The essence of self-concept and self-image. Characteristics of the self-concept at the stage of aging The self-concept is relatively stable, more or less conscious, experienced as an individual’s unique system of ideas about himself, on the basis of which he builds interactions with other people and relates to himself. A holistic, although not without internal contradictions, image of one’s own self, acting as an attitude towards oneself. The self-concept contains components [8]: 1) cognitive - the image of one’s qualities, abilities, appearance, social significance, etc. (see self-awareness); 2) emotional - self-respect, self-love, self-deprecation, etc.; 3) evaluative-volitional - the desire to increase self-esteem, gain respect, etc. Self-concept is a prerequisite and consequence of social interaction, determined by social experience. Its components include [8]: 1) physical self - a diagram of one’s own body; 2) real self - an idea of ​​oneself in the present tense; 3) dynamic self - what the subject intends to become; 4) social self - correlated with the spheres of social integration: sexual, ethnic, civil, role, etc.; 5) existential self -; as an assessment of oneself in the aspect of life and death; 6) the ideal Self is what the subject, in his opinion, should become, focusing on moral norms; 7) the fantastic Self is what the subject would like to become, if it were possible. Self -concept is an important structural element of the psychological appearance of a person, developing in communication and activity, the ideal representation of an individual in himself as in another. The formation of an adequate self-concept, and above all self-awareness, is one of the important conditions for the education of a conscious member of society [3]. Self-image is a set of sensory images (sensations, perceptions, ideas) and characteristic images of one’s actions in relation to oneself and others . Social stereotypes are repeated, widely used judgments in society [6]. The self-concept develops throughout a person’s life cycle and is determined in accordance with the most significant periods of personality development, and thus represents a complex formation that contains information about a variety of Self-images that arise in a person in a variety of variants of his self-perception and self-presentation. This is a selective memory of the individual, reflecting events in such a way as not to violate the basic personal positions [6] Personality development involves the creation of a more or less reliable image of the self. It is known that with age the adequacy of self-esteem increases. In mature people it is more realistic and objective, and its criteria also change. Life experience, mental development and clarification of the level of aspirations, bringing them into line with reality, take their toll. But the trend is not linear or obligatory. It is impossible to know everything about yourself, just as it is impossible to build an image of the Self once and for all. A person is constantly changing, abandoning something outdated and established and acquiring something new, more promising. Therefore, in order to correspond, the image of the Self must be revised and changed [4]. To understand the characteristics of the self-concept during the aging stage, we can cite the eighth and final stage in Erikson's classification as an example. He designated this period as the stage “Integrity and hopelessness” [12]. The life of an individual at this stage is characterized by: - ​​the end of work (retirement); - a tendency to think; - “fun with grandchildren” (if there are any). A feeling of integrity arises if a person perceives the past years as filled with meaning and evaluates the past positively. A feeling of hopelessness arises if an individual perceives what he has lived through as a chain of missed opportunities, failures, and realizes that it is too late to start all over again and that what has been lost cannot be returned. Such a person is overcome by despair at the thought of how his life could have turned out, but did not work out. Self-concept in old age as a set of attitudes towards oneself. Particular significance for the psychology of the elderlya person has self-esteem and self-perception of age. Self-esteem in people of every age can be overestimated or underestimated, but old age bears the burden of subjective assessments of all life periods. Those who easily overcome the psychological crises of childhood and adolescence acquire lifelong high ambitions and often do not correlate high aspirations with their ordinary capabilities. Other people who have crossed the first steps with great difficulty or failure, for the rest of their lives become people who are distrustful of the world around them, with self-doubt, and with a feeling of constant guilt. With all that is commonly called an “inferiority complex.” Even in old age, they always look back at someone, they are afraid of someone or something. In their self-perception of old age, people with high self-esteem identify themselves with the younger generation, while their antipodes identify themselves with the older generation [6; 11]. Van Gogh “On the threshold of eternity” The influence of stereotypes on the self-concept in old age Stereotype is an emotional-evaluative formation. Its nature consists of two components - knowledge and attitude (attitude), and this knowledge is standard, simplified, and the attitude is emotional. Stereotypical formations, judgments, assessments, images are concentrated in ready-made formulas: in propaganda cliches, concretized in the media using linguistic means and visual images. In most cases, stereotypes manifest themselves in labels and false generalizations, which are very actively used by propaganda to evoke an appropriate emotional reaction [2; 9].Stereotypes widespread in society influence the formation of the attitude of older people towards themselves. Under the influence of negative opinions, many representatives of late adulthood lose faith in themselves, their abilities and capabilities. They devalue themselves, lose self-esteem, feel guilty, their motivation drops and, consequently, their social activity decreases [9]. The