Like any field of psychological science, pathopsychology uses the method of experiment. Methods of pathopsychological research depend on the fundamental general psychological theoretical principles on which they are based. Therefore the choice concrete ways psychological research is a problem not only methodological, but also methodological in nature. In order to understand the features of the pathopsychological experiment, it is necessary to dwell in a few words on the methods of research in general psychology. The method of experiment is not the only way of knowledge in psychology. It became dominant with the development of psychology as exact science and connection with its general theoretical provisions.

As is known, the attention of rationalist psychologists was directed to the differentiation in the human psyche of individual "spiritual abilities", each of which processes material received from outside in its own way. Psychology was reduced to a description of the work of these abilities.

The speculative description of the inner world of man was reflected not only by rationalist psychologists. It found its place among the representatives of the so-called "understanding" psychology (E. Spranger, W. Dilthey). Denying the division of the psyche into separate processes or functions, recognizing the indivisibility, unity of the psyche, representatives of this trend refuse to scientifically study the psyche, believing that if nature can be explained, then the psyche can only be understood. These provisions of "understanding" psychology are reflected in the concept of existentialist psychologists.

In practice, this means that the psychologist must confine himself to observing the behavior of the subject, registering his statements and self-observations, and renounce the experiment, the possibility of changing the conditions and activities on which the course of this or that process depends. In essence, the existentialist psychologist seeks to describe the phenomenon, but not to penetrate into its essence.

The empirical psychology that replaced rationalistic psychology brought with it a different understanding of the method of research. With the development of empirical psychology, the development of psychophysiology, the experimental method (W. Wundt, G. Ebbinghaus, E. Titchener) began to take root in psychology, penetrating into the practice of neurology and psychiatry. In the largest clinics (V. M. Bekhterev in Leningrad, E. Krepelin in Leipzig, S. S. Korsakov in Moscow), psychological laboratories are opening.

The principles of methodological techniques used in laboratories are different. Let's briefly dwell on them.

For a long time, the method of quantitative measurement of mental processes dominated in clinics, a method that was based on Wundtian psychology. The view of mental processes as innate abilities that only change quantitatively during development led to the idea of ​​the possibility of creating a "measuring" psychology. An experimental study of mental processes was reduced to establishing only its quantitative characteristics, more precisely, to the measurement of individual mental abilities.

The principle of quantitative measurement of innate abilities formed the basis of psychological research methods in psychiatric and neurological clinics. The study of the decay of any function consisted in establishing the degree of quantitative deviation from its "normal standard".

In 1910, the most prominent neuropathologist G. I. Rossolimo developed a system of psychological experiments, which, allegedly in his opinion, made it possible to establish the level of individual mental functions, the "psychological profile of the subject." According to the author, various pathological states of the brain caused certain typical "psychodynamic change profiles." This method was based on the concept of empirical psychology about the existence of innate isolated abilities. This false theory, as well as a simplified quantitative approach to the analysis of mental disorders, could not ensure the introduction of methods adequate to the demands of clinical practice, although the very attempt to bring psychology closer to solving clinical problems was progressive for its time.

The method of quantitative measurement of individual mental functions reached its extreme expression in Binet-Simon's test studies, which were initially aimed at identifying the level of mental abilities. Measurement test studies were based on the concept that mental capacity the child is fatally predetermined by a hereditary factor and to a small extent dependent on training and education. Each child has a certain, more or less constant age-specific IQ (JQ).

The tasks that were offered to children required certain knowledge and skills for their solution and made it possible to judge, at best, the amount of acquired knowledge, and not the structure and qualitative features of their mental activity.

Such studies, aimed at purely quantitative measurements, do not allow predicting the further development of the child. Meanwhile, with the help of these tests, it was and is now being carried out in some countries to separate children supposedly "able" from birth from others, delay mental development which was declared dependent also on congenital features. The test method was also used in our country in the so-called pedological studies of children in schools. They were justly condemned by the Decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of July 4, 1936 as pseudoscientific.

The method of quantitative measurement is still leading in the work of many clinical psychologists abroad. In numerous published last years monographs and articles devoted to the experimental psychological study of patients, the methods of such test studies are given up to the calculation of JQ.

In the study of patients by methods aimed at measuring functions, neither the features of mental activity, nor the qualitative side of the violation, nor the possibility of compensation, the analysis of which is so necessary in resolving clinical problems, can be taken into account.

By measuring, only the final results of the work are revealed, its very process, the attitude of the subject to the task, the motives that prompted the subject to choose one or another mode of action, personal attitudes, desires - in a word, all the variety of qualitative features of the subject's activity cannot be detected.

Along with a purely quantitative method, in recent years in foreign pathopsychology there has been a tendency to use methods that are aimed only at identifying a person.

