Personality in a group: social identity. Social psychological qualities of personality. Relations in a social group as a subject of work for a leader.

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Identity

(English identity < Latin identitás) - the property of a person’s psyche to express in a concentrated form how he imagines his belonging to various social, economic, national, professional, linguistic, political, religious, racial and other groups or other communities , or identifying oneself with this or that person as the embodiment of the properties inherent in these groups or communities.

Use in psychology

Ego-identity
[1] - E. Erikson's term - personality integrity; the identity and continuity of our Self, despite the changes that occur to us in the process of growth and development (I am the same).
Identity crisis (English)Russian
- Loss of ego identity. In such a state, a person's integrity, identity, and belief in his social role disappear or decrease. Existential identity is considered in the works of D. Bugental, “The Science of Being Alive” (English: The search for existential identity).

There are many and different definitions of identification and identity. V. P. Zinchenko, B. G. Meshcheryakov in the “Psychological Dictionary” [2], suggest different meanings of identification. Including:

in the psychology of cognitive processes - this is recognition, establishing the identity of an object;
in psychoanalysis - a process as a result of which an individual, thanks to emotional connections, behaves (or imagines himself leading) as if he himself were the person with whom this connection exists;
in social psychology - an individual’s identification of himself with another person, the subject’s direct experience of one or another degree of his identity with an object;
likening oneself (usually unconsciously) to a significant other (for example, a parent) as a model of behavior based on an emotional connection with him;
identifying oneself with a character in a work of art, thanks to which one penetrates into the semantic content of the work and its aesthetic experience;
a psychological defense mechanism consisting of unconscious assimilation to an object that causes fear or anxiety;
projection, attributing one’s traits, motives, thoughts and feelings to another person;
group identification - identification of oneself with any (large or small) social group or community, acceptance of its goals and values, awareness of oneself as a member of this group or community;
in engineering and legal psychology - recognition, identification of any objects (including people), assigning them to a certain class or recognition based on known characteristics.

Key Takeaways: Personal Identification

The spread of identity seems obvious when a person does not strive for an identity and does not try to create it. Many people tend to experience a period of identity breakdown during childhood or early adolescence until they eventually grow out of this period. However, long-term diffusion of identity seems quite possible.

James Marcia identified four “identity statuses.” These identity statuses are a continuation of Erik Erikson's work on adolescent personality development. Identity diffusion and other identity statuses are an extension of Erik Erikson's ideas regarding personality development during adolescence. James Marcia created statuses as a way to empirically test Erikson's theoretical ideas.

According to Erikson's stage theory, Stage 5 during adolescence shapes a person's identity. According to Erikson, the main crisis of this stage is identity versus role confusion. This is a period of time when teenagers are actually figuring out their own identity and future prospects. If this does not happen, there are risks of entering into a state of confusion regarding the task of one's own place in this world.

James Marcia explored identity formation in two dimensions:

1) a person goes through a period of decision-making (crisis period).

2) a person’s adoption of a specific professional choice (ideological belief).

In particular, Marcia's focus on occupation and ideology stems from Erikson's assertions that occupation and commitment to certain values (beliefs) are fundamental parts of identity. Since Marcia first proposed personality statuses, these statuses have been the subject of global research, especially with the participation of college students.

Types of identities

Some researchers divide the entire set of identities into natural ones, which do not require organized participation in their reproduction, and artificial ones, constantly in need of organized maintenance. The first include such identities as ethnic, racial, territorial (landscape), global, and species. The second category includes such identities as national, professional, contractual, confessional, regional, (sub)continental, class, class, zodiac, group, stratification. Some identities are mixed, such as gender[3].

Characteristics of Diffusion Identity

People in a state of identity diffusion do not go through a period of decision making and do not make any firm commitments. These people may have never experienced a period of crisis while exploring possibilities for their future. On the other hand, it is possible that a period of research will go through, but without making decisions.

Diffuse identities are passive and live without taking into account their own current belonging and desires for the future. As a result, the goals of such individuals are not to experience pain, but to experience pleasure. Diffuse identities tend to lack self-esteem, are externally oriented, have lower levels of autonomy, and have low personal responsibility for their lives.

