Sports in psychology of everyday life

Abstract

The article provides the analysis of the place of sports in the psychology of everyday life based on the theory of psychological evolution of personality of Pierre Janet and three levels of personality: bodily, social and historic. On the level of bodily unity sports involvement reflects current swift and cardinal changes on the level of body and dynamic organization of modern life. Decrease of physical activity and search of basic needs satisfaction, heightening of virtualization lead to changes in life space and new forms of body image, mind and body interaction and body involvement. On the level of social unity, sports become the means of social differentiation (gender, social, economic, moral). Sport activities are involved in construction of social and collective identity and become important parameter of participation in social life, of gaining one’s role and place in the society. Sports reflect and facilitate the development of basic democratic values of equality, unity, social inclusion despite superficial differences connected with health, demographic, social and even psychological characteristics. On the level of historic unity, unity in time, which is created via autobiography, sports become one of the prisms of viewing and understanding one’s life not only among elite sportsmen, but as a sense-provoking lens in everyday life as well.