Representatives of this trend use the so-called "projective" methods in their research. The task that is offered to the subject does not provide for any specific solutions. In contrast to the test, which requires the performance of a task in accordance with certain conditions, the "projective" method uses any task only as a pretext for the subject to express his feelings, features of his personality and character.

As a specific technique, a description of paintings with an indefinite plot ("Thematic Apperception Test", abbreviated as TAT) is used. Rorschach's "ink blots", which are various symmetrically arranged configurations of the most bizarre kind. The plot pictures offered for description are an image of the actions or postures of the characters. The subject must describe the picture, tell what is drawn on it, what they think, what the depicted characters are experiencing, what will happen to them, what preceded the depicted event. At the same time, according to some authors of the "projective method", there is a certain identification of the subject with the depicted character. In the words of the French psychologist A. Ombredan, "personality is reflected with the help of this method, like an object on the screen" (hence the name "projective"). This method is often referred to as the "clinical approach to the healthy mind".

Thus, the "projective" method, which is essentially the opposite of the measurement method, according to the intention of its authors, should provide an opportunity for a qualitative assessment of the behavior of the subject. If the test method is aimed at evaluating the results of work, then with the "projective" method, the problem of an erroneous or correct decision does not arise at all. The researcher using the "projective" method pays attention not to the mistakes made or to the correct decisions, but to the subject's personal reactions, to the nature of the associations that arise in this case.

If we analyze what kind of personal experiences and attitudes we are talking about, it turns out that researchers are trying to reveal, using this method, the "unconscious, hidden" motives and desires of the patient. Separate features of the subject's perception (for example, whether he sees objects in motion or at rest, whether he pays attention when describing Rorschach spots to large parts of drawings or to small details, etc.) are interpreted as indicators of personality traits.

Thus, this method should, in contrast to the quantitative measurement of individual functions, make it possible qualitative analysis holistic personality. The rational grain contained in the "projective" method must certainly be used. However, the identification of experiences with its help, features cannot serve as indicators of the structure of the personality, the stable hierarchy of its motives and needs. Projective methods should themselves become an object of study.

Let us dwell on the principles of experimental psychological research in Soviet pathopsychology. The position of materialistic psychology that mental processes are not innate abilities, but life-forming activities, requires that a psychological experiment make it possible to investigate mental disorders as activity disruption. It should be aimed at a qualitative analysis of various forms of the disintegration of the psyche, at revealing the mechanisms of disturbed activity and at the possibility of its restoration. If we are talking about violations of cognitive processes, then experimental techniques should show how certain mental operations of the patient that have been formed in the course of his life activity disintegrate, how the process of acquiring new connections is modified, in what form the possibility of using the system of old ones formed in previous experience is distorted. connections. Based on the fact that any mental process has a certain dynamics and direction, it is necessary to construct an experimental study in such a way that it reflects the preservation or violation of these parameters. Thus, the results of the experiment should give not so much a quantitative as a qualitative characteristic of the disintegration of the psyche. We will not dwell on the description of specific methods in the future. They are set out in the book by S. Ya. Rubinshtein "Experimental methods of pathopsychology" .

It goes without saying that the experimental data obtained must be reliable, that statistical processing material should be used where the task in hand requires and allows it, but quantitative analysis should neither replace nor push aside the qualitative characterization of experimental data. Quantitative analysis is admissible when a thorough qualitative psychological qualification of the facts has been carried out. Before you start measuring, you need to establish what is being measured.

One should agree with the remark of A. N. Leontiev, made in his article "On Some Perspective Problems of Soviet Psychology", that it is not necessary to bring together scientifically based experiments, "allowing a qualitative assessment, with the so-called tests of mental giftedness, the practice of which is not only fair condemned in our country, but now raises objections in many other countries of the world.

The idea that quantitative analysis alone cannot be suitable for solving a number of problems related to human activity is recognized by a number of scientists in foreign countries. So, one of the prominent American specialists in the field of management, prof. A. Zade writes that "an accurate quantitative analysis of the behavior of humanistic systems does not seem to be of great practical importance in real social, economic and other tasks related to the participation of one person or a group of people" . Moreover, he emphasizes that "the ability to operate with fuzzy sets and the ability to evaluate information that follows from it is one of the most valuable qualities of the human mind, which fundamentally distinguishes the human mind from the so-called machine mind attributed to existing computers" .

Consequently, the main principle of constructing a psychological experiment is the principle of a qualitative analysis of the characteristics of the course of the patient's mental processes, as opposed to the task of only one quantitative measurement of them. It is important not only what difficulty or volume of the task the patient comprehended or completed, but also how he comprehended, what caused his mistakes and difficulties. It is the analysis of errors that occur in patients in the process of performing experimental tasks that is an interesting and indicative material for assessing one or another violation of the mental activity of patients.

