Aesthetic paradigm as optics of modern psychology research

Abstract

The theoretical construct "aesthetic paradigm" and the role of art as a methodological optics in psychological research are discussed. Aesthetic paradigm is considered as a system of interdisciplinary theoretical approaches to the study of problems of psychology based on the synthesis of art and science. The representativity of an aesthetic paradigm at different methodological levels is shown. At the general theoretical level the aesthetic paradigm offers psychology a model of organizing knowledge in art as a methodological basis. This is a variant of the network model of the methodology of psychology, which is based on the principles of polyparadigmality and complementarity of knowledge. At the level of the research paradigm art acts as a research model that complements existing research psychological models and constructs of studying the personality, as well as the processes of socialization, the construction of social reality, cultural transmission, the construction of personal and sociocultural identity. A role of an aesthetic paradigm in the study of problems of personal and sociocultural identity is shown. The problem of chronotope harmonization is linked in the aesthetic paradigm with aesthetic experiences, which translates a person into the discourse "human-culture" as opposed to others discourses related to political, economic, social and ethical contexts. The possibilities of art as models for studying the processes of socialization – individualization, identity construction, cultural transmission and the transition of individual senses into meanings are considered. The prognostic value of aesthetic paradigm and art as a modeling activity that constructs reality is shown. It is emphasized that the greatest interest in the quality of the prognostic value of the aesthetic paradigm is the research of the content of feelings, senses and values of contemporaries that are "caught" by art and crystallized in it. Art intuitively reacts and fixes the changes that arise in society before the reflection of such changes in science. At the level of research methods the aesthetic paradigm presupposes the synthesis of the psychological methods of research proper (methods of personality psychology, social and cognitive psychology, the psychology of art) with the methods of related disciplines (art criticism, art history, semiotics, etc.).