International Journal

on Marine Navigation

and Safety of Sea Transportation

Volume 4

Number 4

December 2010

453

Emergency situation causes very high psychical

overloads, special emotional conditions of psychical

mental tension which can be determined in such

terms as “stress”, “affect”, and “panic”.

In an emergency situation the crew’s activity be-

comes more complicated due to such psychological

factor as “fear of making mistakes”. Under the de-

veloping emergency conditions legal and moral re-

sponsibility for prompt and correct actions is in-

creasing. Untrained senior officers and crew

members might have the “fear of making mistakes”.

They might think that their wrong actions and deci-

sions could cause material loss and casualties. The

“fear of making mistakes” doesn’t allow them to

make right, informed decisions and efficient coun-

termeasures in case of emergency.

Fear limits, obstructs, immobilizes. It is notable

that Honoré de Balzac who was the master of the

human soul wrote in one of his novels:” Under the

influence of fear all human abilities either achieve

extreme exertion or fall to decay.”

What is fear? It is an emotion (feeling) arising in

danger to biological and social human well-being. It

doesn’t matter how real the danger is. It could be an

imaginary danger. The main point is that the person

who is frightened would take it for real.

Passing through fear varies in wide range of gra-

dations: diffidence, apprehension, fright, panic, ter-

ror. It depends on the situation and on the individual

peculiarities of a personality. In cases when feeling

the fear achieves its affect it imposes some stereo-

types formed in the process of biological evolution

of so-called “emergency” behavior upon a person. In

other words the mind switches off at that moment

and the person acts as “being beside him (her) self”

in the exact meaning of the words. But unfortunate-

ly, the actions themselves nearly always turn out to

be irrational, very often they lead to deplorable con-

sequences.

The behavior and internal sensations of the

frightened people are different. Fear makes people

tremble, squeal, scream, cry, laugh… It butterflies in

the stomach, hands and legs tremble, it dings in the

ears, there is a lump in the throat, the face becomes

pale, heart pounds, you have heavy breathing, your

hair stands on end, pupils of the eyes enlarge, you

feel tingles down the spine. Fear makes you run no

one knows where at breakneck speed, stand motion-

less staring fixedly and blankly in front of yourself,

or, excuse the naturalism, defecate... It is necessary

to classify the gist of a person’s reactions to under-

stand them.

People feeling fear have the following mental

states: agitation (expressive symbol is escape), stu-

por (expressive symbol is torpor), clouded (twilight)

state (expressive symbol is uncontrollable aggres-

sion). Just escape, torpor or aggression are stereotyp-

ic ways of the “emergency exit” in such situations

when a person cannot find the acceptable way out.

Agitation is the most commonly encountered. It is

expressed in trying to escape, hide, not to see and

hear of what is frightening. In motions agitation mo-

tivates people take some automatic defensive ac-

tions. For example, he closes his eyes, humps shoul-

ders, covers his face and body with his hands, leans

to the ground, springs back from the source of dan-

ger, runs away. Serious changes take place in the or-

ganism at that time. Under the influence of such

hormone as adrenaline big volume of blood moves

to the organs ensuring human movements, generally

to the legs. Blood leaves the other organs at that

time, especially the brain. That is why cerebration

Psychological Features of Seamen’s Activity in

Emergency Situations

V.A. Bondarev & O.M. Bondareva

Baltic Fishing Fleet State Academy, Kaliningrad, Russian Federation

ABSTRACT: The rendered material will help to form a clear view of psychological features of human activi-

ty in situations concerning increased danger to a person’s existence.

454

becomes worse and a frightened person does not of-

ten know where to run.

Increasing of the adrenaline level in the blood of

mentally unstable people has a feedback action: it

paralyses their muscles. It is also a natural reaction,

developed evolutionary: pretend to be dead not to be

hurt since no carnivore would eat carrion. And in the

battle people usually don’t hurt the fallen.

Stupor is expressed in freezing or in very slow

and awkward human movements and even a person

can fall unconscious. It happens since the muscles

contracted convulsively and their blood supply

shortly became worse, human physical coordination

changed.