The same pathopsychological symptom may be due to different mechanisms, it may be an indicator of different conditions. So, for example, a violation of mediated memory or instability of judgments may arise due to impaired mental performance of the patient (as is the case with asthenia of various organic genesis), it may be due to a violation of the purposefulness of motives (for example, with lesions of the frontal sections of the brain), it may be a manifestation dis-automation of actions (with vascular changes in the brain, epilepsy).

The nature of the violations is not pathognomonic, i.e. specific to a particular disease; it is only typical for them and must be evaluated in conjunction with the data of a holistic pathopsychological study.

Psychological research in the clinic can be equated to a "functional test" - a method widely used in medical practice and consisting in testing the activity of some organ. In the situation of a psychological experiment, the role of a "functional test" can be played by such experimental tasks that are able to actualize the mental operations that a person uses in his life, his motives that encourage this activity.

It should be emphasized that the pathopsychological experiment should update not only the mental operations of the patient, but also his personal attitude. Back in 19-36, V. N. Myasishchev put forward this problem in his article "Efficiency and Illness of the Personality". He points out that a mental and psychopathological phenomenon can be understood on the basis of taking into account a person’s attitude to work, his motives and goals, attitude to himself, requirements for himself, for the result of work, etc. Such an approach to psychological manifestations requires both this says VN Myasishchev, knowledge and study of the psychology of personality.

This approach is also dictated by a correct understanding of the determination of mental activity. Speaking about the mechanisms of mental determination, SL Rubinshtein emphasized that external conditions do not directly determine the behavior and actions of a person, that the cause acts "through internal conditions." This means that the judgments, actions, deeds of a person are not a direct reaction to external stimuli, but that they are mediated by his attitudes, motives, needs. These attitudes are formed in vivo under the influence of education and training, but, having formed, they themselves determine the actions and deeds of a person, healthy and sick.

Human relations are connected with the structure of a person's personality, with his needs, with his emotional and volitional characteristics. Despite the fact that the latter are considered by psychology as processes, they are essentially included in the structure of personality. In the needs of a person, material and spiritual, his connection with the outside world, people is expressed. Evaluating a person, we first of all characterize the range of his interests, the content of his needs. We judge a person by the motives of his actions, by what phenomena of life he is indifferent to, by what he rejoices at, what his thoughts and desires are directed to.

We talk about a pathological change in personality when, under the influence of a disease, a person’s interests become poorer, his needs become smaller, when he shows an indifferent attitude to what he used to worry about, when his actions lose focus, his actions become thoughtless, when a person ceases to regulate his behavior , unable to adequately assess their capabilities, when their attitude towards themselves and the environment changes. Such an altered attitude is an indicator of an altered personality.

This altered attitude leads not only to a weakening of the patient's working capacity, to a deterioration in his mental production, but can itself participate in the construction of a psychopathological syndrome. So, in the study of patients with cerebral arteriosclerosis, it was noted that excessive fixation on their mistakes often led patients to exaggerated indirect actions that reduced the mental production of patients, and to excessive corrective techniques that violated their visual-motor coordination. In other words, the very attitude of the patient to the situation, to himself should become the subject of research and should be reflected in the design of the experiment.

The orientation of psychological research to the study of personality changes inevitably leads to the problem of their methodological ways of this study. The question arises: is it enough to confine oneself to observations of the behavior of patients with its subsequent description, or is it possible to study personality changes experimentally?

First of all, it should be noted that the very observation of the behavior of the patient in the experimental situation

Qualitatively different from the observation of the patient in the clinic. The fact is that the situation of psychological research in the clinic, as a rule, is perceived by patients as a study of their mental capabilities. Therefore, the very situation of the experiment leads to the actualization of the known attitude towards it. So, for example, some patients, fearing that they will have a bad memory, declare that they always memorized words poorly. In other cases, the need to perform counting operations causes the remark that they "always hated arithmetic." Therefore, the very way the patient accepts the task may indicate the adequacy or inadequacy of his personal attitudes.

The very methods and quality of performing tasks, the number of errors, the pace of work can, for example, be the same in a patient with schizophrenia and in a healthy person. Meanwhile, the emotional reactions of the patient, especially when erroneous decisions appear, are profoundly different.

One more feature of psychological research in the clinic should be noted. The very process of completing the task inevitably causes a feeling of some kind of self-control. Patients often indicate that they themselves are "interesting to test their memory." It often happens that the patient in the process of work for the first time realizes his mental insufficiency. Phrases: "I did not think that I had such a bad memory", "I did not think that I was so bad at thinking" are not uncommon.

Naturally, such a "discovery" is in itself a source of experience for the patient. Therefore, the observation of the behavior and statements of the patient can serve as material for the analysis of his personal manifestations.

Another methodological way of studying personality changes is the way of their indirect detection through the analysis of cognitive process disorders.

As will be shown in subsequent chapters, certain types of thought disorders are essentially expressions of that affective "displacement" that is inherent in these patients. Such variants of thinking disorders include "uncritical thinking", in which thoughtless and purposeless judgments are caused not by a decrease in the level of generalization of the patient, but by an indifferent inactive attitude to the result of one's activity.

