Experience Integration: between the Past and the Future

This article explores issues of relations between personal experience and internal time (I. Prigozhin). Personal experience is the space where the person can constantly move around the different modes of time. There is continuity of past, present, and future and the person’s ability to move between time modes. The personalization of experience points to its belonging to the personal life history and the necessity of studying time not as movement but as history. It is indicated that the problem of time in the human’s dimension (historicity of time) turns out inextricably linked with the event problem. Eventfulness creates the time asymmetry in the personal internal space leveling the role of initial conditions and circumstances. This allows the event to be considered as element which separates and connects time in the flow of experience at the same time. Experience, in turn, acts as a mechanism through which the event is integrated into practice. The results of the empirical research of person’s movement fixation between past and future in the process of experiencing significant life events are presented. Georgie’s phenomenological psychological approach was used to study the experience practice. The sample consisted of 15 people (M = 24.6 ± 2.22 years). It was found that the depth, detailed description of experiences, the representation of the event meaning for person were related with the freedom of movement between past as well as with the integration and complexity of experience. Freedom of movement and deep practices will speak in favor of integration and complication whereas difficulties with movement and superficial experiences may indicate weak integration. Present contains the experience of past and future and “traces of the past possible future” which was not realized. The idea of the fact that people try to integrate disparate values in the experience, so integration is always local, but in the same time freedom of movement will promote greater integration.

Abbey, E., Valsiner, J. (2005). Emergence of meanings through ambivalence. Forum Qualitative Social Research Sozialforschung, 6 (1). Available at: https://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/515 (accessed: 14.02.2022).

Avanesov, S. S. (2017). “Event” as coming into being in M. Bakhtin’s philosophy. Idei i idealy, 1 (31), 1, 23–30. (In Russian)

Antsyferova, L. I. (2006). Personal development and problems of gerontopsychology. Moscow, Institute of Psychology RAS Press. (In Russian)

Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Toward a Philosophy of the Act. In: Philosophy and social study of science and technology (pp. 80–160). 1984–1985. Мoscow, Nauka Publ. (in Russian)

Bernstein, N. A. (1966). Essays on the physiology of movements and the physiology of activity. Мoscow, Medicine Publ. (In Russian)

Castoriadis, С. (2003). Imagined establishment of society. Moscow, Gnozis Publ. (In Russian)

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2017). Personality evolution. Moscow, Al’pina non-fikshn Publ. (In Russian)

Epshtein, M. N. (2001). Philosophy of the possible . St Petersburg, Aleteiia Publ. (In Russian)

Fuhrer, U., Josephs, I. E. (1998). The cultivated mind: From mental mediation to cultivation. Developmental Review , 18 (3), 279–312.

Giorgi, A. (2012). The descriptive phenomenological psychological method. J. Phenomenol. Psychol., 43, 3–12.

Grishina, N. V. (2020). Life event: force of circumstances and authorship of personality. Bulletin of Moscow Region State University , 4. Available at: https://evestnik-mgou.ru/ru/Articles/Doc/1045 (accessed: 14.02.2022) (In Russian)

Heidegger, M. (2003). Sein und Zeit. Kharkiv, Folio Publ. (In Russian)

Husserl, E. (1994). Phenomenology of the inner consciousness of time, transl. from the German by V. I. Molchanov. In: Collected Works (pp. 6–102), 1. Moscow, Gnozis Publ. (In Russian)

Kostromina, S. N., Grishina, N. V. (2021). Emerging as a subject of research in personality psychology. Voprosy Psikhologii , 67, 4, 21–37. (In Russian)

Mamardashvili, M. K., Pyatigorsky, A. M. (2011). Symbol and Consciousness . St Petersburg, Azbuka-Attikus Publ. (In Russian)

Mamardashvili, M. K. (1996). On consciousness. In: Neobkhodimost’ sebia (pp. 214–219). Moscow, Labirint Publ. (In Russian)

Mamardashvili, M. K. (1992). How I Understand Philosophy . Moscow, Progress Publ.; Kultura Publ. (In Russian)

Martin, J., Gillespie, A. (2010). A neomeadian approach to human agency: Relating the social and the psychological in the ontogenesis of perspective-coordinating persons. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science , 44 (3), 252–272.

Popova, R. R. (2011). The problem of definition of the concept “event” in psychology. Vestnik Tatarskogo Gosudarstvennogo Gumanitarno-Pedagogicheskogo Universiteta , 3 (25), 287–293. (In Russian)

Prigozhin, I. R. (2006). From existing to emerging. Time and complexity in the physical sciences . Moscow, KomKniga Publ.; URSS Publ. (In Russian)

Rubinstein, S. L. (1989). Fundamentals of general psychology : in 2 vols. Vol. II. Moscow. (In Russian)

Russell, B. (2004). About the experience of time. Logos, 5 (44), 29–44. (In Russian)

Russell, B. (1957). Human knowledge. Moscow, Institute of Humanitarian Studies Press.

Ryndin, D. G. (2019). Merab Mamardashvili: Event of thought and pedagogic practice. Vysshee obrazovanie v Rossii , 28, 1, 104–118. (In Russian)

Sartr, J.-P. (2001). Imaginary. Phenomenological psychology of imagination . St Petersburg, Science Publ. (In Russian)

Sato, T., Valsiner, J. (2010). Time in life and life in time: Between experiencing and accounting. Ritsumeikan Journal of Human Sciences , 20 (1), 79–92.

Shchittsova, T. V. (2002). Event as a concept of Bakhtin’s philosophy . Minsk, I. P. Logvinov Publ. (In Russian)

Taylor, C. H. (2007). A Secular Age (pp. 171–176). Cambridge, MA; London, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Valsiner, J. (2003). Beyond social representations: A theory of enablement. Papers on Social Representations , 12, 7.1–7.16.

Vasilyuk, F. E. (1984). Psychology of experiencing. The resolution of life’s critical situations . Moscow, Moscow University Press. (In Russian)

Warsaw, B., Vygotsky, L. (1931). Psychological Dictionary . Moscow, State Educational and Pedagogical Publ. (In Russian)

Zittoun, T. (2008). Sign the gap: dialogical self in disrupted times. Studia Psychologica , 6 (8), 73–89.

Zittoun, T. (2012). Lifecourse. In: J. Valsiner (ed.) Handbook of Culture and Psychology (pp. 513–535). Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Zittoun, T., Gillespie, A. (2015). Integrating experiences: Body and mind moving between contexts. In: B. Wagoner, N. Chaudhary, P. Hviid (eds), Integrating experiences: Body and mind moving between contexts (pp. 3–49). IAP Information Age Publishing.