2.2. The Psychobiographical Approach to Studying the Life Path of the Personality

The psychobiographical approach is a research method that focuses on studying an individual's life path while taking into account both psychological and biological aspects. This approach makes it possible to understand how biological factors — such as genetic characteristics and physiological processes — interact with psychological factors, such as personality traits, emotions, motivations and experience, to shape a person's unique life path.

Important aspects of the psychobiographical approach include:

1. Biological factors: The approach takes into account the individual's genetic characteristics, physiological aspects (for example, how physical health or illness can affect mental state), as well as age-related changes and biological factors such as hormonal changes.

2. Psychological aspects: This approach analyses personality traits, character, motivation, emotional reactions and psychological mechanisms that influence decision-making and behaviour at different periods of life.

3. Cultural and social factors: The psychobiographical approach also takes into account the influence of culture, society, family and other sociocultural factors on personality development.

4. Study of life events: Particular attention is paid to analysing the key events and transitions in a person's life, such as education, career, marriage, divorce, the loss of a loved one and other important life events.

5. Dynamic analysis: The psychobiographical approach involves analysing the life path as a dynamic process that changes over time and in response to various influences.

6. Personality development: The aim of this approach is to understand how a person develops and changes over the course of life, and which factors contribute to the formation of their unique traits and characteristics.

An attempt at a comprehensive study of a person's biography was
undertaken by Ch. Buhler and her colleagues in the late 1920s and early 1930s of
the twentieth century. Buhler tried to understand a person's life not as a chain of
chance occurrences, but through its lawful stages, and to understand the personality through its
inner world. Buhler's biographical approach to the study of the person
stands apart in the history of psychology and did not receive the further
development it deserved within psychological science. The main driving force
of personality development, according to Buhler, is the innate striving of a person toward
self-fulfilment, self-realization, that is, the comprehensive realization of
oneself. A person can realize themselves only through creativity,
through creating. Self-fulfilment is the outcome of the life path. She believed that
the cause of a person's psychological ill health, the cause of neuroses, lies in the absence of
life goals most adequate to their inner essence. In this
respect Buhler's ideas were further developed in the humanistic theory of A.
Maslow, who characterized self-actualization as a person's desire
to become what they are capable of becoming.

On the basis of studying hundreds of biographies of the most varied people,
representatives of different classes and groups, Buhler put forward the idea of the
multiphase nature of a person's life path. A phase of the life path (she
identified five such phases) indicates a change in the direction of development, and
a discontinuity within it. It is notable that the age up to 16-20 years (the period
preceding self-determination) is placed by Buhler outside the boundaries of the life
path, as is the age from 65 - 70 until death (when a person leads an aimless
existence). In our view, in order to understand the true significance of any given period of life, one must relate it to the integral structure of the life
cycle, taking into account not only its immediate, but also its
more distant, deep consequences for personal development; therefore the unwarranted decision
of the scholar is to place these two phases of development outside the boundaries of the life
path.

