Self-Discovery in Adolescence as a Means of Pre-Adaptation to Adulthood

Abstract

The article considers one of the applied tasks of personality psychology — finding the means of pre-adaptation of youth to adulthood, to life in an uncertain and rapidly changing world. The phenomena of behavior associated with an incomplete representation of the personality about itself, creating difficulties on the path of pre-adaptation, are described; the question of self-knowledge as a means of forming a more complete picture of oneself and one’s future is raised.The question is raised about the psychological means of motivating young people to the process of self-knowledge, allowing both to diagnose existing psychological problems and to make them the subject of awareness. The «life line» is considered as the subject of self-knowledge: an idea of the key events of one’s past, present and future; ways to solve psychological problems of the present, the connection between past actions and planned actions in the future.The drawing technique of depicting key events of their past, present and future on students of a psychological university is tested; the «types» of the drawings presented are highlighted, recommendations are given on the interpretation of the drawings and the procedure for discussing them with students.The procedure of group discussion of ways to solve psychological problems of students related to the present is tested, the types of behavior of students in the process of group discussion are highlighted, the procedure of reflection of this lesson with students is described. The procedure of conducting a lesson and reflecting on its results on remembering past actions and planning actions for the future is being tested, its psychotherapeutic effect is noted.It is stated that the result of students’ self-knowledge according to the proposed scheme was not only the students’ awareness of their psychological problems and related needs, but also the causal dependencies between the events of their lives.