Semantic aspects of the experience of the social identity’s crisis in the forced change of life situation

Abstract

The paper presents the results of an empirical study of semantic aspects of the experience of the social identity’s crisis in a forced change of situation. Life situation is defined as the reciprocal conditioning of three factors - the nature of man, his personal resources and social environment. Forced moving from one living situation to another involves breaking these ties and is experienced as a crisis of identity. The experience of the crisis is caused by the semantic relation of the individual to the subjective past, present, and future (current semantic condition). As a model group was a group of 145 people with the status of internally displaced persons, faced with the situation of finding a new social identity. Repertory grid technique (J.Kelly) and Test of life orientations (D.A.Leontiev) reconceptualized to diagnose actual semantic states are used in study. The results allow us to characterize the experience of the social identity’s crisis as a process of de-synchronization of temporal loci sense (past, present, future). Mismatch of correlation between the factors life situation leads to the localization of meanings in distinct time region of subjective reality.