Competition as a metacategory of modern psychology. Part 2

This paper presents the results of my psycholinguistic and theoretical studies of the role and place of the concept of competition in psychological and broad interdisciplinary context. The author analyses the place of the concept of competition among other basic psychology and social sciences meta-level categories of activity, communication, and conflict. Psycho-semantic scaling of the notion “competition” on the scale “softness vs. hardness of interaction” showed that competition lies between notions of contest and confrontation (conflict). The author has discovered that depending on the context competition (as well as conflict) might be considered either as a “situation” or as a “behavioural strategy”. The author suggests that the concept of conflict is not enough for early prevention of destructive interaction between people. The author argues that introducing concept of competition helps to develop and enrich the categorical apparatus of activity theory since most of the human and animal activity is related to implicit or explicit competition. Motives and strategies of implicit competitive behaviour should be studied by a new multidisciplinary field that we call “competitive psychoanalysis”. Key role in the competitive psychoanalysis is to be played by psychologists.