Personal self-determination in early adolescence. Self-determination in early adolescence. The object of research in the course work is professional self-determination in early adolescence

Chronological boundaries of this age period: early adolescence, i.e. senior school age(from 15-16 to 18 years old) and late adolescence from (18 to 22-23 years old). In Western psychology, the tradition of uniting adolescence and adolescence in the age period, called the adolescence, predominates, the content of which is the transition from childhood to adulthood and the boundaries of which can extend from 12-14 to 25 years. In the West, there exists, and now we also have the word "teenager" as a general name for anyone from 13 to 19 (the number of years, in English language ending in -teen).

The social situation of the development of adolescence

The social situation of development in adolescence is determined the contradiction between biological maturity and social immaturity:- there are more and more adult roles with the ensuing measure of independence and responsibility;

- there are many critical social events: obtaining a passport, the onset of criminal liability, the possibility of exercising active suffrage, the possibility of marriage, choosing a profession and further life path.

- but this is material dependence,

- inertia of parental attitudes associated with leadership and subordination.

The psychological criterion for "entering" adolescence is associated with a sharp change in the internal position, with a change in attitude towards the future. If a teenager, according to L.I. Bozovic, looks at the future from the position of the present, then the young man looks at the present from the position of the future... Changes the main orientation of the personality, which can now be designated as striving for the future,

Leading activities in adolescence

A.N. Leontiev, B.D. Elkonin as a leading activity in adolescence is called educational and professional activities. Despite the fact that in many cases the young man continues to be a schoolboy, educational activity in the senior grades should acquire a new focus and new content, oriented towards the future. In other cases, young men and women are even closer to the industrial sphere: they continue their education in technical schools, colleges, lyceums, or begin their own working life, combining work with education in evening schools.

Adolescent neoplasms:

– socio-psychological readiness (ability) for personal and life (professional) self-determination. This psychological willingness to enter adulthood and take a place worthy of a human being presupposes a certain maturity of the personality, which consists in the fact that the high school student has formed psychological formations and mechanisms that provide him with the possibility of a continuous process of growth of his personality now and in the future (I. V. Dubrovina). In other words, psychological readiness for self-determination means the formation of such psychological qualities in a young man or girl that could provide them in the future with a conscious, active, creative and constructive life.

An important psychological neoplasm of adolescence is the formation of a stable self-awareness and a stable image of "I" - a holistic view of oneself, an emotional attitude to oneself, self-esteem of one's appearance, mental, moral, volitional qualities, awareness of one's strengths and weaknesses, on the basis of which there are opportunities for purposeful self-improvement, self-education. The main acquisition of early adolescence is the discovery of his inner world, his emancipation from adults.

The formation of self-awareness occurs in several directions:

1) opening your inner world;

2) the emergence of awareness of the irreversibility of time, understanding of the finiteness of their existence. It is the understanding of the inevitability of death that makes a person seriously think about the meaning of life, about his prospects, about his future, about his goals;

3) the formation of a holistic idea of oneself, attitude towards oneself, and at first the person recognizes and evaluates the features of his body, appearance, attractiveness, and then moral-psycho-logical;

4) awareness and formation of attitudes towards the emerging sexual sensibility.

The formation of sustainable self-awareness is associated with development of social reflection - understanding another person by thinking for him. The idea of what others think of me is an important aspect of social cognition.

One of the most important neoplasms intellectual sphere becomes theoretical thinking - the formation of abstract thinking In adolescence, there is expressed a craving for generalizations, searching general patterns and the principles behind concrete facts. However, the breadth of interests, as a rule, is combined at this age with scattering, lack of a system of knowledge and skills - intellectual amateurism... Young men may have a tendency to exaggerate their intellectual abilities and the strength of their intellect, the level of knowledge.

Formation of a worldview – an integral system of views, knowledge, beliefs, your life philosophy, which is based on the previously acquired significant amount of knowledge and the formed ability for abstract theoretical thinking. The phenomena of reality interest the young man not in themselves, but in connection with his own attitude towards them.

Identity crisis

For adolescence there is an identity crisis, since at this age a series of social and individual-personal choices and self-determination are carried out. Several options are possible here:

1) undefined identity- a person has not developed his convictions, has not chosen a profession, cannot build life plans, this is accompanied by the fear of growing up and changes;

2) long term identification- the person made his life choice and made decisions not on his own, but on the basis of other people's opinions;

3) mental moratorium stage- the stage of the crisis of self-determination, the choice from numerous development options of the only one that can be considered our own At this time, the young man seeks (through trial and error) to find his place in society.

They are followed by either the acquisition " adult identity", Or developmental delay - "Diffusion of identity", which forms the basis of the special pathology of adolescence - identity pathology syndrome(E. Erickson). This syndrome is associated with the following points:

• regression to the infantile level and the desire to delay the acquisition of adult status as long as possible;

Vague but persistent state of anxiety;

• feeling of isolation and emptiness;

• constant stay in a state of expectation of something that can change your life;

· Fear of personal communication and the inability to emotionally affect people of the opposite sex;

• hostility and contempt for all recognized social roles, including male and female ("unisex");

· Contempt for everything domestic and irrational preference for everything foreign (according to the principle “it's good where we are not”).

In extreme cases, the search for negative identity begins, the desire to “become nothing” as the only way of self-affirmation, sometimes it takes on the character of suicidal tendencies.

Psychological characteristics of youth

1. The boundaries of youth are conventionally located on the interval from 18-20 to 30 years. This period of life is associated the formation of human independence and responsibility for their actions, the ability to make “meaningful” decisions, consolidation of worldview orientations, building a stable “image of the world”, defining the prospects and goals of life, etc.

2. Researchers emphasize the dual nature of youth: possessing the entire set of rights to lead an adult life, a young person is far from always able to find and realize himself in it.

