Human mental health is a very broad topic and includes many aspects. Just because a person is healthy, whole and fulfilled in some way, this does not indicate his personal maturity. What can be considered an indicator of a person’s maturity?
One of the necessary conditions for personality maturity is the quality, or ability, of a person to rely on himself. Personal maturity manifests itself well in relationships.
For example, in our society it is believed that a happy marriage is one in which the partners satisfy each other's needs. A person is sure that his partner should take care of him, create comfort, console him, protect him, and he is ready to give something in return. But if this does not happen, then the person becomes disappointed in his partner and looks for someone who can satisfy his needs. This shows quite clearly where divorces come from.
An indicator of a person’s maturity is a person’s willingness to take care of himself. He himself is able to provide himself with security, care for himself, this person is able to love himself. This is manifested in the fact that he can heal himself if necessary, he has the ability to self-regulate, he is able to console himself, create comfort for himself, and is able to protect himself. In a relationship, such a person, instead of expecting something from a partner, can share it with the person himself. Those. An indicator of a person’s maturity is a person’s ability not to shift all responsibility to another person, to be able to independently resolve their emotional problems, to cope with their anxieties and fears.
What doesn't a mature person do? He tries to settle his fears, settle his anxieties, sometimes in a violent way, at the expense of another person.
Psychological maturity is also manifested in the fact that a person is able, despite his emotional problems, not only not to attack another, but also is able not to ignore him or withdraw. He maintains contact, is present with his partner.
Another important quality of a person’s psychological maturity is the ability to respond to the emotional problems of another person. This translates well into partnerships. When a person is able, seeing the problems of another person, not to start saving him, not to start attacking him. But at the same time, do not distance yourself from him, do not leave, do not leave him alone. He is able to simply be in contact, to be present, to be able to reflect it, to be nearby, to maintain contact.
A mature person is also a person who is able to be flexible. An immature person is quite cruel in his assessments, in his worldview, in his attempt to defend his rightness. He receives inner strength from his beliefs and rules received from the outside, which he is accustomed to follow.
Thus, an immature person gains strength not within himself, but at the expense of his family, at the expense of the country, at the expense of some organization.
An indicator of a person’s maturity also lies in the fact that when a person is flexible, when everything is in order with him, he can allow another person to convince himself of something, he can allow himself to accept the point of view of another person, but at the same time, without destroying himself, preserving myself. He can even allow himself to be influenced, again preserving himself and his integrity.
What else can be considered an indicator of a person’s maturity? A person’s ability to feel some painful feelings meaningfully, for growth, the ability to consciously leave their comfort zone. The ability to show another person your wound, your vulnerability, your pain, to open up, to trust, to admit some of your limitations, i.e. take some risk, go through some discomfort.
Humans are naturally programmed to avoid pain and seek pleasure and comfort. Therefore, unfortunately, not everyone manages to solve their problems, even if they have the desire. You can see why this happens in our article on the topic “About people who are not helped by coaching” from Olga Tereshchenko.
Development of a mature personality
It often happens that in a relationship one person develops and opens up a new space, a new level for himself, his needs in the relationship change, while his partner remains in place. On this basis, a conflict arises. What to do in this case?
First, you need to understand that conflict in relationships is part of the path to psychological maturity. Conflict in relationships is always normal, it is not a problem, it is development. When we find ourselves in a relationship, in a conflict, we always have a choice - to escape from this conflict or to live through it and grow. Living through conflicts, remaining in contact, is where learning occurs and internal supports are nurtured. We cannot buy internal supports from training, books, or another person. It is in these conflicts of maturity that supports are grown. In living through these conflicts in contact with yourself, with your feelings, with your partner, this ability to love yourself, the ability to console yourself, is cultivated. Of course, you can’t do this without dealing with trauma. Because it is obvious that many things are blocked in a person. This is not acquired through knowledge, it is acquired through living, through acceptance, through healing. The NLP practitioner course at the Academy can also help in solving these problems.
In other words, a person’s mental health is directly affected by healing internal traumas
Sometimes people are born with a high level of maturity, sometimes this happens as a result of deliberate work on themselves, for example, trauma therapy, and sometimes it is the result of growth in relationships.
Of course, everything starts in childhood, when parents teach and help the child cope with difficulties on his own. Not by attacking him and not leaving him alone to be torn apart by this world, but by being with him, helping him grow the ability to act on his own.
For example, if we take coaching, it is a tool that allows a person to cope with his own difficulties, problems and tasks. This is also a wonderful method that helps to look for answers within yourself, to look for resources within yourself, to look for strength within yourself, to grow it within yourself. We also train people in coaching through our Academy.
Mature Personality Map
True maturity cannot be achieved without a strong sense of identity. The level of personality development often correlates with the degree of its socialization. In research on personality psychology, various similar and dissimilar manifestations of a person are intertwined in different ways. Historically, personality has been described using different characteristics, sometimes closely related and sometimes directly opposed.
