More Stupid Than Ever – On Psychological Transformation, Grief and Trauma

Speaking from the Rwandan capital, Kigali, last week, the British prime minister Boris Johnson gave his reaction to yet further calls for his resignation: ‘If you’re saying you want me to undergo some sort of psychological transformation,’ he told the BBC reporter, “I think that our listeners would know that is not going to happen.”

Meanwhile, in the i-weekend newspaper earlier this month, Patrick Cockburn published an opinion piece called Today’s World Leaders Seem To Be More Stupid Than Ever. Cockburn suggests that Vladimir Putin, Boris Johnson, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping all demonstrate, in various ways, “plain and simple stupidity” – a factor that is often underestimated in the role it plays in determining the course of history.

Perhaps what makes leaders stupid – if they aren’t already – is the tendency to surround themselves with people who agree with them and who won’t (or can’t) give them sensible advice. In this situation, it would be easy to believe that one is always right about everything and that, therefore, there is no need for change or personal transformation. But believing that psychological transformation is neither necessary nor even desirable is the height of stupidity.

It could be said that psychological transformation is the aim of all psychological therapy. Whether this is achieved through changing how we feel about things, what we think about things, how we behave, or a combination of these, a key assumption is that psychological transformation is a positive, adaptive goal. I’ve recently been reading Louise Harms’ Understanding Trauma and Resilience. Louise is Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her book is a clearly written overview of various approaches to trauma. She explores how psychodynamic approaches to trauma seek to reintegrate the Self, how a symptoms-based approach aims to reduce the signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), how person-centred approaches seek to recreate congruence in the person while narrative approaches consider ‘re-authoring’ the narrative of trauma to provide meaning and coherence.

I read the book in the context of what could be called my own personal trauma – bereavement. Louise writes: “Grief also has an important place in trauma understandings. Many traumatic events evoke both trauma and grief reactions. The losses inherent in many traumatic events – of life, world views and beliefs, a sense of safety, places, roles and routines – can lead to profound experiences of sadness and yearning and processes of mourning and remembrance. Despite this, trauma and grief research and theories have tended to remain separate.”  

This is absolutely true and is perhaps because, while traumatic events tend to be viewed as extraordinary occurrences, bereavement and grief are experienced by all of us as part of the natural life-cycle. Louise provides an inexhaustive but sobering list of traumatic events: “natural and human-made disasters, war, forced migration and displacement, forced separations of children from their parents, abuse and neglect, torture, accidents and injuries, health crises and private assaults to emotional, physical, social and spiritual well-being.”  

In this context, my own personal loss could fall into this last category as being a “private assault to my emotional, physical, social and spiritual well-being.” But, as for those people who have experienced “natural and human-made disasters, war, forced migration and displacement, forced separations of children from their parents...” there is no shortage of examples in our daily news bulletins, from the victims of Putin’s war in Ukraine to the refugees that Johnson wants to forcibly displace to Rwanda. It is, indeed, “plain and simple stupidity” to add to the trauma of already-traumatised people.

The good news, according to the evidence cited in Louise’s book, is that most people are able to recover from trauma, whether in the sense that they experience a remission in symptoms of PTSD, or in the sense that they return to their normal, pre-traumatic functioning. And some will even experience post-traumatic growth. I discuss post-traumatic growth in my book Creativity, Wellbeing and Mental Health Practice, as a process wherein people exposed to life-threatening situations experience, somewhat unexpectedly, improved psychological wellbeing.

The underlying message of Understanding Trauma and Resilience is a hopeful one. As Louise writes, “returning to functioning is the most common response to potential trauma, and therefore the processes that activate this return to living, and potentially living and functioning well, need to be understood better.” In the meantime, whether they know it or not, to undergo some sort of psychological transformation is exactly what some of our far-from transformational leaders need.