Vadim Emelin

Alexander Tkhostov

• Occupation:  Head of Department of clinical psychology
• Affiliation: Lomonosov Moscow State University
  
• Address:  125009, Moscow, Mokhovaya str., 11/9

 Radicalism has become one of the most hazardous phenomena in the sociocultural reality. It appears in the different multiformity from the ordinary intolerance up to terrorism. Radicalism is a form of the subjective experience and perception of surrounding reality. That form excludes the critical evaluation and tolerance to another sort of weltanschauung. Given the variety of radicalism manifestations, one may distinguish its universal elements: a black-and-white picture of the world, binary thinking, and the absence of any doubts about the genuineness of the world picture and one’s own behaviour. From the point of view of evolution, radicalism is the extension of struggle for existence.

Moderation is less reasonable evolutionally, and it stems as a particular cultural mechanism, forming a more complicated structure of activity. It involves the elements of voluntary regulation, of the mediation of affects and attractions, alienation, reflection, of a complex non-linear evaluation system, and higher forms of moral. This is a higher transpsychic formation, that is, a holistic cognitive-personal-behavioural style. It is based on the integration of mediated and voluntarily-regulated higher mental functions, and it allows considering the present situation in the context of development, planning, goals, and axiological content. Moderation and radicalism are not a binary opposition but a complex structure enabling a derivative, conscious and voluntarily-cultivated radicalism to exist non-contradictorily, being incorporated in symbolic relations and behaviour.