Author:
Tatyana Viktorovna Slotina, candidate of pedagogical sciences, associate professor of the department of applied psychology of the St. Petersburg State Transport University.
In research on personality psychology, various similar and dissimilar manifestations of a person are intertwined in different ways. These include: motives for activity, social roles, psychophysiological characteristics, biochemical properties, types of higher nervous activity, ideals, physical appearance, abilities, worldview, self-awareness, character, needs, products of creative activity, value orientations, intelligence, experiences, mental cognitive characteristics processes... This list can be continued, it will be very long and varied.
Historically, personality has been described using different characteristics, sometimes closely related and sometimes directly opposed. Let's consider one of the classifications of personality manifestations proposed by A.G. Asmolov.
External characteristics. Most people differ from each other in their appearance, height, skin color, build, weight and other features. In everyday life, many observations have been accumulated about the connection between physical appearance and human characteristics. In ancient times, based on facts that speak about the connection between a person’s appearance and character, a whole doctrine arose - physiognomy. Today, in some forms, physiognomy continues to serve many who like to understand the behavioral manifestations of their own or someone else’s personality. At the same time, the theories of Kretschmer, Sheldon and others are an example of a scientifically substantiated relationship between external characteristics and personal characteristics.
Past experience
. Knowledge, beliefs, habits, skills, stereotypes, various manifestations of memory are an essential characteristic of a person’s personality. A person who has lost past experience completely loses orientation in time and space.
Motivation
. According to many psychologists, drives, needs, aspirations, attitudes and, finally, personality orientation are the main components of motivation. Needs and attitudes determine the selectivity of a person’s attention, memory, and thinking. The role of the motivational sphere in this case is difficult to leave aside.
Goals and values
. A personality is impossible without the goals to which it strives, without the values for which a person lives (even if he is not always aware of them).
Language and speech
. A person’s speech and language largely determine his vision of the world. It is no coincidence that one of the most important characteristics of a child’s maturity at a certain age is certain speech features.
Character traits
. If you ask someone to describe themselves or someone they know, certain character traits will most likely be mentioned first. The list of designations for personality traits in the language is huge. The first acquaintance often begins with a verbal portrait. Character traits are a special category, without which in this case it is difficult to obtain a complete description of a person’s personality.
Social roles
. Wherever we are, no matter what we are doing, we constantly have to perform one role or another, and sometimes several roles at once. It turns out that by describing our roles, the specifics of each individual person fulfilling his role, we will also receive some description of the personality. Let's remember the "Who am I?" test. What are people's first responses? I am a person, a mother, a brother, a student, a pensioner, a teacher, etc. Behind social roles there is a very tangible reality.
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Behavior
. The obvious truth is that in life a person is primarily judged by his deeds. The path to personality through the study of various manifestations of human behavior, his actions in certain situations of moral choice seems so natural that it is chosen not only by practitioners of human communication, wise with everyday experience, but also by professionals of the most diverse trends and trends.
Consciousness and self-awareness
. Consciousness, and even more so a person’s self-awareness, are the most essential manifestations of personality. Many experts even include the concept of consciousness in the definition of personality: for example, K. K. Platonov calls a specific person as a bearer of consciousness a personality. All other definitions of the concept of personality are, in his opinion, derived from this.
Talent and creativity
. Very often in everyday life we call a person a person if he shows himself creatively and talentedly.
Personality development criteria
True maturity cannot be achieved without a strong sense of identity (Who am I?).
Psychologist K. Obukhovsky stands out
four criteria for personality development
. None of them is the most important, they complement each other.
Skill Growth
: throughout the life of each individual, a contradiction intensifies, expressed in the fact that the success achieved leads to an increase in the complexity of the tasks that face it, and the natural process of aging worsens the skill. Just maintaining the skill at the same level requires, in fact, its constant improvement.
The emergence of new features
: these are new views, a different understanding of the world, a transition to a more abstract concept of the world and the study of new techniques of action.
Feeling satisfied with life
: satisfaction is the general positive background against which we view our lives, which does not exclude negative emotional states as adequate reactions to inevitable misfortunes and difficulties. At the same time, prolonged despair, which breaks our lives and creates new types of negative functioning, leads to the loss of the ability to develop.
Self-control ability
requires special psychological conditions, qualities that are unique to man and relate to the world of human experiences, his most conscious inner experience. In addition, the ability to self-control follows from mental distance from such mental characteristics as fear, love or guilt, which can control us regardless of intellectual premises and modify our behavior in a way that is contrary to our intentions.
Humanistic, phenomenological, and existential theories interpret the process of personality development primarily as a desire for self-actualization, as the process of becoming a self. In particular, A. Maslow identifies 15 main features of a self-actualizing personality. He believed that such individuals make up about 1% of the population and are an example of psychologically healthy people who maximally express the human essence.
- A more adequate perception of reality, free from the influence of current needs, stereotypes, prejudices, interest in the unknown.