Research on identity diffusion shows that these people tend to feel isolated and even withdrawn from this world. In one of his studies, James Donovan found that people who spread personality are suspicious of others and believe that those close to them do not understand them. Such people often resort to a mechanism for overcoming misunderstandings - secluding themselves in their own fantasies.

Some teenagers' identity projection may resemble obvious slackers or academic laggards. Adolescents whose identity is widespread in the area of ideology may demonstrate a similar lack of attention and commitment in the area of politics, religion, and other worldviews. For example, a teenager approaching voting age is often unable to express preferences between candidates from different parties in upcoming elections and does not consider the political perspective of these candidates.

Ethnic identity

Main article: Ethnicity

Ethnic identity is a derivative of ethnocentrism as a principle of self-organization of perception when it identifies in others certain properties that require ethno-identification. Ethnic identity is expressed in a set of behavioral automatisms with their characteristic speech characteristics and gestures. It, accordingly, manifests itself in the role repertoire of the individual and is formed primarily in the early stages of its socialization as something that is common to all speakers of a given language and a given ethnoculture[4]. Ethnic identity is attracting increasing attention from researchers in the modern world, with its ever-increasing mixture of different ethnic groups as an ambiguous process in which both centripetal and centrifugal forces operate.

The materials of the dictionary entry in V. I. Dahl’s dictionary show the signs of a “Russian person” as they are perceived by Russians themselves. Dahl understood well that a language has many units in which a person’s understanding of his culture is enshrined, including when he determines his ethnicity[5].

When do people grow out of personality diffusion?

People are capable of moving from one identity status to another, so identity expansion is not usually a permanent state. This phenomenon is normal for children and adolescents who are going through a period of identity expansion.

Until they reach adolescence, children often do not have a clear idea of themselves and their own preferences. As a rule, only at the stage of middle and older age do people begin to study interests, worldviews and perspectives more closely. As a result, the process of future vision of the individual begins.

However, research has shown that long-term diffusion of identity is possible. For example, a study that assessed personality status at ages 27, 36, and 42 showed an interesting result. Many participants, who were in different walks of life, including professional, religious, and political, at age 27 remained consistent in their identity until the reference age of 42.

Additionally, a 2020 study found that people who remained in the spread personality status at age 29 actually slowed down their lives. Either actively avoided or failed to explore opportunities or invest in options such as work and relationships. Such individuals viewed the world as random and unpredictable, and therefore refrained from developing a further direction for their lives.

Source

Notes

Wed. also Onto In-se in the terminology of ontopsychology
Zinchenko V. P., Meshcheryakov B. G.
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Natural and artificial identities
Speech communication: Problems and prospects: Sat. scientific-analytical reviews. M., 1983, p. 192-193.
Farkhutdinova F.V. Such a simple and understandable word Russian... // Bulletin of the Russian Language Council under the head of the administration of the Ivanovo region. Ivanovo, 2003. No. 1-3

Wiktionary has an entry for
"identity"

Literature

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Identity: sameness and integrity

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As already noted, identity is a feeling of acquisition, adequacy and personal ownership of one’s own “I”, regardless of changing situations. E. Erikson, whose works made the concept of identity one of the central ones in personality psychology, connects adolescence and adolescence with an identity crisis, which “...occurs at that period of the life cycle when every young person must develop from the effective elements of childhood and hopes associated with foreseeable coming of age, one’s main prospects and path, that is, a certain working integrity; he must identify significant similarities between how he expects to see himself and what his heightened senses indicate others expect from him” (1996, pp. 33-34).

A teenager who has acquired the ability to generalize, and then a young man, is faced with the task of combining everything he knows about himself as a schoolchild, friend, athlete, storyteller, etc. He must collect all these roles into a single whole and comprehend , connect with the past and project into the future. If a young person successfully copes with the task of finding an identity, then he will have a sense of who he is, where he is and where he is going. Otherwise, role confusion or identity confusion occurs. Thus, according to E. Erikson, identity is understood as a person’s identity with himself (the immutability of personality in space, including in the space of social roles) and integrity (continuity of personality over time).

Discussing the problem of identity in relation to children growing up outside the family, we note the following. Most researchers see the main reason for the development of a negative “I-concept” and confused identity in children raised outside the family in the fact that a child from an institution from early childhood does not deal with several constantly present loving and caring adults, which for the child is usually the mother , father, grandmothers, grandfathers, and with many constantly changing adults, very different both in the characteristics of their behavior and in the nature of their emotional attitude towards the child.

