Antinomies and paradoxes of the idea of ​​development in psychology psychological reality(her

1.2. Object and subject of study in developmental psychology Distinguishing between the object and subject of knowledge

3.1. The pre-revolutionary period of the development of developmental psychology in Russia The formation of Russian developmental psychology (mid-50s - early 70s of the 19th century) The formation of the subject, tasks and methods for studying the development of the human psyche begins in the middle of the 19th century. At that time in Russia there was

3.2. The Marxist period of development of the national age

The Marxist Perestroika of Developmental Psychology (1918–1936) After 1917, Russia entered a new, Soviet stage in its historical development. This period of development of social and humanitarian thought is characterized by a strong dependence scientific research from political

3.3. General theory of mental development in Soviet psychology Cultural-historical doctrine of the nature of the mental

3.4. Ways of building modern developmental psychology

The search for the object and subject of developmental psychology Until the end of the 80s. such a phrase as "developmental psychology" in domestic and world psychology for a long time was used only as a general name for the totality of research in the field of mental development

Part II Conceptual Foundations of Human Development Psychology Methodological Guidelines for Part II subject area(development of physical,

Chapter 1. The philosophical meaning of the principle of development in

Subjective Approach in Developmental Psychology The system-structural and procedural-dynamic approaches place the main emphasis on the special construction of the object of cognition. As a rule, such an object is singled out in terms of its formal characteristics - as a holistic,

The categorical structure of the psychology of human development The scientific approaches discussed above to understanding and explaining the psychological reality of a person and its development in ontogenesis differ significantly from each other. Each of them developed its own class of representations and

Category of Age in Developmental Psychology The concept of age is the central category for the sciences that study human development. L. S. Vygotsky considered the problem of age and age periodization to be the key to all issues of social practice. periodization

Principle - (from lat. Principium - beginning, basis) - the main starting point of any theory, doctrine, science, worldview.

In psychology, there are several methodological principles that provide big influence on the tasks it solves, and on the ways of studying the spiritual life of people. The most important of them are the principles of determinism, consistency and development. The principle of development is the leading one for that area of ​​psychological science that describes the genesis of the psyche. However, before turning to an analysis of the role and methods of influence of the principle of development, it is necessary to dwell briefly on the description of two other methodological principles and their place in psychology.

The principle of determinism implies that all mental phenomena are connected according to the law of cause-and-effect relations, i.e. everything that happens in our soul has some cause that can be identified and studied and which explains why this and not another effect has arisen. In psychology, there were several approaches to explaining the emerging connections.

Even in antiquity, scientists first spoke about determinism, about the existence of a universal law, the Logos, which determines what should happen to man, to nature as a whole. Democritus, who developed the detailed concept of determinism, wrote that people invented the idea of ​​chance in order to cover up ignorance of the matter and inability to manage.

Later, in the 17th century, Descartes introduced the concept of mechanical determinism, proving that all processes in the psyche can be explained on the basis of the laws of mechanics. This is how the idea arose about the mechanical nature of human behavior, which obeys the law of reflex. Mechanical determinism lasted almost 200 years. Its influence can also be seen in the theoretical positions of the founder of associative psychology, D. Gartley, who believed that associations in both small (psyche) and large (behavior) circles are formed and developed according to the laws of Newtonian mechanics. Echoes of mechanical determinism can be found even in early 20th-century psychology, such as the theory of energyism, which was accepted by many well-known psychologists, as well as in some postulates of behaviorism, such as the idea that positive reinforcement strengthens the response, while negative reinforcement weakens it.

But an even greater influence on the development of psychology was exerted by biological determinism, which arose with the advent of the theory of evolution. In this theory, the development of the psyche is determined by the desire for adaptation, i.e. everything that happens in the psyche is aimed at creature as well as possible adapted to the conditions in which it lives. The same law extended to the human psyche, and almost all psychological schools took this kind of determinism as an axiom.

