THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR CONSTRUCTING A CATEGORICAL-CONCEPTUAL MATRIX OF PROFESSIONAL CREATIVITY OF PERSONALITY

Abstract

Relevance of the research. Professional creativity of personality, as a subject of psychological inquiry, requires an in-depth theoretical examination of its essential characteristics, personal prerequisites, regularities of its formation, and ways of its actualisation in professional activity. The diversity of scholarly interpretations of creativity and the ambiguity of its conceptual relationship with creative activity, creative abilities, and professional action complicate the identification of the psychological specificity of the phenomenon under investigation. At the same time, the existence of different theoretical explanations of particular characteristics of professional creativity does not yet ensure an adequate organisation of the categories and concepts necessary to elucidate its personal nature and the regularities of creative act performance. The construction of a categorical-conceptual matrix is intended to deepen the theoretical understanding of professional creativity by identifying methodological coordinates, establishing substantive relationships between categorical and conceptual characteristics, and determining their interconnections while taking into account the processual organisation of professional creative act performance.

Purpose of the Study. To provide theoretical and methodological substantiation for, and construct, a categorical-conceptual matrix of professional creativity of personality by identifying the methodological coordinates of its construction, developing a conceptual schema of creative act performance, and establishing substantive, structural, and functional interrelationships between categories and concepts reflecting the psychological nature, processual unfolding, and integrative characteristics of professional creativity.

Research Methods. The study employed theoretical and methodological analysis, categorical-conceptual analysis, systematisation and generalisation of scientific propositions, and conceptual modelling to identify methodological coordinates, develop a conceptual schema of creative act performance, and construct a categorical-conceptual matrix of professional creativity of personality.

Conclusions. The theoretical and methodological study substantiated a categorical-conceptual matrix of professional creativity of personality, with “creativity” and “professional creativity” identified as its foundational concepts. A system of sixteen methodological coordinates was developed and organised across four planes: categorical, conceptual, processual, and integrative. Based on the cyclical-act approach, a conceptual schema of creative act performance was constructed, comprising four periods–situation, motivation, act execution, and post-action–each specified through four successive stages. The proposed categorical-conceptual matrix deepens the psychological understanding of professional creativity as a deep-seated property of personality associated with the self-organisation of creative potential, the development of original ways of solving professional problems, and the reflective assimilation of the outcomes of creative act performance.