Since the “I-concept” in early childhood is formed primarily on the basis of a person’s reflection in the “social mirror,” i.e., on the basis of how he is treated, what other people see in him, then in the case of multiplicity, the multiplication of such mirrors , discrepancies in the reflections in them in the child and the child does not develop a sense of self-identity, identity.

Speaking about integrity as an important aspect of identity, it should also be said that it is acquired with great difficulty by children from children's institutions. We have already written above about the specifics of the development of the time perspective of the future in children from a boarding school. Now let us pay attention to the role played by these children’s idea of their past and their attitude towards their past. J. Langmeyer and Z. Matejcek, whose book we have already repeatedly referred to, observed how orphans developed in the so-called family orphanages and children's villages. The excerpt below from this book presents their views on this matter. “It’s amazing how little children entering family groups know about themselves and their past. They usually have some very vague ideas about their own family, and then only impressions of their stay in the institution. This is insignificant compared to what children from families know, where photo albums record the past of the whole family, furniture bears traces of children's hands, traditions are manifested in everything that happens in the house, and funny children's stories from the child's past life are repeated again and again. repeated at the family table. The past is clear and constantly present. On the contrary, uncertainty about one’s own past and the reasons for one’s own “social” orphaning emerged as a factor preventing the creation of one’s own identity. The struggle for a new identity is apparently one of the main problems of children during the period of correction of deprivation. Therefore, it was necessary to explain to the children in the village in a simple and understandable form, but mostly truthfully, how things were with them before and how things are now. This usually contributed significantly to calming the child and balancing him out. It can be seen that going beyond the boundaries of the present, in which these children almost exclusively lived, and going in both directions, into the past and into the future, represents a condition for acquiring new life confidence and a new identity, and thereby a condition for escaping from the vicious circle of mental deprivation "(1984, pp. 279-280).

Let us give a story from the life of one family orphanage, in which a married couple with two natural daughters took in five more orphans. The children feel very good in this house, they consider it theirs, they happily do all the household chores, they love to ride on dad’s tractor, go to the store with mom, etc. The only thing they don’t like is to look at family albums, in which there is dad, here is a mother, here is one daughter (native), here is another (also dear). “Where am I?” - says the 6-year-old foster boy and slams the album shut. And this despite the fact that he is aware of his past, he has his own last name, he knows the names of his father and mother. Other adopted children behave in a similar way.

The importance of the subjective past in the development of a person’s personality and the formation of his identity is often underestimated. Educators and foster parents, knowing how difficult, often almost unbearable, the past of their pupils was, with the best intentions they try not to remember it, with all their might to distract the child from memories of him, to emphasize that his life begins anew, “with a clean slate” . This, however, should under no circumstances be done, because a person cannot live without the past. Repressed, unreflected, as if forgotten, it actually does not go anywhere, but remains alien, hostile, tearing the personality apart. Identity as integrity, continuity in time is unattainable on this path. It follows from this that no matter how difficult and joyless the child’s past may be, he must remember it. Adults must take care to help the child recover these memories, process them and include them in a holistic subjective experience.

Therefore, if a child wants to tell an adult something about his past, you must always listen to him very carefully and support this story. Children often tell the same stories over and over again. And every time they must be listened to with utmost attention and affection for the child. It is necessary to carefully and respectfully store photographs and things that connect the child with home, and, if possible, visit the places where he used to live. Often (again for the best reasons) adults want to correct the child’s ideas about his past - to make them more realistic or less traumatic. But this should not be done either, since the child must experience and understand the past as his personal and inviolable property.

One of our colleagues, who at the age of five during the Great Patriotic War was left an orphan and ended up in an orphanage, already as an elderly man recalled the “family” album of the orphanage group, in which photographs of their parents, relatives, those killed and those at the front were pasted in, including family members of teachers. “Often in the evenings,” he said, “we looked at this album in silence (sometimes all together, sometimes in a small group or alone). We couldn't talk about our loved ones, it didn't work out. But when we leafed through the pages of this album, a completely special feeling arose. This feeling is very difficult to define. Now I would say, paraphrasing Hamlet, that “the connecting thread of days” was being restored, no matter how pompous it may sound.”

