History and prospects of studying integral individuality within the system approach

The article considers the main system ideas of V.S. Merlin’s theory of integral individuality: the hierarchical nature, causal and teleological determination, single-valued and polymorphic relations, system-forming factor and individual style of activity. These ideas were further developed in works of V.S. Merlin’s followers and scholars. The prospects of integral individuality theory are discussed: 1) in aspect of general methodology, stated by theorists of Perm psychological school of thought, and 2) in aspect of some concrete mathematical and statistical methods. Within of framework of the first aspect, the author reviews ideas of recent research: multi-quality and polysystem approach, commonality and integration, polymorphism and isomerism. The se-cond aspect is presented by a number of modern mathematical and statistical methods, which expand the pos-sibilities of studying the integral individuality: structural equation modeling, canonical correlation analysis, multidimensional scaling, network analysis, decision trees and neural networks. To demonstrate these methods, the author used data received from a sample of 287 students. Two levels of the integral individuality - psy-chodynamic and personal - were reflected by two inventories used for data collection: FCB-TI (The Formal Characteristics of Behaviour - Temperament Inventory) by J. Strelau and the «Big Five» in the adaptation of A.B. Khromov. Special attention is paid to the discussion of the «meta-analytical approach», which requires scientists to publish full results of the study.