3. In youth, general somatic development ends, physical and puberty reach their optimum.

4. A person begins to meaningfully build the future, focusing on the entire age perspective as a whole, and not only on mastering the values and goals of the next age period, as was the case at all previous stages of development.

5. In youth it is found striving for personal expansion, self-expression(especially in choosing a profession, professional self-determination, in a career), building a life strategy.

6. Find a partner for life, separation from parental family the acquisition of a profession and the beginning of your own professional and personal life are the conditions for developing your own individual lifestyle, acquisition and realization of individual meanings of life. Meaning of life is one of the main categories used by youth.

7. Emotionally, for a young person, self-acceptance is the most important condition for self-realization. In his youth, a person is able to treat himself realistically and critically, to accept the disadvantages of his development.

8. For youth, it is of particular importance to build a system of personal moral, cultural, spiritual values, coupled with the awareness of their own uniqueness and originality.

9. The desire to change, to become different, to acquire a new quality is expressed in youth crisis, generalized and transferable.

10. A person develops a new interest in himself, not only as an individual or personality, but as an existence, a phenomenon of a higher order - the embodiment of purpose from above, vocation, etc.

11. In social terms, the leading place is taken by the search for a partner and marriage, which are associated with new social roles (spouse, sexual partner, parent), emotionally - love.

Psychological characteristics of adulthood/ according to Elena Evgenievna Sapogova. Psychology of human development. M, 2005.

Adulthood (maturity) is related to the age from 30 to 55-65 years. The branch of scientific knowledge associated with adult analysis is called acmeology.

2. Physiologically, adulthood is associated with the optimal functioning of all body systems;

in social and legal terms - with the ability to comply with the norms and rules of social life, to occupy certain status positions, to demonstrate the level of their social achievements (education, profession, rootedness in social communities, etc.), to be responsible for their own decisions and actions.

3. Psychologically, adulthood correlates with a person's own attribution of himself to a certain age cohort (for the latter, it is very important to have a family and experience of parenting), with the experience of his own life among people; an attitude not only to oneself, to one's “I”, but also to the broader context of the realization of life, the ability to influence the world and change it, inscribing oneself into the universe.

4. E. Erickson considered adulthood as the central stage of a person's life path, characterized by feeling needed by others.

5. Basic neoplasms age - productivity (generativity) and procreation (procreation) - are realized in caring for the upbringing of a new generation, productive labor activity, individual creativity.

6. If the developmental situation in adulthood is unfavorable, there is regression to the obsessive need for pseudo-proximity: excessive self-focus appears, leading to stagnation and stagnation, personal devastation - a crisis of maturity.

7. It is customary to associate with adulthood such new personality traits, as: 1) the ability to take responsibility; 2) striving for power, initiative and organizational skills; 3) the ability to provide emotional and intellectual support to others; 4) independence, self-confidence and dedication; 5) a tendency to philosophical generalizations; 6) protection of the system of one's own principles and life values; the ability to resist the problems of reality with a developed will; 7) the formation of an individual lifestyle; 8) the desire to influence the world and "give" individual experience to the younger generation; 9) realism, sobriety in assessments and a sense of "done" life; 10) system stabilization social roles and etc.

E. Evtushenko:

Forty is a strange time

when you are still young and not young

and the old people cannot understand you,

and youth, to understand, is not so wise.

Forty is a terrible time

when worn out with life in a duel

and in the palm of your hand there are two or three golden grains,

and a dug empty earth is a mountain.

Forty is a wondrous time,

when another revealing charm,

smart, almost like old age, our maturity,

but this maturity is not at all old.

Psychological characteristics of old age/ according to Elena Evgenievna Sapogova. Psychology of human development. M, 2005.

1. The period of old age begins when a person crosses the conditional border of 60-65 years, but the percentage of people of this age who do not consider themselves old people in the world is growing every year due to the general progress of medicine, social progress and an improvement in the quality of life.

2. The aging process is heterogeneous: elderly age(60-75 years old), old age (75-90 years old) and longevity (over 90 years old).

3. Old age is a phenomenon to a greater extent social than physiological, psychologically development continues.

4. Acquiring such quality as integrability- the integrity of the personality, or the experience of despair from the fact that life is almost over, but it was not lived as desired and planned.

5. The main neoplasm of old age E. Erickson suggested to consider wisdom as a form of such an independent and at the same time active relationship of a person with his life limited by death, which is characterized by the maturity of the mind, careful deliberation of judgments, deep comprehensive understanding.

6. The work of mental functions in old age labor activity affects, carried out or continued by a person, since it leads to sensitization of the functions included in it and thereby contributes to their preservation.

7. The mental health of an aging person is determined by his engagement in communication. Narrowing social ties associated with the termination of compulsory professional activity, with the gradual "washing out" of the age cohort of peers, with increasing fatigue from intense social contacts.

8. After 60 years, gradually comes awareness of the social alienation of the elderly from subsequent generations th, which is experienced painfully, especially in societies where there is no necessary social support for old age.

9. In older people, gradually the motivational sphere is being rebuilt: leading needs become bodily needs, the need for safety and reliability.

Usually, old people do not make long-term plans- it's related with a general change in temporal life perspective... Psychological time changes with old age, and life in the present and memories of the past are now more important than the future.

11. Only unfulfilled and immature elderly people want to remain “forever young”, with unsettled self-esteem, deprived and frustrated by life, and for the majority of old people the feeling of “fulfillment” of age is more valuable.

12. Of particular importance is the implementation of creative activities by older people, outbursts of new abilities (especially creative ones).

from Previous

The age limits of adulthood are determined by a complex of social and biological reasons, depending on the specific socio-economic conditions of individual development of a person. The accumulated data made it possible, to some extent, to distinguish the period of adulthood from adolescence, adolescence and youth, on the one hand, and old age, on the other, as well as to single out individual macroperiods in adulthood itself - early adulthood, average age, elderly age. But it is rather difficult to establish a clear chronological framework for adulthood: there is a lot of uncertainty in the characteristics and time boundaries of adulthood.

