Introduction
Current times demand a broad range of individual abilities. To an unprecedented and mass extent, the demand for increased capacities and performance quality in diverse types of activity, in communication, in relationships has come to the forefront. It is likely that the current social “pressure” and rising environmental demands on individuals’ social and psychological adaptation will continue to intensify.
This reality requires, more than before, respecting the human personality, its position and status in systems of relations and activities within the social environment. It is necessary to be more concerned than before with the real possibilities of individual personalities in terms of people’s readiness to address increasingly pronounced contradictions between individual and societal, or group, life interests. One must keep in mind not only understanding adaptability but also the possibilities of mobility and activation of new psychological and social competencies of a person. In studying human personality, one must also overcome simplified reasoning that reduces the person to a mere phenomenon of bare human existence or an empirical individual.
The agent of socialization of the human individual is always society as a system and a whole. Society, however, acts in the socialization environment and in the socialization process through various factors of socialization. Instruments of socialization are specific social groups—large, medium, and small groups. Likewise, individual people in certain social roles and positions allow or require them to influence others in a formal way—e.g., teachers, educators, managers, cultural and political actors—and also in an informal way—e.g., parents, siblings, peers, reference groups such as friendship or interest groups and other collectives.
Social environment
What is social environment? Is it society as a whole and the individual groups that make up a person’s social surroundings? If we agree with the view [3, p. 382] that “society is an organized aggregation of people, consisting of a network of mutually linked groups and organizations that form social structure,” then we have a definition of social environment. We interpret the ideas of the authors of the well-known book A Person in Society [3, p. 350, 381] as follows:
- In social environment, coordination and regulation of the activities of members of social groups are achieved through systems of social positions and social roles.
- Social class, as the most significant status system, strongly determines social environment and an individual’s position within it.
- In social environment, influence on people is exerted in such a way that social structure stamps its specificity and permanence onto individuals’ needs, knowledge and interpersonal response characteristics.
The development of personality as a social system, i.e., the development of moral and ethical qualities, conscious action, as well as accepted patterns and values, are not only an image of the culturality of personality behavior, but significantly also influence social development at the level of society. We consider relations of the person to natural and social reality on these three levels:
- relations and connection between person and nature—the person and the natural environment;
- relations and connection between person and the objects of his or her material activity—person and material-object environment;
- relations and connection between person and the objects of his or her theoretical activity—the person and mental/psychological and also spiritual environment;
- relations and connection between person and society—the person and social environment.
A person is realized in society at different levels. V. S. Merlin [6] states that the person appears in society as an individual characterized by the specific features of temperament and psychological processes; as a personality characterized by psychological and social qualities; as a social group, and also as a socio-historical community—the nation. Solving any practical task concerning a person and therefore social deviance is in fact possible only when somatic, psychological, social and social conditions of individuals’ lives and their interconnections are accepted.
The idea of personality self-reproduction as a system captures the unavoidable condition of existence, functioning, movement and development of the human personality system. Part of reproduction is continual balancing of material, energetic and informational differences between the individual and the environment.
Considering personality under current life conditions and in situations that are challenging for further development and adaptation of people, it seems necessary for us to acknowledge that [5]:
- Personality is a self-organizing whole. For personality, programmed, purposeful and goal-oriented organization of psyche and behaviour is characteristic, including action.
- Personality is an open system that exchanges information, matter and energy with the environment.
- Personality is a system with goal-directed behavior and action—its goals are determined by the needs of the environment and by the needs of personality.
A personality system, however, has not only an external environment but also its own internal environment, i.e., the environment of its subsystems: its structure, psychological components and relationships. Personality self-regulation means not only maintaining balance between personality and its external environment, but also maintaining balance between personality and its internal environment. The first is realized through the second.
In connection with the question of conditions of socio-psychic adaptation, one should mention the subjective conditions of individuals’ adaptation in social environment. As a subjective condition of social adaptation, O. Mikšík [7, p. 21] considers the hypothetical structure of psychological variability. It is made up of a complex of innate and learned strategies of dynamically coping with situational variables that appear as readiness of the individual for a certain form and mode of responses. In this context, O. Mikšík [7, p. 22] defined two forms of psychological adaptive variability:
- High adaptive variability is shown in the tendency to respond purposefully and adapt.
- Adaptive rigidity—inertia—is shown in the tendency to hold to one’s own behavior patterns and not to adapt.
This theoretical introduction to the issue of personality and environment was chosen for practical reasons—it leads to the understanding and explanation of the psychological mechanism by which positive and negative influences of the environment can be transformed into personality. A more extensive analysis was published in the monograph Psychológia vo vzdelávaní dospelých [5].
Socio-psychological adaptation of the individual in the environment
We frame the process of socio-psychological adaptation against the background of mutual influence and relationships of personality in the social environment. In mutual influence, personality does not enter into relationships with all systems of social environment, only with some of them. Social environment, which had been the condition of personality’s emergence, is itself reproduced by personality as its own result. This could mean that personality is a moment of society and society is made of moments of personality. In this way, we explain the specificity of the sociability of an individual depending on the environment in which he or she lives.
