2007. vol. 4. No. 1

The article examines the formation and dynamics of structures of subjective experience and culture. Culture is understood as an environment consisting of artificially created patterns of «affordances». The results of the research represent the evolution of implicit social representations in the period of social and economic changes in Russia. The authors describe language as a special instrument used in individuals’ reports and self-reports on results of their behaviour, with which they evaluate the significance of individual results for the community; they argue that this instrument is community-specific. They give a complex definition of culture and discern its elements and units. They also offer a systematic view of morals and make an analogy between morals as a feature of under-differentiated systems in culture, on the one side, and emotions as a feature of under-differentiated systems in the structure of subjective experience, on the other side. In contrast with this, they link law and consciousness to the high-differentiated systems of the same structures.

Gray’s theory offers arguably the best to nowadays neurophysiological explanation of personality. One of its most polemical issues is the relationships between reward sensitivity, which depends primarily on the activity of dopaminenergic brain structures, and personality constructs of Extraversion and Psychoticism. One part of the researchers, including Gray, links the high activity of dopaminenergic brain structures to Psychotism while others connect it to Extraversion. By contrast, the author argues that the high activity of dopaminenergic brain structures, which mediates the activation of behaviour, is typical of both extraverts and high Psychoticism scorers. Meantime, such feature of extraverts as their positive emotionality and sociability might depend on other mechanisms, arguably on the activity of the opiate brain system. This is illustrated by a series of empirical research that shows that the psychometric scales created for measuring behavioural activation can correlate with either Extraversion or Psychoticism depending on whether those who created these scales had considered positive emotionality an attribute of behavioural activation or not. The second series of empirical research demonstrates that under conditions of psychophysiological experiment the scale of behavioural activation (linked to Extraversion) helps detect subjects who show higher electrophysiological manifestation of emotional arousal in a reward situation. The third series of research shows that the scale of behavioural activation linked to Psychotism is one of the strongest predictors of substance use. Extraversion may also be a risk factor but it is also positively related to subjective well-being, educational aspiration, and good relationships with parents which act as protective factors for problem behaviour.

The author deduces theoretically what he defines as main tendencies of development in various spheres (such as total human activity, the system of knowledge and the human sciences) and examines them in the light of history of the last centuries. He attributes the central role in this development to the so-called information paradigm that helps reveal regularities in functioning and the evolution of systems, which include human beings, and it combines these regularities with those in the natural sciences.

Hegel argued that tragedy involves a conflict between two rules or laws that are both equally correct but cannot be reconciled. His idea can be applied to the high arts. To be considered as art, an artifact must communicate something and it must also be novel. Eventually, these laws will come into conflict. If novelty, unpredictability, or entropy must increase continually, eventually a point will be reached where they conflict with the necessity of communication. That is, entropy will be so great that art will be incomprehensible. When that point is reached the art form will become extinct. Evidence is presented showing that poetry is on the verge of extinction and that classical music, painting, and sculpture are already extinct. Art has come to its predestined end.

The author argues that, similar to the individual success in love, the writer’s or artist’s success with the public can be a stimulus for creative work. He demonstrates with figures in hand that creative work (like poetry) is a kind of self-portrait, a sincere expression of the poet’s psychology, and that the reader perceives it accordingly. He also offers a “formula of success” based on the idea of a compromise between the partners’ overlapping areas of interests and their different preferred patterns of meaning. This relates to a scientist or artist, on the one side, and society, on the other: they are involved in social games with each other similar to love games played by individuals. In these terms, creative work and love can be described identically.

The article analyses the process of psychotherapeutic counselling, which is studied by both qualitative and quantitative methods. The author uses «narrative» for an objective indicator of counselling dynamic and «the subject of life span» to characterise the psychological component of changes that the client in counselling undergoes through. The author discusses the theoretical context of both categories, narrative and the subject’s position, and describes their elements. She gives the results of an empirical study that show a connection between the changes in the subject’s position and narrative in the process of counselling.

This is a study of the phenomenon of so-called group psychological defence in the organisational framework and, in particular, in connection with the culture of organisation. The author examines various aspects of the relationship between the defence activity of a group within the organisation and the organisation’s culture. He also discusses some prospects for further studies of group psychological defence in relation to organisations.