Abstract
The paper proposes a theoretical justification of the importance of the concept of meaning for understanding human psychology, especially in (but not limited to) existential and positive psychology (PP). An analysis of relationships between existential psychology (EP) and traditional mainstream psychology is focused on the issue of determinism versus self-determination; meaning as conceptualized in EP is treated as the key mechanism that can make a person to a large degree free from the rigid mechanisms of biological and social programming and open the new possibilities for action in the specifically human dimension. Meaning is relevant to humans rather than animals, to being-in-the-world rather than behaving-in-the-environment. The essence of meaning is treated as reference to a broader context; this is why meaning of any object cannot be found in this object as it is, but rather in the network of its relationships with broader contexts. The author’s multiregulation model of personality describes meaning-based regulation as one of the principal mechanisms of human activity regulation and specifies its interplay with other forms of regulation. Finally, meaning regulation is analyzed both theoretically and experimentally as an important resource of freedom, autonomy, and field-independence. It is experimentally shown that high level of meaning accounts for autonomous behavior in an unstructured boring situation and makes an opposition to helplessness.
Nothing have you to hope for if yours is the misfortune of being blind to that light which emanates not from things, but from the meaning of things. De Saint-Exupery. The Wisdom of the Sands (Citadelle) (1979, p. 284).
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The study was implemented in the framework of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) in 2012–2013.
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Leontiev, D. (2014). Extending the Contexts of Existence: Benefits of Meaning-Guided Living. In: Batthyany, A., Russo-Netzer, P. (eds) Meaning in Positive and Existential Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0308-5_7
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