We consider adaptation to be a constitutive aspect of development of organism, individual and personality. Adapting personality to a specific social reality means concordance with the developmental tendency of personality, i.e. with psychological potential and developmental tasks. Developmental dynamics reaches an optimum when necessary conditions are created. We reach the psychological meaning of the concept socio-psychological adaptation through the statement by J. Charvát [2], who regards adaptation as the guiding factor of developmental change: “Adaptations are not completely understood. They are usually understood ex post, historically, as a consequence of evolution. Sometimes, however, we can also understand them in reverse, as one of the causes of evolution. Biological adaptiveness of adaptations flows from the encoded memory of the species. But in higher organisms, and especially in humans, we also find experiences organized and processed from the life of the individual. And these also have adaptive character… adaptation must under changing external conditions ensure the survival of the individual… must help him survive overload.”
The psychological content of adaptation, in our view and according to other authors [4], [10], is the convergence of goals and value orientations of the group and the individual as a group member, because he or she adopts norms, traditions, group culture and group role structure. In connection with the socialization of people, we define socio-psychological adaptation as follows [5, p. 148]:
- Adaptation is considered one of the basic socio-psychological mechanisms of socialization.
- Adaptation is a term that expresses the dynamic process of a person’s adaptation to the environment.
- The result of the adaptation process is the individual’s adaptiveness.
A significant contribution of J. Piaget [9] to adaptation theory, well known in professional circles, is his distinction of opposed processes of adaptation, which we briefly rephrase:
- The process of accommodation leads to the functioning of the organism, personality, subject in accordance with demands and properties of the environment. It may be only formal, external adaptation to conditions, even when accompanied by internal disagreement or protest by the individual.
- In the process of assimilation there is learning, interiorization of properties of environment, and transformation of these properties in accordance with the needs of the organism, personality, subject.
Representatives of the interaction concept of adaptation (Philips, 1968: in [5]) view the reality of individual adaptation in environment as follows:
- Adaptation expresses how the organism or personality adapts to the demands of specific situations; this is situational adaptation, and its outcome is situational adaptiveness.
- Adaptation refers to stable resolution, coping with typical problematic situations; this is general adaptation, and its outcome is general adaptability.
If we summarize the views of the mentioned authors, it appears that general adaptation—let us call it generalized adaptation—and its result—let us call it a person’s general adaptiveness—is the consequence and image of mastering a whole range of situational adaptations to recurring situations. Then, the individual’s general maladaptability, as a result of these situational adaptations in which defensive psychological mechanisms had to be mobilized, can be compared to coping with stress, i.e., stress, frustration, deprivation, conflicts.
With regard to the problem of social deviations, we recall [1, p. 25] the occurrence of stress from difference and stress from failing to meet society’s social expectations. Marked negative distinctness of an individual from others in a group or in society is called psychological and social stigma. Rejection occurs through social “categorization” of people, and society accepts these categories to varying degrees. Some people are rejected, certain groups are labelled as others, or as deviant; persons from such groups are poorly accepted, and the likelihood of their social rejection increases. We add to social categorization the characterization of normal adaptation and deviant adaptation [8, p. 22] in our treatment.
A sketch of the idea of distinctness of persons and groups in a given social whole:
- Normal adaptation is a process that results in adaptiveness in typical situations without pathological changes in personality structure and without violation of social-group norms.
- Deviant adaptation consists of adaptation processes that do indeed satisfy the needs of the individual in a specific social environment, a group, but the mode of satisfying them is not in line with expectations of other participants in the social process and deviates from their ideas, norms and requirements.
Using the term deviant in this context does not mean pathological in the subjective sphere of the individual and anti-social in the objective sphere of society.
It appears that more attention needs to be paid to terminological delimitation and explanation of the concepts deviant and pathological, socially deviant and socially pathological. Likewise, socially deviant phenomena and socially pathological phenomena should be specified both in knowledge and in the study of these phenomena.
In social environment, certain behavior may be deviant, i.e., it departs from the accepted norms of the group, but in other groups and especially from the perspective of society as a whole, such behavior can be productive and desirable and vice versa [8]. A. A. Nalčadžjan develops his position by distinguishing non-conformist adaptation from innovative and creative adaptation of individuals.
Unlike deviant adaptation, according to the author above, pathological adaptation of a human individual already excludes creatively overcoming obstacles in social environment. It is therefore a psychological process and social behavior that an individual carries out by activating pathological mechanisms in the form of neurotic, psychotic, psychopathic syndrome and personality disorder.
Conclusion
In the prevention of social deviations, it is important to take into account both the nature, degree and level of socio-psychological adaptation of adult persons and the nature of the social environment in which they live. We raise this point because adult persons cannot be understood outside and without understanding the properties and state of their specific social environment. It is understandable that social environment, social deviations and socially pathological behavior patterns of people are closely connected, and they can be regarded as manifestations of the consequences of disrupted socio-psychological adaptation in adults.
Author: Prof. Doc. PhDr. Mária Machalová, CSc.
References
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