From Controllable Organisms to Maintainable Systems: A Structural Model of Modern Military Psychology

This conceptual technical note proposes a three-phase structural model of modern military psychology, tracing how operational demands across successive eras of warfare produced distinct psychological frameworks: humans as controllable organisms (World Wars), humans as information processors (Cold War), and humans as maintainable systems (twenty-first century conflicts). Rather than offering a comprehensive historical account, the paper articulates a conceptual scaffold for understanding how wartime psychological innovations—developed under conditions where failure carried catastrophic consequences—established the foundations for many contemporary civilian practices. The model serves as a conceptual precursor to a broader forthcoming work examining the migration of military psychological architectures into modern social, technological, and institutional systems. This working paper presents a preliminary conceptual framework. The full historical analysis and extended argument are reserved for a forthcoming book-length work.