Soviet Psychology

ISSN: 0038-5751 (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/mrpo19

Psychology during the War

B. V. Zeigarnik & S. Ya. Rubinshtein

To cite this article: B. V. Zeigarnik & S. Ya. Rubinshtein (1986) Psychology during the War, Soviet
Psychology, 25:1, 13-20

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/RPO1061-0405250113

Published online: 19 Dec 2014.

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 AND S. YA. RUBINSHTEIN
B. V. ZEIGARNIK

Psychology during the War

In such a short article it is impossible to do justice to the contribu-

tion made by psychology to the great victory. We shall therefore
speak only of some of the people with whom we ourselves have been
associated in our common work.
First we should mention, with gratitude, our colleagues at the
university who participated directly in military operations along the
harsh roads of warfare. These included G. M. Andreeva, D. N.
Bogoyavlenskii, V. M. Gudkin, A. V. Zasimovskii, S . N. Kar-
pova, Z. A. Reshetova, E. N. Sokolov, D. B. El'konin, and many
others. A number of psychologists-A. R. Luria, A. N. Leont 'ev,
and A. A. Smirnov-who entered the People's Voluntary Corps
were later called back to continue their scientific work. Many scien-
tists and graduate students, including M. G. Yaroshevskii, helped to
build the defense structures around Novgorod. Some of them died.
We should also mention the work of psychologists during the
seige of Leningrad. The dean of our faculty, A. A. Bodalev, then
still a youth, fought the fires ignited by artillery attacks and incendi-
ary bombs dropped on the city by the enemy. S . L. Rubinshtein
wrote his notable work Foundations ofpsychology during the unend-
ing artillery attacks. Many psychologists worked in defense fac-
tories as workers and foremen, among them, Yu. V. Kotelova.
V. N. Myasishchev was the head of a Leningrad hospital throughout

Russian text @ 1985 by Moscow University.

Vestn. Mosk. Univ., Ser. 14, Psikhologiya, 1985, No. 2, pp. 8-12.
Blyuma Vul 'fovna Zeigarnik, Doctor of Psychology, is a Professor in the
Department of Neuropsychology and Pathological Psychology, Faculty of Psy-
chology, Moscow State University; Suzana Yakovlevna Rubinshtein, Doctor of
Psychology, is a Senior Scientific Worker at the Scientific Research Institute of
Psychiatry, RSFSR Ministry of Public Health.

13
I4 B. K ZEIGARNIK & S. Ya. RUBINSHTEIN

the seige. After the war, his experience was published in an article
that not only has not become outmoded but is, in fact, today espe-
cially timely since he speaks of the necessity of combining biological
methods of treatment with psychotherapy (Myasishchev, 1947).
Special mention should be made of the work done during the war
years by Professor A. R. Luria and his team. Together with N. I.
Grashchenov, Director of the All-Union Institute of Experimental
Medicine (AIEM), Luria assembled a team of scientists in the neur-
osurgical hospital in the city of Kisegache (Chelyabinsk region) that
studied the treatment and restoration of work capacity of the war
wounded; the hospital became the base for the work of the Clinic of
Nervous Diseases of the AIEM. Luria was not only the organizer of
this team but also its inspirer. It was not a very easy task to create a
research team in a hospital under the conditions of those first harsh
years of the war; it was necessary not only to supervise the compre-
hensive therapeutic and research work but also to combine it with
practical organizational matters. It is probably no exaggeration to
say that Luria’s profound interest in restorative work and his enthu-
siasm for it go back to the time of his work in this hospital. During
this period not only Luria’s organizational talents but also his deep
humanity came to the fore. He took a deep personal interest in all of
the difficulties in the lives of his fellow workers, offering them his
unflagging assistance, which at that time was very valuable.
?tKo sets of problems may be distinguished that, at the time, were
reflected in the work of colleagues at the hospital and were of major
importance for the development of psychopathology.
The first area was study of mental activeness in people with brain
damage, including impairment of functions of controllability and
self-awareness. The findings of this research, in particular, pro-
vided the material for Luria’s well-known work Traumatic aphasia
(1947) and B. V. Zeigarnik’s Disorders in spontaneity in combat
injuries of thefrontal lobes (Zeigarnik, 1949). It was found that
brain injury could give rise to complex psychopathological symp-
toms in the form of general impairment of the organization of all
mental activity, and it was shown that local symptoms might also
appear against a background of general brain disorders. It was
during this period that the idea that functional and organic factors
 PSYCHOLOGY DURING THE WAR 15

were interrelated in brain injuries was developed.