Thus, patients with damage to the frontal lobes of the brain could not cope with some simple tasks, despite the fact that their intellectual operations were relatively intact.

Any simple task that required choice, planning, control was not performed by such patients, and, conversely, more difficult tasks, the fulfillment of which did not require compliance with these conditions, were carried out by them quite easily. Thus, erroneous solutions to tasks may not be a consequence of a violation of the logical structure of thinking, but the result of an indifferent attitude of the subject.

This is evidenced by studies of psychologists working in the field of educational psychology. Thus, the works of L. I. Bozhovich and L. S. Slavina showed that the performance of many children at school was due not to a violation of their cognitive processes, but to the changed attitude of children, their changed position in the team.

The path of indirect study of personality and its anomalies is not limited. In principle, any experimental technique can be suitable for this, since the construction of various models of human behavior and activity (and the methods of experimental psychological research essentially fulfill such a task) also includes the attitude of the subject.

We restrict ourselves to just a few examples. Even the execution of the simplest tasks includes an emotional component. The studies of E. A. Evlakhova showed that even such a simple task as describing a simple plot of a picture depends on the level of the emotional sphere of the subject. She found that in children with damage to the frontal lobes of the brain, there was a lack of response to the emotional content of the picture.

Therefore, it seemed legitimate that a violation of the emotional relationship with particular clarity should appear in a certain category of patients when describing such pictures, the comprehension of which should be based mainly on the physiognomy of the depicted characters, for example, if it is necessary to describe pictures with an indefinite plot. As the studies of our diploma student N.K. Kiyashchenko showed, this task aroused in healthy subjects an active focus on revealing the meaning of gestures, facial expressions of the depicted characters. "He holds his hand like that, as if he wants to decisively prove something to his interlocutor. His facial expression is somewhat skeptical, he looks with distrust."

At the same time, the subjects, as a rule, revealed their attitude to the plot of the picture. Expressions: "I don't like his face", "it's clear that the person is not modest", "this person with a thoughtful pretty face" and the like were frequent when describing pictures.

Completely different are the data obtained using this technique in patients with schizophrenia (mostly patients with simple and paranoid forms of schizophrenia, in the clinical picture of which there were manifestations of passivity, lethargy). Descriptions of paintings by these patients are reduced to a purely formal statement of facts: "Two men"; "Men talk"; "People are sitting at the table."

If such patients are pointed out the need for a meaningful description of the pictures, they are able to delve into the semantic side of the depicted event, stop at characteristic features depicted faces, however, such a description did not arise spontaneously and did not follow directly from desires, but only in response to the experimenter's demand. The patients, as a rule, did not express their emotional attitude to the depicted faces.

At the same time, one more feature of the patients was revealed when solving the problem. The level of performance by healthy subjects of certain experimental tasks (classification of objects, the method of exclusion, etc.) did not depend, as a rule, on the personal attitude to it. The assessment of the given task ("this is a child's game", "this is a test of my attention"), the carelessness or diligence of performance, but not the very possibility of identifying an adequate principle for solving the problem, depended on this attitude. In some patients (for example, with schizophrenia), the performance of the task became inadequate due to the fact that some fragments of subjective experiences, desires began to dominate in their judgments, changing the very nature and course of these judgments. The very possibility of adequate performance of even a simple task was violated due to altered motivation, altered attitudes.

Summarizing, we can say that the use of techniques that activate cognitive activity always includes the actualization of personal components (motivation, attitude).

Finally, one of the ways to study personality changes is the use of techniques aimed directly at identifying the motivational characteristics of a sick person. These are methods that originate from the results of research by Kurt Lewin. S. L. Rubinshtein emphasized that the result of a study that reveals any significant dependencies of the studied field of phenomena turns into a method, a tool for further research. Huck happened with a number of experimental methods of K. Levin. Despite the fact that the methodological positions of K. Levin are unacceptable for us, some of his experimental techniques turned out to be useful for studying the motivational sphere. As an example, let us cite the method of K. Levin's student F. Hoppe, known in the psychological literature as "Research on the level of claims." It consisted of the following: the subject was given a number of tasks (about eighteen), differing in the degree of difficulty. The content of the task was plotted on cards arranged in order of increasing difficulty. These can be tasks that require knowledge in the field of literature, art, mathematics. Tasks can be like puzzles, labyrinths. In other words, the content of the tasks should correspond to the professional, educational level of the subjects, their interests, attitudes. Only under this condition do the subjects develop a serious attitude towards the situation of the experiment - a situation of choice is created.

