Psychological Concepts of Positive Alternatives to Human Estrangement

The paper addresses various interpretations of estrangement as a negative state of mind, preservation of which in an individual represents his/her refusal of personal growth. The paper distinguishes between two meanings of estrangement (first, one's estrangement from the real 'self'; second, one's feelings of estrangement) and outlines their possible relations. However, the analysis is focused primarily on the alternatives to estrangement, that is, on positive states of mind, ways of escaping estrangement and entering these alternatives. The objects of this analysis are the classics of philosophy: the works of antique philosophers, Karl Marx, Martin Heidegger, Soren Kierkegaard, Nikolai Bakhtin; and the classics of personality psychology: the works of Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, Karl Jung, as well as of existential psychologists, such as Erik Eriksson, Frederick Pearls, Carl Rogers, Salvatore Maddi, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The comparison of these theories reveals the most characteristic ways of reviewing the positive alternatives to estrangement. The main patterns leading to these positive states are divided into groups, which, in turn, constitute the grounds for a layered structure of positive alternatives formation.