Personal autonomy and relatedness in adult age (by materials of foreign researchers)

- Чайка, Г.В. (2019) Personal autonomy and relatedness in adult age (by materials of foreign researchers) Актуальні проблеми психології: Збірник наукових праць Інституту психології імені Г.С. Костюка НАПН України. – Том. 11: Психологія особистості. Психологічна допомога особистості, 1 (19). pp. 484-501. ISSN 2072-4772

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Abstract

The article analyzes recent foreign literature revealing the following topics: personal autonomy and relatedness in early adulthood; autonomy and relatedness of elderly people, as well as these issues at the middle age and in different cultures. It is shown that achievement of autonomy, expansion of its boundaries is more a necessity and less a task in adolescence, but in youth, it is both a need and a task. Successful achievement of autonomy both in day-to-day task solving, and in life goal setting and achieving is the key to success on a life pass. On the other hand, existence of strong attachments, warm relations with other people, both parents and peers, is not an obstacle to meet the need for autonomy, but such relations support a sense of psychological well-being. As for the elderly people, the issue of autonomy is complicated and painful for them, as they are progressively less able to organize their lives on their own and more and more must rely on other peoples. In order to mitigate the situation, helping people must stimulate those areas where older people have not lost capabilities in autonomy and can manifest it, and thus satisfy this need. On the other hand, existing attachments, emotionally close relationships greatly improve elderly people’s psychological well-being and alleviate their sadness caused by lack of autonomy. There are not enough works related to the middle age. However, this does not mean that such problem does not exist. For example, career development requires initiative, vigorous actions, planning and implementation of the planned, personal characteristics and actions based on the feeling of autonomy, independence. However, such way of life is poorly reconciled with the desire to have a large friendly family, many children, to care for elderly parents, that is, to appreciate highly relatedness. There are also not enough works on the cross-cultural analysis of the phenomenon under study. Autonomy as a need is inherent to people of any culture. But the theory of autonomy has been developed within the limits of Western culture, which is characterized by the cult of individualism.

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