PHENOMENOLOGY OF IDENTITY SELF-DEVELOPMENT

This paper is the result of theoretical generalizations on the problems of retrospective analysis of the self-development concept. Analysis of the philosophical literature enables the author to identify two basic ideas: self-development as a form of existence of all living organisms, and understanding the ability for self-development as a human generic characteristic. The comparison has been performed of understanding of the meaning of identity self-development in the theory of humanistic and existential psychology on the basis of “view of the essence of an individual”. In the humanistic approach it is stated that the human nature is certainly positive, the meaning of education is to facilitate mainstreaming the positive inborn abilities of a personality. In the existential approach, when considering a conditional-positive human nature, the meaning of education is to help in the selection – the most important are interests of the human. Theoretical analysis of the literature has shown that nowadays in pedagogy and psychology there are three major areas of considering the category of identity self-development: self-development as a fundamental ability, the highest and essential human need; self-development as self-formation; self-development as development of one’s "selfhood". Understanding of self-development in the first area is based on a personal approach of the humanistic psychology; all the rest get their understanding of the essence of self-development on the activity basis of the existential approach. The approach of Russian teachers and psychologists to the problem of identity self-development are unanimous in the fundamental assertion that in the process of self-development a person gets a lot of new skills and abilities, which have not been actualized before; this demonstrates the meaning of self-development as opposed to the traditional Western humanistic pedagogy and psychology where self-development is understood through the actualization of inborn qualities and capabilities.