The last kind of determinism, which can be called psychological, proceeds from the fact that the development of the psyche is explained and directed by a specific goal. However, unlike the understanding of the goal in antiquity, when it was considered a given force external to a person, in this case the goal is inherent in the very content of the soul, the psyche of a particular living being and determines its desire for self-expression and self-realization - in communication, cognition, creative activity. Psychological determinism also proceeds from the fact that the environment is not just a condition, a zone of human habitation, but a culture that carries the most important knowledge, experiences, which largely change the process of becoming a person. Thus, culture is considered one of the most significant factors influencing the development of the psyche, helping to realize oneself as a bearer of unique spiritual values ​​and qualities, as well as a member of society. Psychological determinism, in addition, suggests that the processes taking place in the soul can be aimed not only at adapting to the environment, but also at resisting it - in the event that the environment interferes with the disclosure of the potential abilities of a given person.

The principle of consistency describes and explains the main types of communication between different aspects of the psyche, the spheres of the mental. He assumes that individual mental phenomena are internally interconnected, forming integrity and acquiring new properties due to this. However, as in the study of determinism, the study of these connections and their properties by psychologists has a long history.

The first researchers of those connections that exist between mental phenomena considered the psyche as a sensory mosaic, which consists of several elements - sensations, ideas and feelings. According to certain laws, primarily the laws of associations, these elements are interconnected. This type of connection was called elementarism.

The functional approach, in which the psyche was presented as a set of separate functions aimed at the implementation of various mental acts and processes (vision, learning, etc.), appeared, like biological determinism, in connection with the theory of evolution. Biological studies have shown that there is a relationship between morphology and function, including mental function. Thus, it was proved that mental processes (memory, perception, etc.) and acts of behavior can be represented as functional blocks. Depending on the type of determination, these blocks act according to the laws of mechanics (as separate parts of a complex machine) or according to the laws of biological adaptation, linking the organism and the environment into a single whole. However, this principle did not explain how, in the event of a defect in some function, its compensation occurs, i.e. how shortcomings in the work of some departments can be compensated by the normal work of others (for example, poor hearing - the development of tactile or vibrational sensations).

This is what explains the principle of consistency, which represents the psyche as complex system, the individual blocks (functions) of which are interconnected. Thus, the systemic nature of the psyche implies its activity, since only in this case is both self-regulation and compensation possible, which are inherent in the mental even on lower levels development of the psyche. Consistency in the understanding of the psyche does not contradict the awareness of its integrity, the idea of ​​"holism", since each mental system (first of all, of course, the human psyche) is unique and integral.

Finally, let's move on to the principle of development, which states that the psyche is constantly changing, developing, therefore, the most adequate way to study it is to study the patterns of this genesis, its types and stages. No wonder one of the most common psychological methods refers to genetic.

It has already been said above that the idea of ​​development came to psychology with the theory of evolution, which proves that the psyche changes along with the environment and serves to adapt the organism to it. The English psychologist G. Spencer for the first time identified the stages of development of the psyche. He studied the genesis of the psyche, proceeding from the fact that the human psyche is the highest level development, which did not appear immediately, but gradually, in the process of complicating the living conditions and activities of living beings. The initial form of mental life, sensation, developed from irritability, and then from the simplest sensations, various forms of the psyche appeared, which are interconnected levels of the formation of consciousness and behavior. All of them are original tools for the survival of the organism, particular forms of adaptation to the environment.

These include:

• consciousness, behavior
• sensation is a reflex
• feelings, instinct
• memory is a skill
• mind is volitional behavior.

Speaking about the role of each stage, Spencer emphasized the main importance of the mind: it is devoid of the limitations that are inherent in the lower forms of the psyche, and therefore provides the most adequate adaptation of the individual to the environment. This idea about the connection of the psyche, mainly the intellect, with adaptation became the leading one for developmental psychology in the first half of the 20th century.

The principle of development says that there are two ways of the development of the psyche - phylogenetic and ontogenetic, i.e. the development of the psyche in the process of the formation of the human race and in the process of a child's life. Studies have shown that these two types of development have a certain correspondence with each other.

As the American psychologist S. Hall suggested, this similarity is due to the fact that the stages of development of the psyche are fixed in nerve cells and are inherited by the child, and therefore no changes are possible either in the rate of development or in the sequence of stages. The theory that established this rigid connection between phylo and ontogeny was called the theory of recapitulation, i.e. brief repetition in ontogeny of the main stages of phylogenetic development.

