SELF-ACCEPTANCE: FROM PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS TO THE CHARACTERISTICS OF A SUBJECT

In experimental psychology, the problem of non-acceptance of oneself, one’s environment, and the world around is one of the relevant issues. The author notes that the accepted in contemporary society popular opinions associated with self-acceptance often have manipulative or prescriptive nature and are the negative attitudes blocking the person activity and leading to its stagnation. The resolution of the stereotyped image of this phenomenon is possible from the perspective of historical-theoretical analysis of the study of self-acceptance. The paper presents various approaches to the understanding of self-acceptance by foreign and Russian psychologists within such psychology areas as neofreidism, gestalt-psychology, existential, and humanistic psychology. The author considers the changes in the study of self-acceptance, notes that despite different views of classical psychologists on the understanding of this phenomenon, they define self-acceptance as an active process promoting self-improvement and self-actualization of a person. This fact conflicts with the latent meaning of widespread life theses on self-acceptance. The paper emphasizes the possibility to study self-acceptance from the perspective of the subject approach as a phenomenon initiating the activity of a person in organization and regulation of own life activities, promoting further development of a person, its self-actualization. The author considers the controversial characteristics of self-acceptance as a subject characteristic: self-acceptance allows changing from self-understanding to self-improvement, at the same time, the high level of self-acceptance requires a particular level of development of the personal agency. The author notes the paradoxical understanding of the self-acceptance phenomenon largely within the frames of positive self-attitude, which can promote the “Self” image idealism and lead to intrapersonal regress.