Psychologies is a magazine for very personal reading, analysis and reflection. But it’s nice to share your views. Especially with those who are interested in us. We invited such people to become our co-authors and interlocutors in the anniversary issues of the magazine. This month, the writer and journalist Yulia Latynina helped us prepare the issue.
Psychologies: In your opinion, why has our interest in the possibilities of psychological science grown so noticeably in recent years?
Julia Latynina: In fact, this desire to know oneself is far from new. Mankind has existed for, say, 140 thousand years (of course, in a civilized form – much less), and all this time a person peered into himself, saw himself in the mirror – at least of his past – and pondered. But the answers are often sought in religion. And today it is gone: what was previously told in confession is now being discussed with a psychotherapist. I think it’s good. Because a person who goes to a training or reads a book about psychology, instead of burning a fellow tribesman at the stake or tearing out his heart, as in the days of the Aztecs, is a clear progress.
What is psychology in your profession for you?
Yu. L.: A writer and a journalist are very different professions: a journalist observes events, and a writer observes people. A journalist has no right to say: such and such could not cope, for example, with his ambitions, because of this everything happened. In my opinion, this is a big minus of journalism, because most often events occur precisely because of a person – ambitious or greedy, embittered or, conversely, set to cooperate. That is, the basis of the conflict is always our psychological characteristics. And journalism is a description of the world from which psychology, as a non-objective thing, has been removed. You know, I recently came up with this theory. Over the past few months, I have visited a lot of very clean rooms. For example, those where microcircuits are produced under absolutely sterile conditions. Or in clean rooms, usually closed scientific research institutes, where they study phonons, two-dimensional electron gas and other similar things. And I suddenly realized: if representatives of the exact sciences say that they know how a real substance will behave, they are terribly wrong! After all, if you give them a handful of sand and ask what it is, they will answer: “We do not know, it is too dirty.” Exact science strives to place everything in a clean room, where even a speck of dust seems like a cobblestone. And to analyze something “pure” – an ideal triangle, an absolutely rigid body. And psychology – like history and philology – deals with “dirty”, that is, complex systems, where it is impossible to accurately predict how an object will behave. Because there are no “pure” objects in the humanities. I told this theory of mine to a familiar microelectronics engineer. He laughed and said that I was right, adding: “And TV brings a lot of impurities into a person!”
Is the illusion that our relationships can be “clean” preventing us from building them better?
Yu. L.: The Bolsheviks tried to build such a system of “pure” relations – it turned out to be a living hell! However, it didn’t even work out … In general, when people cannot agree, it means that one of them does not want it. Sometimes both of them don’t want to. Most often, our very different aspirations interfere with this. Second is greed. The third is stupidity. But what can be proposed here – to change human nature? Then the person will cease to be a person. In my opinion, it will be boring without ambitious people, without greedy ones too. Without the stupid ones, I would somehow survive! And we are also hindered by the fact that in our society, in comparison with the archaic one to which we are genetically adapted, connections between people are built differently. After all, if we live in a village where there are only thirty people, we will definitely communicate with each other. And in a metropolis with ten million citizens, barriers arise. For example, we often do not suspect who lives on one or the other side of our holiday village. Although if tomorrow we are flooded, then we will obviously run to each other with buckets to help. But it would be better if there was no flood… Today, ties between us are much less built on the principle of territorial proximity: this person is my neighbor, and I communicate with him. On the other hand, now it is possible in a different way: a person is sitting somewhere on the other side of the world, but I like to communicate with him, and I communicate! There is an absolute plus in this: in this way we can build our own circle of relationships.
But our internal barriers also interfere with us,
Yu. L.: I’m sure there’s something positive to be found in them as well. Of course, each of us has them. But someone says to himself: “I will never do anything!” — and really doesn’t. And the other says: “I won’t succeed!” – and at the same time literally digs the ground with his nose, overcoming himself and circumstances. So he has a chance that someday his complexes will go away, becoming a positive driving force.
What would you wish to the readers of Psychologies?
Yu. L.: Success. In relationships, business or creativity – each of us determines this for himself. Better yet, wish us all good luck. Because success depends on us, and luck is not very dependent on us.
Юлия Латынина – writer, journalist
- 1966 Born in a Moscow family of literary journalists.
- 1988 Graduated from the M. Gorky Literary Institute.
- 1992 Defended in IMLI Ph.D. thesis on the topic “Literary origins of the anti-utopian genre” under the guidance of Academician Vyach. Sun. Ivanova.
- 1989 Starts publishing his prose in literary magazines. Later he publishes books in the genre of science fiction and economic detective story.
- 1992 Deals with the history of economics, undergoes an internship at the University of London. He writes a series of articles on the history of the economy, begins to collaborate with many periodicals.
- 2000-2003 Conducts author’s programs on NTV and TVS channels.
- Since 2003, she has been the author and host of the Access Code program on Ekho Moskvy radio.