Subsequent work proved that such a rigid connection does not exist and development can accelerate or slow down depending on the social situation, and some stages may disappear altogether. Thus, the process of mental development is non-linear and depends on social environment, from the environment and upbringing of the child. At the same time, it is impossible to ignore the similarities found in the comparative analysis of processes cognitive development, the formation of self-esteem, self-awareness, etc. in small children and primitive peoples.

Therefore, many psychologists (E. Claparede, P.P. Blonsky, etc.), who studied the genesis of the psyche of children, came to the conclusion about a logical correspondence, which can be explained by the fact that the logic of the formation of the psyche, its self-deployment, is the same during the development of the human race and the development of an individual person.

The most important principle of developmental psychology is the principle of historicism, which makes it necessary to study the connection between the history of childhood and other stages of development and the history of society in revealing the psychological content of the stages of ontogenesis. The historical principle of developmental psychology also manifests itself in the fact that chronological framework and the features of each age are not static - they are determined by the action of socio-historical factors, the social order of society.

The principle of objectivity. No matter how fair and impartial we try to be, our personal and cultural attitudes can create serious obstacles to a correct understanding of human behavior. Whenever we evaluate what people are capable of—or not capable of, when we try to predict proper behavior—in short, when we judge the behavior of other people, we bring into our conclusions the values ​​and norms that we have formed on the basis of personal experience. and socialization in a particular culture. It is difficult for us to give up our subjective judgments and look at others based on their norms, values ​​and living conditions.

If we seek to explain human behavior and development without having the slightest idea of ​​such cultural variations, we will be seriously misled and our conclusions will be erroneous.

Unfortunately, complete objectivity can never be achieved. Researchers living in different times, belonging to different cultures or holding different philosophical views, describe human behavior in different ways. Therefore, it is important for them to identify their own omissions and predilections and plan the study in such a way that errors in their constructions can be detected.

The principle of the unity of consciousness and activity states that consciousness and activity are in continuous unity. Consciousness forms inner plan human activities. If we put the principle of the unity of consciousness and activity as a basis, then we can trace the development of a number of branches of psychology that study specific types of human activity.

The genetic principle in developmental psychology was introduced by L.S. Vygotsky. Pedagogy constantly turned to developmental psychology with questions about what the process of development is and what are its basic laws. Attempts to explain this process, made by developmental psychology, have always been conditioned by the general level of psychological knowledge. At first, developmental psychology was a descriptive science, not yet capable of revealing the internal laws of development. Gradually, psychology, as well as medicine, moved from symptoms to syndromes, and then to a real causal explanation of the process. Changes in ideas about the mental development of the child have always been associated with the development of new research methods. “The problem of method is the beginning and basis, the alpha and omega of the entire history of the cultural development of the child,” wrote L.S. Vygotsky. And further: “... To truly rely on the method, to understand its relation to other methods, to establish its strengths and weaknesses, to understand its fundamental justification and to develop the right attitude towards it means, to a certain extent, to develop a correct and scientific approach to everything further presentation of the most important problems of developmental psychology in the aspect of cultural development ”, It is important to emphasize that we are talking about the method, because a specific methodology, according to L.S. Vygotsky, can take various forms depending on the content of a particular problem, on the nature of the study, and on the personality of the subject.

In recent decades, developmental psychology has changed both in its content and in interdisciplinary connections. On the one hand, it influences others scientific disciplines, and on the other hand, she herself is influenced by them, assimilating everything that expands her subject content.

Biology, genetics, developmental physiology. These disciplines are important, first of all, for understanding prenatal development, as well as for the subsequent stages of ontogeny from the point of view of its early foundations. They play a significant role in the analysis of the adaptive capabilities of newborns, as well as general physical and motor (motor) development, especially in relation to subsequent changes in behavior and experience. Of particular interest here is the development of the central nervous system, sensory organs and endocrine glands. In addition, the discoveries of biology are of particular importance for understanding the subject-environment problem, i.e. explanations of similarities and differences in the development of different individuals.

