Development of students’ constructive self-consciousness experience in psychodrama process

Abstract

The ongoing socio-cultural deformations mostly negatively affect the young generation, forming distorted forms of identity and self-consciousness. The initial hypothesis of the study was that the development of students' full-fledged self-consciousness can be facilitated by the process of their versatile self-disclosure and self-expression in the reference environment of the group, and this process can be successfully modeled using the psychodrama method. The purpose of the study was to determine the logic and techniques of building a psychodramatic process focused on improving self-awareness of students. The study was based on the role methodology of self-consciousness and the psychodrama method as a practice of replaying personally significant situations in group interaction. The study involved 131 first-year students of Belgorod National Research University. The questionnaires to identify self-attitudes and various aspects of the Self-concept served as diagnostic tools. The results were processed using the paired Student's t-test and Spearman's coefficient of rank correlation. As a result, the study revealed the content of psychodramatic process, the technology of its building and its forms. The essence of this work is to create favorable conditions for students’ self-realization in the reference social environment. The positive influence of psychodrama on the sphere of students’ self-consciousness was shown. In particular, the constructive images in their Self-concept were developing; their self-respect was strengthening due to the growth of reflected self-attitude (t=9.11, p ≤ 0.01) and self-confidence (t=8.56, p ≤ 0.01), autosympathy was increasing through the growth of self-value (t=9.29, p ≤ 0.01) and self-acceptance (t=8.41, p ≤ 0.01), as well as their negative feelings towards themselves were overcoming by reducing inner conflict (t= –8.56, p ≤ 0.01) and self-blame (t= –8.04, p ≤ 0.01). The performed correlation analysis revealed the connection between the growth of indicators of self-knowledge and self-attitude among students in psychodrama process. Namely, a positive relationship was found between an increase in the cognitive complexity of the self-concept and an increase in self-acceptance (r=0.53, p ≤ 0.01) and reflected self-attitude (r=0.51, p ≤ 0.01). The contrast of self-representations growth is positively connected with an increase of reflected self-attitude (r=0.58, p ≤ 0.01) and self-acceptance (r=0.55, p ≤ 0.01), as well as with a decrease of inner conflict (r = –0.45, p ≤ 0.01). The growth of self-concept integrity positively correlates with an increase of self-acceptance (r=0.57, p ≤ 0.01), reflected self-attitude (r =0.54, p ≤ 0.01) and closeness (r=0.53, p ≤ 0.01), as well as with a reduce of inner conflict ( r= –0.51, p ≤ 0.01) and self-blame (r= –0.48, p ≤ 0.01). A number of psychodrama modifications were proposed: long-term versatile building of a safe and confiding relationship space; predominance of non-verbal ways of interaction; saturation with relaxing and imaginative techniques; introspective form of psychodramatic action with elements of sociodrama; inclusion of “Self-centered” topics in the content of classes; targeted training of identification feedback etc. The results revealed a unique mechanism of psychodrama for developing the students' self-consciousness. This is the mechanism of symbolic-metaphorical replaying of a personally significant situation with the active participation of the reference group in creating a versatile positive feedback about the productive ways of the individual’s self-manifestation. The proposed modifications and techniques of psychodrama can be applied in practical work on the psychological support of students.