Я – Другой

The article presents the results of theoretical analysis of the “collective memory” constructs as a repository of collective experience of a large group, represented in the meanings, symbols, images, cultural patterns, means, mechanisms of reproduction and translation of the past, and the “family memory” constructs as its kind in the context of a small group.

The purpose of the study presented in the article is theoretical reflection on the meaningful transformation of the “Significant Other” representation in a transitive society. It describes the main attributes of a transitional society (instability, uncertainty, projectivity, multidirectionality, multivariability, innovativeness, etc.), indicating its institutional and value-related changes, their irreversibility, as well as unity of preservation and negation of rules, norms and values, old and new worldviews and world orders, their conflict and alternativeness.

The article outlines the results of an empirical study of the phenomenological experience of the individual who finds himself/ herself in a situation of forced otherness, i.e. a situation where the individual, subjectively perceiving other people as belonging to his/ her in-group, is himself/herself perceived by them as an outsider. The study relies on qualitative methodology, which is based on case studies and whose units of analysis are emotional, cognitive, and behavioral indicators of the personality that is experiencing otherness.