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The paper gives a brief introduction to existential analysis (EA). It briefly describes how to develop this phenomenological approach and its main provisions. The emotion is deemed as a specific perception of a meaningful life. Emotionality plays a significant role in the existential analysis of anthropology and practice. The former one is the cornerstone of existence, and takes its place among the other three measurements in the existential theory of the EA.

The paper presents a phenomenological description of the four-step process of the emotion emergence. It shows how during this process vitality is stimulated, so emotions are important to humans. This is an existential analytic theory of emotions, which explains the importance of the EA practice of affection feeling (fühlen) and intuitive feeling (sense, i.e. spüren). The first is related to human life and the need for the detection values, the second one is related to the authenticity and ethics. In this pater, we consider the difference between the affect and the emotion. In the last three paragraphss theyform of emotional dysfunction is fiscribed, some of the studies in this area and the main elements of emotional and affective therapy.

The paper is devoted to the concept of narrative in social psychology. The problem of lack of unity in the understanding and application of this concept in the research methods is discussed. The goal is to systemize the approaches to narrative from the perspective of the identity research. Narrative is a concept that is beginning to be widely used in the study of personality, self-perception, communication, and the study of various social practices; that is why it is necessary to determine which properties of narrative can be applied to the study of identity. The paper performs a review of four most common approaches to the narrative: narrative as a particular mode of thought (J. Bruner), narrative as a metatheoretical paradigm (T. Sarbin), narrative as a life story, narrative as one of discourse genres. The features of the narrative in each approach, as well as the main problems of research are analized. Two criteria of the narrative are discussed: specific temporal structure and transformation criterion. The following features of the concept of narrative in psychology are focused upon: discursive understanding of narrative, the importance of incorporating interactional and cultural contexts within the study of narrative, functional approach to the definition of the narrative. We discuss the potential of the narrative as a psychological construct in the study of identity and define two promising approaches to the narrative: the analysis of separate life events (e.g. turning points and complex actions) and the analysis of narration as a discursive practice and an interactional process which is sensitive to local context and to wider social practices.

The objectives of this paper are as follows: argumentation feasibility of developing structural dynamic model of emotion regulation within the theoretical and methodological framework of cultural activity paradigm of the development of human mind and promoting a psychologically-based typology of emotion regulation strategies in health and disease (Part 1), the description of the model of emotion regulation (Part 2). The paper introduces the author’s definition of emotion regulation as a set of mental processes, psychological mechanisms and regulatory strategies that are used to preserve human capacity to induce productive activity in a situation of emotional stress, to ensure optimal impulse control and emotions, to maintain the excitement at the optimum level.

In the first part, the paper summarizes the concepts and paradigms in which the problem of emotion regulation is viewed: psychoanalytic and cognitive approaches, concepts and emotional development of emotional intelligence, cultural activity approach. The paper considers the procedure model of regulating emotions by J. Gross with the release of emotion regulation strategies and efficacy assessment, analyzes its capabilities and limitations. Based on a review of the today research, the conclusion is as follows: within the existing labels on a wide range of regulatory strategies the issue of the psychological mechanisms of their use still remains open.

In the second part, the author suggests the possibilities to address this issue on the basis of the construction of structural and dynamic models of emotion regulation in the methodology of cultural activity approach to the study of the mind and capacity of this theoretical paradigm of integrated methodological approach to the experimental study of the regulation of emotions.

The interdisciplinary approach in studies of identity has to employ methods that allow to study and compare the prognostic value of diagnostic criteria of identification which are suggested within the line of various concepts. The objective of this research is to study the steadiness and correlation of identification values according to a number of criteria, and also their relationship to subjective well-being, coping strategies, and also the severity of psychopathology symptoms in subjects without mental illness. The method of “Who Am I?” by M. Kuhn and T. McPartland was completed by a quantitative Likert scale to which extent each identity is liked (emotional evaluation), is often actualized (significance), is important for the subject (psychological centrality), and is recognized by others (perceived social recognition).

The two samples, psychology students (n1=82) and adult subjects (n2=50), show sufficient consistency of identification values, impossibility to interchange the criteria, and the possibility of reliable calculation of a single indicator coherence/incoherence in evaluations identifications. Positive assessment, psychological centrality and awareness of their identities more often contribute to choosing active behavioural and cognitive coping strategies. The additional consideration of consistency in values results in better prediction of the inclination to positive reformulation, appeal to religion and focus on emotions. Relationship of the importance of identification and depression was mediated by the emotional assessment: frequent thoughts about identification prevented depression only in the subjects with positive emotional evaluation of identity. In general, the use of quantitative assessment allows us to complete the qualitative analysis of identifications by general indicators of subjective experience of identity.

An important feature of the present stage of human knowledge development is the introducing psychology in the spiritual context. An interest in the scientific community to such spiritual and psychological realities as subjectivity, individuality, personality, “spiritual I” consciousness, conscience, human morality is increasing. These concepts are united by the fact that they do not fit in the objectively oriented areas of psychology that study the general properties and regularities of mental functioning. To consider them properly we have to differentiate the diverse scientific types and processes for obtaining psychological knowledge.