So, for example, many authors correlate early adulthood with the period of adolescence (its chronological framework is from 15-16 to 22-25 years); average age - with a period of youth (from 20-35 years old, according to D. Veksler) or "maturity" (25-40 years old - D. B. Brom-ley, 25-50 years old (D. Birren), up to 36-60 years according to the international classification of ages); old age - with old age (55 years and older). The upper limit of adulthood is socially correlated with graduation from school and the beginning of an independent life (17-18 years old), and the lower one - with retirement (55-60 years old).

What kind of person can be considered an adult? First, adulthood is determined physiologically, in terms of the optimal functioning of all body systems. Outwardly, adults continue to grow, physiologically change - they reach an optimum and the functioning of the bone, muscle, cardiovascular, digestive, hormonal and other systems changes. For example, the sexual functions in women reach their optimum by the age of 26-30 and remain at this level until the age of 60; men, on the other hand, experience a gradual decline after the age of 30.

Secondly, adulthood is determined socially and legally - from the point of view of the ability to comply with the norms and rules of social life, to occupy certain status positions, to demonstrate the level of one's social achievements (education, profession, rootedness in social communities, etc.), to be responsible for own decisions and actions.

Thirdly, adulthood is a psychological category that takes into account a person's own attitude to age, the experience of being related to a certain age cohort. For the latter, the presence of a family and parenting experience are very important (socio-demographic studies show that the risk of family breakdown is greatest in the first five years of marriage and at the border of 45-60 years, when people have been married for about 15 years). According to E. Erickson, a mature person needs to be needed; maturity needs guidance and encouragement from young people who need to be cared for. This, of course, is not only about their own children. The mere fact of having children, or even the desire to have them, does not yet “pull” one toward generativity. Generativeness as one of the important characteristics of adulthood is, first of all, an interest in the organization of life and the guidance of the new generation. And quite often, in case of life failures or special giftedness in other areas, a number of people direct this drive not only (and not even at all) to their offspring, therefore the concept of generative ™ also includes productivity and creativity, which makes this stage of life even more important.

new personal characteristics, such as: 1) the ability to take responsibility; 2) the desire for power and organizational skills; 3) the ability to provide emotional and intellectual support to others; 4) self-confidence and dedication; 5) a tendency to philosophical generalizations; 6) protection of the system of one's own principles and life values; the ability to resist the problems of reality with a developed will; 7) the formation of an individual lifestyle; 8) the desire to influence the world and "give" individual experience to the younger generation; 9) realism, sobriety in assessments and a sense of "done" life; 10) stabilization of the system of social roles, etc.

Adulthood, in spite of its apparent stability, is the same contradictory period as the others. An adult is simultaneously experiencing both a sense of stability and confusion about whether he really understood and realized the real purpose of his life. This contradiction becomes especially acute in the case of negative assessments given by the personality of his previous life to the need to develop a new life strategy.

Professional and social self-realization presupposes such forms as initiative and responsibility. Initiative is the outrunning external requirements or the free activity of the subject counter to them, which is then realized in the intellectual or practical spheres. She reveals herself in undertakings, in the proposals that a person makes, in his over-normative activity. That is why the initiative is often associated with the creative intentions of the individual. Initiative is always an expression of motives and desires, motives of the subject. Responsibility is voluntary, i.e. internally accepted, implementation of necessity, rules, requirements, etc. within the boundaries and forms determined by the subject himself.

Personal self-determination in early adolescence

For such an understanding of the problem of personal self-determination, an extremely significant provision should be noted: the level of personality is the level of value-semantic determination, the level of existence in the world of meanings and values. As B.V. Zeigarnik and B.S.Bratus point out, for a person, "the main plane of movement is moral value. Let us emphasize a few more provisions of these authors (see also B.S.Bratus, P.I.Sidorov), which are close to understanding these problems of M.R. Ginzburg and make it possible to better understand his approach to self-determination.So, the first point is that existence in the world of meanings is existence at the proper personal level (this was pointed out by L. S. Vygotsky); the area of meanings and values is that the area in which the interaction between the individual and society takes place; values and meanings are, in fact, the language of this interaction.The second point is the leading role of values for the formation of personality: The confession of values consolidates the unity and self-identity of the individual, for a long time defining the main characteristics of the personality, its core, its morality, its morality. Value is acquired by a person, because "... there is no other way to deal with value, except for its integral personal experience. Thus, the acquisition of value is the acquisition by the individual of himself. And the third, distinguished by B.V. Zeigarnik and B.S.Bratus, are the functions of semantic formation: the creation of a standard, an image of the future and an assessment of activity from its moral, semantic side.

Value orientations are elements of the personality structure that characterize the content side of its orientation. In the form of value orientations as a result of the acquisition of values, the essential, the most important for a person, is recorded. Value orientations are stable, invariant formations ("units") of moral consciousness, its main ideas, concepts, "value blocks", semantic components of the worldview, expressing the essence of human morality, and hence general cultural and historical conditions and prospects. Their content is changeable and mobile. The system of value orientations acts as a "curtailed" program of life and serves as the basis for the implementation of a certain personality model. Communication is the area where the social passes into the personal and the personal becomes social, where the exchange of individual value and worldview differences takes place.

Value is one of the main mechanisms of interaction between the individual and society, personality and culture. This position is central to the so-called humanistic-axiological approach to culture, according to which culture is understood as the world of embodied values; "the scope of the concept of value is the human world of culture and social reality." Values are generalized ideas of people about the goals and norms of their behavior, embodying historical experience and concentrating on the meaning of the culture of the era, of a particular society as a whole, of all mankind. these are the landmarks existing in the consciousness of each person, with which individuals and social groups correlate their actions. Within the framework of this approach, it seems to us, the issue of the relationship between values and goals is adequately resolved: “Value is, first of all, that which gives the ideal (ie, not yet really realized) goal the force of influence on the method and nature of human activity, the incentive force ". Thus, values, value consciousness underlies goal-setting. "... the target determination of human activity is a value determination. The goals can affect human activity not in a real-causal way, but as ideal values, the realization of which a person considers his urgent need or duty."

