Understanding Identity in the Context of Cultural-Historical Psychology

Abstract

In the context of cultural historical psychology, it is proposed to view identity as an explication of a life project. A synergetic methodology is used, within which development is considered not only as a process determined by heredity and environment (internal and external), but also as a process of self-organization, leading to selfconstruction of the subject. In a constantly changing world, understanding identity as a stable structure of the subject’s representations, reflecting one’s actual state, is replaced by understanding the fundamental incompleteness of the “auto-project” text narrated by the subject of life, which implies the analysis of the (re)constructed author of this project. As it turned out, the growth of the complicated subject’s thinking leads to the organizational complication of the “auto-project” text. Three types of identity texts have been distinguished (personal, social, predictive), which differ by the methods of identity description. Personal identity is a collection of the descriptive characteristics of a subject. Social identity means the (re)construction of social space and the choice of social roles. The predictive identity as a representation of future vital roles provides an opportunity for the subject to plan the achievement of potential life goals. The expanded understanding of identity functions is revealed: starting as the knowledge about the self and the regulator of behavior in a social context, it becomes the instrument of self-organization, which allows making some adjustments into the life project of the subject. The depth of social identity (autonomous personality, representative of a group, citizen of society) will determine the scale of life tasks available to the subject. It is shown that as a result of the processes of circular causality, the increase in the complexity of thinking leads to the complication of the organization of any identity, which, being a tool for a self-development, provides some opportunities for the deployment of the existing human potential.