Instructions were given: "There are cards in front of you, on the back of which tasks are indicated. The numbers on the cards indicate the degree of complexity of the tasks. A certain time is allotted for solving each problem, which you do not know. I follow it with a stopwatch. If you do not meet the allotted you have time, I will consider that you have not completed the task. You must choose tasks yourself. " Thus, the subject is given the right to choose the complexity of the task himself. The experimenter can, at his discretion, increase or decrease the time allotted for the task, thereby arbitrarily cause the subject to experience failure or success, show that the task has been completed, or discredit the results. Only after evaluation by the experimenter did the subject have to choose the next task.

F. Hoppe's research showed that after successful decisions, the level of claims rises, the subject turns to more complex tasks; and vice versa, after failure, the level of claims decreases, the subject chooses an easier one.

The work of F. Hoppe was the first attempt to experimentally investigate the conditions for the formation of the level of claim under the influence of successful or unsuccessful solution of the problem; other works followed.

The laws of movement of the level of aspiration, which were established by F. Hoppe, were tested in the study by M. Yuknat "Achievement, the level of aspiration and self-awareness". With the help of a slightly modified methodology, instead of separate tasks, as with F. Hoppe, she created a series of labyrinth tasks. The first series (10 labyrinth tasks) guaranteed success, i.e., the subject could always solve the problem. It was a "streak of success". In the second series - the "series of failure" - all tasks (also 10 labyrinth tasks), except for the first one, were unsolvable (the path in the maze always led to a dead end).

M. Yuknat studied two groups of subjects. The first group started with a series that guaranteed success, the second group started with the second series (a series of failure). It turned out that the subjects who started from the first series successfully started the second series from a higher level, and vice versa, the subjects who completed the tasks of the "failure" series began work with easy tasks even after fourteen days, when they were re-experimented with another type of task. The subjects who completed the series of "success" chose difficult tasks after two weeks. Thus, M. Yuknat showed that the formation of the "level of aspirations" is associated with previous experience.

However, like F. Hoppe, her “level of aspirations” turned out to be completely isolated from real relations with the people around her, from the content of the activities performed.

Taking the Hoppe method as a basis, E. A. Serebryakova established not only the role of the activities performed, but also the assessments of others in the formation of self-esteem and self-confidence. If F. Hoppe in his methodology maximally abstracted from real life conditions, then E. A. Serebryakova tried to get as close to them as possible. As a result of her research, E. A. Serebryakova established several types of self-esteem:

1. Sustained adequate self-esteem.
2. Inadequate low self-esteem.
3. Inadequate increased self-esteem.
4. Unstable self-esteem.

E. A. Serebryakova revealed a manifestation of various types of affective reactions to success and failure. However, issues related to the emotional attitude of students to difficulties in work did not become the subject of research by E. A. Serebryakova, just like the question of the relationship between self-esteem and the level of claims. She writes that the level of claims is the need for a certain self-esteem that satisfies a person. The aim of the study was to study the emotional attitude of children to their successes and failures.

M. S. Neimark showed the dependence of the level of claims on the material of the experiment, the nature of the emotional reaction in an acute situation came close to the problem of the relationship between the level of claims and self-esteem.

Thus, the studies of E. A. Serebryakova and M. S. Neimark showed the suitability of using the Hoppe method to study the formation of a student’s personality attitude. This technique turned out to be suitable for studying changes in the anomalies of the emotional state and motivational sphere of patients.

Already by the work of the employees of V.N. Myasishchev, using this technique, personality traits in hysterical children were revealed.

In our laboratory, using different variants of the described methodology, a study of the formation of the level of claims in patients with various forms of mental illness was carried out. As experimental work, the subjects were offered tasks, the performance of which could be perceived as an indicator of a certain "cultural level". Tasks such as arithmetic or other special circles should have been rejected, since many people do not develop a level of claims in relation to them.

The data of our experiments confirmed the results of research by F. Hoppe and E. A. Serebryakova. The choice of task in healthy subjects depended on the successful or unsuccessful completion of previous tasks. The initial level of claims was different; in some subjects, all behavior was cautious, "groping"; for others, a more or less high level of claims was developed immediately, "as if on the move." However, the dependence of the choice of task on the quality of the previous one was obvious. This dependence was often not straightforward, but the situation of choice always came into play.

Completely different results were obtained in the study of patients with schizophrenia (simple form), with a sluggish course of the process, using this technique. According to B. I. Bezhanishvili, in 26 out of 30 patients, there was no dependence of the choice of task on the successful or unsuccessful previous decision. The level of claims was not formed in them; adequate self-assessment of their capabilities was not developed either. The statements of the patients did not carry any emotional coloring; patients show no distress even when the experimenter emphasizes their failures.

A different picture is revealed in the study of the "level of claims" of psychopaths. The level of claims they have very quickly formed. And, as a rule, was quite high. However, it was distinguished by fragility, instability: at the slightest failure, it decreased, and just as quickly increased with successful decisions.

