Psychosemantic Reconstruction of Health Concepts in Patients with Somatogenia

Abstract

The article presents the results of study of the subjective psychosemantic space of patients suffering from somatogeny. The construction of a subjective semantic space is fundamentally different from the descriptive researches because it involves an experiment that simulates the certain aspects of linguistic or cognitive activity and allows the reconstruction of the system of values. This is a study of the psychosemantic structure of those semantic structures of consciousness that create a typical conceptual system of self-regulation, forming a normative and actual subjective picture of the own ideas about the health and psychological causes of its violation.
 On the example of patients with chronic gastroenterological and cardiovascular diseases, the author used the method of semantic differential by Ch. Ozgud with the subsequent factorization of data and has established the basic psycho-semantic parameters of such patients’ consciousness, which allows to understand how people with a certain structure of consciousness fall into the number of patients suffering from psychogeny . The semantic differential method allows us to evaluate the subjective aspect of the meanings associated with content, social settings, stereotypes and other emotionally loaded, structured, and not enough apperceived forms of generalization. The study was conducted in three stages. At the first one was used the adoption of associations. At the second stage was obtained an array of data that represented the result of applying the semantic differential method to the description of the specified categories. The third stage was aimed at working out the received factual data.
 Through the study, there were obtained the results as three factors. The main factor was called “Score”. The second (partial) bipolar factor absorbed three scales and received the name – antonym to the classical scale of Ch. Osgood “Weakness”. The third (partial) unipolar factor also contains three scales. It received the name “Activity”.
 The study revealed a number of common features that characterize the partial psychosemantic space of such patients. It was found that the psychosemantic parameters of the psychosemantic space of patients differ by its cognitively-emotional simplicity, low dimensionality, inconsistency and predominance in negative connotations.
 The psychosemantic structure of consciousness of the patients suffering from psychogeny involves the special efforts of clinical psychologists and psychotherapists in providing targeted psychological support and assistance to such people.