Professional Self-determination as a Mechanism of Updating the Process of Discovering the System of an Individual’s Abilities

Abstract

The article contains an overview of the main provisions of the author’s concept of the phenomenon of professional self-determination. Professional self-determination is interpreted as a psychological mechanism of actualization of the process of revealing the life potential of an individual, in particular the potential of his abilities and giftedness. The assumption that professional self-determination is one of the defning elements of the set of protophenomena of self-determination as a fundamental universal human ability is justifed. It is emphasized that taking into account the circumstances, peculiarities of origin and structuralfunctional afliation of professional self-determination plays an important role in building an understanding of the psychological essence of the problem of choosing an individual’s professional type of life activity, including its implicit aspects. This concerns, frst of all, such an aspect of this problem as the place of a professional type of life activity in the general context of a person’s life. The functional purpose of professional self-determination in its implicit dimensions of meaning and sense is to choose
a model of prosperous existence during the working day and the entire period of working professional activity. The psychological core of the performance of this function by an individual is his desire to avoid dissonance between the requirements of the profession to the system of abilities and qualities of the employee and his response to these requirements, as well as the goal of achieving a harmonious match between them.

The article describes the subject and object types of professional self-determination. The characteristics of the subject type include confdence, purposefulness, an optimistic assessment of one’s capabilities, a view of the profession as one that can be mastered, be successful in it, and achieve the desired life benefts and goals at the expense of the opportunities present in it. The object type is described as a type that is characterized by an individual’s excessive criticality of his abilities and professionally signifcant qualities, insecurity, low self-esteem, a hypertrophied vision of professional requirements and difculties, a tendency to pessimistically assess his capabilities in mastering a given profession, despite its attractiveness, addiction from the opinion and recommendations of others, a low level of resistance to them and a low level of self-sufciency.

The author draws attention to the existence of a correlation between the degree of giftedness and the agespecifc features of  professional self-determination, which is manifested primarily in self-determination in relation to professions of a creative nature: the higher the degree of giftedness, the earlier and more stable professional self-determination. It is suggested that this relationship is due to the specifcs of the influence of giftedness on the general mental functioning of a person. A signifcant place in the article is devoted to the analysis of functional connections between the phenomena of professional self-determination and self-determination as a universal human quality, as well as deep personal systems and mechanisms that ensure their work.