Conference Agenda

The study examines the role of the Ideal Self in shaping women’s self-perception and self-attitude within their culturally constituted life-world (Schutz & Luckmann, 1973). Drawing on existential-phenomenological psychology and poststructuralist feminist theory, the research reconceptualizes Simone de Beauvoir’s notion of the cultural "Other" (L'Autre) as an internalized cultural law structuring women’s identity (de Beauvoir, 2011; Butler, 1990, 2011). Within the women’s life-world, this law takes the form of the “Ideal Woman,” which becomes an individualized yet culturally mediated Ideal Self (Irigaray, 1985). Unlike traditional psychological accounts that describe the Ideal Self as a personally constructed aspirational image (Higgins, 1987; Markus & Nurius, 1986), the present study conceptualizes it as a normative structure preceding and organizing self-experience. The empirical study involved 30 adult women (20–63 years), native speakers of Russian and English residing in several countries. Data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted in both languages, focusing on representations of femininity, experiences of normative expectations, and attitudes toward the Ideal Self. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim in the original languages, and analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009). The system of categories was developed iteratively and comparatively across the Russian- and English-language corpora, allowing conceptual refinement sensitive to linguistic nuances. Findings indicate that the Ideal Self functions as a fundamental organizing principle within women’s life-worlds, often producing existential tension or a sense of "impossibility" that calls for reflective transformation (Butler, 2011; Gilligan, 1993). Through processes of meaning-making, participants renegotiate their relationship to this internalized cultural law, thereby reshaping self-attitude (Schutz & Luckmann, 1973). The study proposes a reconceptualized model of the Ideal Self linking cultural normativity, gendered identity, and self-attitude, with implications for personality psychology and psychotherapeutic practice.