Further modification of the methodology in the thesis work of N. K. Kalita revealed that the formation of the level of claims depends not only on the assessment of the experimenter, but also on the attitude of the subject to the experimenter and the experiment as a whole, and that the level of claims is not formed in those cases when the subject develops " businesslike attitude to the experiment, when the motive for it is the desire to get acquainted with the tasks.

All these data lead us to the following conclusion: in order for an experiment to reveal the level of human aspirations, it must be modeled in such a way that it can cause not only a focus on the content of the task, but also contribute to the formation of an attitude towards the experimental situation and towards the experimenter.

At the same time, in all the studies cited, a relationship was found between the level of claims and self-esteem. This problem has been specially posed in theses A. I. Oboznov and V. N. Kotorsky. Their experiments with middle and high school students showed that the level of aspirations depends not so much on the successful or unsuccessful completion of tasks and the evaluation of the experimenter, but on the adolescent's self-esteem. These data correspond to the hypothesis put forward by L. I. Bozhovich that adolescent children have a need to maintain a certain self-esteem and that the adolescent's behavior is guided precisely by it. This was especially clear in the work of E. I. Savonko, where it was shown that, depending on age, a different relationship is revealed between the orientation towards evaluation and self-esteem.

The most significant shift from evaluation orientation to self-esteem orientation occurs during adolescence. This fact can be put in connection with the emergence in the adolescent of the need to make the qualities of his own personality an object of consciousness. Of course, this does not mean that the predominant focus on self-esteem leads to ignoring the assessment from other people, however, in adolescence, the motivational value of self-esteem is already so great that when there is a discrepancy between the requirements arising from self-esteem and assessment from others, self-esteem turns out to be the predominant motive for behavior. .

The very formation of self-esteem does not mean that its presence always causes adequate activity. The solution to this question depends on whether the self-assessment itself is adequate or inadequate. Our studies with psychopathic patients have shown that inflated inadequate self-esteem can act as a brake on adequate actions and deeds. So. overestimated self-esteem in psychopathic personalities, faced with a lower assessment of others, leads to affective breakdowns, just as underestimation of one's capabilities leads to a decrease in the level of claims. Thus, the dynamics of the level of claims in any narrow specific activity is associated with a person's self-esteem in the broader sense of the word.

The connection between the level of claims and self-esteem was revealed in the theses of L. V. Vikulova and R. B. Sterkina.

In the study of L. V. Vikulova, a peculiarity of the dynamics of the level of claims inherent in oligophrenic children was discovered. On the material learning activities(two series of problems in arithmetic, questions on history, geography and literature), as well as using the experimental method of Koos, it was shown that in oligophrenic children the level of claims is either developed very slowly, with difficulty and only half the end, or not developed at all . The choice of tasks in these children is often characterized by thoughtlessness; successful or unsuccessful completion of the previous task does not affect the choice of the next one. There is an indifferent attitude to success and failure in work. At the same time, it has been established that oligophrenic children are extremely sensitive to the experimenter's assessment, especially negative assessments, and to censure. Thus, in characterizing the level of claims of oligophrenic children, at first glance, there is a paradoxical combination of difficulty or even impossibility of developing a level of claims (against the background of an indifferent attitude to the results of activity) with increased vulnerability to the censures of the experimenter.

In R. B. Sterkina's study, a further attempt was made to identify what underlies the observed contradictions and to analyze them psychologically. R. B. Sterkina conducted experiments on two types of activity: educational (arithmetic tasks) and practical (cutting).

It turned out that the level of aspirations was developed in oligophrenic children when performing the "cutting" task and was not formed when performing the training task (arithmetic). R. B. Sterkina found it possible to explain this phenomenon by the place occupied by both types of activity in the children under study.

Educational activity occupies a different place in the personality structure of oligophrenic children than in their healthy peers. A mentally retarded child usually finds it difficult to do arithmetic, for a long time he constantly fails in this type of activity, he has an attitude that he cannot achieve good results in this activity. A situation is created similar to the situation in the experiments of M. Yuknat, which was mentioned above. Over time, the child developed a kind of passive attitude towards this activity. Activity takes on the character of "satiated" for him. Naturally, the level of claims in this activity, which does not affect the personality of the child, cannot be formed. It is not for nothing that stronger students, who have shown themselves more successfully in arithmetic, have such an attitude less pronounced.

Practical activity (cutting out) is more accessible to oligophrenic children and is not a satiated activity for them. It does not cause an indifferent attitude towards itself, but, on the contrary, it disposes to treat it with interest, that is, it affects the personal characteristics of the subject. Therefore, the level of claims in this activity is formed.

Thus, the experimentally established level of a person's claims in any particular activity must be analyzed in accordance with the self-assessment of the person. Only then can it become a fact that reveals some real personal relationships of the subject. Currently, research is ongoing: a) to identify the relationship between self-esteem (and its changes) and the level of aspirations in one type of activity with self-esteem in other types, and b) to identify conditions that contribute to or hinder the formation of self-esteem (in psychopathic children, children with delayed mental development, epileptic children).

