Postmodern worldview and problematic context of personality’s psychological cognition
Authors: Savchyn Myroslav 
Published: January 2021

The semantic characteristics of the postmodern worldview and its mostly destructive influence on the state of solving the existing problems of psychological science are analyzed at the methodological level. In this worldview, the image of the world is seen as a multidimensional, heterogeneous, mosaic formation, and culture is seen as a sphere of manifestation of the ecstasy of communication; emphasis is placed on the dynamics of processes and no attention is paid to stable modes; the order is sought in chaos, which somehow helps to maintain a sense of stability of the system in a deficit of order, the opposite processes of structuring and chaos are reflected and the idea of multiplicity of beauty is developed. In the bosom of this worldview, life is seen as a text, and communication (dialogue) as a key moment in the personality’s social existence, the contextuality (dependence on socio-cultural influences) of human’s everyday life is proclaimed, procedures of controlling the discourses are characterized, which is caused by “linguistic turn”, concentration of considerations on the texts. It is noted that postmodern ideology actually declares a taboo on science, objectivity in the world cognition, because imitation is attributed to reality itself, the possibility of constructing a systematized theory and philosophy is denied, the network principle of knowledge organization is proposed, and to ensure its “objectivity” it is proposed to abandon the category of subject in order to get rid of the subjectivity of cognition, which seems to be manifested in the adherence to values and meanings of cognitive activity, and to define the structure of cognition the concept of “epistem” is operated, which characterizes the structure of historically variable cognition. In general, in the postmodern worldview it is promoted to achieve objectivity through dialogue, communication, and convention, when intersubjectivity is a criterion of truth, and methodological progress is associated with interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. In this worldview dimension, against the background of nihilism, the personality is considered as dynamic, flowing, changeable, polyphonic, not rigidly determined, emancipated structurally, and without a stabilizing core (spiritual Self, gender, Self-concept), individually unique is exaggeratedly interpreted, that one which is not combined with universal and neutral in relation to objective values (for example, amoralism). Freedom is misinterpreted as permissiveness, even in the field of self-realization and self-creation. The postmodernist idea of narrative as a textual interpretation of the world, one’s personality and one’s life is analyzed. It is argued that there can be different relationships between the processes of real life and narration, because a person is able to live fully without resorting to narration. It is noted that postmodernism neglects the stabilizing phenomena of the human’s inner world, the eternal meanings of life (creation of faith, love, good and the fight against evil, the spread of authentic freedom and responsibility, hope, happy moments, healing states of humility and repentance for unworthy deeds, spiritual understanding of suffering). It is argued that due to the focus on the spiritual in his inner world and life, personality constructively overcomes chaos, organizes worries, thoughts, intentions, she has great hope, realizes great life goals, finds authentic meanings of being and then she really feels happy. The spiritual Self makes us stronger, allows us to act intelligently in conditions of uncertainty, the pressure of complex problems allows us to overcome stressful situations, to benefit from our own spiritual suffering.