Abstract: There are books that reflect the deepest gap in values of our today’s culture. These books describe another mentality and life style. Very often an author of a book does not even set a goal to pave the way for new life and practical preferences. Did an Austrian and German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing want to write his ‘Psychopathia Sexualis’? Not likely. He just had a professional goal to tell about sexual perversions as psychopathologic deviations. And he wrote the book that created such a great scandal.

Keywords: psychology, sensuality, piety, Victorian ethics, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, perversions, good morals, masochism, sadism.

Abstract: The article is devoted to the dynamics of social and psychological views on the problem of dynamic aspect of Self-conception and identity. It is shown how the approval of the idea about the changeable Self passed the stages of admission of a social subject’s activity, potential manifestations of Self structures and their temporary modus. The author of the article underlines the role of the actual social environment, i.e. situations of social transformations, in development of these views. It has been affirmed that the vital task of a modern human’s existence is becoming the establishment of the meaning and significance of changing social reality for him personally, with the minimum support of social determinacy and actualization of all his personal resources. This makes the majority of social and psychological approaches to studying the Self pay attention at multiplicity and probability of self-consciousness structures, which reflects the influence of general gnoseological principles of post-modernism on this matter.

Keywords: psychology, social psychology, personality, Self-conception, identity, self-consciousness, possible Self, multiplicity of Self, social constructivism, social transformations.

Abstract: The article describes particular features of modern borderline situations in one’s existence and traces back the development of the term ‘borderline situation’ offered by Karl Jaspers. Comparing the positions of such existentialists as Nikolay Berdyaev and Lev Shestov, Miguel de Unamuno, Jean-Paule Sartre, Viktor Frankl and Erich Fromm, the author of the article concludes that the borderline situation in one’s existence is a personall challenge and the awakening of one’s emotional world through suffering, personality formation and testing of his values, character and willpower.

Keywords: psychology, borderline situation, existentialism, experience, establishment, acceptance of suffering, personality, existential communication, choice based on one’s values.

Abstract: Human is driven by his interests and needs. The nature of human can be determined based on the dominance of particular interests and needs. In order to take people’s needs to a higher stage, a society needs an adequate social technology.

Keywords: psychology, ethnoculture, human, needs, vital needs, basic needs, higher needs, variety of needs, perverse interests and needs.

Abstract: ‘Transition rituals’ or rites of initiation mean special procedures that exist in a traditional society in the form of religious and social practices. These procedures denote the transfer of a person from one status (social, spiritual and etc.) to a higher status. In other words, transition rituals or rites of initation lead to transformation of personal and social identity. The three most important functional components of initiation (death, transition and birth) reflect a unique logic of discrete cogitation, in accordance to which identity transformation is not a gradual process but an immediate shift from one form of self-perception (Self conception) to another. Such a transit must be necessarily accompanied with the altered state of consciousness (trance, loss or break of consciousness and etc.). Otherwise, one’s experience of the Self remains continuous and consecutive. There are the following methods to create the liminal (‘transitory’) feelings: usage of psychoactive substances of vegetable and animal origin, trance dances, starvation, breathing techniques, tortures, deprivation of sleep, sensor deprivation and so on.

Keywords: psychology, transition, initiation, identity, Self-conception, liminality, consciousness, discretion, continuity, trance.

Abstract: The article deals with the process of “escape” of the individual to accept the highest, existential values in light of strengthening his mind deficit of value trends. Essence of the phenomenon is revealed through analysis of desecration of fear of self-actualization. The feasibility process of resacralization of Being in conscious of the individual are showed, and the place of this process in the system continuity and translation of existential values are indicated.

Keywords: psychology, fear, self-actualization, conflict, values, desanctification, sacred, awe, resacralization, continuity.

