The author traces the development of the subject category in the school of the Russian philosopher and psychologist, S.L. Rubinstein. According to the author, Rubinstein transformed the Hegelian category of the subject, which signified a source of activity, self-determined motion and self-development, into an ontological one. In the work of Rubinstein's followers, its meaning went through a number of stages. The author comes to a conclusion that what is often perceived as psychology' crisis — its seemingly contradictory tendencies — are due in fact to the spread of a new, «subject paradigm», or the subject as a new methodological principle.