Gender identity

An essential component of identity is the so-called gender identity.

Gender identity is the experience of oneself as a person of a certain gender. Unlike gender role, which reflects external signs of behavior patterns and attitudes that allow other people to judge the extent to which someone is male or female, gender identity characterizes the internal, deeply personal experience of oneself as a person of a particular gender. An essential component of gender identity is sexual, or gender, identity, which reflects a person’s idea of his sexual preferences (hetero-, homo- or bisexual). Gender identity and gender role do not always coincide for the same person.

Gender identity, like identity in general, can be viewed in terms of sameness and integrity. In other words, we can say that acquiring gender identity presupposes, on the one hand, the integration of various gender roles (woman as a mother, woman as a wife, girl in love, friend, etc.), and on the other hand, the creation of a holistic idea of oneself as a person of one or another gender in the past, present and future (girl - girl - woman, boy - boy - man). It is also important that a person’s self-image is confirmed by the appropriate attitude towards him of significant others - peers and adults. The latter is important for the construction of identity in general, but takes on a special meaning in the context of the formation of gender identity.

Achieving gender identity for children from closed children's institutions is associated with significant problems. There is very little concrete data in the literature on this topic. Among the few scientifically described facts is an analysis of the consequences of children staying in fascist concentration camps. These most severe cases of social and maternal deprivation are called “camp deprivation.” The German psychologist G. Biermann, who studied this phenomenon, in particular, notes that, having become adults, many of the former child prisoners were not able to take on the responsibilities of a mature person, realize themselves in love and marriage, or give their children a complete life from a psychological point of view. upbringing, which led to emotional deprivation from generation to generation, i.e. the emergence of “psychopathology of the second generation” (cited from: J. Langmeyer, Z. Matejcek, 1984).

The consequences of extreme forms of deprivation are, in principle, comparable to the consequences of the deprivation experienced by modern pupils of our children's institutions, although, of course, their degrees are different. “Psychopathology of the second generation,” which manifests itself in the difficulties of creating their own family and raising their own children for those who suffered from maternal deprivation, is noted by those teachers, teachers of orphanages and boarding schools who are interested in the adult life of their pupils. While conducting our research at the boarding school, we were also interested in the subsequent fate of its students. With rare exceptions, they are unhappy in their family life, have great difficulty entering the parental family of their husband or wife, have many problems communicating with their spouse, and their marriages often turn out to be fragile. And all this despite the fact that in childhood, adolescence, and adolescence, almost all of them dream of creating a good family and having children. Let's try to figure out the reasons.

Problems of developing gender identity manifest themselves in one way or another at all stages of personal development. We, for example, observed that already in preschool and primary school age children do not play role-playing games in which female and male roles are played (they, and we discussed this above, practically do not play role-playing games at all), although there is a strong opinion that this kind of game is almost innate. One can relate to the last remark one way or another, but in modern psychology the thesis seems indisputable that role-playing games such as “Mother and Daughter”, “Into the Family”, “Into the War”, “Barbie and Ken”, etc., are such , which emphasize the differences in the behavior of men and women, are extremely important for the development of gender roles and the formation of gender identity. Let us note that both girls and boys can play both male and female roles. For example, in the game “Mothers and Daughters” a girl can play not only the role of a mother, grandmother or daughter, but also the role of a father, and a boy, say, the role of a daughter. The important thing is that in all cases, behavior patterns corresponding to a certain gender role are mastered. Moreover, mastering this happens literally effortlessly. One cannot help but recall A.S. Pushkin here:

“...with an obedient doll child

Prepared in jest

To decency, to the law of light,

And it’s important to repeat to her

Lessons from your mother"1.

The underdevelopment of role-playing among boarding school students has multiple reasons. One of them is the lack of appropriate gender models of behavior, both female and especially male. Among the pupils of orphanages and boarding schools there are children who, in fact, are completely unfamiliar with models of male behavior, because almost from birth they grew up in a purely female environment - nannies, teachers, etc. We had the opportunity for quite a long time observe several boys, primary school students, in whose behavior this was clearly visible. Thus, in their speech they often confused the gender of the verb (“I went”, “I said”), several times we saw them put on girls’ clothes - skirts, aprons, etc., and willingly chose specifically girlish activities - embroidery, watering flowers, creating coziness in the group room, etc. In conversations, speaking about their future, they essentially described their future gender role as that of a woman and mother, dreaming of raising children, becoming teachers and nurses. It should be specially noted that both the appearance of boys and their actual behavior during puberty, which we also had the opportunity to observe several years later, indicated that there was no natural basis for such preferences.