Abstract: Sigmund Freud’s supposition about primitive people having high ambivalency is proved according to the traditions of the psychoanalytic concept. High degree of ambivalency correlates with the degree of social belonging to the culture of magic. Its conditions of existence tell about high ambivalency which, however, requires new, important for human evolution, qualities in the course of research. In history, the same dynamics of ambivalency are parallel to dynamics of religious and magic transformations in civilization. These relations can be explained from the point of view of Carl Jung’s theory of collective unconsciousness and a number of his concepts about the history of collective unconsciousness. However, the research results show that the concept of high ambivalency does not only answer the question about human descent but also plays an important role in the analysis of today’s major cultural cataclysms.

Keywords: psychology, ambivalence, unconsciousness, anthropogenesis, magic, psychoanalysis, evolution, religion, aspiration, energy.

Abstract: Under conditions of the information society, social experience cannot be conveyed only through traditional methods. From an early age a modern human has to emerge into computer- based interaction ongoing in the field of information reality created by modern computer systems. Thus, modern computer technologies are already used during the first stage of personal socialization (identification). The article describes possible negative consequences of such identification when social experience is conveyed not through a real socialization subject but through information quasi subjects created by modern computer and information systems.

Keywords: teaching, computer socialization, computer interaction, identification, information reality, scholar, computerized education, computerized teaching, computerized up-bringing, computer culture.

Abstract: The article is devoted to Carl Schmitt’s (1888-1985) theory of politics mostly developed by him in his two works, ‘Political Theology’ (1922) and ‘The Concept of the Political’ (1927). According to Schmitt, the concept of the political can be defined only when we establish specific political criteria and categories. As a particular ‘political distinction’, Schmitt introduces the terms ‘friend’ and ‘enemy’ to denote the highest degree of intensity of connection and disconnection, association and dissociation. To his opinion, such a distinction can exist both in theory and practice disregarding whether moral, esthetical, economic or other kinds of distinction are used simultaneously. At the same time, this isn’t about the moral or esthetic evaluation of the ‘enemy’. The most important point here is that the enemy acts as the ‘Other’ with regard to a particular political system. In the course of researching Schmitt’s political concepts, it is shown that the definition of the ‘political’ described with the help of the ‘friend-enemy’ dichotomy defined the entire process of further theory development. All his life Schmitt believed into a need to create a politically strong or even authoritarian type of a state institution. Such a belief actually influenced both his concept of philosophy of law and made him despite liberal traditions of the West.

Keywords: psychology, Carl Schmitt, state institution, friend, enemy, politics, morals, society, liberalism, Europe.

Abstract: The author of the article analyzes modern theories of ageing and defines the three types of theories: genetic theories saying that ageing and death are in our genes; environmental theories that make a supposition that our body is immortal and death is forced by external effects; and stochastic theories according to which our life duration is determined by random factors. It is proved that within the framework of each theory, life duration depends not only on particular factors but also on personal features of someone who organizes his life. In psychogenetics personality factors are compared to the interaction between an organism and the environment. The author of the article offers a few research trends of studying psychological factors influencing one’s individual life duration. This involves, first of all, studying personal qualities contributing to longevity. Secondly, this is the research of life path features that can actually prolong your life. And thirdly, this is the research and further use of the features of one’s internal time such as additional time and transfer to the ‘outside the hours’ stage.

Keywords: psychology, psychogenetics, life duration, ageing, anti-ageing, theory of ageing, personality, internal time, personal time organization, life path.

Abstract: Due to integration processes ongoing in modern psychology, the author proves the need in discussing how fundamental, applied and practical psychologies are related. The author defines the main solutions of the problem and describes the dynamic model of relations between theoretical psychology and social practice through development of applied psychology in Lev Vygotsky’s work. Analysis of later periods of relations between Russian fundamental psychology and psychological practice is based on A. Zhuravlev’s, D. Ushakov’s, A. Liders’ and I. Karitsky’s positions. The author describes an attempt of a better distinguishing between applied and practical branches of psychology by using the role-playing ring offered by Y. Zhukov.

Keywords: psychology, integration, fundamental psychology, research psychology, applied psychology, practical psychology, psychological practice, role-playing ring, history of psychology.