Over the past three years we have encountered social processes that have shattered our steady way of living: the COVID pandemic, social unrests and splits after presidential elections, the war in Ukraine. Adults with a post-totalitarian personality have experienced a re-activation of their inner totalitarian objects, but “Gen Z” adolescents without the personal experience of living in a totalitarian system react differently to current realities. Practitioners are witnessing a dramatic increase in social anxieties and anorexia nervosa – psychopathologies characterized by the introjections and projections of intrusive controlling objects, a strict punitive super-ego that resembles the dynamics of inner totalitarian objects. This can be attributed to the increased exposure to the Internet during the COVID-related social isolation, with a decreased possibility for reality testing. The Internet acquired an overbearing influence on all domains of personality development for Generation Z individuals, including on the super-ego. The Internet houses totalitarian cyber-objects that increase their presence and influence in situations of social and developmental unrest, impinge on the development of psychic structures, and can lead to related pathological psychodynamics.
Darius Leskauskas (Wed,) studied this question.