results of empirical studies show that many characteristic features of the elderly are due to the negative stereotypes widespread in society of the perception of old people as useless people, intellectually degraded, helpless. And many older people internalize these stereotypes, lower their own self-esteem, and are afraid to confirm negative patterns with their behavior [6]. The self-concept of these people in most cases (in the terms of C. Rogers) is “not congruent with their self,” it blocks their real possibilities and predetermines few characteristic features of the elderly are due to the negative stereotypes widespread in society of perceiving old people as useless, intellectually degrading, and helpless people [6]. Obviously, such attitudes form not only a negative attitude towards older people, but also towards their own impending old age as a stage of “survival” and “uselessness”. There are some older people who conceptually do not accept such stereotypes. However, not finding the resources to resist negative opinions and, on the other hand, experiencing anxiety and fear of confirming these social cliches with their behavior, they try to isolate themselves from society. They experience fear of hearing offensive remarks addressed to them and outright antagonism. They experience such situations as a “social fall” (especially if these people had significant social status in their youth) [6]. However, among older people there are also many representatives of an active life position who have retained many social contacts and are capable of establishing new ones. Such an attitude towards the world and the environment is associated with the general positive sign of their self-concept, with its integrity and balance. Sexual differences in the formation of the self-concept in old age. Men and women have different functional roles in society, and their moral consciousness is oriented differently : for men - on logic, justice, social organization; for women - for sympathy, care, humanizationrelationships. At the stage of aging, an individual’s gender roles become more smoothed out (insignificant); there is also a harmonization of the logical-active strategy of the male self-concept and the emotional-empathic strategy of the female [12]. According to W. Crane, moral categories are important components of the content of the self-concept, such Thus, such a smoothing of gender roles and integration of two lines of moral development is one of the main tasks of the individual in later years [6]. Theories of the “relativity” of aging. Concept of E. Erikson In general, three directions of theories of the “relativity” of aging can be distinguished. According to the first, from the point of view of a medical-biological position, old age was considered the age of obligatory psychological degradation and a decrease in the productivity of consciousness, which was defined as a consequence of pathological processes in the brain. However, this point of view is outdated. Currently, modern psychogerontology refutes this position. According to modern neuropsychology: there is no clear connection between the degree of brain damage and intellectual capabilities. In practice, there are quite a lot of cases when, despite extensive damage to brain tissue, personality turns out to be intact, and moreover, a person demonstrates his originality and creative activity [6]. Thus, age-related changes in the nervous system and the body as a whole are not grounds for considering late age is a period of “fading” in a psychological, spiritual sense. Consequently, the physiological processes occurring in old age can only partially influence the self-concept of an individual, namely when, for some personal reasons, a person’s attention is fixed on such manifestations of his body. To some extent, this may be due to that personal formation, which in modern medical and psychological vocabulary is designated as the “internal picture of the disease,” but in essence this is the psychosomatic aspect of the self-concept [12]. According to the second theoretical direction, the basis of which is the activity approach to personal development: people, through their actions, change their own environment, develop the ability to cope with difficult situations, and chart their own path in life. An active life is a condition for the progressive development of personality in later years. The cognitive-behavioral component of the self-concept “plans” such a life strategy. Representatives of this approach are R. Hayvighurst, G. Krempen, F. Heil and others [12]. According to the third theoretical direction, the ability of an individual to resist negative stereotypes in society is one of the important factors of actualization [12]. There is reason to assume that the early appearance in a developing person of the quality of autonomy, that is, independence and independence, allows the individual to resist social pressure and develop his own criteria assessing your life, and therefore prolonging your state of youth. This is achieved with the favorable development of the evaluative component of the self-concept [6]. In Erikson’s concept, each period of personality development is determined by a new formation, which is formed through the resolution of internal conflict. The conflict, in turn, is represented by two sides (the first promotes development, the second slows down). These tendencies, in an explicit or implicit form, include a certain personality trait and a person’s attitude towards the world, towards his life, towards himself. In a person who successfully resolves normative crises, the balance is upset towards positive qualities. With a less favorable outcome, there is a preponderance of negative properties [12]. Erickson calls the epigenetic formations of each stage Hope, Will, Intention, Competence, Loyalty, Love, Care and Wisdom. Each of them includes two opposing qualities. Opposite qualities in the structure of the “I” can indicate the characteristics of the ideal and real I. The real I is the idea of ​​myself at the present moment. The ideal self is the idea of ​​how I amshould be based on learned moral and other standards” [12]. Interesting is the idea of ​​L.I. Antsiferova about the stage of integrativeness - wisdom. According to Antsyferova, the task of the stage is for a person to find the meaning of his life, to integrate all the stages he has passed through and to gain the integrity of his “I”. The core of wisdom is the spiritual and moral attitude of the individual to the world and life [1]. The self-concept in old age is driven by a person’s desire to integrate his past, present and future, to understand the connections between the events of his own life. In later years, the need to develop a holistic view of one’s life becomes especially urgent [12]. Conditions that facilitate an individual to effectively integrate his life include: the individual’s successful resolution of normative crises and conflicts, the development of adaptive personal characteristics, and the ability to learn useful lessons from past failures , the ability to accumulate the energy potential of all stages passed through. Compliance with these conditions will be presented as a factor in the development of the self-concept at the aging stage [6]. Specifics of the self-image at the aging stage At the aging stage, interaction with the world and behavior in various social situations is characterized by rigidity. The image of I loses its flexibility. Thus, one of the main signs of aging is hyperbolic adaptation to developed techniques for solving life problems, strategies of behavior in social situations and a certain way of life [6]. Thus, finding himself in new socio-historical and everyday conditions, such a person reflects in his consciousness a reality that does not correspond to reality, since the perception turns out to be unrealistic, attitudinal (the perception settings of the previous - both socio-historical and associated with individual development - era are triggered). Thus, the success and adaptability of aging is determined by the extent to which a person is able to perceive new tasks that are characteristic of later years of life, rationally assess the change in his place in society, difficult situations specific to old age, and at the same time have a realistic self-image [11]. Picasso “The Aging Guitarist” Determining conditions for the development of the self-concept in old age One of the main factors contributing to the continued development of personality and its self-realization during the aging period is the meaningfulness of the activity and the creative direction of the individual’s life. The manifestation of such self-realization is expressed in the preservation of mental and emotional qualities developed earlier, with a gradual decline in physical form [11]. “In a situation of discrepancy between the ideal (expected) self-image and the individual’s capabilities (social or psychological), he begins to model new self-images. When the expected self-image is embodied, the previously created promising models do not disappear, but are preserved in his inner world in the form of “images-sketches” [6]. Thus, fragmented images of the Self help the individual to productively change himself and his life. This hypothesis is especially relevant to those people who, as a result of retirement, find themselves in an uncertain, poorly structured situation. In these conditions, a person must organize his own present and future. It is at such moments that the actualization of previously unrealized self-images can help a person begin a new active life [6]. Another defining condition of the self-concept during this period is a positive self-image, modeled in youth. That is, the successful resolution of normative crises, life challenges and conflicts at previous life stages. However, this condition for the development of self-concept will be met if the individual rises above the past from the position of the present, analyzes the past stages of life, and integrates past experience with the present. Another condition for the development of self-concept is a positive assessment of one’s own life, a spontaneously manifested productive attitude to evaluate life according to the criterion of success, achievements, and happy moments. Appreciating mistakes and failures as necessarylife lessons, necessary experience. At the same time, self-esteem remains positive [12]. Factors of adaptive and non-adaptive agingL. I. Antsiferova (1996) identifies the following criteria for the types of progressive personal development in later years [6]: - whether the person lost his job during these years or whether he continues his professional activity; - what values ​​are his activities oriented toward during late adulthood? With retirement, a person faces the task of realizing his capabilities in new activities and changing his lifestyle. Here, the actualization of early fragmentary self-images that early arose during the individual’s attempts to see himself in new social roles will help. (example: in his youth a person was fond of drawing, but because of work he could not devote time to his hobby. In retirement, thanks to his free time, he began to paint/sell paintings) [11]. I.S. Kon gives his classification of types of old age, depending on the nature of the activity with which it is filled [10]: 1. The first type is active, creative old age. People parted with professional work and continued to participate in public life, living full lives without feeling any disadvantage. 2. The second type of old age is also distinguished by good social and psychological adaptability, but the energy of these people is aimed mainly at organizing their own lives - material well-being, relaxation, entertainment and self-education, for which they previously did not have enough time. 3. The third type, in which women predominate, finds its main application of strength in the family. They have no time to mope or be bored, but their life satisfaction is usually lower than that of representatives of the first two types. 