Clouded (twilight) state is expressed in lapses of

memory (a person does not remember what he has

just done), alogism of cogitation, emotional overex-

citement. Externally, clouded state looks like a mad-

ness attack, inconsequent or insane aggressive ac-

tions towards the fear source.

But it should be mentioned that full-featured ag-

gression as a fear expression is less common. On the

other hand its attributes are well-known: malicious

face expression, threatening gestures and pose,

scream or squeal. They are based on an instinctive

intention to frighten the rival; sometimes it is suc-

cessive sometimes not.

So fear makes a person weaker, paralyses or, fig-

uratively speaking, makes a person get into hot wa-

ter, but it is well-known to be useless. That is why

there is no use to hope for the victory in the conflict

with a stronger enemy unless you are not able to

control your emotional state.

In modern psychology there is a conception ac-

cording to which the endless variety of human emo-

tional life is determined by some basic emotions.

Each of them has its own valence. According to the

valence index there are four pairs of basic emotions

opposed to each other: pleasure- disgust, joy-grief,

triumph- anger, assurance- fear. The scale of emo-

tions is not linear but circular. Schematically it is as

follows (fig. 1)

Figure 1. The scale of emotions

This scheme vividly confirms the rightfulness of

the traditional emotions` distinguishing into posi-

tive (sthenic) and negative (asthenic). The former

encourage inspiration, provide some energy for a

person and increase his will activity. The latter

weaken the will, decrease activity, predispose to

passive defensive actions and worsen the organiza-

tion of behavior. Therefore, a psychologically

trained seaman’s positive emotions should always

dominate over the negative ones.

In accordance with the same conception emotion-

al states could be distinguished into short-term and

long-term. The former are direct reactions to certain

situations. The latter (they are often called feelings)

are determined not only by the exact moment but al-

so by the past and future of the human’s life. For ex-

ample, envenoming somebody’s life feeling of fear

could be associated with a by-past danger or with the

thoughts of the coming death. Situational emotions

of fear and fear itself as an essential feature of a per-

sonality have one basis. It is very important for

seamen’s psychological training. This basis is a

feeling of impendence of death, the end of existence.

That is why everything which could directly or in-

directly lead to death (even if it is only in the imagi-

nation of a person) is the cause of the fear emotion.

It should be also noted that a person with dominating

asthenic emotions stronger and more often feels fear

than an individual with dominating positive states.

Any danger or aggression should stir up positive

(sthenic) emotions but not the feeling of fear at a

well-trained seaman. To put it into practice it is

necessary to solve two main problems during the

process of seaman’s psychological training:

− Dispose of a death feeling.

− Learn to act unconsciously with your brain on

autopilot in emergency situations.

Then in any situation even in the teeth of death a

person will be able to act freely, without any tension,

using the most effective way for his abilities. Even

at the limit of his abilities.

To cut the long story short, the first problem can

be solved by personality programming (including

self-programming); the second- by visualization

(meditation) and autohypnosis. Let us study both

ways in greater detail.

To dispose of a death feeling forever it is neces-

sary to change your own personal scale of values. If

your life is considered to be the most valuable thing

then whiplash of fear in emergency situations will be

practically unavoidable. In other words, it is neces-

sary to have an idea which could dominate over the

animal self-preservation instinct. People understood

it long time ago. It is no mere chance that Japanese

samurais had an authentic death cult.

455

Eternal samurai’s enemies (ninja) practiced the

techniques of psychological training focused on the

realization and experience of future death. The reali-

zation and experience of future death in particular

are connected with ritual admissions in religious

sects and organizations of different times and coun-

tries. To feel the death, fathom its mystery it is nec-

essary to stop being afraid. Not to make some other

people believe that you have no fear, but dispose this

emotion out of your psyche.

Stopped depressing the human consciousness, the

thought about death gives the possibility to feel

strong zest for life, it enables to enjoy every moment

delicately.

Being in chime with natural development and

with him\herself, a person could get the ability to

live tranquilly. “To live when it is rightfully to live

and undauntedly die when the moment comes”. Dif-

ferent ideas allow not fearing death. Such concepts

as family’s honor and personal duty at his lord

played an important part for samurais. Modern Eu-

ropeans have some other key concepts. For example,

self-respect, family’s duty, service to a political or-

ganization etc.