A special area was study of reactive postcontusion deafness and
dumbness; clinical and psychotherapeutic studies of this phenom-
enon were done by the neuropathologist L. B. Perel 'man, and B. V.
Zeigarnik conducted pathopsychological studies. It was found that
postcontusion deafness and dumbness were partly reactively in-
duced, even in cases of severe brain injury. considerable attention
was devoted to the restoration of the speech of patients who had
suffered head wounds. The psychologists E. S. Bein, 0. P. Kauf-
man, and Luria himself showed considerable ingenuity in their
search for ways to restore oral speech and writing in patients suffer-
ing from different forms of aphasia. These studies and others were
described in contributions to a book on neurological research during
the war years (Nevrologiya . . . , 1949).
Another aspect of the research was restoring the work capacity of
commanders and troops treated in the hospital. A considerable por-
tion of the practical work involved curing speech disorders and
disorders in gnosis and praxis. This part of the research was the
domain of E. S . Bein and 0. P. Kaufman, who displayed consider-
able ingenuity in devising methods and developing guidelines for
such restoration (Nevrologiya . . . . Pp. 177-88, 230-46).
One area of restorative work had to do with restoring movements.
These studies, which were carried out mainly by A. V. Zaporozhets
and S . Ya. Rubinshtein, who were joined slightly later by S. G.
Gellershtein, B. B. Mitlina, and D. N. Reitenbarg, were of practi-
cal importance in that, first, the troops who had come to the neuro-
surgical hospital after suffering wounds damaging the central and
peripheral nervous system were in many cases incapable of physical
labor for the rest of their lives: in addition to treatment, the hospital
tried to give them a new occupation. Secondly-and this was even
more important-it was necessary, immediately following surgery
(N. I. Grashchenkov and N. P. Ignat'ev performed the operations)
and other therapeutic measures, to prevent the development of con-
tractures and to restore motor functions of the wounded as quickly as
possible. To this end, well-equipped workshops (woodworking,
metalworking, shoe-making, and tailoring workshops) and courses
in accounting, cooking, and writing with the left hand were especial-
16 B. !I ZEIGARNIK & S. Ya. RUBINSHTEIN

ly organized (by A. V. Zaporozhets and S. Ya. Rubinshtein). They

were staffed by special teams of instructors and practical psycholo-
gists; their principal aims were therapeutic, educational, and reha-
bilitative. Only practicing physicians assigned people to the work-
shops.
Special, protected conditions of work (“quiet hours, ” elimina-
tion of noise during work in the workshop, the possibility of working
while seated, etc.) were created for the severely injured. Instruction
was based on curricula that gave a real opportunity to acquire a skill
at the second or third level. The aims of assignment to a workshop-
to restore impaired functions, to provide expert evaluation and voca-
tional guidance, and to teach job skills- often coincided and inter-
sected. For most of the patients, treatment in the hospital was a
turning point in their lives; and preserving their ability to work, or
changing occupations and job retraining when it was impossible to
go back to their previous jobs, had profound, direct effects on their
personal interests.
A theoretical analysis of restorative techniques and of various
types of compensation is presented in monographs by E. S. Bein
(1964) and A. R. Luria (1947, 1948). In examining various hypoth-
eses explaining the restoration of functions following head injury,
Bein and Luria give extensive factual material illustrating the var-
ious ways of restoring motor, gnostic, and speech processes and
discuss possibilities of directed psychological methods of restoring
and altering the personal attitudes of the individual.
A series of measures was devised for restoring movement in the
hands and arms. First, the types of labor operations the wounded
would have to perform were determined with the help of neuropath-
ologists. Assisted by medical workers, psychologists (A. V. Zapor-
ozhets and S. Ya. Rubinshtein) designed and constructed special
devices that enabled a patient with a semiparalyzed hand or arm to
hold an instrument (Zaporozhets & Rubinshtein, 1942). Physiother-
apeutic procedures and therapeutic physical education were also
used, but work therapy invariably proved to be the most effective.
The wounded patient did not simply perform an assigned move-
ment: he was also given a specific work task, which generally
required just the type of movement that was useful to him, plus other
 PSYCHOLOGY DURING THE WAR 17