In orphanages one can often observe a craze among pupils - both girls and boys - for such purely feminine activities as embroidery and knitting. Undoubtedly, these activities in themselves are good. They develop fine motor skills, visual-kinesthetic coordination, artistic taste, etc. And undoubtedly, a hobby like that of the Swedish king, who proudly showed his embroidery to the first female ambassador, A. M. Kollontai, is possible. However, in cases where female occupations predominate among boys, and they do not have the opportunity to choose their own occupations, learn from someone to plan, saw, or repair a car, this becomes dangerous precisely for the formation of gender identity. This subtle point is practically not taken into account by educators. They simply loved such activities and shared their skills and interests with their students, both girls and boys.

Problems of developing gender identity manifest themselves most clearly during puberty. Practical teachers unanimously note that the main problems and difficulties of this period are associated with the sexual behavior of adolescents, compared with such difficulties as poor academic performance, indiscipline, etc. According to them (and research data confirm this), students begin to have sex early , often find themselves involved in sexual crimes, concern for their appearance for many, especially girls, results in an excessive emphasis on their sexual potency. Let us note that the desire to emphasize one’s sexual attractiveness is completely normal for adolescents of both sexes, although it often frightens both parents and educators, who seem to forget that at one time they did the same thing, only by other means. It is often new forms that are frightening - a naked navel with a piercing, a ring in the nose, multi-colored hair, etc. Let us cite the memories of a “former teenager”, and later a famous rock musician in the USA, Dee Snider. “Parents, pay attention: you don’t need a lot of money to dress a teenager in fashion. One pair of jeans is enough. And one shirt or blouse - but fashionable. What seems like a “charming dress” to you can cause bitter tears, because in this very school no one - do you understand? - NOBODY wears frilly frills.

When I was 15 years old, I started growing my hair out - it half covered my ears and curled slightly at the back of my head. But my father is a policeman and a man of very conservative views. One fine day he ordered: “Do it like this!” - and pointed to the top of his head. My father had a short military haircut, which would look the part today, but back then, in the era of hippies and long hair, I might as well have had “CRUTIN” tattooed on my forehead. And here I am, with a boxer’s haircut, and it’s only the second week of the school year. The obstruction was complete. Even the few people I considered friends laughed and called me “pod” and “bald.” The neighbors grumbled, the dogs growled, the prices of houses in our neighborhood went down - well, maybe not, but it seemed so to me. I burst into tears, and my father could not understand why. (“Yes, he’s a total slobber!”) “I’m a freak,” I kept repeating. - I'm long, skinny and with big ears. Nobody loves me." To be honest, long hair wouldn't have solved the problem anyway, but in my opinion, it was the only way to improve the situation at least a little. Hair meant to me the same thing as to the biblical Samson,1 and my father deprived me of my only dignity.

And then my father found the courage to look at me from the outside and intently. And I saw not a child, a son whom I had always loved, but a nasty teenager with a breaking voice and acne. And then he realized what he had done. And he never forced me to cut my hair again, and I didn’t cut my hair” (1997, pp. 28-29).

The problems of boarding school pupils boil down to the fact that such emphasis, normal for their age, is often carried out in inappropriate ways, ineptly, deliberately, tastelessly, which is aggravated by the lack of truly fashionable clothes, cosmetics, the opportunity to use the services of a good hairdresser, etc. We believe extremely It is important in boarding schools to conduct special classes with pupils (call it “image club”, “cool girls”, “baubles”, “hammer” or something else), where you can talk about your appearance and actually learn how to do makeup, walking beautifully, finding your own style in clothes and hairstyle. The person leading such classes can be invited from the outside (hairdresser, fashion designer, image maker, etc.), but it can also be one of the employees of an orphanage or boarding school, whom teenagers recognize as stylish. Let us recall, as an example, the secretary Verochka from E. Ryazanov’s film “Office Romance,” who taught her strict boss how to walk, what to wear and what eyebrows to wear.