A person adopts different norms and values dur-

ing his life (badly- well, beautifully-ugly, right-

wrong, decently- humiliatingly etc.) That is pro-

gramming giving common direction to human` s

ambitions and certain life perspectives. It is clear

that environment: parents and neighbors, teachers

and tutors, friends and acquaintances, colleagues and

occasional fellow travelers play the main part in

programming. And of course books and magazines,

films and television, rumors and fashion. To make a

long story short, we are spontaneously programmed

by a giant information channel which passes through

our psyche during our life especially in the child-

hood and adolescence.

Speaking about self-programming we mean the

attempt to regulate this process, make it more or less

goal-oriented, successive, and systematic. That is

why we need a doctrine (political, religious, moral-

it does not matter). It gives a person some support in

his\her thoughts, enables to judge and choose, shows

the way, and lights the way with the highest mean-

ing. In the context of the discussed problem it is ex-

tremely important that such doctrine should admit

and justify self-sacrifice in the name of the values

and norms accepted by the person.

A person should not only “know” that he\she

must not be afraid of death and there are some things

which cost more than a life but he\she should make

this idea a part of him\herself. It is essential to trans-

fer this idea from the sphere of consciousness into

the sphere of unconsciousness. For this purpose it is

necessary to make up a list (a programme pack) of

certain “orders” to our biocomputer. Such orders

must be short, clear, in the form of positive state-

ments.

In other words the “programme pack” is a special

“code of courage”. (We could recollect “honor

codes” of the traditional schools here.) It is neces-

sary not just to learn it by heart but insert it into the

unconscious sphere of our psyche. There is a very

interesting phenomenon: this programme starts

working independently of our consciousness if it

was inserted correctly. That is, programmed behav-

ior is implemented in an emergency situation by it-

self, without any vivid will interference and without

any violence against a person.

Generally speaking, fear can be disposed using

two ways. The first one, which was mentioned

above is the depression of the animal self-

preservation instinct by means of mind` s logic. The

second way of fear disposing is to switch off the

consciousness and act with your brain on autopilot.

In this case a properly trained unconscious sphere of

our psyche completely ignores danger and it is not

afraid of it for that reason. Theoretically, both ways

should make a junction. Then a person even being in

a desperate situation would act freely, easily, self-

confidently. Moreover he\she would have such pos-

sibilities of which he\she could only dream in his\her

real life. However, super possibilities enabling to

“move mountains” do not just come at will. A long,

persistent, very hard training is necessary. In con-

nection with the above mentioned we will look upon

a simple but very important scheme (figure 2). The

meaning of the scheme is the following it shows

how to learn to evolve from a human being into

someone else: a beast, a robot, a superman, an “An-

gel of Death”- into anybody. Assimilating with an

image, fitting into it you will act with your brain on

autopilot, without any fear, using self-programming

and meditation.

At first it will take much time, but achieving a

higher training level the stage of fitting into an im-

age will reduce from several hours to some seconds.

Figure 2. Psychotraining scheme

But why should we “switch off” the conscious-

ness? Let us see the other side of the discussed prob-

lem in the mental sphere for better understanding. Il-

literate people often confuse mind and

456

consciousness (they perceive themselves as creatures

separated from the environment), they mix mind and

intelligence (which is only a structure of mental abil-

ities). Animals and morons have mind as distinct

from consciousness. The point is- what kind of mind

it is.

So mind is an operation of information pro-

cessing, coming into the brain through the sensory

organs (sense of sight, sense of hearing, kinesthetic

sensation, sense of smell), and also from the inside

of the organism. As a result of the processing our bi-

ocomputer (central nervous system) gives orders in

the form of impulses, passing through the neural

network and regulating all our motions, actions and

conduct.

Three mind types are distinguished.

− Visually operative- based on the intensive and

varied manipulation of your own body and sur-

rounding objects.

− Visually creative- based on the emotional and

sensual apperception of the objects and events

“inside” and “outside” the organism.