movements. Purposeful work with objects stimulated the restoration

of movements, since the movement ceased being a goal in itself, but
was part of a meaningful work task.
Most of the operations in the woodworking and metalwork work-
shops were done with two hands. At first, a paretic or sometimes
even paralyzed hand participated in these movements passively, as a
“passenger,” as the work with an instrument was done with the
healthy hand. Sometimes the paralyzed hand was fastened to a saw,
plane, or file with special straps. As such work operations were
repeated, gradually, over a period of many months, the impaired
hand would begin to participate in the work of the healthy hand. The
joint efforts of practical instructors in therapeutic physical educa-
tion, neuropathologists, and psychologists produced astonishing re-
sults. Wounded soldiers learned work skills. Unfortunately, the
experience accumulated during these years in organizing the restor-
ative department and the concrete work done in restoring hand
movement have not been fully described. A short while later, similar
work in restoring movements after central and peripheral damage to
motor functions was begun in a Ural hospital, in Kaurovka (Sverd-
lovsk region). A. N. Leont’ev and P. Ya. Gal’perin worked there;
and A. V. Zaporozhets, T. 0. Ginevskaya, Ya. Z. Neverovich, and
others transferred there at the end of the war. The psychologists and
hospital staff consistently strove to give theoretical sense to the
experience gathered in their work and to provide a psychological
analysis of the factors they discovered; their research is reflected in
the 111th edition of Uchenye zupiski MGU (1947), in which the
results of work in the restoration of speech in the wounded carried
out by psychologists in other hospitals, particularly by E. A. Korob-
kova and V. M. Kogan, are also given. Restoration of the work
capacity of soldiers who had suffered brain injury was the subject of
a special study by S . Ya. Rubinshtein. Observations of the process
of work training of the wounded and short descriptions of what
happened to them (one or two years) after leaving the hospital
(correspondence with the patients had been arranged) enabled the
scientists to discover certain typical symptoms of disorders that had
not been specified in clinical diagnoses, but that became apparent in
work and in everyday life (Rubinshtein, 1949). One such symptom
18 B. !I ZEIGARNIK & S. Ya. RUBINSHTEN

was a general fatigue, which set in very quickly, in performing any

type of activity. This fatigue was most often observed in soldiers
who had suffered contusions and concussions or, much less fre-
quently, in those who had suffered penetrating wounds of the skull.
The latter, in turn, revealed a peculiar type of instability in their
work capacity. They did not spare themselves or shun difficulties,
and the instructors in the workshops sometimes had to persuade
them to stop working. These patients would suddenly find it impos-
sible to continue working. A characteristic feature, their lack of a
subjective appreciation of their abilities, continued after discharge
from the hospital (this was clear from the patients’ letters).
A quite unique type of disorder in work capacity was observed in
soldiers who had suffered wounds of the frontal sections of the
brain. They felt so good, and gave an impression of being so healthy
and strong, that, on the basis of first impressions, members of the
Military Medical Commission would even propose that they were fit
to resume military service. However, during the course of the pa-
tients, work in workshops and, especially, after being discharged
from the hospital, the patients’ suggestibility, lack of critical in-
sight, and impaired attitude toward work became apparent.
Thanks to the organizational efforts of A. R. Luria and V. I.
Chekalin, commissar of the hospital, a model therapeutic and re-
storative institution was set up under the difficult conditions of
wartime. Its activities are worthy of special study and description.
So far only the results of the work of the neuropsychologists in-
volved in restoring speech to the wounded with different types of
aphasia have been dealt with fully in published works, though this
work is, of course, extremely important for an understanding of the
mechanisms of different types of aphasia and of directed restoration
of speech, writing, and reading. Other aspects of the scientific work
in military hospitals of that period have been less fully dealt with in
the literature.
S . L. Rubinshtein, who at the time was head of the Department of
Psychology at Moscow University, undertook a serious attempt to
collect and publish the experience of the work of the different teams
of psychologists during World War 11. A conference of the depart-
ment was convened jointly with the Institute of Psychology of
 PSYCHOLOGY DURING THE WAR 19

the RSFSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences and the Hospital of

