Current Existential Problems in the Context of Subjective-Personal Relationships of Future Specialists in Helping Professions

Abstract

The growing influence of existential approaches is one of the recognized trends in the development of psychology in the first decade of the 21st century. Existential, "philosophical" questions of human existence are increasingly facing a person today, which to a large extent is a consequence of changes in the social context of human life. The purpose of this study was to identify and analyze actual existential problems in the context of the subjective-personal relationships of future helping specialists. The study involved students of the Institute of Psychology of the Russian State Pedagogical University named after V.I. A.I. Herzen (St. Petersburg), 34 people from the Institute of Pedagogy of the Russian State Pedagogical University named after A.I. Herzen (St. Petersburg) in the amount of 32 people, the average age is 20 years. The study used: the methodology "Relevance of existential problems", modified projective technique of Sachs-Levy "Incomplete sentences"; phenomenological interview (Korablina E.P.). To process the data obtained in the study, the following methods were used: descriptive statistics, comparative statistics (nonparametric Mann-Whitney test). Mathematical data processing was carried out using the Statistics package (SPSS Statistics 17.0). The results of studying the relevance of existential problems have shown that the most pronounced existential problem for both groups is "The meaning of existence." As a result of the analysis of subjective-personal relations, it was revealed that the attitude to life among students-social workers is more traditional than students-psychologists. Phenomenological analysis of students' statements made it possible to determine two types of experiences when establishing semantic meanings and reflecting them in consciousness in the form of images of the profession and oneself in it and in life: the "cognitive-changing type" characteristic of psychology students and the "cognitive-accepting type" characteristic of social worker students.