ABSTRACT
Chapter 7 approaches the cultural trauma of totalitarianism as a phenomenon of adaptation, and examines strategies and competencies employed by those who have adapted to hostile and unpredictable social environments. Trauma psychology already has a model of survivorship in toxic and abusive environments. Often stigmatized, the powerful, charismatic, and resourceful borderline personality is a champion in their ability to adapt to crazy-making and can teach us about effective strategies. These include black-and-white thinking, hypervigilance, and cognitive fragmentation. In totalitarian regimes, this translates into double-thinking behavior and morale in personal and official life. Distrust, social apathy, and learned social helplessness can be consequences of powerlessness when it is not safe to trust. Traumatic regression, dissociation, magical thinking, and psychosis are powerful adaptation strategies that signify escape into an alternative reality and severing ties with the hostile material world. In the former USSR, there were also tactics of passive resistance such as a culture of political jokes or anecdotes. The adaptation approach offers insight into the lingering transgenerational legacy of once adaptive learned behaviors and cognitions. It also assists with understanding the needs of and designing helping interventions for refugees and immigrants who arrive from countries with abusive governments.