P. Gerstmann points out a fundamental difference in the nature of the elements of a person's idea of his future, from which follows the difference in their function. He distinguishes two types of goals in the life plan: final (ideal) and auxiliary (real, concrete). Ultimate goals are ideals understood as values; these goals are stable. Real goals are characterized by concreteness and reach, they can change depending on success or failure (Gerstmann P. according to M.R. Ginzburg). Thus, Gerstmann directly points to the relationship between the life plan and values.

As we can see, the idea of one's own future is associated with values. Values, being by their nature socio-historical, are a means of introducing an individual to the genus (generic human abilities), thereby making it possible to overcome the finiteness (temporality) of human existence. Values, in turn, are closely related to the idea of the meaning of life (see, for example,), which is both the basis of personality development and its result.

So, we noted that self-determination is associated with values, with the need to form a semantic system, in which the problem of the meaning of life, with an orientation towards the future occupies a central place.Now we can formulate these connections more specifically, A person's definition of himself in society as a person is a definition of himself (self-determination, taking an active position) in relation to socio-cultural values, and thereby determining the meaning of one's existence, Defining oneself as a person, personal self-determination has a value-sense nature. Values, on the other hand, set the orientation towards the future (more on this below). This understanding of personal self-determination is consistent with the proposed by MM Shibaeva's understanding of "self-determination of personality in culture." So, MM Shibaeva notes "... the importance of the process of self-determination of personality in culture in order to highlight and substantiate for oneself the value-sense foundations of one's own life concept, as well as the choice of methods and forms of its implementation."

The idea of the value-semantic nature of personal self-determination is the basis from which M.R. Ginzburg approaches the solution of this problem in the age aspect. Now consider the characteristics of adolescence and adolescence that provide a basis for such an approach.

There is no study of older adolescence that does not emphasize that the primary need for adolescents is to strive for a certain place in society. However, the desire to occupy a certain place in society in itself is not at all a specific feature of adolescence. As is clear from the works of LS Vygotsky, D.B. Elkonin, LI Bozhovich, DI Feldshtein, the desire to take a new social position is characteristic of all inter-age transitions and is, in fact, one of the mechanisms of these transitions. Specificity should be sought not in the very desire to gain a place in society (social position), but in the qualitative features of the system of relations that develops in given age between the child and society. This specificity, among other things, also lies in the fact that, as P.P. Blonsky justly noted, with each subsequent age stage, the child's circle of contacts expands; this means that the addressee of this communication is expanding, the representation of society as a whole in this communication. In addition, its content and means are also changing. In older early adolescence, society as a whole becomes such an addressee; the young man comes into contact with society (broader with the world of human culture) directly.

So, in the works of D.I. Feldstein it is shown that adolescence is sensitive for the formation of motivation for socially useful activity, i.e. activities aimed at the benefit of the whole society. The "nodal border" in the social development of the individual is the adolescent's occupation of the position "I and society." Meaningfully, this means that at this level the adolescent solves the problem of the relationship between himself and society, defining himself in society and through society. And this, as we have shown, is possible only in the field of values and meanings. Thus, at this level, the task is solved as a task of personal self-determination.

The very fact of the generalized nature of youthful aspirations, their connection with the fate of society and humanity as a whole have been noted by researchers many times. Interest global problems the meaning of life in general and one's own existence in particular, interest in "the last questions" (FM Dostoevsky) is an essential characteristic of the emerging self-determination. In addition to the fact that young men and women are concerned about these problems, they are widely discussed by them with their peers and those adults whom they consider deserving of their trust. The presence of interest in the meaning of life and its active discussion, according to M.R. Ginzburg, indicates an actively ongoing process of self-determination; their absence is about its distortion.

In search of the meaning of their existence, in the most general form the value-semantic nature of personal self-determination is manifested. The need for a sense of life characterizes adult forms of behavior and therefore cannot be ignored when we are dealing with the process of personality maturation, the formation of the human "I". Viktor Frankl considers the desire for a person's search and realization of the meaning of his life as an innate motivational tendency inherent in all people and is the main engine of behavior and development of an adult. The need for the meaning of life, K. Obukhovsky believes, forms the "knot" that allows a person, first of all, to integrate numerous requirements coming from different spheres his life, building life not as a sequence of isolated accidents, but as an integral process with goals and continuity, and, secondly, helps a person integrate all his abilities, mobilize them as much as possible, following the tasks that are set for him in accordance with the developed self-concept and the concept of life.

The difficulty lies in the fact that early adolescence, creating internal conditions favorable for a person to start thinking about what he lives for, does not provide sufficient means to solve it. It is well known that the problem of the meaning of life is not only ideological, but also quite practical. The answer to it is contained both inside a person and outside him in the world, where his abilities are revealed, in his activities, in a sense of social responsibility. But this is precisely what forms the deficit, which is sometimes very painful in youth. Thus, closing in on oneself, the search for the meaning of life is, as it were, doomed to remain only an exercise of youthful thinking, which creates a real danger of stable egocentrism and withdrawal into oneself, especially among young men with neurotic features or predisposed to it in connection with the characteristics of the previous development (low self-esteem, poor human contacts).

However, despite all the subjective difficulties, these searches contain a high positive potential: in the search for the meaning of life, a worldview is developed, the system of values expands, the moral core is formed that helps to cope with the first everyday troubles, the young man begins to better understand the world around him and himself. , becomes in reality itself.