Nervous Diseases of the AIEM. The physiologists L. A. Orbeli,
P. K. Anokhin, E. A. Asratyan, and N. A. Bernshtein, and the
neurologists and surgeons N. I. Grashchenkov, V. A. Gilyarovskii,
and N. N. Priorov were invited to the conference. Colleagues of
B. G . Anan’ev and D. N. Uznadze, workers at the Moscow Brain
Institute, the Institute of Labor Conservation, and the Institute of
Orthopedics and Traumatology also told about their work during the
war years. The proceedings of the conference were published
(Uchenye zupiski, 1947). In a brief introductory article in this col-
lection, entitled “The psychological problem of restoring functions
following an injury” (Ibid.), S. L. Rubinshtein defines, in classic
formulations (it is to be regretted that this short article was not
included in the book of his posthumously published works), the
preconditions and theoretical positions and approaches established
in prewar Soviet psychology that later, during the war, enabled it to
turn immediately to the practical activity of restoring the work
capacity of wounded soldiers of the Soviet Army.
Rubinshtein noted, first, that the process of restoring functions
must not be regarded as the result of regeneration of an organ; for
that, functional therapy to stimulate regeneration is necessary. Sec-
ond, since specific functions are formed “directly in the context of”
activity with objects, their restoration must take place in the context
of motivated activity with objects, i.e., in work. Finally, restoration
requires special training, and this training, in turn, will help to
further understanding of the internal mechanism of the defect. Ru-
binshtein goes on to say that movement is a sensorimotor unity, a
closed circuit of afferent and efferent impulses. The way it is accom-
plished is determined by the person’s individual attitudes and sets
directed toward resolving a task involving objects and meaningful to
him. (Perhaps therein lies the theoretical explanation for the empiri-
cally established fact that the movement of a patient with a wounded
arm is more successfully restored through nonantagonistic work
operations involving both hands .)
Other works published in Uchenye zapiski include articles by
B. G . Anan’ev, N. N. Priorov, N. I. Grashchenkov, A. R. Luria,
A. N. Leont’ev, P. K. Anokhin, E. A. Asratyan, V. N. Myasi-
20 B. K ZEIGARNIK & S. Ya. RUBINSHTEIN

shchev, P. Ya. Gal‘perin, G . 0. Ginevskaya, V. S. Merlin, E. S.

Bein, 0. P. Kaufman, V. M. Kogan, E. A. Korobkovaya, A. P.
Zaporozhets, S. Ya. Rubinshtein, S. G. Gellershtein, and others.
The work done by psychologists during the war years was vital
for the country; it brought relief and benefit to many people and
enabled the psychologists themselves to learn much that was new
about humankind. However, it is our hope that this experience will
remain exclusively a theoretical acquisition of psychology, and that
psychologists will never have to be involved in rehabilitative train-
ing of the wounded again.

References
1. Bein, E. S. [Aphasiaand ways of overcoming it]. Leningrad: “Medit-
sina” Publishers, 1964. 179 pp.
2. Zaporozhets, A. V., & Rubinshtein, S. Ya. [Methods of restorative
work therapy for patients with injury of the upper limbs]. Chelyabinsk: Medgiz,
1948. 28 pp.
3. Zeigarnik, B. V. [Disorder in spontaneity in combat injury of the fron-
tal lobes of the brain]. In N. I. Grashchenkov (Ed.), [Neurologyof wartime].
MOSCOW: AMN SSSR, 1949. Pp. 218-29.
4. Luria, A. R. [Restorationof thefunctions of the brain following combat
injury]. Moscow: AMN SSSR, 1948. 236 pp.
5. Luria, A. R. [Traumatic aphasia]. Moscow: AMN SSSR, 1947. 467
PP.
6. Myasishchev, V. N. [Psychogenesis and psychotherapy of neuropsychia-
tric disorders in combat brain injuries]. In Uchenye zapiski MGU, No. 111.
Psikhologiy .
I . Rubinshtein, S. L. (Ed.) [Problems in the restoration ofpsychophysio-
logicalfunctions]. Moscow: MGU, 1947. Pp. 71-74.
8. Grashchenkov, N. I. (Ed.) [Neurologyof wartime].Vol. 1, [Zheory and
practice]. Moscow: AMN SSSR, 1949. 410 pp.
9. Rubinshtein, S . Ya. [Expert evaluation and restoration of work capacity
following combat brain injury]. In N. I. Grashchenkov (Ed.), [Neurologyof
wartime]. Moscow: AMN SSSR, 1949. Pp. 294-308.
10. Uchenye zapiski MGU, No. 111. Psikhologiya.
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logicalfunctions]. Moscow: MGU, 1947. 163 pp.