Often, educators also complain about such “monstrous” facts of the behavior of teenage boys, who in the shower and bedroom compare the size of their penises to almost a centimeter. Adults must understand that, despite all the outward savagery, this is often a way for a boy to understand and really evaluate whether he is developing normally as a man. Girls essentially do the same thing, comparing what breast size someone has, only outwardly it looks more harmless, since it concerns secondary sexual characteristics. Let us recall that fears about one’s appearance, its compliance with the standard to which a group of peers is measured, are among the most common and strong fears of adolescents. We can't resist quoting another passage from Dee Snyder's book. “As a teenager, you experience morning torment in front of the mirror. What other gift did Mother Nature give you today? The body and face that you have already become accustomed to suddenly begin to change at a monstrous speed. Sometimes you are sure that Mother Nature is a real sadist, because otherwise she wouldn’t have stuck this pimple on your forehead, you can see it from a hundred kilometers away, it’s not a pimple at all, it’s a horn growing! Only this was not enough yet! Moreover, the pimple certainly pops out on the day when you have a date, or when you have to read a report in front of the whole class, or, best of all, when the photographer is supposed to come to take the annual class photo. And then you come home and find another one - healthy and red. Dear Lord! How long can this continue” (1997, pp. 29-30).

According to the famous Russian psychologist E. T. Sokolova, teenagers who are especially dissatisfied with their appearance are at risk for mental illness and emotional and personal disorders.

There is a widespread point of view that directly connects the problems of adolescence described above with puberty, puberty. However, it is extremely important to consider this line of development in a broader context, including not only biological, but also psychological and social aspects, because only such a context will give the opportunity to understand why problems related to sexual development are so accentuated in children raised outside the family. L. I. Bozhovich analyzes this problem deeply and subtly. “During this period, a new and very powerful biological need—sexual desire—appears for the first time and becomes the subject of consciousness and experience of the adolescent. Of course, deprivation of this drive can frustrate a teenager and thereby explain some of the features of his well-being and behavior. At the same time, it must be taken into account that sexual desire, like all other biological needs of a person, acquires a qualitatively different, indirect character in the process of development. Just as, for example, the need for stimuli necessary for the development of brain systems first becomes a need for external impressions, and then a need for active cognitive activity, so sexual desire in the course of its development takes the form of human love. Arising during the pubertal period, it enters into the structure of psychological new formations already existing in the adolescent (various interests, moral and aesthetic feelings, views and assessments), forming together with them this kind of attitude towards the other sex, in which sexual desire, as a rule, does not occupy dominant position... After all, factors of both biological and social order do not directly determine development; they are included in the development process itself, becoming internal components of the resulting psychological formations” (1979b, p. 24).

We quoted this fragment in such detail because it expresses with utmost clarity the theoretical ideas we share about the development of the motivational sphere, which make it possible to understand the manifested hypersexuality of boarding school students. In this scientific context, it is explained not by the fact that their sexual desire is simply biologically stronger (there is a strong tendency to associate the sexual promiscuity of pupils with bad heredity: “What do you want from him/her - the mother is a prostitute”), but not by the fact that that the necessary internal prohibitions and taboos have not been formed (as boarding school workers often told us: “They just don’t know what is possible and what is not”), and not with the “bad examples” they saw in childhood. The bottom line is that at the time of puberty, a teenager from a boarding school often does not have new psychological formations - interests, values, moral and aesthetic feelings - that could compete in strength and significance with the awakened sexual desire. Unmediated by cultural psychological structures, sexual desire becomes an “uncultured” need in such a teenager, absolutely dominant in the absence of competition.

It is interesting to see how the sexual sphere enters into the “I-image” of a teenager. As already noted (see Table 2.7), if in a regular school statements about one’s attractiveness to peers of the opposite sex, one’s sexuality are very rare, in a boarding school they are perhaps the most common. Since the “image of the self” is a value-differentiating formation, the very inclusion of the characteristics of one’s sexual attractiveness in it means that it is through these characteristics that a teenager determines both his own value and his difference from other people. The importance of the sexual aspect of the “self-image” is explained, in particular, by the fact that it allows boarding school students to increase their sense of their own worth - after all, in sex they are no worse than others. That is why, having sexual relations early, they are not only not ashamed, but are proud of them. If for some reason a boy or girl “turns out to be unclaimed” as sexual partners, this becomes a reason for serious worries.

