Life prospects of an individual: theoretical and methodological aspect

Introduction. The problem of the path of life, the meaning of life has been around for many centuries. This topic is studied by psychologists, sociologists, ethicists, aestheticians, philosophers, etc. But up to this day there has been no unambiguous solution. Hence, it is quite reasonable to conclude that a speculative answer to the question about life prospects is impossible, because it is not so much theoretical as life-practical. The goal is to analyze the theoretical and methodological foundations of examining life prospects in foreign and domestic psychology. Materials and Methods. The methodological and theoretical basis for the study of life prospects was made up of psychological, humanistically-oriented theories of personality development, scientific developments of the problems of finding the meaning of life, the idea of personal self-realization and a system approach; personal and personal-activity, subject-focused, semantic approaches; theories of psychological time in development, the concept of goal setting and measuring the quality of life of an individual. The study employed the interpretive-analytical method, the method of theoretical generalization, which were the basis for the study and analysis of foreign and domestic works on the problem. Results and Discussion. The article analyzes the views of foreign and Russian researchers on the construction, functioning and development of the phenomenon of personal life prospects. A theoretical analysis of the formation of the concept of “life path” and “life perspective” of an individual has been carried out, a review of the etymology of the concept “life prospects” provided, and the diversity of its synonymous series in psychological research shown. The paper describes approaches and areas of the study of life prospects. Conclusions. Based on theoretical analysis, the author states that in psychological science there are a number of methodological approaches to solving the problem of a person’s life path: from the study of life prospects, psychological time, vision of the future, crises and stages of age development, etc. to the use of the event-biographical method. The problem of life prospects is involved in the range of problems of the psychology of a person’s life path. Based on theoretical analysis, the concept of “life perspective” is defined as a system vision of an individual about the future, which includes the cognitive (system of life goals and plans), emotional-value (experience of attitude towards the future, system of value orientations), activity-based (decisions and actions) and other components into the structure.