Personality Self-Development

 

Definition

Personality self-development is an integrative process within the dynamics of a human being’s evolvement; its core and nucleus, which is characterized by personal agency to continuously enrich one’s subjective experience, values and motives, in accordance with self-conception, one’s own life strategy, and in harmony with her/his social environment.

Personality self-development is a social and personal phenomenon, and can be defined as:

  • a socially valuable and personally meaningful process;
  • a unity of antinomies: spiritual and practical, dynamic and steady, implicit (internal decision to self-develop) and explicit ( motivation to influence the world and to actively engage in reaching the result), creative and routine, discrete and continuing, autonomous and pedagogically supported.

Background

The role of the individual in her/his own development has been advocated strongly throughout the history of public thinking. The idea of man as author of her/himself is rooted in philosophy. Socrates considered the human capability to self-improve as a major motivation of human nature. Immanuel Kant spoke of personality as an ever changing and “flowing” substance that produces changes in self as a result of her/his own choice and efforts. Berdyaev held that “man is a creature who is always trying to overcome her/his limits…. by self-developing”. Self-development is often viewed as a way to locate personal existentiality and freedom (Heidegger, 1962; Bakhtin, 1990).

Personality self-development can also be viewed in the context of the human developmental process, in general, which includes multidimensional (physical, intellectual, moral, aesthetic) vectors of human development. According to various concepts of human development vectors of “movement” to self-improvement can be: biological (genotype pre-determined), social (“formation” of an individual within societal norms, rules and expectations), and subjective volition.

A holistic concept of human development entails dynamic interplay of all these factors, with the third one – self-constructing volition – as dominant. Volition itself is not a born trait; it grows within the individual as agency to perfect self in harmony with the world, and aims at reaching the fullness of one’s own life.

Components

To become a personality is to take full responsibility for self-creation. “Personality is the task of a human being her/himself” (N. Berdyaev, 1999). As such, personality self-development can be viewed as the process of becoming the author of one’s own life, which entails:

  • self-assessment of one’s own possibilities to improve according to personal meanings and goals
  • self-defining ways to improve
  • assessment of social environmental conditions and adjusting the interrelationships between self and the social environment
  • self-monitoring and self-correcting of the process of personal growth
  • self-regulation and self-control.

Personality self-development is a human activity and, as such, can be characterized by internal and external substances, which represent a dialectical unity (L. Kulikova, 2005).

The internal substance of self-development comprises conscious effort: to search for personal meanings and interpretations of resonances with the world, to self-reflect and transform and re-transform personal values, to define and re-define personal tasks for self-creation and co-creation of the world, in collaboration with other people.

The internal substance of personality self-development is a process of accumulating fluctuations and transformations, which a growing personality produces consciously and situationally. It is important for the individual to recognize these fluctuations within her/himself and to constantly exert effort to strengthen them.

Internal activity represents a locus of internal self-control and meaningful self-regulation. This activity is spiritual by nature (“spiritual” here is the notion of self-regulation; the internal human core of personality which allows the individual to act beyond the threshold of social necessity (O. Kovbasyuk, 2009).

The external substance of self-development is represented by behavior, decision making, “probing” self in various activities, communication, interaction, and applying personal experience in life, thus creating one’s own life world.

Personality self-development is the internal work of an individual applied to her/his practical activity. This work is implicit, insightful and never demonstrable, as the idea to self-develop is personal and self-conscious.

However, personality is an open system, and external conditions are critical for personality development because personal capability to accept external conditions as well as to adjust to them and apply them selectively is the basis of self-transformation.

In other words, personality turns the internal vector of development into the external one, and then selectively introduces external factors into the structure of conscious self-regulation. This counter-alternating movement of interiorization and exteriorization of social effects characterizes personality as an open and alive system, and self-development as self-enrichment and self-transformation.

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References

Bakhtin, M. M. (1990). To the Philosophy of Action. M: Nauka.

Berdyaev, N.A. (1999). Man, his freedom and spirituality. M: Flinta.

Bibler. B (1991). From Epistemology to the Logic of Culture. M: Nauka.

Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time. NJ: Harper and Row Publishers.

Kant, I. (1993). Criticism of Pure Mind. SPb: Nauka.

Kovbasyuk, O. (2009). Theoretical Foundations of a Meaningful Approach to Raising a Personality. Siberia Pedagogical Journal. Novosibirsk: NSPU.

Kulikova, L. N (2005). Self-Development of a Personality: Psycho-Pedagogical Foundations. Khabarovsk: KhGPU.

Editors

This encyclopedic entry was edited by Peter C Taylor.

Citation

Kovbasyuk, O. (2013). Personality Self-Development. The Encyclopedia of Meaning-Centered Education. http://patrickblessinger.com/meaningcentered//encyclopedia/personality-self-development

Copyright

Copyright © [2013] Institute for Meaning-Centered Education (IMCE) and Olga Kovbasyuk.

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