Juveniles’ Deviance and Life Orientations

Introduction. Under consideration is the problem of studying life orientations of persons of juvenile age, a period when a certain range of interests is formed and which is a psychological basis determining his life path. During this period a person acquires moral values common for the culture of the society, which underlie a juvenile personality’s development. This gives rise to a special interest in this age group as the most active, unpredictable, capable of both creation and destruction. The latter is most typical for deviant juveniles whose life orientations significantly differ from their non-deviant peers. The purpose of the research is to reveal life orientations of deviant juveniles. Materials and Methods. The study employed the method of life meaning orientations developed by D.A. Leontiev, G.V. Rezapkina’s “Hierarchy of life values”, Yu. M. Orlov “Need for achieving the goal”. The survey covered thirty-eight school students from Omsk. Results and Discussion. It is emphasized that life orientations play a significant role in determining, building a person’s life, implementation of his plans, tracking the way to the designated goal, which achievement is accompanied by experiencing happiness. The authors present dominant life orientations of such an age group as juveniles. The focus is made on identifying the psychological nature of life orientations, their diagnostics, as well as determining the differences in life orientations of deviant and normotypical juveniles. The article contains some data from the empirical study of life orientations of deviant and normotypical juveniles. Conclusions. The majority of juveniles have either an inner position not yet formed or formed not to a sufficient degree, which is caused by the general unformed adequate life orientations. Moreover, such a behaviour should be characterized not as the one aimed at protesting, but, on the contrary, as conforming to an anti-cultural or asocial environment, which, due to the insufficient degree of formation of one's own life orientations, is a reference for deviant juveniles.