Mental Resources of Personality in the Psychological-Hermeneutic Paradigm

Abstract

The article is devoted to the theoretical conceptualization of personal mental resources within the framework of the psychological-hermeneutic paradigm in the context of full-scale war and increasing social uncertainty. The contemporary sociocultural context foregrounds the problem of preserving the psychological integrity, resilience, and subjectness of adults who are capable of comprehending, interpreting, and integrating traumatic experience. The article substantiates the need to expand the traditional resource-based approach, which predominantly interprets resources as relatively stable reserves or tools for coping with stress, and to align it with meaning-making and narrative processes.
Based on the analysis of the Conservation of Resources theory and contemporary narrative and hermeneutic concepts, mental resources are defined as dynamic sense-cognitive formations that emerge in the process of interpreting experience and narratively constructing one’s life story. It is demonstrated that within the psychological-hermeneutic paradigm, resourcefulness has a relative and contextually determined character: what functions as a resource in one situation may lose its supportive function in another.
A structural-dynamic model of mental resources is proposed, functioning within the cycle «situation → interpretation → narrative → sense-making → sense transformation → action». The structure of mental resources includes cognitive-interpretative, sense-making, reflective, and narrative-integrative components. It is argued that sense performs the function of a meta-resource that organizes the individual’s resource system, determines the hierarchy and conditions for mobilizing other resources, and enables the transformation of traumatic experience into developmental potential.
It is shown that narrative serves not only as a form of representing experience but also as a mechanism for activating mental resources and restoring sense integrity. The article substantiates the possibility of operationalizing mental resources through narrative indicators, including modes of event interpretation, sense-dominant themes, the image of the Self in the narrative, future models, and strategies for explaining difficulties. It is concluded that the psychological-hermeneutic approach provides methodological grounds for the empirical study of mental resources through the analysis of personal narratives.
Prospects for further research involve the development of operationalized models of mental resources and their empirical verification in crisis and traumatic social contexts.

Keywords: mental resources, psychological-hermeneutic paradigm, sense-making, narrative, sense as a meta-resource, structural-dynamic model of resources, resource-based approach, war

Accepted: 13.02.2026

Reviewed: 23.03.2026

Published: 20.05.2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.31108/3.2026.10.1.1