Wholeness as a Fundamental Category in Describing the Nature of Personality

The concept of wholeness, which is one of the main concepts in the description of personality, is discussed. In psychology, wholeness is considered as a characteristic of personality and as a requirement for its study. In traditional approaches to understanding wholeness, it is described through the relative constancy of personality substructures, interconnected, or, in dynamic approaches, through the development of wholeness based on the connection of existing structures with the emergence of new formations. Violation of the principle of integrity in research studying individual components of personality became one of the main reasons for the crisis in personality psychology of the twentieth century. Difficulties in studying the wholeness of personality are associated, among other things, with differences in its interpretations, with the polysemy and uncertainty of the concepts that describe it, which is demonstrated by the results of the analysis of the conceptual field in scientific discourse. It is proposed to consider wholeness as a fundamental category in the description of personality, along with the categories of variability and stability. Wholeness is understood as an integral characteristic that works at different levels of the functional organization of the individual, which correlate with the contexts of the individual’s life. In accordance with the developed processual approach, integrity is a dynamic formation, the balance of which is ensured by the balance of the processes of change and stability; the content of the conjugate action of these processes is the “completion” of the stability of the individual due to the changes that occur.

Abul’khanova, K. A. (1999). Theoretical and empirical development of the Rubinshtein’s conception of personality. In: Individual’nyi i gruppovoi sub”ekty v izmeniaiushchemsia obschestve: K 110-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia S. L. Rubinshteina: tezisy dokladov k mezhdunarodnoi nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii (pp. 6–7). Moscow. (In Russian)

Akrivou, K., Scalzo, G., Orón, J. V. (2020). How differing conceptions of integrity and self-integration influence relationships: Implications for management, personal and professional development. Archives of Psychology, 4 (1). Available at: https://www.archivesofpsychology.org/index.php/aop/article/view/135 (accessed: 11.06.2024).

Allport, G. (2002). Formation of personality. Moscow, Smysl Publ. (In Russian)

Ananiev, B. G. (2001). Human as an object of knowledge. St. Petersburg, Piter Publ. (In Russian)

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

Beck, E. D., Jackson, J. J. (2022). Idiographic personality coherence: A quasi experimental longitudinal ESM study. European Journal of Personality, 36 (3), 391–412.

Cervone, D. (2022). Five paths to personality coherence: Integrative implications of the Knowledge-and-Appraisal Personality Architecture. European Journal of Personality, 36 (3), 319–346.

Fajkowska, M. (2022). Personality coherence: Advances in theory, assessment, and research. European Journal of Personality, 36 (3), 267–273.

Fournier, M. A. (2021). Integrative processes and personality coherence across levels of functioning. In: The Handbook of Personality Dynamics and Processes (pp. 405–423). Amsterdam, Elsevier Academic Press.

Fournier, M. A., Dong, M., Quitasol, M. N., Weststrate, N. M., Di Domenico, S. I. (2022). Components and correlates of personality coherence in action, agency, and authorship. European Journal of Personality, 36 (3), 413–434.

Ganzen, V. A. (2007). System descriptions in psychology. Moscow, URSS Publ. (In Russian)

Grishina, N. V. (2018). Existential psychology. St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg University Press. (In Russian)

Grishina, N. V., Kostromina, S. N. (2021). Processual approach: Stability and variability as the basis of personality wholeness. Psikhologicheskii zhurnal, 42, 2, 5–17. (In Russian)

Grishina, N. V., Kostromina, S. N. (2024). The problem of wholeness in the works of L. I. Antsyferova: Processual approach. Psikhologicheskii zhurnal (in print). (In Russian)

Gurevich, P. S. (2004). The problem of human wholeness. Moscow, Institute of Philosophy RAS Press. (In Russian)

Guseltseva, M. S. (2022). Personality psychology and anthropological discourse: In search of new approaches. Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Psychology, 12 (2), 132–149. (In Russian)

Hjelle, L., Ziegler, D. (2018). Theories of personality. St. Petersburg, Piter Publ. (In Russian)

Janis, L., Canak, T., Machado, M. A., Green, R. M., McAdams, D. P. (2011). Development and validation of the Northwestern Ego Integrity Scale. Evanston, Nortwestern University.

Jayawickreme, E., Zachry, C. E., Fleeson, W. (2019). Whole trait theory: An integrative approach to examining personality structure and process. Personality and Individual Differences, 136, 2–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.06.045

Kohut, H. (2003). Analysis of selfness: Systematic approach to the treatment of Narcisstic personality disorders. Moscow, Kogito-Tsentr Publ. (In Russian)

Kostromina, S. N., Grishina, N. V. (2023). Personality stability: Concept and phenomenology. Voprosy psikhologii, 4, 16–29. (In Russian)

Lewin, K. (2001). Dynamic psychology. Moscow, Smysl Publ. (In Russian)

Lomov, B. F. (1975). On the systems approach in psychology. Questions of psychology, 2, 31–46. (In Russian)

Losev, A. F. (2009). Philosophy of the name. Moscow, Akademicheskii proekt Publ. (In Russian)

Magnusson, D., Torestad, B. (1993). A holistic view of personality: A model revisited. Annual Review of Psychology, 44 (1), 427–452.

Martsinkovskaia, T. D. (2022). Personal integrity in esthetic paradigm’s context. Vestnik RGGU. Ser. Psikhologiia. Pedagogika. Obrazovanie, 2, 14–25. https://doi.org/10.28995/2073-6398- 2022-2-14-25 (In Russian)

Maslow, A. (2006). Motivation and personality. St. Petersburg, Piter Publ. (In Russian)

McWilliams, N. (2021). Psychoanalytic diagnostics. Understanding the structure of personality in the clinical process. Moscow, Klass Publ. (In Russian)

Merlin, V. S. (1980). Problems of integral research of human individuality. Psikhologicheskii zhurnal, 1 (1), 58–71. (In Russian)

Pratt, M. W., Matsuba, M. K., Lawford, H. L., Villar, F. (2020). The life span development of generativity. In: L. A. Jensen (ed.). The Oxford handbook of moral development: An interdisciplinary perspective (pp. 366–386). Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Rasool, A., Zhang, B., Dang, Q., Lin, Ya. (2022). Effects of self-stereotype on older adults’ self-integrity through the intervening effects of sense of coherence and empathy. Ageing & Society, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0144686X22001003

Rogers, C. R. (1959). A theory of therapy, personality, and interpersonal relationships, as developed in the client-centered framework. In: S. Koch (ed.). Psychology, the study of a science. Vol. 3: Formulations of the person and the social context. New York, McGraw-Hill.

Rubinshtein, S. L. (2015). Fundamentals of general psychology. St. Petersburg, Piter Publ. (In Russian)

Ryff, C. D., Heincke, S. G. (1983). Subjective organization of personality in adulthood and aging. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 807–816.

Sosnowska, J., Kuppens, P., De Fruyt, F., Hofmans, J. (2020). New directions in the conceptualization and assessment of personality — a dynamic systems approach. European Journal of Personality, 34 (6), 988–998. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.2233

Quirin, M., Kuhl, J. (2022). The concert of personality: Explaining personality functioning and coherence by personality systems interactions. European Journal of Personality, 36 (3), 274–292.

Wanek, J. E., Sackett, P. R., Ones, D. S. (2003). Towards an understanding of integrity test similarities and differences: An item-level analysis of seven tests. Personnel Psychology, 56, 873–894.

Yalom, I. (1999). Existential psychotherapy. Moscow, Smysl Publ. (In Russian)