4. The fourth type is people for whom health care has become the meaning of life, which stimulates quite diverse forms of activity and provides a certain moral satisfaction. However, these people tend to exaggerate the significance of their real and imaginary illnesses. “I. Kon considers all these 4 types of old age to be psychologically healthy and notes that there are also negative types of development: these are aggressive old grumblers, dissatisfied with the state of the world around them, criticizing everything except themselves , lecturing everyone and terrorizing those around them with endless claims; disappointed in themselves and their own lives, lonely and sad losers, constantly blaming themselves for real and imaginary missed opportunities, thereby making themselves deeply unhappy" [10, 223]. There are 2 types of personal high activity and productivity in life [6]:1 . "Promethean" type. Personalities of this type perceive life as a constant struggle. In old age, such people struggle with age-related diseases. Ultimately experiencing the need to rely on others, they accept only the help that they have won. They strive not only to preserve, but also to expand the subjective space of their life world.2. “productive-autonomous” type - also distinguished by activity. Both in the early and late periods of life, individuals of this type are focused on high achievements, success, which is ensured by diverse strategies. They are independent, critical of various social stereotypes and generally accepted opinions. Individuals with a productive life style manifest a positive self-image, regardless of previously experienced painful situations of failure and failure that every person faces. Psychiatrist E. S. Averbukh identifies two extreme types in their own attitude towards their old age. “Some people don’t feel or even realize their age for a long time, so they act “younger” in their behavior, sometimes losing their sense of proportion. Others seem to overestimate their old age, begin to take excessive care of themselves, ahead of time and more than is required, protecting themselves from life’s worries” [11] A.I. Antsyferova distinguishes two types that differ from each other in their level of activity, strategies for coping with difficulties, attitude towards the world and towards themselves, life satisfaction [1]: 1. Representatives of the first typecourageously, without any special emotional disturbances, they experience retirement. They are characterized by high activity, which is associated with a positive outlook on the future. Often these people perceive the attitude as liberation from social restrictions, regulations and stereotypes of the working period. Engaging in a new activity, establishing friendly contacts, and maintaining the ability to control one’s environment generate satisfaction with life and increase its duration. 2. Representatives of the second type develop a passive attitude towards life, they become alienated from their environment, their range of interests narrows and their intelligence test scores decrease. They lose self-respect and experience a heavy sense of worthlessness. Such people have a hard time experiencing their late age, do not fight for themselves, are immersed in the past and, being physically healthy, quickly become decrepit. There are a number of conditions that give rise to a non-adaptive process of personality aging that do not ensure its further development. Erikson identifies two groups of stage-specific neoplasms, the summation of which in later years leads to stagnation, a person’s perception of the world as a source of evil, and a combination of arrogance and a feeling of an unsuccessful life. One of the primary negative personal formations is arrogance, which is not consistent with a person’s abilities. The aging process also turns out to be non-adaptive in those people who have not been able to develop the qualities of autonomy and initiative [6]. The most severe stress for older people is loneliness in old age. An elderly person often has no relatives, peers, or friends. Loneliness in old age can also be associated with living separately from younger family members. However, psychological aspects (isolation, self-isolation) turn out to be more significant in old age, reflecting the awareness of loneliness as misunderstanding and indifference on the part of others. Loneliness becomes especially real for a person who lives a long time. The focus, thoughts, and reflections of an old person can be solely on the situation that gave rise to the restriction of the circle of communication. The heterogeneity and complexity of the feeling of loneliness is expressed in the fact that an old person, on the one hand, feels an increasing gap with others and is afraid of a lonely lifestyle; on the other hand, he strives to isolate himself from others, to protect his world and the stability in it from the invasion of outsiders [11]. A number of studies revealing the social, gerontological, and psychological characteristics of older people show a certain interest in this little-studied problem. “Research by Perlan and his colleagues found significantly more loneliness among older adults who lived with relatives than among other older adults who lived alone. It turned out that social contacts with friends or neighbors have a greater impact on the internal well-being of older people than contacts with relatives. Contact with friends and neighbors reduced their feelings of loneliness and increased their sense of worthiness and the feeling of being respected by others.” [5, 14] Marriage is one of the key values ​​in late life, one of the main agents of socio-psychological support and assistance. The positive impact of spousal support on the rehabilitation processes of various groups of elderly patients, on the adaptation processes of those recovering and on improving the ability to overcome stressful situations was also revealed. The increased attachment of older people performs a protective function. Both spouses experience similar mental states; they are characterized by a high level of empathic experiences, which greatly helps to find the necessary strategies for getting out of crisis situations [6; 11]. Conclusion The self-image in old age largely depends on the active, active position of the individual, his interaction with people around him, adequate perception of himself (self-image), self-esteem and self-perception of his age (lack of suggestibility in relation to those broadcast by society».