Let us describe such a case. One of the orphanage teachers was accused of cohabiting with a seventh-grader. The girl did not deny it at all, but, on the contrary, proudly told everyone about this connection. It should be noted that the teacher in question was young, handsome and very popular - literally the favorite of the entire orphanage. The case went to court, and everything could have ended badly if the lawyer had not demanded a medical examination of the girl, who turned out to be a virgin. Subsequently, she herself admitted that stories about an intimate relationship with her teacher allowed her to prove to everyone that she was no worse than others.

Domestic psychologist T. I. Yufereva conducted a special study in a boarding school devoted to studying the ideas of teenagers 13-15 years old about modern men and women, which, according to the author, reflected their views on masculinity/femininity. These ideas reproduced the opinions of adolescents about the motives of behavior, value orientations, ideal models of behavior of men and women, and their negative characteristics. To do this, T.I. Yufereva, in particular, analyzed the essays of teenagers from a boarding school and from a regular school on the topic “What do I imagine modern men and women to be like” (see Mental development of orphanage pupils, 1990). The instructions specifically emphasized that ordinary men and women should be described, and not literary characters, heroic personalities, etc. Content analysis of the received material made it possible to identify eight categories in which adolescents’ understanding of masculinity/femininity was manifested:

1) appearance;

2) attitude towards people (regardless of their gender);

3) attitude towards a woman (man);

4) business, professional qualities;

5) intelligence, abilities;

6) traditional understanding of masculinity (strength, courage, will) and femininity (tenderness, softness, compliance);

7) the role of a woman/man in the family (wife, mother, husband, father);

love-sexual relationships.

The results revealed significant differences between adolescents from a public school and from a boarding school. Let's start with teenagers' descriptions of the “modern man.” It was found that for the first in a modern man, the most significant are his roles as a father, a husband (this category of statements in terms of the frequency of its use has the highest, first, rank): “I believe that a man should be the head of the family in everything (it’s nice to see a man standing in line at a store taking things to the laundry). He should also be involved in raising children and should be a clear example for them.” Boarding school students write about this very rarely.

For boarding school students, when describing a man, the first place is the attitude towards other people (regardless of their gender): “In my opinion, a man is like this: he should be decent, responsive to the people around him” and appearance characteristics: “A modern man should be neat, decent dressed, tall, broad-shouldered." In family children, these categories are much less common.

In both groups of teenagers, statements about a man’s intelligence and abilities also have a fairly high rank (III-IV): “I will never love a man who is not smart. I will forgive him everything for his intelligence.”

Based on the analysis of the material, the author identifies two standards of masculinity - positive and negative, the content of which is different for adolescents from the family and the boarding school. For teenagers from a family, the positive standard includes a large number of various emotionally rich characteristics (educated, intelligent, courageous, with a strong character, businesslike, able to behave in society, involved in some kind of sport, knowledgeable about modern music and interested in it, etc.). At the same time, the negative standard is poor, emotionally neutral and essentially reproduces the opinions of adults.

For boarding school students the picture is the opposite. The positive standard is poor, sketchy and mainly consists of moral requirements and requirements for appearance: “Men should be strong, brave, kind. Should not drink alcoholic beverages. A man should look after a woman, especially if he is married, and not allow the woman to be hit. He must be restrained and not swear.” The negative standard, on the contrary, is emotionally rich, diverse, and extremely specific. The core of the negative standard for the vast majority of students is alcoholism: “I would like to see men as athletes, handsome, strong, well dressed. I wouldn’t like to see drunk, dirty people who have forgotten everything except vodka.”

The ideas about a modern woman are formed among boarding school students in the same logic as the image of a man. Character, attitude towards other people, appearance are described. This image is complemented by a description of the woman as a wife and mother:

♦ “I would like to see a woman with a kind spirit and an eternal smile”;

♦ “A woman should be beautiful, slim, long-haired, and take care of her appearance”;

♦ “It happens that some women have a child who walks around dirty and unwashed. And there are women who are without a husband, but the child is clean, washed, and studies well.”