Methods aimed at studying self-esteem should also include the methodology developed by S. Ya. Rubinshtein. It is a variant of T. V. Dembo's technique, which was used to identify the "idea of ​​happiness", but S. Ya. Rubinshtein uses it much more widely to identify self-esteem. The technique consists in the following: a blank sheet of paper is placed in front of the subject; the experimenter draws a vertical line on it and asks the subject to mark his place for health reasons among all the people placed on this line (from the healthiest - at the top, to the sickest - at the bottom).

Then the subject is offered a similar task: to mark his place among all people according to his mind (the second vertical line); after that - by happiness and by character (the third and fourth vertical lines).

When the subject has completed all these tasks, he is asked to tell what kind of people he considers happy, unhappy, stupid, smart, etc. Thus, in the end, we get the ratio of self-esteem of the subjects with their ideas about these categories. According to S. Ya. Rubinshtein, healthy people tend to put themselves to "a point just above the middle."

In mental illness, an uncritical attitude to one's illness and abilities is often observed, as a result of which the self-esteem of patients is in some cases too high, in others too low.

Behind recent times The attention of pathopsychologists is attracted by another method - this psychological analysis data contained in the case histories of a mentally ill person. The fact is that the content of the case histories of such patients includes data from a survey of the patient himself (subjective anamnesis), data from a survey of his relatives, colleagues (objective anamnesis), a description of the situation in which the patient was, information about his relationship with people, information about his behavior after discharge from the hospital (catzmnez). In other words, the history of the disease is a material that characterizes the life path of a person, as it were, a "longitudinal" section of his life.

The comparison of these data (namely, the comparison, and not the correlation of some individual factors, properties) with the results of experimental psychological research is the most valuable objective material.

We should dwell on one more feature of the pathopsychological experiment. Its structure should provide an opportunity to detect not only the structure of the altered, but also the remaining preserved forms of the patient's mental activity. The need for such an approach is important in addressing the issues of restoring impaired functions.

A. R. Luria expressed the opinion that the success of the restoration of disturbed complex mental functions depends on how much the restoration work is based on the intact links of mental activity; he emphasized that the restoration of disturbed forms of mental activity should proceed according to the type of restructuring of functional systems. The fruitfulness of this approach has been proven by the work of many Soviet authors. Research aimed at analyzing the principles of restoring impaired movements that arose as a result of gunshot wounds during the Great Patriotic War, showed that in the process of restorative occupational therapy, the decisive role belonged to the mobilization of the patient's preserved functions, the safety of his attitudes (S. G. Gellerstein, A. V. Zaporozhets, A. N. Leontiev, S. Ya. Rubinshtein). A similar conclusion was reached by psychologists working in the field of restoring speech disorders (A. S. Bein, V. M. Kogan, L. S. Tsvetkova).

The restructuring of the defective function occurs in close conjunction with the development of the intact function. The authors convincingly show that restoration work should be based on the revival of the knowledge that has remained intact. It is rightfully emphasized that during restoration work (in this case, restoration of speech), the entire system of connections, attitudes of a human, albeit painfully changed, personality should be updated. Thus, V. M. Kogan proposes in the rehabilitation work to evoke a conscious attitude of the patient to the semantic content of the word in its connection with the subject. The above views of researchers relate to the restoration of functions that are, relatively speaking, of a narrow nature - speech, praxis.

With even greater right, they can be attributed to the restoration of more complex forms of mental activity, to the restoration of lost mental performance (purposefulness, activity of the patient). In these cases, the issue of retained opportunities is especially acute (for example, when deciding on the patient's ability to work, the possibility of continuing his studies, etc.). To answer these questions, the pathopsychologist goes beyond narrowly experimental methods; the life path of the patient is subjected to analysis.

It is necessary to note a number of other features that distinguish an experiment in a clinic from an experiment aimed at studying the psyche of a healthy person, that is, an experiment aimed at solving questions of a general psychological order.

The main difference is that we must always take into account the peculiar relation of the patient to the experience, depending on his morbid condition. The presence of a delusional attitude, arousal or lethargy - all this forces the experimenter to construct the experience differently, sometimes changing it on the go.

Despite all the individual differences, healthy subjects try to carry out the instructions, "accept" the task, while the mentally ill sometimes not only do not try to complete the task, but misinterpret the experience or actively oppose the instructions. For example, if during an associative experiment with a healthy person, the experimenter warns that words will be spoken that he should listen to, then the healthy subject actively directs his attention to the words uttered by the experimenter. When conducting this experiment with a negative patient, the opposite effect often occurs: the patient actively does not want to listen. Under such conditions, the experimenter is compelled to carry out the experiment, as it were, by a "detour": the experimenter pronounces the words as if by chance and registers the patient's reactions. Often one has to experiment with a patient who interprets the situation of the experiment in a delusional way, for example, he believes that the experimenter acts on him with "hypnosis", "rays". Naturally, such an attitude of the patient to the experiment is reflected in the methods of performing the task; he often fulfills the request of the experimenter intentionally incorrectly, delays answers, etc. In such cases, the design of the experiment must also be changed.

