(2016) Science and education, 5, 142-150. Odessa.

Larysa Zhuravlova,
Doctor of Psychology, professor,
Dean of the Faculty of Social Psychology,
Head of the Department of Social and Applied Psychology,
Philip Donchev,
student, Faculty of Social Psychology,
Zhytomyr State University named after Ivan Franko,
40, Velyka Berdychivska Str., Zhytomyr, Ukraine

RESEARCH OF BODY IMAGE IN THE MINDS OF TRANSHUMANISTS

The development of scientific and technological progress, whose products are used for the benefit of a man, is accelerating exponentially. In psychology, the issue of the synthesis of the human body and products of progress still remains understudied. Some aspects of the inclusive psychology have been already examined, namely in the sphere of working with people who have lost limbs and use prostheses to improve their life. However, the main feature of transhumanists is a voluntary agreement on an artificial intervention into the body. The article is aimed at studying transhumanists’ body image as one of the options of personal development. The presented theoretical structure model of body image included the following components: the image of the real body (based on perceptions of respondents about their bodies and individual values of the body), the image of the ideal body (based on social and cultural experience of respondents and their ideas about the perfect body), means of achieving the perfect body (arising from social and cultural experience of the subject) and implicit unconscious processes (which are not subject to reflexivity and cannot (yet) be investigated). According to the theoretical models the following methods and techniques were used: method of free associations with stimuli “my body”, “perfect body”, a modified method of value orientations by Milton Rokeach and repertory grids technique by George Kelly. Research results: the ideal body image in the minds of transhumanists can be described as strong, durable, immortal, invulnerable, controlled at the atomic level. The main forms of its existence and the ways of achieving it can be presented in the following modifications: cyborgisation, digital immortality, regenerative medicine, genetic engineering, longevity. Additional methods (forms) are nanomedicine, cryonics. The image of the real body is described by the following peculiarities: brittle, product evolution, shell consciousness, weak, frail, sickly. The most priority values of the real body are the following; health, vitality, rationality, performance, development, self-control. The characteristics of the least priority are the following: public recognition, satisfaction and confidence. This study of body image in the minds of transhumanists is not fully examined and may be developed in terms of psychological aspects of transhumanitarian worldview in adolescence.

post-humanism, transhumanism, the ideal body image, the real body image, social and cultural experience of the individual, value component of body image.

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