both adult and adolescent participants aged 13 and older. The majority of the participants (65%) exhibited schizotypal traits (F21), while the remaining group (35%) consisted of individuals with a neurotic type of personality development, including post-traumatic stress disorder. A preliminary conclusion can be drawn: due to the social and political situation in the world, the fears of adults and children in Russian society have changed. The content of these fears now includes themes of nuclear catastrophe and war. The visualization of other stimulus words in the pictogram task has remained unchanged. Additionally, effective psychological support strategies are discussed. In the context of visual representations of fear, art therapy is examined as a method of materializing fear. Art therapy is successfully applied in various fields of psychology, including work with children, adolescents with deviant behavior, and palliative care. An example of such work with negative emotions is the previously tested training program Face of Aggression. Aggression is understood as the reverse side of anxiety. The effectiveness of this training was demonstrated using objective methods for assessing emotional states, including the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire and anxiety questionnaires. A distinctive feature of this corrective intervention was the depiction of negative emotions in various artistic styles.