ABSTRACT
The problem of emotional maturity has been studied by domestic and foreign psychologists (A. Reber, A. Sukharev, O. Chebykin, C. Lambert, W. Menninger, etc.), psychophysiologists (P. Fress, P. Simonov and others.) and psychotherapists (D. Abrahamsen, C.E. FitzMaurice, etc.).
A significant contribution to solving the problem of emotional maturity of a person was made by O. Chebykin, A. Maurer, J. Murray and others, whose works have shown the general concepts of its research and formation.
The results of research by G. Breslav, O. Zaporozhets, O. Kulchytska, E. Nosenko, A. Olshannikova, E. Chomskaya, O. Yakovleva and others, focused on revealing certain patterns of formation of the emotional sphere, and by K. Abulkhanova-Slavskaya, L. Antsiferova, L. Bozhovich, B. Bratusya, A. Maslow, V. Morgun, which reveal the meaning of the concepts of “maturity” and “personal maturity”, and also by O. Asmolov, L. Vygotsky, G. Craig, I. Cohn, O. Leontiev, D. Elkonin and others, related to the determination of the factors of personality development, actualize the problem of in-depth understanding of emotional maturity. After all, according to V. Vilyunas, O. Leontiev, P. Fress and others, the study of emotional maturity belongs to the undeveloped areas of psychology. At present, the psychological content of emotional maturity and the main features that characterize this phenomenon are still insufficiently defined.
In age and pedagogical psychology, the problem of diagnosing emotional maturity is also of paramount importance. According to L. Bozhovych, R. Granovska, I. Cohn, A. Olshannikova, L. Potapchuk, O. Tolstykh and others, this period can be considered optimal for the formation of these emotions.
Emotional maturity can be viewed as an integrative property of a personality characterized by the development and adequacy of emotional response in various living conditions. In this case, the main components in its structure may be such properties as intensity, self-regulation and empathy. Taking into account the given properties the methodology of emotional maturity diagnostics is presented. The peculiarities of the development of emotional maturity in adolescents and young adults from 11 to 23 years are described. We also gave characteristics of types of emotional maturity (such as expressive, self-regulatory, empathic, harmonious, self-regulatory-empathic, expressive-empathic and expressive-self-regulatory).
The first part of this chapter summarizes approaches to clarify the psychological content of emotional maturity, tendencies of its recognition and characteristic features. The methodology for examining emotional maturity is presented. The final part presents empirical results concerning the development of emotional maturity, taking into account the age and gender differences between adolescents and young adults.
We believe that the presented results can be useful both for specialists in the field of development of the emotional sphere and for practicing psychologists in the education system.
