ABSTRACT
As a personal quality, independence indeed presupposes the ability to make and carry out important decisions by oneself, without outside coaching; the responsibility and willingness to answer for the consequences of one’s actions; and the conviction that such behavior is practicable, socially possible, and morally correct. A normal person, whether in an experiment or in real life, determines his line of behavior on the basis of all information available to him both about himself personally and about the surrounding world. Psychologists have identified a number of features comprising the essence of independence and the psychic phenomena associated with it: the capacity for self-affirmation, for maintaining the stability of the ego; self-control; and the ability to regulate one’s own behavior and emotional reactions. The "subject-activist" model of independence could only have been formed under the kinds of conditions in which the active individual could have a real opportunity to achieve any socially significant results.
