Patyayeva, E.Yu.

Background. The inner work of the personality, which makes a decisive contribution to personality development and can lead to equally significant results in overcoming personality crises, as well as psychotherapy, remains practically unrevealed. In particular, the role of works of art in the facilitation of the inner work remains unstudied.

Objective. The goal is to identify the conditions under which a literary text becomes or does not become a facilitator of the inner work of the personality, as well as to describe the process of facilitation in a dramatic improvisation group.

Study Participants. Sixth-year psychology students who participated in a dramatic improvisation group (N = 11) or independently read an excerpt from J. Cabret's novel "I Confess" (N = 6) were involved in the study.

Methods. The method of dramatic improvisation based on works of art, the analysis of reflexive responses of participants in a dramatic improvisation group, the analysis of a literary text, as well as the theoretical analysis of scientific literature were applied.

Results. The literary text we chose turned out to be emotionally "difficult" for psychology students and did not become a facilitator of the personality inner work for the study participants who simply read it. However, this same text turned out to be a facilitator of the personality inner work for all the study participants who worked with it in the format of a dramatic improvisation group. At the same time, the path of inner work when encountering the text in the format of such a group includes five stages: at the first stage, resistance is overcome before the immersion into the "difficult" text, at the second stage, the readers live through their experiences with the characters of the work, at the third stage, universal meanings, experiences and questions are revealed in the work, at the fourth stage, improvisation occurs, allowing one to feel one's own position in the value-semantic world of the work, at the fifth stage, a person begins to "read" the personal experience with the help of the work.

Conclusions. The notion of the inner work of the personality in the concept of A.N. Leontiev is comparable with a number of concepts used in modern psychotherapy and philosophical practice. A literary text can act as a facilitator of the personality inner work if the readers manage to see universal meanings and problems behind the story of specific characters and "read" their own experience through this prism. In the case of emotionally "difficult" texts, the practice of dramatic improvisation based on literary works can help pave the way from the text to the inner world of the reader.

The article continues the discussion of complex social and cultural motivating systems, which took start in the author’s previous paper. The ideas of social and cultural motivation in sociology, ethnomethodology and narrative approach are analyzed. Relying on M. Foucault’s concept of ‘dispositif’ and on the numerous data, collected in sociology, social psychology, studies of culture and narrative therapy, a three-level model of social and cultural motivating is suggested, which distinguishes between the basic level of a dispositif, it’s conscious level and the actual social field. The model makes it possible to coordinate different mechanisms of social motivating. 

The article deals with the complex social and cultural motivating systems, which were described in sociology, social psychology and the studies of culture but are hardly known within psychology of motivation. M. Weber’s concept of “ethos”, K. Levin’s concept of “social field” and M. Foucault’s concept of “dispositif” are analyzed in detail.