ANALISIS OF THE PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT PROCESS IN THE OLD AGE

The article deals with theoretical and methodological problems of a personality development in the old age as an indirect process of changes of the mental model to the wisdom and integration. The main tasks of the development in the old age are the following: successful overcoming of the crisis of ageing, victory over the fear of death and over the dementia. The old age is a specific age period, interpreted sometimes as a "social project". The role of old people in the construction of such a project and the possibility of restructuring their self-attitude and attitude towards their own old age problems are the extremely important. Analysis of the development and self-development in the old age, as well as their specifics, requires understanding of the lifetime development as a nonrectilinear process, according to which there is not only the upgrading of potencies, and there are ups and downs, amplification of the specified functions and the depletion of others. According to the G. S. Kostyuk's concept of self-development (self-motion) of personality, the development is associated with changes in mental models of the world. The mechanism of the development in the old age appears as "self-projecting". It follows that the general specifics of the development in the old age essentially act like person's self-development. The labor activity of self-development is a separate, specifically organized activity, which we consider as a leading activity in the old age. Among the new formations in the old age we primarilly identify the updated (wise, integrative, restructured) mental model of the world.