The construction of an experimental psychological study in the clinic differs from the usual psychological experiment in another feature: diversity, a large number of methods used. This is explained as follows. The process of disintegration of the psyche does not occur in one layer. It practically never happens that in one patient only the processes of synthesis and analysis are violated, while in another the only purposefulness of the personality suffers. When performing any experimental task, one can to a certain extent judge various forms of mental disorders. However, despite this, not every methodological technique makes it possible to judge one or another form or degree of violation with equal clarity, clarity and reliability.

Very often, a change in the instructions, some experimental nuance changes the nature of the indications of the experiment. For example, if in an experiment on the memorization and reproduction of words the experimenter emphasizes the significance of his assessment, then the results of this experiment will be more indicative for assessing the attitude of the subject to work than for assessing the process of his memorization. And since the very situation of an experiment with a sick person often changes during the experiment (if only because the patient's condition changes), a comparison of the results of various variants of the experiment becomes mandatory. Such a comparison is also necessary for other reasons. Performing this or that task, the patient not only solves it correctly or erroneously, the solution of the problem often causes awareness of his defect; patients seek to find an opportunity to compensate for it, to find strong points for correcting the defect. Different tasks provide different opportunities for this. It often happens that the patient correctly solves more difficult tasks and is not able to solve easier ones. Understanding the nature of such a phenomenon is possible only by comparing the results of various tasks.

And, finally, the last: the violation of the mental activity of the patient is often unstable. With the improvement of the patient's condition, some features of his mental activity disappear, others remain resistant. In this case, the nature of the detected violations may vary depending on the characteristics of the experimental method itself; therefore, a comparison of the results of various variants of some method, which is repeatedly used, gives the right to judge the nature, quality, dynamics of the patient's mental disorder.

Consequently, the fact that in the study of the disintegration of the psyche it is necessary not to confine oneself to any one method, but to apply a complex of methodological techniques, has its own meaning and justification.

The focus of experimental psychological techniques on revealing the qualitative characteristics of mental disorders is especially necessary in the study of abnormal children. With any degree of mental underdevelopment or disease, there is always a further (albeit slow or distorted) development of the child. A psychological experiment should not be limited to establishing the structure of the level of mental processes of a sick child; he must first of all reveal the potential possibilities of the child.

This indication was first made back in the 1930s by L. S. Vygotsky in his position on the "zone of proximal development." In his work "The problem of learning and mental development in school age"he writes: "The state of a child's mental development can be determined at least by elucidating two levels - the level of actual development and the zone of proximal development." By "zone of proximal development" L. S. Vygotsky understands those potentialities of the child that independently, under the influence of certain conditions, are not detected, but which can be realized with the help of an adult.

Essential, according to L. S. Vygotsky, is not only what a child can and knows how to do on his own, but also what he can do with the help of an adult. The ability of a child to transfer the methods of solving a problem learned with the help of an adult to actions that he performs on his own is the main indicator of his mental development. Therefore, the mental development of a child is characterized not so much by its current level as by the level of the zone of its proximal development. Decisive is "the discrepancy between the level of problem solving available under the guidance, with the help of adults, and the level of problem solving available in independent activity" .

We dwelled in some detail on this well-known position of L. S. Vygotsky, because it determines the principles for constructing a psychological experiment in relation to abnormal children. Measuring test studies, accepted in foreign psychology, can at best reveal only the "actual" (in the terminology of L. S. Vygotsky) level of a child's mental development, and then only in its quantitative expression. The potential of the child remains unclear. But without such a "prediction" of the further development of the child, many tasks, for example, the task of selection in special schools learning cannot be essentially addressed. experimental psychological research, used in the field of child psychoneurology, should be carried out taking into account these provisions of L. S. Vygotsky and be built according to the type of teaching experiment. A. Ya. Ivanova's research is being carried out in this direction. A. Ya. Ivanova offers children tasks that they did not know before. In the process of the children performing these tasks, the experimenter provides the child with different types assistance, which were strictly regulated by it. How the child perceives this help is strictly considered. Thus, the help itself is included in the structure of the experiment.

For the implementation of "regulated assistance" A. Ya. Ivanova made modifications to some generally accepted methods of pathopsychological research: subject classification, Koos method, classification geometric shapes, a series of successive paintings. The author regulates and fixes the stages of assistance in detail. Their quantitative gradation and their qualitative characteristics are taken into account. The use of the "learning experiment" gave A. Ya. Ivanova)