Abstractedly logical, conceptual, sign-oriented

mind based on the reflection of the cause-effect rela-

tions, associated with the recollection of the past,

knowledge of the future and self-awareness.

It is clear that visually operative and visually cre-

ative mind types comprise an animal stage of the

human psycho development. But at the same time

both mind types the most significant for close-

handed fight. Abstractedly logical type is rather an

obstacle. In connection with the said let us consider

a question of encephalic asymmetry in detail.

It is identified that psychological functions are

distributed between the right and the left cerebrums.

The function of the left one is to operate the verbal

and sign-oriented information and also reading and

counting. The function of the right one is to operate

images, space orientation, coordination of move-

ments, identification of compound objects (for ex-

ample, faces, figures, colors etc.) In view of the fact

the difference between the cerebrums is not deter-

mined by the material they get from the sensory or-

gans, but by the way they use (process) it. The left

cerebrum is responsible for the abstractedly logical

ways of processing; the right one is responsible for

the visually creative and visually operative ways.

The left cerebrum operates both discontinuously

(discretely) and sequentially (gradually). The right

cerebrum processes information synchronously

(simultaneously) and synthetically, immediately

grasping numerous features of phenomena taken as a

whole, undifferentiated.

To understand the possibilities of the goal-

oriented training (also psycho training) it is neces-

sary to know that an encephalic asymmetry is put in

a person only as a precondition, it is finally formed

and corrected by real living conditions, education,

upbringing.

From the said above (about mind types and ence-

phalic asymmetry) we can clearly conclude that for

surviving in an emergency situation a person should

activate (enhance) the functions of the right cere-

brum and weaken (inhibit) the activity of the left.

We will remind you one more time that the right

cerebrum is responsible for the position of the body

and space orientation, speed and coordination of

movements. The experience of any situation with its

space-temporal characteristics is also carried out by

the right cerebrum the operation of which enables a

person feel him(her)self “here” and “now”, in a cer-

tain entity at the given moment.

That is why enhanced activity of the right cere-

brum, its domination over the left, so to say, expands

the inner sense limits, “prolongs the moment”. Ex-

ternally it is expressed in speeding-up body` s re-

sponse reactions. The thing is that on the abstracted-

ly logical (verbal) level the mind manages to process

not more than 100 bits a second but on the visually

creative and sensomotor (operative) levels – up to

ten million bits! By means of it the “body’s mind”

free from the “intelligence` s chains” starts the mo-

tor response practically in seconds. Therefore a well-

trained seaman really acts earlier than he manages to

think about it.

However, our biocomputer is able to make a cer-

tain choice of those actions which are “encoded” in

the psyche. Frequent repetition and training ( i. e.

exercise in similar but different in detail situations)

are necessary to insert them there. In other words au-

tomatic behavior in emergency situations demands

preliminary practice of some definite “clichés” (ma-

trixes). A trained person can “give away” such cli-

chés just right after the general identification of the

situation nature.

It is known that it takes the right cerebrum only

60 milliseconds to recognize the situation; mean-

while, pixel-by-pixel analysis (the left cerebrum op-

eration) takes 320 milliseconds. But if, for example,

two events follow each other with an interval, which

is less than this figure then a person is physically

unable to react adequately to the second one. There-

fore a delayed response is unavoidable every time he

(she) tries to understand the situation in detail. And

vice versa a seaman is able to give away a response

action in the shortest time period recognizing the

situation in general (without thinking) on the basis

of the preliminary practiced and “coded” schemes

(clichés, matrixes) inserted in the subconscious

mind. That is a non-conceptual, automatic, intuitive

cogitation of a professional.

And it is necessary to add that the dominance of

the right cerebrum reduces sensitivity to pain, weak-

457

ens criticism in the analysis of the reality. Evident

response to a real danger decreases accordingly, up

to absolute defiance. If such a state overlaps the non-

involvement to death, readiness to fight to the last (it

should be guaranteed by self-programming), then

extraordinary fearlessness comes up. At that time a

person pays attention to nothing except the thing

which is directly relevant to the developing situa-

tion. But everything coming from the danger even

poor signals is conceived highly sharp.

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