Psychological functions of personal helplessness

The article studies the phenomenon of personal helplessness on the base of psychology of subject(Ananyev B., Abulkhanova K., Brushlinskiy A., Zhuravlev A., Znakov V., Sergienko E.), specifically systems subject approach(Sergienko E., Kuftyak E.), as well as personal helplessness conception (Tsiring D.). Personal helplessness is an integrativecharacteristic, which detects the low level of personal subject. The assumption that personal helplessness is not only a negativephenomenon is advanced according to the view on the systematic character of the psyche. The consideration of personal helplessnessfrom the position of the functional systems theory of P. Anokhin qualifies personal helplessness as a conditionally profitablecharacteristic for the subject, aimed at acquisition of the adaptive effect. There are three functions of personal helplessness, whichare beneficiary for the individual: protective, adaptive and manipulative. The criterion of personal helplessness functionsdifferentiation is factors of its formation. These are environmental factors, such as family relations deviations. Considering family asa system, basing on the conclusions of Selvini-Palazzoly M.., Boscolo L., Chekkin D., Prat D., Bouen M., Minukhin S., Beitson G.,Heily D., Eidemiller E., Yustitckis V., et al., every psychological phenomenon in the system gives positive result. The idea thatpersonal helplessness formed in different disharmonic styles of upbringing has different functions, providing the achievement ofintegral personal relations with the environment is theoretically proved. These disharmonic styles of upbringing are dominativehyper protection, high moral responsibility, severity of parents and inconsistency of upbringing. In the issue of theoretical analysisof family relations deviations peculiarities and upbringing specificity, a hypothetic assumption was made that a childs personalhelplessness has the manipulative function with dominative hyper protection, high moral responsibility and parents severity raisesthe adaptive function and the inconsistent style of upbringing actualises the protective function of personal helplessness of a child.Theoretical grounds of personal helplessness functions differentiation are given and their realization is depicted. In consistence withthe personal helplessness functions indicated above three types of personal helplessness can be classified: adaptive, manipulative andprotective. The theoretical conclusions in the article are the pre-requisites of an empirical research of every type of personalhelplessness, which allows describing it in details and searching for prevention and correction methods.

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