Symptomatics of Crisis Emotional Experience of 23 Years

Background and aim of study:

Prolonged in the indefinite calendar historical time adverse challenges (economic, political, educational, etc.) have formed the concentrated civil demand for the development of evidence-based diagnostic and prognostic differentiated approach to a person. Its essence is to take into account the specific age (calendar, biological, psychological) in the specific life space. Common references to the psychological characteristics of “broad” age periods (“junior school age”, “adolescence” etc.) lose their functional significance primarily due to the levelling the individual characteristics (examples: identifying the crisis of “13 years” and “adolescence” as “crisis”; existence of own features of 11-year-old, 12-year- old age etc.). Poor evidence-based operating the terminology only has become commonplace in the psychological science (examples: the “crisis of middle age” and, in general, the age periodization of adulthood with subjective interpretations of the duration of its intervals). Such cognitive tendencies a priori negatively affect in particular the targeted psycho-counseling activities. At the same time, they actualize systemic empirical scientific investigations aimed at determining the psychological content of symptom complexes (or features) of age-related crisis human development. The aim of the study: theoretical and empirical investigation of the genesis, structure, content of the basic symptom complexes of the experience of the age normative crisis of 23 years, or the crisis of “entering adulthood”.

Research methods:

1) organizational (longitude, comparative research); 2) theoretical (systemic and structural, historical and logical, comparative analysis of primary sources on the psychological features of age crises); 3) empirical (questionnaires, analysis of products of activity, analytical observation, biographical method, author's methods for studying the symptoms of experiences of normative crises, applied modelling); 4) mathematical (correlation analysis, data ranking).

Results:

It was empirically proven (as examples): 1. By the end of 23 years of age a person forms the final structure of the symptom complex of the 23 years crisis, which is similar to the crisis of 13 years. 2. Girls (women) have typical positive (pride in their own achievements, ability to self-assess, ability to self- control, experience of their own successes or failures, desire for independence, diligence, optimism) and negative symptoms (irritability, cunning, individualism, excessive flexibility; arrogance, envy, selfishness). They enter and leave the crisis earlier than boys (young men). Negative symptoms set concentrated in the fixed 21−23-year interval with a significant advantage over positive ones are undisguised and often demonstrative. Autonomous development of irritability is more spontaneous and is accompanied by verbal aggression. There is a direct combination of female irritability with the male one, with the claim to primacy, which denies it in young men as a typical gender trait. 3. Symptoms set of young men includes: positive (desire for independence, optimism, pride in their own achievements, ability to cooperate, experiencing their own successes or failures); negative (slander, selfishness, irritability, individualism, excessive flexibility, negativism, arrogance, laziness). 4. In both gender social situations of development, cognitive limitations progress to become typical features in the long run.

Conclusion:

1. The structure of the basic experiences of the 23 years crisis, its phase and cycle character confirms the natural sources of age development (the possibility of its reliable diagnosis and prediction using deductive and inductive conclusions and extrapolation are determined in any historical and social conditions). 2. Age-related crisis development is an objective regularity (discreteness) of a person’s life way. 3. Systematic scientific ideas about age development (as the final research theoretical and empirical product) are as follows: 1) make the basic information ground for the formation of the other areas of psychological knowledge (including psychology of management); 2) actualize the need for qualified professional activities, which content presupposes verified evidentiary knowledge, but not individual contemplative and experiential subjectivism.

DOI and UDC:

UDC: 159.942.6-053.6 DOI: 10.26697/ijes.2020.4.20

Information about the authors:

Polishchuk Valeriy Mykolayovych – Doctor of Psychological Sciences, Professor, Honored Education Worker of Ukraine, Professor of the Department of General Age and Professional Psychology, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, Kyiv, Ukraine. Research interests: age development psychology, social psychology, management psychology, theoretical and methodological problems of psychology; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1283-1640