The experience of using psychosemantic technique “color-associative experiment” in psychological counseling of students

Abstract

This article presents a qualitative and quantitative study of personality based on psychosemantic technique “color-associative experiment”. The subject of this research is the theoretical framework, procedure for psychosemantic technique “color-associative experiment”, and the possibilities of its application in psychological counseling of students. For quality data processing and interpretation, the author employs the techniques of free and axial coding (the categories correspond to the axes: conditions, phenomenon, its characteristics, strategy of interaction with the phenomenon, and outcome), which allow the psychologist to acquire a holistic representation on the current state of the respondent. The article provides the materials of empirical study, which involved 15 people; describes the results diagnostics of the bachelor's degree students conducted in terms of distance learning at the Academy for the Humanities and Pedagogy  (branch) of the Crimean Federal University in Yalta (April 2020). The obtained results indicate that the verbal space and perceptive-semantic space are not identical, but mutually complementary, forming a holistic picture of the individual semantic space of personality. On the example of implementation of “color-associative experiment” technique, the respondent (bachelor's degree graduate) is characterized by a neurotic structure of personality. The intrapersonal conflict and resulting emotional tension are accompanied by the pursuit of orderliness and freedom (the verbal component of semantic space), but also indicate the prevalence of variability and lack of constancy in the perceptive semantic space of personality. For comparing the results of perceptive and verbal semantic space, the author offers the schematic image of the coordinate system formed by these two axes and saturated with individual meanings of the respondent. Thus, in the dialogue with the respondent, the psychologist forms a map of the individual semantic space of the latter. The application of the method of “color-associative experiment” indicated the instance of the development of reflection among students.