So, self-determination in older adolescence and adolescence is based on personal self-determination, which has a value-semantic nature, an active determination of one's position with respect to a socially developed system of values, and on this basis the definition of the meaning of one's own existence. M.R. Ginzburg believes that in early adolescence, personal self-determination (i.e. value-semantic, self-determination with respect to values) is genetically initial, determining the development of all other types of self-determination (about which below). The consciousness of an older adolescent does not at all represent a "value chaos." Of course, the adolescent's value-sense orientation is very different from the adult's value-sense orientation. Personal self-determination is by no means completed in adolescence and early adolescence, and in the course of further development, a person comes to a new personal self-determination (redefinition). But the dialectic here is such that personal self-determination is the basis of one's own development.

This understanding allows us to build a holistic picture of self-determination in adolescence and adolescence, within the framework of which the motley mosaic of various "self-determinations" found in the literature takes on meaning. Personal self-determination sets a personally meaningful orientation towards achievement a certain level in the system of social relations, the requirements for him, i.e. sets social self-determination. On the basis of social self-determination, requirements are developed for a certain professional field, and professional self-determination is carried out (naturally, not without the influence of many other factors).

On the basis of the stated positions, it is possible to explain the dual nature of self-determination, which was pointed out by LI Bozhovich, and "the transition from a romantic orientation to a real choice", noted by SP Kryagzhde. "Deprived of concreteness of quest", "romantic character", the absence of any kind of temporary attachment of ideas about the future of older adolescents and younger adolescents is explained by the fact that we are dealing with personal self-determination occurring at the level of values. Value is fundamentally timeless; giving a person an idea of the future, she does not correlate it with the time axis, with chronology, for that other dimension is the dimension of the "semantic future" (MM Bakhtin). Temporary future, i.e. more or less precise planning of one's life in time (life plan, understood as a system of goals), apparently, arises at the level of social self-determination. In the future, these two types of ideas about their future coexist, performing different functions: the semantic future, the function of meaning formation, the temporary regulatory function. Hence the duality of life plans, life prospects, which is noted by many researchers.

So, we summarize the main provisions on the problem of personal self-determination, which are reflected in our work:

1) personal self-determination as a psychological phenomenon arises at the border of older adolescence and early adolescence;

2) the need for personal self-determination is a need for the formation of a semantic system in which ideas about oneself and the world are merged;

3) personal self-determination has a value-semantic nature. active determination of one's position regarding a socially developed system of values, determination on this basis of the meaning of one's own existence; the acquisition by a person of his value-semantic unity and its realization is the definition of himself in the world of self-determination;

4) an essential feature of personal self-determination is its orientation towards the future, and two types of the future are distinguished: semantic and temporary future;

5) personal self-determination underlies the process of self-determination in older adolescence and adolescence, it determines the development of all other types of self-determination (social and professional).

Based on all of the above, we can determine the relationship between the concepts of "I-concept" and "personal self-determination". Since the most capacious definition of personal self-determination will be the process of forming a single semantic system in which generalized ideas about oneself and generalized ideas about the world are merged, we can say that the self-concept (as a dynamic system of ideas about oneself, coupled with their assessment ) is a factor in the process of personal self-determination.

The basis from which the approach to solving the problem of self-determination is the idea of the value-semantic nature of personal self-determination.

For such an understanding of the problem of personal self-determination, an extremely significant position should be noted: the level of personality is the level of value-semantic determination, the level of existence in the world of meanings and values. As B.V.Zeigarnik and B.S.Bratus point out, for a person “the main plane of movement is moral and value. Let us emphasize a few more provisions of these authors (see also B.S.Bratus, P.I.Sidorov), which are close to the understanding of these problems by M.R. Ginzburg and make it possible to better understand his approach to self-determination. So, the first point is that existence in the world of meanings is existence at the proper personal level (this was pointed out by L. S. Vygotsky); the area of meanings and values is the area in which the interaction of the individual and society takes place; values and meanings are, strictly speaking, the language of this interaction. The second point is the leading role of values for the formation of personality: The confession of values consolidates the unity and self-identity of the individual, for a long time defining the main characteristics of the personality, its core, its morality, its morality. The value is acquired by a person, since “... there is no other way to deal with value, except for its integral personal experience. Thus, the acquisition of value is the acquisition by the individual of himself. And the third one is the functions of semantic formation, distinguished by B.V. Zeigarnik and B.S.Bratus: the creation of a standard, an image of the future and an assessment of activity from its moral, semantic side.

Value orientations are elements of the personality structure that characterize the content side of its orientation. In the form of value orientations as a result of the acquisition of values, the essential, the most important for a person, is recorded. Value orientations are stable, invariant formations (“units”) of moral consciousness - its main ideas, concepts, “value blocks”, semantic components of the worldview, expressing the essence of human morality, and hence general cultural and historical conditions and prospects. Their content is changeable and mobile. The system of value orientations acts as a “curtailed” program of life and serves as the basis for the implementation of a certain personality model. Communication is the area where the social passes into the personal and the personal becomes social, where the exchange of individual value and worldview differences takes place.

Value is one of the main mechanisms of interaction between the individual and society, personality and culture. This position is central to the so-called humanistic-axiological approach to culture, according to which culture is understood as the world of embodied values; "The scope of the concept of value is the human world of culture and social reality." Values are generalized ideas of people about the goals and norms of their behavior, embodying historical experience and expressing in a concentrated way the meaning of the culture of the era, of a particular society as a whole, of all mankind. these are the landmarks existing in the consciousness of each person, with which individuals and social groups correlate their actions. Within the framework of this approach, it seems to us, the issue of the relationship between values and goals is adequately resolved: “Value is, first of all, that which gives an ideal (that is, not yet really realized) goal the force of influence on the method and nature of human activity, an incentive force ”. Thus, values, value consciousness underlies goal-setting. “... the target determination of human activity is a value determination. Goals can affect human activity not in a real-causal way, but as ideal values, the realization of which a person considers his vital need or duty ”

So, we noted that self-determination is associated with values, with the need to form a semantic system, in which the problem of the meaning of life, with an orientation towards the future occupies a central place, Now we can formulate these connections more specifically, A person's definition of himself in society as a person is a definition of himself (self-determination, taking an active position) in relation to socio-cultural values, and thereby - defining the meaning of one's existence, Defining oneself as a person - personal self-determination - has a value-semantic nature. Values, on the other hand, set the orientation towards the future (more on this in more detail below). This understanding of personal self-determination is consistent with the proposed by MM Shibaeva's understanding of “self-determination of personality in culture”. So, MM Shibaeva notes “... the importance of the process of self-determination of personality in culture in order to highlight and substantiate for oneself the value-semantic foundations of one's own life concept, as well as the choice of methods and forms of its implementation”.

