The Problem of Personal Wholeness in the Works of L. I. Antsyferova: Processual Approach

The center of L.I. Antsyferova scientific interests was always the personality problem. The article discusses one of the fundamental principles of her approach — the idea of personal wholeness. Antsyferova’s methodology is based on the implementing the ideas of a processual-dynamic approach in the field of personality psychology. It is the dynamic characteristics of the personality, in her opinion, that ensure the variability and development. One of her fundamentals is the idea of personality as a continuously developing wholeness. The novelty of her approach is associated with the understanding wholeness as not just a mechanism for maintaining integration, but also as developing and “finishing” itself to a new level of integrity. Based on the analysis of the provisions of Antsyferova’s dynamic approach, the article outlines the theoretical and methodological foundations for a research approach to studying wholeness. Personal wholeness is considered to be maintaining a certain balance between interacting tendencies toward stability and variability in personality. At the same time, different “orders” of wholeness (degrees of dynamic unity) are allowed, ranging from “higher order” wholeness processes that reflect the fundamental nature of personality to “partial” levels of wholeness related to subsystems and psychological formations at different contextual levels. Maintaining the individual’s wholeness in the face of variability is the pursuit of a new system-forming foundation. The proposed theoretical framework for describing wholeness enables us to identify possible approaches for its empirical study.