Delinquency as a manifestation of the pathopsychological state of the transformation of society during the transition from totalitarianism to democracy

Abstract

The article examines the nature of delinquency as a manifestation of the pathopsychological state of society in the conditions of transformational changes. The general background of this relationship is the visible weakening of social norms and institutions regulating and disciplining people’s behaviour through transformational processes, which leads to the denial of the authority of existing social norms and provokes various forms of deviant behaviour. Therefore, the psychological (psychosocial) aspect, which covers the individual and the collective conscious and unconscious nature of social behaviour, comes to the forefront of the knowledge of the new – Postmodern social situation. For the analysis of transitional processes and the social situation as a whole, the authors use both the established concept of the Modern era – “social identity” and introduce a new one, corresponding to the realities of the postmodern era, the concept of “societal identity” as a multidimensional psychosocial reality, which is measured by the author’s BAD methodology. It is about its six binary scales-oppositions, which measure such qualitative features of the social system as: “extroversion – introversion”, “emotionality – pragmatism”, “irrationality – rationality”, “intuitiveness – sensory”, “externality – internality”, “executiveness – intentionality”. Monitoring the trends of changes in these qualitative characteristics during the years 2002–2023 provided an opportunity not only to establish the fact of the birth and subsequent dominance of a new type of “social identity” in Ukraine but also to determine the “landmarks” of the irreversibility of the process of social transformation, which became: the “Orange Revolution” (2004), the “Revolution of Dignity” (2013–2014), the Russian-Ukrainian war (2014–2023), especially its final phase – Russia’s large-scale aggression against Ukraine (2022–2023). The latter seems to be the equifinal moment of social transformation, which brings victory for Ukraine while turning into a strategic defeat for Russia. This defeat is accompanied by the criminal nature of the delinquent behaviour of the military and politicians, which is caused by the pathopsychological state of Russian society with its conformist behavioural colouring, which is based on the archetypal tradition of the “oprichnina” of the Muscovite state of the 16th century, during the reign of Ivan 4th the Terrible.