There is no study of older adolescence that does not emphasize that the primary need for adolescents is to strive for a certain place in society. However, the desire to occupy a certain place in society in itself is not at all a specific feature of adolescence. As is clear from the works of LS Vygotsky, D.B. Elkonin, LI Bozhovich, DI Feldshtein, the desire to take a new social position is characteristic of all inter-age transitions and is, in fact, one of the mechanisms of these transitions. Specificity should be sought not in the very desire to gain a place in society (social position), but in the qualitative features of the system of relations that develops at a given age between the child and society. This specificity, among other things, also lies in the fact that, as P.P. Blonsky justly noted, with each subsequent age stage, the child's circle of contacts expands; this means that the addressee of this communication is expanding, the representation of society as a whole in this communication. In addition, its content and means are also changing. In older early adolescence, society as a whole becomes such an addressee; the young man comes into contact with society (more broadly - with the world of human culture) directly.

So, in the works of D.I. Feldstein it is shown that adolescence is sensitive for the formation of motivation for socially useful activity, i.e. activities aimed at the benefit of the whole society. The “nodal border” in the social development of the individual is the adolescent's occupation of the position “I and society”. Meaningfully, this means that at this level the adolescent solves the problem of the relationship between himself and society, defining himself in society and through society. And this, as we have shown, is possible only in the field of values and meanings. Thus, at this level, the task is solved as a task of personal self-determination.

The very fact of the generalized nature of youthful aspirations, their connection with the fate of society and humanity as a whole have been noted by researchers many times. An interest in global problems of the meaning of life in general and one's own existence in particular - interest in “the last questions” (F.M. Dostoevsky) is an essential characteristic of the emerging self-determination. In addition to the fact that these problems are of concern to young men and women, they are also widely discussed by them - with their peers and those adults whom they consider deserving of their trust. The presence of interest in the meaning of life and its active discussion, according to M.R. Ginzburg, indicates an actively ongoing process of self-determination; their absence is about its distortion.

In search of the meaning of one's existence, the value-semantic nature of personal self-determination is manifested in the most general form. The need for a sense of life characterizes adult forms of behavior and therefore cannot be ignored when we are dealing with the process of personality maturation, the formation of the human “I”. Viktor Frankl considers the desire for a person's search and realization of the meaning of his life as an innate motivational tendency inherent in all people and is the main engine of behavior and development of an adult. The need for the meaning of life, K. Obukhovsky believes, forms the “knot” that allows a person, firstly, to integrate numerous requirements coming from different spheres of his life, building life not as a sequence of isolated accidents, but as an integral process with goals and continuity, and, secondly, helps a person to integrate all his abilities, to mobilize them as much as possible, following the tasks that are set for him in accordance with the developed self-concept and the concept of life.

The difficulty lies in the fact that early adolescence, creating internal conditions favorable for a person to start thinking about what he lives for, does not provide sufficient means to solve it. It is well known that the problem of the meaning of life is not only ideological, but also quite practical. The answer to it is contained both inside a person and outside him - in the world where his abilities are revealed, in his activities, in a sense of social responsibility. But this is precisely what forms the deficit, which is sometimes very painful in youth. Thus, closing in on oneself, the search for the meaning of life is, as it were, doomed to remain only an exercise of youthful thinking, which creates a real danger of stable egocentrism and withdrawal into oneself, especially among young men with neurotic features or predisposed to it in connection with the characteristics of the previous development (low self-esteem, poor human contacts).

So, self-determination in older adolescence and adolescence is based on personal self-determination, which has a value-semantic nature, an active determination of one's position with respect to a socially developed system of values, and on this basis, the meaning of one's own existence. M.R. Ginzburg believes that in early adolescence, personal self-determination (i.e. value-semantic, self-determination with respect to values) is genetically initial, determining the development of all other types of self-determination (about which - below). The consciousness of an older adolescent is not at all a "value chaos." Of course, the value-semantic orientation of an adolescent is very different from the value-semantic orientation of an adult. Personal self-determination is by no means completed in adolescence and early adolescence, and in the course of further development, a person comes to a new personal self-determination (redefinition). But the dialectic here is such that personal self-determination is the basis of one's own development.

This understanding allows us to build a holistic picture of self-determination in adolescence and adolescence, within the framework of which the motley mosaic of various “self-determinations” found in the literature takes on meaning. Personal self-determination sets a personally significant orientation towards achieving a certain level in the system of social relations, the requirements for it, i.e. sets social self-determination. On the basis of social self-determination, requirements are developed for a certain professional field, and professional self-determination is carried out (naturally, not without the influence of many other factors).

On the basis of the stated positions, it is possible to explain the dual nature of self-determination, which was pointed out by LI Bozhovich, and “the transition from a romantic orientation to a real choice,” noted by SP Kryagzhde. “Deprived of the concreteness of quest,” “romantic character,” the absence of any temporary attachment of ideas about the future of older adolescents and younger adolescents is explained by the fact that we are dealing with personal self-determination occurring at the level of values. Value is fundamentally timeless; giving a person an idea of the future, she does not correlate it with the time axis, with chronology, because that other dimension is the dimension of the “semantic future” (MM Bakhtin). Temporary future, i.e. more or less precise planning of one's life in time (life plan, understood as a system of goals), apparently, arises at the level of social self-determination. In the future, these two types of ideas about their future coexist, performing different functions: the semantic future is the function of meaning formation, the temporal one is the regulatory function. Hence the duality of life plans, life prospects, which is noted by many researchers.