The paper presents a historical and methodological review of studies on the problem of human psychology. We identified and analyzed methodological orientations of psychological human anthropology: theocentric, and sociocentric personcentric. For each of them we found certain philosophical and ideological concepts that define the fundamental principle of human in man, which were fruitfully absorbed by psychology and allowed to deploy the relevant areas of research.

Correlation of sociocentric and personcentric scientific approaches allows to raise the issue of insufficient research of theocentric methodology for the problem of human psychology. Psychological anthropology is an implementation of theocentric methodology at the present stage of rational psychological knowledge development.

Psychological anthropology has become a new methodological platform endowed with considerable heuristic potential.

The content of psychological anthropology is a description of the phenomena of the inner world of a human individual, revealing the bases and conditions for the development of subjective reality in the ontogeny. The article defines the basic categories and formulated the basic provisions of the psychological anthropology. We justified a new interpretation of the principle of development in psychology. The results of structural and content analysis of human subjectivity, normative models, marginal quality, and the superordinate form of human existence are presented.

The soul concept has been forbidden to use in the academic psychological literature for over a hundred years. It was replaced (suppressed) by the concept of “psyche”, “consciousness”, “self-esteem”, etc. The paper raises the issue of the need to reconsider the concept of human soul as the fundamental basis of human mental activity. We emphasize the multidimensional concept of soul, a number of traditional fields of theoretical and applied psychology the directly being attributed to it, for example, the study of thinking, memory, perception, sensations, emotions, etc. We discovered that among the accepted meanings of the soul (more than ten listed in the paper) only one is known to fall out of the academic and psychological requirements, namely understanding the soul in terms of “spiritual part of human beings”. The fundamental conclusion consists in the fact that the soul properly never escaped the issues of academic psychology. On the contrary, it has been in the focus of scholars. In order to differentiate between the competence of psychology and theology we propose a distinction between “inner” and “outer” psychic manifestations. Within such a divide, the “outer” side will face the entire material world almost directly and entirely meet the requirements of the subject matter of science, whereas the “inner” side is connected with psychology through the reality, habitually referred to as spirituality, which in addition to theological interpretations can be deemed in terms of moral and philosophical value sphere and intelligible reason of human existence.

This approach allowed us to consider the issue of “spiritual” and “personal” relations, to establish relationships between personality psychology and the religious and secular approaches. It is shown that without taking into account the methodological correlation with these approaches the psychological category is reduced to simply identifying personal individual features, and motivational and volitional performance.

The paper examines the phenomenon of “professional deformation” which comprises destructive personality changes that occur after many years of a career. This condition does not only produce an adverse effect on the personal productivity, but also gives rise to undesirable qualities in a person, alters his/her professional behaviour. Professional deformation may lead to changes in mental structure and personality traits (behaviour, ways of communication, stereotypes, perceptions, character, values, etc.). They are also one of the reasons that may prevent the professional development of a person.

Various concepts of the structure of professional deformation are considered. Thus, E.F. Zeer classifies professional deformation based on four levels of their manifestations, A.K. Markov considers professional deformation based on major trends, A. Pines, J. Aronson and A. Shirom understand professional deformation as a one-dimensional structure, D.V. Direndonk, W.B. Schaufeli, H.J Sixma, accounts professional deformation as a two-dimensional structure, while B. Pelman, E. Hartman, C. Maslach, S. Jackson and B.A. Farber identified three constructs of professional deformation, and G.H. Frith, A. Mims, E.F. Iwanicki, R.L. Schwab represent professional deformation as four-factor model, where in addition to emotional exhaustion and reduced professional achievements they considered depersonalization associated with work, and depersonalization associated with the recipients.

In conclusion, the domestic and foreign psychology are given lack of consensus on the structure of this condition.

In this paper, the motivation is deemed as a particular activity of living beings to provide mental support of individuals for generating activity (as the solution of generating activity problem). In the process of motivation, triggered by actualized needs or requirements of the society, the person accepts the need of conduct, chooses one of the offered activities to fulfill, selects the object of his/her behaviour, which is correspondent with the subject of need in a particular situation, finds a way of conduct to create the supraliminal motivation to work. This activity can be carried out randomly or involuntarily, with multiple operations or being reduced to automaticity (motivational habit being a skill).

Solution of the motivation problem is provided by either solution found in the evolution of species (congenital method) or by solutions found in ontogeny (motivational skills), or is being looked for “here-and-now”.

In humans, the process of motivation is correspondent with the higher mental functions, the former being constructed as a system and implemented deliberately and voluntarily. The motivation system denotes collaboration of all mental processes (emotional-volitional, and cognitive), which provides motivation to action by means of internal and external operations.

When referring motivation to action, the subject of the activity shall take into account the objects or subjects of desire that are meaningful for him/her in terms of needs, their degree of attractiveness in this particular situation, knowing the subject terms of his/her field of action, anticipating changes, having tools at disposal for further action, skills, their emotional and functional condition, and other factors. Motive is understood as a particular object or a desirewhich is meaningful for a subject in terms of necessity in this particular situation. The subject of need is the general term for anything that can meet the need.