Perspectives in Studying Self-Consciousness in Special Education

Abstract

Introduction. Studying self-consciousness in individuals with disabilities is associated with certain diagnostic, interpretation, and organization difficulties. Elaboration of a unified methodological basis to investigate personality traits in individuals with developmental abnormalities represents a scientific challenge. Theoretical Basis. When studying mental states and cognitive or other impairments, methodology for exploring individual inner world and self-representations should rely upon explanatory, phenomenological, and interactive research viewpoints. Results and Discussion. This paper introduces the ‘embodied self’ concept, that partially unifies three basic methodological approaches and contains some elements of self-models and a narrative component integrating biopsychic, emotional, and cognitive-behavioral factors. This offers the components important to researchers in the field of self-consciousness in special education, including biogenetic component, self-model, implicit ‘sense of self’, cognitive component of the ‘explicit self-concept’, behavioral component of self-representations, and narrative component of self-representations. A system approach to the study of self-consciousness in individuals with disabilities is related to intrinsic mechanisms of the development of self-consciousness, specific characteristics of individuals’ activities towards themselves and their behavior, self-orientation as the behavioral result of self-consciousness. Special educationalists may be interested in such mechanisms of self-consciousness in individuals with developmental abnormalities as self-acceptance/self-rejection, identification/de-identification, reflection/de-reflection, and consolidation/delimitation. Conclusion. The approaches to studying self-consciousness in individuals with disabilities require the techniques relevant to aims of special educationalists’ work with individuals of various ages with various dysontogenetic abnormalities. The development of new methods and techniques of psychological interventions influencing adaptation-related components of self-consciousness may help create the differentiated environment for person-oriented interaction in the context of psychological support of individuals of different ages with developmental disorders.

Keywords

• я-репрезентации
• воплощенное я
• рефлексия
• дерефлексия
• слияние
• отграничение
• идентификация
• деидентификация
• самопринятие
• самонеприятие