PERSONAL INFANTILISM IN THE DISCOURSE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNSELING (ACCORDING TO THE INTERNET-FORUM)

Abstract

The article describes the content of the construct “personal infantilism” in the space of psychological counseling (by the analysis of the Internet-forum www.b17.ru). The empirical analysis includes more than 3000 thousand messages of “consultants” (professional psychologists who provide psychological assistance online) and “clients” (participants of the forum who initiated the discussion about their own difficulties which they consider to be the manifestation of “infantilism”). The results show that the “clients” and “consultants” have unequal contents of the construct “personal infantilism”, and this difference is a factor which reduces the effectiveness of the psychological counseling.

Keywords

• personal infantilism
• personal maturity
• adulthood
• course of life
• normative criteria of adulthood