Investigation of psychological defense strategies in communication among high school students with different character accentuations

The article deals with the question of the correlation of strategies of psychological defense in communication with accentuations of character in adolescence. The content of the terms «character», «accentuation», «psychological defense» is revealed, and a brief description of the youthful age is given. The relevance of the study is substantiated. The characteristics of the sample and the procedure for the study are presented. The dominant strategies of psychological defense in communication and their similarity in high school students with certain character accentuations are described. The types of accentuations are determined without the expressed predominance of a concrete psychological defense strategy. The strategies peculiar to students without accentuations of character are revealed.

The youth age was separated into an independent period of a person's life relatively recently, at the end of the 19th century, in connection with the processes of industrialization and urbanization [1]. According to most modern authors, youth covers the period from 14-15 to 18 years and is a transition stage from adolescence to adulthood [2]. At this age, self-awareness is actively developing, a worldview is developing, personal and professional self-determination is taking place [3]. The process of character formation continues. In psychology, the term «character» is regarded as «a set of stable individual characteristics of the personality that are formed and manifested in activity and communication, causing typical for her ways of behavior" [4]. Character is a structural entity. In its structure, it is possible to distinguish individual sides or features. Character traits are "individual habitual forms of human behavior, in which his attitude to reality is realized» [4; 49]. Steady personality traits determine the attitude of a person to the surrounding world, the activities performed, to other people and to himself. These relationships are fixed in the forms of behavior, communication and activity that are habitual for man.

Individual character traits can be expressed to a greater or lesser extent and even reach extreme values of the norm, bordering on pathology. AE Licko defined such excessively «pointed» features as «accentuation of character». Character accentuations are «extreme variants of its norm, in which certain traits of character are excessively amplified, which reveals an selective vulnerability to a certain kind of psychogenic influences with good and even increased resistance to others» [5]. The emergence of accentuations AE Lichko explained the influence of «a special kind of mental trauma or difficult situations in life, namely those who impose increased demands on the» place of least resistance «in character» [5]. Accentuations are most often observed in adolescence and adolescence. As you grow up in the course of upbringing and self-education, character accentuations are smoothed out, harmonized, as the character structure is mobile, dynamic and changes throughout the life of a person. Accentuations, as a rule, do not contribute to a pronounced social maladjustment. But in adolescence, the presence of accentuations can lead to disagreements with oneself and the environment, making it difficult to adapt to the social environment. In this regard, it is necessary to constantly study the conditions for educating the individual, to identify the available accentuations and to timely carry out their psychological correction.

According to VA Averin, obtained with the help of the questionnaire of G.Shmishek, in adolescence the most widespread and expressed such types of accentuations as hypertimensional, cyclotimous and exalted. In this case, the girls are dominated by emotional, exalted and hypertensive types, and for boys characterized by hypertimensional, cyclotimous, excitable and anxious types. Untypical for a given age is a dysthymic, stuck and pedantic type of accentuation.

As noted above, the character traits are realized in the forms of behavior and communication that are habitual for man. For young people, communication is one of the important spheres of their life. Communication with adults and peers is organized differently, differs in content and goals, but acts as a significant factor in mental development. In intense or conflict situations, not only accentuations, but also various psychological protections are manifested. Psychological protection can be considered as «a special regulatory system of personality stabilization, aimed at eliminating or minimizing the feelings of anxiety associated with the awareness of conflict» [7]. Its function is to protect the human mind from negative, traumatic experiences. First of all, in such protection need self-esteem, self-esteem, a sense of confidence, I-concept, the integrity of the individual, individuality. Also, the objects of protection are motivational formations (desires, preferences, tastes), cognitive structures (outlook, opinions, knowledge), behavioral manifestations (habits, skills, communication, behavior or activity). F.V. Bassin and a number of other researchers believe that psychological defense is a normal, day-to-day mechanism of human consciousness. From this point of view, psychological defense is seen as a way to prevent the disorganization of human behavior, which occurs not only in the collision of the conscious and the unconscious, but also in the event of a confrontation between well-defined attitudes.

At the same time, psychological protection can be considered as a negative phenomenon in cases when the conflict situation is significant and requires active work on the causes of the conflict. Psychological mechanisms reduce emotional tension and obscure the importance of conflict for the individual.

V. Kulikov believes that psychological protection is a function of the individual as a whole, a complex structural and functional system. It includes interrelated components: ideological (beliefs and views of the individual), mental (doubt, distrust), emotional (antipathy, shyness, fear), volitional (principled, negativism) [7]. Representatives of deep psychology also emphasize that the body responds to various violations of homeostasis as an integral system. So, V.Rajh marks, that the protective mechanism the full structure of character of the person can act. This understanding of psychological defenses allowed us to formulate hypotheses about the existence of a connection between the non-normative functioning of defense mechanisms and certain character accentuations, behavioral deviations.

References:

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