To understand the problem of personal self-determination, an extremely significant provision should be noted: the level of personality is the level of value-semantic determination, the level of existence in the world of meanings and values. As B.V.Zeigarnik and B.S.Bratus point out, for a person “the main plane of movement is moral and value. Let us emphasize a few more provisions of these authors, which are close to the understanding of these problems by M.R. Ginzburg and make it possible to better understand his approach to self-determination. So, the first point is that existence in the world of meanings is existence at the proper personal level (this was pointed out by L. S. Vygotsky); the area of meanings and values is the area in which the interaction of the individual and society takes place; values and meanings are, strictly speaking, the language of this interaction. The second point is the leading role of values for the formation of personality: The confession of values consolidates the unity and self-identity of the individual, for a long time defining the main characteristics of the personality, its core, its morality, its morality. The value is acquired by a person, since “... there is no other way to deal with value, except for its integral personal experience. Thus, the acquisition of value is the acquisition by the individual of himself. And the third one is the functions of semantic formation, distinguished by B.V. Zeigarnik and B.S.Bratus: the creation of a standard, an image of the future and an assessment of activity from its moral, semantic side.

Value orientations are elements of the personality structure that characterize the content side of its orientation. In the form of value orientations as a result of the acquisition of values, the essential, the most important for a person, is recorded. Value orientations are stable, invariant formations (“units”) of moral consciousness - its main ideas, concepts, “value blocks”, semantic components of the worldview, expressing the essence of human morality, and hence general cultural and historical conditions and prospects. Their content is changeable and mobile. The system of value orientations acts as a “curtailed” program of life and serves as the basis for the implementation of a certain personality model. Communication is the area where the social passes into the personal and the personal becomes social, where the exchange of individual value and worldview differences takes place.

Value is one of the main mechanisms of interaction between the individual and society, personality and culture. This position is central to the so-called humanistic-axiological approach to culture, according to which culture is understood as the world of embodied values; "The scope of the concept of value is the human world of culture and social reality." Values are generalized ideas of people about the goals and norms of their behavior. embodying historical experience and expressing in a concentrated way the meaning of the culture of the epoch, of a certain society as a whole, of all mankind. these are the landmarks existing in the consciousness of each person, with which individuals and social groups correlate their actions. Within the framework of this approach, it seems to us, the issue of the relationship between values and goals is adequately resolved: “Value is, first of all, that which gives an ideal (that is, not yet really realized) goal the force of influence on the method and nature of human activity, an incentive force ”. Thus, values, value consciousness underlies goal-setting. “... the target determination of human activity is a value determination. Goals can affect human activity not in a real-causal way, but as ideal values, the realization of which a person considers his vital need or duty ”

so , we noted that self-determination is associated with values , with the need to form a semantic system, in which the problem of the meaning of life occupies a central place, with an orientation towards the future. We can now formulate these links more specifically. A person's definition of himself in society as an individual is a definition of himself (self-determination, taking an active position) in relation to socio-cultural values, and thus - a definition of the meaning of his existence. The definition of oneself as a person - personal self-determination - has a value-semantic nature. Values, on the other hand, set the orientation for the future.(more on this below). This understanding of personal self-determination is consistent with the proposed by MM Shibaeva's understanding of “self-determination of personality in culture.

There is no study of older adolescence that does not emphasize that the primary need for adolescents is to strive for a certain place in society. However, the desire to occupy a certain place in society in itself is not at all a specific feature of adolescence. As is clear from the works of LS Vygotsky, D.B. Elkonin, LI Bozhovich, the desire to take a new social position is characteristic of all inter-age transitions and is, in fact, one of the mechanisms of these transitions. Specificity should be sought not in the very desire to gain a place in society (social position), but in the qualitative features of the system of relations that develops at a given age between the child and society. This specificity, among other things, also lies in the fact that, as P.P. Blonsky justly noted, with each subsequent age stage, the child's circle of contacts expands; this means that the addressee of this communication is expanding, the representation of society as a whole in this communication. In addition, its content and means are also changing. In older early adolescence, society as a whole becomes such an addressee; the young man comes into contact with society (more broadly - with the world of human culture) directly.

So, in the works of D.I. Feldstein it is shown that adolescence is sensitive for the formation of motivation for socially useful activities... The “nodal border” in the social development of the individual is the adolescent's occupation of the position “I and society”. Meaningfully, this means that at this level the adolescent solves the problem of the relationship between himself and society, defining himself in society and through society. And this, as we have shown, is possible only in the field of values and meanings. Thus, at this level, the task is solved as a task of personal self-determination.

In search of the meaning of one's existence, the value-semantic nature of personal self-determination is manifested in the most general form. The need for a sense of life characterizes adult forms of behavior and therefore cannot be ignored when we are dealing with the process of personality maturation, the formation of the human “I”. Viktor Frankl considers the desire for a person's search and realization of the meaning of his life as an innate motivational tendency inherent in all people and is the main engine of behavior and development of an adult. The need for the meaning of life, K. Obukhovsky believes, forms the “knot” that allows a person, firstly, to integrate numerous requirements coming from different spheres of his life, building life not as a sequence of isolated accidents, but as an integral process with goals and continuity. And, secondly, it helps a person to integrate all his abilities, to mobilize them as much as possible, following the tasks that are set for him in accordance with the developed self-concept and the concept of life.

