Actor and identity. Actor’s psychological sense of identity

Abstract The article adopts an original approach to studying the phenomenon of the concept of “self” whose creator is the Canadian psychologist Rene L'Ecuyer. This is an idiographic method which generates data of both a quantitative and qualitative nature. The empirical studies presented in this article have been done in the milieu of professional actors and among students of theatrical schools. The results of the studies show differences in self concept in both groups. The differences between the group of students and the group of actors are of a qualitative nature and concern the number of utterances in the categories of structures, substructures and self-concept and the degree of importance of certain dimensions. In the group of actors, a difference in the hierarchy of importance of the dimension of self-concept is established. Two kinds of differences verify the hypothesis on the development of self-concept. The first is the phase of development, and the second – the level of development of self concept which the authoress suggests calling the level of the sense of identity.