MYTHOSEMANTIC AND MYTHOPOETIC COMPONENTS OF STUDENTS-PSYCHOLOGISTS’ SENSE OF THEMSELVES

Abstract

The study involved 85 students of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, majoring in "psychology" and "military psychology"; the average age is 21.9 years. A qualitative and quantitative analysis of sense of self which is represented in the drawings and non-reflexive mythopoetic self-descriptions. The method of content analysis was used to analyze the themes and figurative and symbolic content of texts. Mythosemantic and mythopoetic components of the students-psychologist's sense of themselves are correlated as less and more differentiated its components, which represent poorly perceived personal meanings, life landmarks and their specificity in the subjects. They primarily reflect aspects of personal and professional identification and choice of life path. It was found that mythopoetic self-descriptions of students-psychologists in terms of thematic and figurative-symbolic content, as well as the corresponding self-positioning, form five semantic blocks, unevenly represented in the studied groups. In terms of thematic coverage, the largest semantic block in both the group of students-civil psychologists (CP) and the group of students-military psychologists (MP) is "Person in development and search". At the same time in the group of MP difficulties of symbolization within this block are noted. The smallest block in the group MP is "Reflexive person", and in the group CP it is "Social person". In terms of its figurative and symbolic content, the "Reflexive person" block in the GP group is the second largest, but in the EP group it is the smallest. In terms of its figurative and symbolic content, the block "Social person" is less represented in the CP group, while in the MP group it is the second largest after the blocks "Person in development and search" and "Positive person". At the same time, the ratio of metalological and autological images in this block in the MP group is 1:5, that is, the images perform primarily a pictorial rather than symbolic function. For the block "Person in trials and problems" in the CP group, the prevalence of the proportion of themes over the proportion of produced images is noted. Discrepancies in thematic and figurative and symbolic content of semantic blocks may reflect a certain limitation of symbolization on topics that are problematic for an individual. The sense of themselves is increasingly specified in the СP by aspects of reflexivity and personal development, and in the MP by aspects of social normativity and positivity