Introducing the concept of "life path" into the arsenal of contemporary
psychology is also determined by methodological considerations. The ontology
of "life path," just like the ontology of "life-world," stands opposed
to the epistemological "subject - object" scheme entrenched in academic
psychology. The difference between the concept of "life path" and the concept of "life
world" is that in the former, a dynamic principle for analysing the individual history of a
person's biography is proclaimed and consistently upheld, one that makes it
possible to overcome not only the subject-object
opposition, but also the opposition of "consciousness-being," to include consciousness within
ontologized being, and to consider an "ontologized consciousness."
In connection with examining the concept of "a person's life path,"
let us clarify somewhat the concept of "event" in psychological science.
What is the significance of this concept for a person, and what place does it occupy in
the process of their life path? The concept of "event" occurs in
psychology, but most often as some kind of auxiliary category for
clarifying other, more significant psychological terms. Here
the basic unit of any historical process, including a
person's biography, is the event. It is with events that
fundamental restructurings of character, changes in the tempo and direction of personality
development are connected. Understanding the essence of events largely determines the understanding of
the nature of the life path as a whole. "An event," noted I.A. Loginova, "is the
basic 'unit' of any historical process, including a
person's biography." Fundamental restructurings of
character, changes in the direction or tempo of personality development are connected with events. In
Russian psychology an event is understood as a certain concrete
change that occurs instantaneously or fairly quickly.
S.L. Rubinstein introduces the concept of "individual history," within which
there are also its own "events" — nodal moments and turning points
of an individual's life path, when, with the adoption of one decision or another, for a
longer or shorter period, the person's life path is determined.
B.G. Ananyev proposed a typology of events, which consists of
events of the surrounding environment and events of a person's behaviour within it; N.A.
Loginova added to this typology a third group — events of inner
life, which make up a person's spiritual biography. Events of the environment
are characterized as discrete, constitute a whole series of significant milestones in
a person's biography, and introduce significant changes into the course of a person's life.
The significance of one and the same objective event is determined by the
position the person takes in relation to it. Events can
be analysed from the standpoint of a person's acts. A person's act is
a unit of human behaviour, and depending on its significance an act may
acquire the character of an event. The meaning of the acts of inner life
is determined by the affirmation or negation of certain values, which
occurs when the subject becomes the object of their own actions and
experiences. All three of the described groups of events are of interest for their
psychological content and consequences for the personality. N.A. Loginova
asserts that "the immediate psychological consequences of events
arise in the form of mental states that reflect the objective
content of the events and correspond to the character of the given person."
Events of the environment are a substantial change in the circumstances of
development that occurred not by the person's will. A break in the smooth flow of
life may be caused by the intrusion of various external forces into a person's
fate. Thus the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant caused changes in
the fates and biographies of many people. Events of the microenvironment include:
the birth or death of relatives; changes in the work or study
collective: appointment to a new position, transfer to a new collective.
Finally, fateful occurrences are also classed among environmental events — happy and
unhappy ones — that at a stroke disrupt all of a person's plans and change their established
way of life. The significance of any given objective event is revealed in
connection with the position that the person themselves takes in relation to it. The role
of an event is determined by whether the person will be a victim of external circumstances
or will take an active stance toward them.

The second group consists of events connected with a person's behaviour in the
surrounding environment, that is, their acts. Some acts have such
significance for a person that they acquire the character of an event. Classes
of act-events, as a rule, correspond to classes of relations.
Act-events mature within the sphere of experiencing, in a person's inner
world; their meaning comes down to the affirmation or negation of certain
values. The search for, acceptance of, or, conversely, rejection of values
makes up a person's spiritual biography, which has its own nodal
moments — events of inner life (the third group).

T.B. Kartseva proposes using the concept of "life events."
A life event cannot fail to have psychological
consequences for its subject. The occurrence of turning-point events in a person's life often
causes a change in the social situation of personality development, and leads to
a change of roles, to a change in the circle of people involved in interaction with them,
in the range of problems they must solve and the possibility of making decisions and
bearing responsibility, to a change in their way of life, and finally — in their self-image,
their conception of themselves. All this allows us to interpret the occurrence of
a life event as a factor that creates the conditions for personal
changes, for a restructuring of the personality as the subject of the event. An event
is a life event for a person only when its occurrence
touches the central aspects of their personality — their self-image, their conception
of themselves — acting on them destructively or forcing the person to change them.
If, however, the event that has occurred does not touch these spheres of the personality, it is not
a life event for that person, regardless of how painful for
the person their experiencing of it may be. A life event is a situation

of self-determination for the personality. From this follows an important conclusion drawn by T.B.
Kartseva: identical events may become life events for some people, while
failing to become such for others. One of the indicators of a life event in
a person's life, and accordingly an indirect criterion of it, is
the process by which a person rethinks their past, reappraises it,
and changes their goals and the meaning of their life.
Life crises, event-based crises, which occurred in every
person's life, essentially remained outside the interest of psychologists. Ecological
catastrophes, natural disasters, accidents and other events have forced
a reconsideration of many previously unshakable views on our life. It turned out that
a person lives in a fairly uncertain world, in which stressful events
are a fairly frequent occurrence.