The invisible spring or how to survive extreme situations

We are capable of mobilising unsuspected resources to survive extreme situations. In these situations we are fully ourselves. And what if we didn’t wait for these situations to arise before we mobilized these resources on a daily basis?

In his book Le ressort invisible (The Invisible Spring), the social psychologist Gustave-Nicolas Fischer studied the behavior of individuals confronted with extreme situations such as terminal illness, the loss of a loved one, or the experience of concentration camps. He shows that individuals are able to mobilize unsuspected resources, which constitute what he calls an invisible source that enables them to cope with and survive these situations. This invisible source is the individual’s sense of self, i.e. his or her identity, defined as a type of behavior based on reference points known as values; a value is what counts for an individual. Our sense of self and of reality is structured by a system of representations, a set of mental models through which we interpret events in order to understand and make sense of them.

Fischer observes that in the face of extremes such as death, illness, or violence, individuals adopt behaviors that are stripped of the social artifices that generally encapsulate their behavior. They abandon a form of social double that they may have created and return to who they really are.

The extreme situation therefore sheds light on our ordinary behaviors, revealing both their constructed aspect as behaviors made up of social artifacts, and the structure of illusions on which they are sometimes based. It is the occasion when reality brutally imposes itself on us. The double is destroyed, whether we like it or not.

The extreme thus reveals dimensions that are usually hidden. Survival behaviors are seen as revealing our ordinary behaviors; the extreme reveals what is usually hidden and therefore untapped in everyday life.

Extreme situations reveal unexpected resources. It is in an extreme situation that the individual is fully himself, reconciled with and in resonance with reality, however difficult it may be. During the first lockdown at the heart of the March 2020 crisis, I talked to people on the front lines – executives, managers, doctors, entrepreneurs. Surprisingly, many of them told me how exhilarated they were. They fully experienced the intensity of the moment, even though they were fully aware of the seriousness of the situation. One supermarket manager proudly explained how he had started his career by getting up at four in the morning to unload pallets “to feed France”.

This role of revealing the hidden dimensions of extreme situations also applies to the individuals themselves. One manager told me that during the acute phase of the crisis, when everything seemed to be at a standstill and there were fears of collapse, some of his managers had become petrified, while others had revealed themselves and risen to the occasion. What struck him was that those who had emerged were not necessarily the ones he would have bet on. But it was an old lesson that the British had learned in the First World War. While the leadership of their army was still very aristocratic, they had been surprised to see that common people were perfectly capable of becoming leaders in place of their dead leaders. “Remember that there is not one of you who does not have the marshal’s baton in his gibernacle.” This phrase, attributed to Napoleon but actually uttered by Louis XVIII in a speech to the students of the Saint-Cyr military academy in 1819, underlined this fact.

The exaltation of the extreme moment is also found in war, which often explains why the experiences are unspeakable. The soldier comes back from war and says nothing or very little. It may seem paradoxical that this exaltation corresponds to an otherwise very violent experience, but it’s the intensity that counts. This undoubtedly explains why the “return to civilian life”, i.e. the return to an ordinary life without extremes, is sometimes difficult. A friend of mine was a very active activist in the 70s, taking part in violent actions and clandestine missions. He came back fairly quickly, but since then has found life lacking in salt.

Mobilizing inner strength

How do you mobilize these unsuspected resources without waiting for an extreme situation? That’s the challenge. You might think it’s impossible: an Olympic sprinter reaches the incredible speed of 44 km/h, but only over a distance of 100 m, and he spends months preparing for it. These resources are mobilized precisely because the situation is extreme.

But let’s remember that the invisible spring is the sense of self, the awareness of one’s identity, the inner flame, and there is no need to wait for an extreme situation to be fully oneself. So we have to find this spring by exposing it and stripping it of all social artifice to make it a resource. That’s how it becomes the essential anchor for dealing with the uncertainty of the world.

🇫🇷 A version in French of this article is available here.