For family children, in the image of a woman, the idea of her as a wife and mother comes to the fore. Erudition, interests, intelligence, appearance and attitude towards other people are also significant:

♦ “I would like to see a woman who could create a joyful, relaxed atmosphere in the family and would be a true friend and helper to her husband”;

♦ “Mother, sister, wife - a good adviser, an attentive housewife”;

♦ “A woman is smart, well versed and loves music, dances well, dresses fashionably, beautifully, elegantly, raises children, goes to the movies and theaters, reads a lot, knows how to cook deliciously, sew and knit.”

Boarding school students identify alcoholism and poor performance of parental responsibilities as negative characteristics of a modern woman, just like men:

♦ “I don’t want a young woman to smoke, much less drink”;

♦ “I would like to see a woman who is beautiful, non-smoking, non-drinking, and loves her family.”

Among mass school students, almost all negative characteristics of a woman relate to her appearance:

♦ “Painted peahen”;

♦ “Dress the same as men.”

Thus, among teenagers from mass schools, family life occupies a large place in their ideas about modern men and women, and these ideas are filled with many specific positive characteristics. For boarding school students, in the descriptions of modern men and women, everything related to the family occupies a much more modest place; the corresponding descriptions are also distinguished, on the one hand, by poverty, abstraction and schematism of positive characteristics, and on the other, by the detail and emotional intensity of negative ones .

The ideas about masculinity/femininity among boarding school students, as in a mirror, reflect a key circumstance for the normal development of gender identity - the lack of adequate models for identification. Moreover, while students can still find models of behavior (primarily professional) of men and women by observing the behavior of the adults around them, they simply have nowhere to take samples of the real behavior of husbands and wives, mothers and fathers. Experts in the field of family psychology emphasize that people in their families, as a rule, reproduce the model of the parental family, repeating in behavior - directly or “exactly the opposite” - the paternal and/or maternal model. One cannot escape the impression that in the above statements by teenagers from a boarding school, the negative traits of modern men and women are drawn from the life of the parental family and immediate social environment. One cannot discount the fact that, while discussing their lives with each other, they somehow exchanged their experiences of living in a family, which for such children is almost invariably negative.

In the studies of T.I. Yufereva, conducted in the 80s of the 20th century, they studied primarily the conscious and verbalized ideas of adolescents about some typical male and female character traits and behavior patterns.

It is interesting to compare these data with the results of studying gender identity presented in the recent work of E. A. Sergienko and A. N. Pugacheva (2002). The authors studied girls aged 14-17 who grew up in a family and in an orphanage. The work used both verbal and drawing methods. According to the authors, this makes it possible to correlate ideas about the female role, motherhood, and future family life at conscious and unconscious levels. The results of this study generally confirmed the data obtained by T. I. Yufereva. A number of new facts were also discovered. The majority of girls from orphanages have a feminine type of gender identity (55%), and 40% have an androgynous one. The picture is different for girls from families: 45% - androgynous, 30% - feminine, 25% - masculine type of gender identity.

According to the authors, it is the androgynous type of gender identity that is the most adaptive, since the combination of masculine and feminine traits allows a person to show greater flexibility and plasticity in behavior, to use different strategies for life problems. The authors also believe that the demands of modern society contribute to greater masculinization of behavior. From this point of view, teenage girls from the family, according to the results obtained by the authors, are more consistent with modern requirements: they strive to become more independent, assertive, self-sufficient, and strong. Such masculinization of gender attitudes, manifested at the verbal level, is combined with a high expression of feminine traits, which is especially clearly manifested in the drawings. Adolescent girls who grew up in conditions of family deprivation, on the contrary, have more feminized gender attitudes, which manifest themselves at the verbal level, against the background of a lower expression of their feminine traits, which is manifested in drawings. Their drawings show a high rate of disharmonious features (50% of orphan girls limited themselves to depicting their portraits, while 100% of the girls from the family drew themselves entirely). The authors associate this with the presence of social-role conflicts and impaired development of the “self-image”. The tendency to ignore one's femininity and the inability to reveal one's sexuality are combined in orphan girls with persistent low self-esteem and an unformed “self-image,” especially in its gender-role aspect.

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