DEVELOPMENT AND FUNCTIONING OF MEANING AUTONOMY

Abstract

The relevance of the study is determined by the need to deepen the theoretical understanding of how individuals develop the capacity to maintain authorship of their own meanings, critically reinterpret external influences, and preserve the integrity of their system of personal meanings under conditions of digitalized communication, information overload, cognitive warfare, and other contemporary information-psychological threats. This integrative psychological capacity is conceptualized in the article as meaning autonomy. The objective of the article is to provide a theoretical substantiation of the concept of meaning autonomy, to analyze the patterns of its development, functioning, stagnation, and recovery, and to determine its place in the structure of personal maturity. The study employs theoretical methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison, and systematization of scientific sources, as well as the genetic approach and conceptual modeling. Meaning autonomy is conceptualized as an integrative, dynamic capacity of an individual to independently form, critically reinterpret, integrate, and maintain a personal system of meanings while preserving authorship of meaning-making regardless of external informational, sociocultural, and communicative influences. A theoretical model of the development and functioning of meaning autonomy is proposed. According to this model, its development is non-linear and unfolds through a sequence of stages: imitation, borrowing and modification, criticism and deconstruction, and individualized reconstruction and meaning creation. The functioning of meaning autonomy is viewed as the result of the coordinated interaction of cognitive, reflective, emotional, value-based, and narrative mechanisms, and its major functional tendencies are described. The factors contributing to the stagnation and de-autonomization of meaning-making are analyzed, including information overload, chronic stress, manipulative narratives, and other information-psychological influences that may weaken authorship of meaning-making under conditions of cognitive warfare. A two-dimensional model of personal maturity is proposed, distinguishing between the mode of meaning formation (meaning autonomy) and its value orientation. A set of psychological practices aimed at supporting and developing meaning autonomy as a resource for preserving personal agency, psychological resilience, and resistance to manipulative information influences is substantiated.