The discovery of the inner world that takes place in early adolescence is associated with the experience of it as a value. The discovery of oneself as a uniquely unique personality is inextricably linked with the discovery of the social world in which this personality is to live. Youthful reflection is, on the one hand, awareness of one's own self (“Who am I?”, “What am I?” “What are my abilities?”, “Why can I respect myself?”), And on the other, awareness of my position in the world (“What is my ideal in life?”, “Who are my friends and enemies?”, “Who do I want to become?”, “What should I do to make myself and the world around me better?”). The first questions addressed to himself are posed, not always realizing this, by the teenager. The second, more general, worldview questions are posed by a young man, in whom introspection becomes an element of social and moral self-determination.
The difficulty lies in the fact that early adolescence, creating internal conditions favorable for a person to start thinking about what he lives for, does not provide sufficient means to solve it. It is well known that the problem of the meaning of life is not only ideological, but also quite practical. The answer to it is contained both inside a person and outside him - in the world where his abilities are revealed, in his activities, in a sense of social responsibility. But this is precisely what forms the deficit, which is sometimes very painful in youth. Thus, closing in on oneself, the search for the meaning of life is, as it were, doomed to remain only an exercise of youthful thinking, which creates a real danger of stable egocentrism and withdrawal into oneself, especially among young men with neurotic features or predisposed to it in connection with the characteristics of the previous development (low self-esteem, poor human contacts).

So, self-determination in older adolescence and adolescence is based on personal self-determination, which has a value-semantic nature, an active determination of one's position with respect to a socially developed system of values, and on this basis, the meaning of one's own existence. M.R. Ginzburg believes that in early adolescence, personal self-determination (i.e. value-semantic, self-determination with respect to values) is genetically initial, determining the development of all other types of self-determination (about which - below). The consciousness of an older adolescent is not at all a "value chaos." Of course, the value-semantic orientation of an adolescent is very different from the value-semantic orientation of an adult. Personal self-determination is by no means completed in adolescence and early adolescence, and in the course of further development, a person comes to a new personal self-determination (redefinition). But the dialectic here is such that personal self-determination is the basis of one's own development.

So, we summarize the main provisions on the problem of personal self-determination, which are reflected in our work:

1) personal self-determination as a psychological phenomenon arises at the border of older adolescence and early adolescence;

2) the need for personal self-determination is a need for the formation of a semantic system in which ideas about oneself and the world are merged;

4) an essential feature of personal self-determination is its orientation towards the future, and two types of the future are distinguished: semantic and temporary future;

Based on all of the above, we can determine the relationship between the concepts of “I-concept” and “personal self-determination”. Since the most capacious definition of personal self-determination will be the process of forming a single semantic system in which generalized ideas about oneself and generalized ideas about the world are merged, we can say that the self-concept (as a dynamic system of ideas about oneself, coupled with their assessment ) is a factor in the process of personal self-determination.

The social status of youth is heterogeneous. The main social task of this age is the choice of a profession. Choice of profession and type educational institution inevitably differentiates life paths girls and boys, with all the ensuing social and psychological consequences. The range of socio-political roles and related interests and responsibilities is expanding.

But social and personal self-determination presupposes not so much autonomy from adults as a clear orientation and determination of one's place in the adult world.

The social situation of development lies in the fact that society sets before young people the task of professional self-determination in terms of real choice. Professional self-determination becomes the psychological center of the social situation of development.

The choice is made twice: for the first time in the 9th grade in connection with the choice of the form of completion of secondary education; the second time - in the 11th grade of high school, when planning ways of obtaining higher education or direct inclusion in working life, that is, twice a high school student finds himself in a situation of choosing to continue education in one of its specific forms.

Professional self-determination as the center of the social situation of development forms a kind of internal position of a high school student, which is associated with a change in attitude towards the future. Professional self-determination is a multidimensional and multistage process in which the tasks of society are singled out and the formation of an individual lifestyle, of which professional activity is a part. Professional self-determination can be viewed as a series of tasks that society poses for the emerging personality and which this personality must consistently resolve over a certain period of time; as a process of gradual decision-making, through which the individual forms a balance between his preferences and inclinations, on the one hand, and the needs of the existing system of social division of labor, on the other; as a process of forming an individual lifestyle, of which professional activity is a part.

Professional self-determination cannot be regarded as a "freeze-frame" of the development process: the experience acquired on the chosen path changes the picture of a person's capabilities and the direction of his further development. Professional self-determination is an important aspect of personal self-determination, is considered as a continuous process of finding meaning in the chosen, mastered and performed professional activity, as a process of alternating choices, each of which is an important life event that determines further steps on the path of professional development of the individual.

The center of professional self-determination is the value and moral aspect, the development of self-awareness, the need for professional competence.

Psychological factors that form the basis of professional self-determination:

· Awareness of the value of socially useful labor;

· General orientation in the socio-economic situation in the country;

· Awareness of the need for general and professional training for full self-determination and self-realization;

· General orientation in the world of professional work;

· Allocation of a distant professional goal (dream);

Harmonization of dreams with other important life goals(family, personal, leisure);

· Knowledge of the chosen goals;

· Knowledge of internal obstacles that complicate the achievement of the chosen goal, etc.

Stages of professional self-determination (the duration of the stages varies depending on social conditions and individual characteristics development):

Child's play (the child takes on different professional roles and "plays" certain elements of the behavior associated with them);

Teenage fantasy (a teenager sees himself in dreams as a representative of a profession that is attractive to him);

Preliminary choice of profession (covers all adolescence and most of adolescence: sorting and evaluation takes place different types activities from the point of view of the student's interests, then - his abilities, finally, from the point of view of the value system);

Practical decision-making (choice of profession: determining the level of qualifications of future work, the volume and duration of preparation for it; choice of specialty).

A feature of the self-determination of modern high school students is their orientation toward the prestige of professions, toward elitism, and being embraced by the idea of a quick career and wealth. With the help of sophisticated manipulation of the media and public opinion, the basis for the professional choice of a particular person is formed, which undermines the very essence of self-determination. However, the prestige of a particular profession is inversely related to its mass character: the more prestigious the profession, the more applicants for one job there will be, and the more of them will have to be eliminated. The level of awareness about the future profession is very important, as well as the level of personal aspirations, which includes an assessment of one's own objective capabilities and abilities.