Science of a Person: Person-Centered Approach to General Personology (or The Story of the Accident in the Noble Family of Sciences) (in Russian)

Abstract

The authors discuss "the personological project" of psychology development, proposed by Vadim Arturovich Petrovsky and Elena Borisovna Starovoytenko. Internal contradictions and weaknesses of the project are identified and explicated, the main ones are "non-systemic" (chaotic and syncretical conceptual apparatus) and "non-human" (the reduction of human being to the personality, and the personality to persona). The authors believe that personology is impossible as the integration of different paradigms, but it is possible as the integration of different concepts within any single paradigm that exists in modern psychology of personality (e.g. personology actually exists within  existential and person-centered approaches). Personology is impossible as well as the integration of different cultures, but it is possible as the integration of concepts within a single culture. In other words, the general personology as the original global project is impossible; the genesis of a general personology is possible on the basis of special personology, and such a natural ambition can be seen in each special personology (theory of personality), beginning from the psychoanalytic one. Moreover, only during the construction of the special personology (within a special scientific paradigm and a special culture) the creative integration of concepts can be real (and not just in words). Set for themselves the task of constructing a general personology before the building a special personology Vadim Arturovich Petrovsky and Elena Borisovna Starovoytenko inevitably become the hostages of the lists of diverse, contradictory concepts and strange, unfounded classifications. Neither the concept "persona," nor the concept "person,"(according to Langle) nor "personality," nor even the concept of "subject" are adequate (due to the narrowness of its denotations) for the ambitious plan of the authors of "personological project." There is only one concept commensurate to this project, and this concept is "person" (as a human being). The perspectives for the development of general personology are seen in the implementation of a holistic person-centered paradigm in relation to the fundamental, counseling and cultural psychology of personality. This area of psychology and psychological practice is positioned in the article as "the science of a person – about a person - for a person - for the sake of a person".