Women’s and men’s happiness in the context of eternal values

¹ Crimean Federal University named after V. I. Vernadsky, Taurida Academy, Department of Religious Studies, Simferopol, Republic of Crimea, Russia
² Crimean Engineering and Pedagogical University named after Fevzi Yakubov, Department of Psychology, Simferopol, Republic of Crimea, Russia

^* Corresponding author: ogriva@yandex.ru

Abstract

The authors draw attention to the issue of gender differences in the features of the subjective experience of happiness and unhappiness. The article describes the results of a study conducted with clients of psychologists who report problems related to the experience of destructive interpersonal relationships and consider themselves deeply unhappy in life. The purpose of the study is to reveal the gender specificity of the frustration of the subjects’ life needs underlying the deep experience of unhappiness in their lives. A peculiarity of the approach used by the authors is the consideration of issues of psychological nature in the context of philosophical and religious understanding of eternal values, such as happiness and love for one’s neighbor. A special focus of the authors’ attention is the problems related to the philosophical and religious basis of consideration of the feminine as Sophia the Wisdom of God with the complex of her rejection, the dominant sense of guilt, and the desire to return to the Father. Such methodological symbiosis is facilitated by interdisciplinarity as one of the main principles of the authors’ interaction with the materials of this work. The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) aimed at the amplification of subjects’ unconscious intentions is used as a diagnostic instrument. The conducted psychological study allows to reveal and describe some of the causes for the manifestation and experience of happiness and unhappiness in the lives of modern men and women and show specific differences between their subjective experiences of happiness and unhappiness in their lives. Unlike previous studies of this kind, the deployed philosophical and religious studies approach provides an opportunity to take a new look at the outlined issues considering them from the point of the philosophical context of values.