PSYCHO-ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIMENSIONS OF EXTREME CRISES: FROM THE FIRST WORLD WAR TO THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Extreme crises, including the World Wars, biological crises, and the COVID-19 pandemic, constitute major disruptive events that simultaneously affect the psychological, social, and symbolic dimensions of human societies. This article proposes an integrative psycho-anthropological model designed to examine the cognitive, emotional, and cultural mechanisms activated in response to situations of prolonged collective threat.
The study is based on a critical interdisciplinary documentary analysis drawing upon clinical and social psychology, the anthropology of disasters, and the sociology of collective trauma. It develops a conceptual framework organized around four core dimensions: threat perception, locus of control, stress and collective trauma, and the processes of resilience and symbolic reconstruction.
The findings indicate that extreme crises lead to a reconfiguration of individuals’ relationship with control, characterized by an increased external locus of control (Rotter, 1966), heightened chronic stress (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), and various forms of collective trauma (Alexander, 2004). At the same time, societies develop adaptive mechanisms grounded in cultural symbolization, social rituals, and dynamics of solidarity that contribute to restoring both psychological continuity and social cohesion (Douglas, 1966).
The comparative analysis highlights significant historical variations across different types of crises. Warfare is primarily characterized by direct violence and social disorganization, biological crises by the invisibility of the threat, whereas the COVID-19 pandemic combines health-related uncertainty, information overload, and socioeconomic instability (Brooks et al., 2020). The proposed model conceptualizes extreme crises as integrated psycho-socio-anthropological systems, thereby providing a comprehensive framework for understanding human adaptive responses while opening new perspectives for psychological prevention and the promotion of collective mental health.