- Acceptance of oneself and others as they are, the absence of artificial, predatory forms of behavior and rejection of such behavior on the part of others.
- Spontaneity of manifestations, simplicity and naturalness. Compliance with established rituals, traditions and ceremonies, but approaching them with a proper sense of humor. This is not automatic, but conscious conformism at the level of external behavior.
- Business orientation. Such people are usually not busy with themselves, but with their life tasks. They usually relate their activities to universal values and tend to view them from the perspective of eternity rather than the current moment. Therefore, they are all philosophers to some extent.
- A position of detachment in relation to many events. This helps them endure troubles relatively calmly and be less susceptible to outside influences. They are often prone to loneliness.
- Autonomy and independence from the environment; stability under the influence of frustrating factors.
- Freshness of perception: finding something new every time in what is already known.
- Ultimate experiences characterized by a feeling of the disappearance of one’s own self.
- A sense of community with humanity as a whole.
- Friendship with other self-actualizing people: a narrow circle of people with whom the relationships are very deep. Absence of hostility in interpersonal interactions.
- Democracy in relationships. Willingness to learn from others.
- Stable internal moral standards. They feel good and evil acutely: they are goal-oriented, and the means are always subordinate to them.
- "Philosophical" sense of humor. Having a humorous attitude towards life in general and oneself, but one's flaws or adversities are never considered funny.
- Creativity that does not depend on what a person does and is manifested in all his actions.
- A critical attitude towards the culture to which they belong: the good is chosen and the bad is rejected. They feel more like representatives of humanity as a whole than of one culture.
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Personal maturity
The level of personality development is often correlated with the degree of its socialization. The criteria of maturity, accordingly, appear as the criteria of socialization. At the same time, the question of the criteria for personality maturity has not been resolved once and for all in Russian psychology. Among the indicators of maturity are:
- the breadth of social connections, presented at the subjective level: I-other, I-others, I-society as a whole, I-humanity;
- a measure of the development of the individual as a subject;
- the nature of the activity - from appropriation to implementation and conscious reproduction;
- social competence.
Carl Jung linked the achievement of maturity with
the individual's acceptance of responsibility
primarily for their projections, their awareness and subsequent assimilation. Carl Rogers viewed responsibility as closely related to awareness, freedom to be oneself, control of one's life and choices.
In G. Allport’s view, mental health, intelligence, and maturity are concepts of the same level. He highlights
six main criteria of maturity
:
- Expanding the sense of self
, which gradually emerges in infancy, is not fully formed in the first 3-4 years or even in the first 10 years of life, but continues to expand with experience as the range of what a person participates in increases. What is important here is the activity of the Self, which must be purposeful.
- Warmth in relationships with others
. A person must be capable of significant intimacy in love (in a strong friendship). And at the same time, avoid idle, obsessive involvement in relationships with other people, even with your own family.
- Emotional safety (self-acceptance)
. A mature person expresses his beliefs and feelings while taking into account the beliefs and feelings of others and without feeling threatened by the expression of emotions - by himself or others.
- Realistic perception, skills and tasks
. A mature personality must be focused on the problem, on something objective that is worth doing. The task makes you forget about satisfying drives, pleasures, pride, and protection. This criterion is obviously related to responsibility, which is the ideal of maturity. At the same time, a mature personality is in close contact with the real world.
- Self-objectification - understanding, humor
. A person acting for show does not realize that his deception is transparent and his posture is inadequate. A mature person knows that it is impossible to “fake” a personality; one can only deliberately play a role for the sake of entertainment. The higher the self-understanding, the more clearly a person’s sense of humor is expressed.
- Unified philosophy of life
. A mature person necessarily has a clear idea of his purpose in life. A mature person has a relatively clear self-image. This criterion is associated with the “maturity” of conscience. A mature conscience is a feeling of duty to maintain one’s self-image in an acceptable form, to continue one’s chosen line of proprietary aspirations, and to create one’s own style of being. Conscience is a type of self-government.
It is important to note that the process of socialization does not stop in adulthood. Moreover, it never ends, but always has a conscious or unconscious goal. Thus, the concepts of “maturity” and “adulthood” are not synonymous. In fact, even at the individual level, the concepts of “maturity” and “adulthood” do not completely coincide. Within the framework of one paradigm, the problem of maturity can be considered at the level of the relationship between different levels of human organization: individual, personality, subject of activity.
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How many of them are mature people?
A mature person cannot be determined by the amount of money, property or some kind of certificates. It can only be determined in personal experience, in personal communication, in personal interaction. This is an internal feeling.
There are very few such people. However, psychological maturity is a process, a movement. Each of us can be willing to accept different levels of discomfort in order to grow and develop. Each of us is ready in a different number of situations to rely on ourselves, to give ourselves love, to console ourselves; in some situations we will need other people.
Personal maturity is not directly related to age. A fairly old person may live in a childlike state, and a teenager may have a higher level of maturity than many adults.
