A modern psychological portrait of a work addict - a person with perverted ideas about the role and the place of work in their life

The article is based on the field research of work addiction, which was made in different regions of Russia in 2013. During the research personal ideas of adult Russians from different regions concerning their life were collected (methods of observation, interview and a number of tests were used). 323 persons (66 male and 257 female Russians) from 17 to 67 years old (М = 33; a = 11.078) from different Russian cities (Tomsk, Seversk, Kargasok, Bakchar, Tyumen, Nizhniy Novgorod, Samara, Novokuibishevsk, Dzerzhinsk, Kemerovo, Leninsk-Kuznetsky, Novokuznetsk, Mezhdurechensk, Prokopyevsk, Tisul, Krasnoyarsk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Elizovo, Yakutsk, Ridder, Rubtsovsk) took part in the field research in 2013. The aim of the research was to collect the data which would give the opportunity to improve the existing approach to the self-identity problem, thinking metamorphose, human potential loss (by example of work addiction). This approach is based on the methodology of thinking experience transtemporal interpretation and self-identity analysis as a condition of maintaining stability by a human being in social variation and social development. The article contains the interpretation of some materials describing general psychological structure of a Russian, who has a risk to become work addicted. The data we received give us the opportunity to suppose that work addiction risk in modern Russia is connected not only with the ''retreat'' into work, but also with perverted ideas about the role and the place of work in our life. The results allow us to improve the existing approach to work addiction risk studies and to elaborate practical measures to correct work addiction and human potential in whole. The general conclusion of the case analysis of the series of people with high index of work addiction is the following: the identity of a work addicted person is characterized with polarity of their psychological indexes and conditions. The ideas of a work addicted person about the place of work in their life are perverted. To them work is a mediator and a denominator to life, whereas non-addicts imagine that life is a mediator and a denominator to work. This conclusion is partly proved by the received data. But in this article only a small part of the analysis is presented, and the continuation of the research demands specification of our assumptions.

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