Ethology. The importance of ethology, or the comparative study of behavior, has grown considerably in recent years. It shows the biological roots of behavior by providing information about the interaction between the environment and the individual (for example, the study of imprinting). No less valuable is the methodological possibility of conducting observations and experiments on animals, and especially in cases where their conduct on humans is prohibited for ethical reasons. The ability to transfer findings from animals to humans is essential to understanding human development.

Cultural anthropology and ethnology. The subject of study of cultural anthropology and ethnology are transcultural universals and intercultural differences in behavior and experience. These disciplines allow, on the one hand, to test the patterns identified in the American-European cultural environment in other cultures (for example, East Asian) and, on the other hand, due to the expansion of the cultural environment, to identify intercultural differences that cause different development processes. Of particular importance in recent years is the study of children's folklore (subculture).

Sociology and social disciplines. These sciences acquire their significance for developmental psychology both due to certain theoretical premises (role theory, the theory of socialization, theories of the formation of attitudes and norms, etc.), and due to the analysis of processes social interaction in the family, school, group of the same age, as well as through the study of the socio-economic conditions of development.

Psychological disciplines. The sciences of the psychological cycle are most closely related to developmental psychology. The sciences united under the name "General Psychology" allow a better understanding of the mental processes of motivation, emotions, cognition, learning, etc. Pedagogical psychology closes developmental psychology to pedagogical practice, the processes of education and upbringing. Clinical (medical) psychology helps to understand the development of children with disorders of various aspects of the psyche and merges with developmental psychology along the lines of child psychotherapy, psychoprophylaxis, and psychohygiene. Psychodiagnostics goes hand in hand with developmental psychology in adaptation and application diagnostic methods in a comparative analysis of the intellectual, personal, etc. development and to determine the age norms of development. It is possible to discover connections between the psychology of development and the psychology of creativity and heuristic processes (along the line of gifted and outstripping children); the psychology of individual differences, etc. In recent years, the volume of interaction between developmental psychology and pathopsychology (oligophrenopsychology, childhood neuroses) and defectology (work with hearing-impaired and visually impaired children, children with mental retardation, etc.) has been growing.

One can detect the merging of developmental psychology with psychogenetics, psycholinguistics, psychosemiotics, ethnopsychology, demography, philosophy, etc. Almost all progressive and interesting work in developmental psychology, as a rule, are performed at the intersection of disciplines.

Over the long period of its existence, developmental psychology has assimilated general psychological methods of observation and experiment, applying them to the study of human development at different age levels.

Observation, as we already know, is a deliberate, systematic and purposeful perception of the external behavior of a person with the aim of its subsequent analysis and explanation. In developmental psychology, this is one of the first and most accessible methods, especially necessary in the study of children in the early stages of development, when it is impossible to take a verbal report from the subjects and it is difficult to carry out any experimental procedure. And although observation seems to be a simple method, when properly organized, it makes it possible to collect facts about the natural behavior of a person. When observing, a person does not know that someone is following him, and behaves naturally, which is why observation gives vital truthful facts. By fixing the behavior of a preschooler in a game, in communication, a schoolchild - in the classroom, a teenager - among peers, an adult - in the professional sphere, etc., the psychologist receives data about a person as a holistic personality and, consequently, intelligence, memory, emotions, personal features are perceived not in isolation, but in connection with actions, statements, deeds. Observations make it possible to systematically analyze the psyche of a developing person.

The limitation of using the observation method is due to several reasons. Firstly, the naturalness and fusion of social, physical, physiological and mental processes in human behavior makes it difficult to understand each of them separately and prevents the isolation of the main, essential. Secondly, observation limits the intervention of the researcher and does not allow him to establish the child's ability to do something better, faster, more successfully than he did. In observation, the psychologist himself does not have to cause the phenomenon he wants to study. Thirdly, when observing, it is impossible to ensure the repetition of the same fact without changes. Fourthly, observation allows only fixing, but not forming mental manifestations. In child psychology, the matter is further complicated by the fact that the psychologist has to record the observation data in writing, since cameras, tape recorders, any equipment affect the naturalness of the child's behavior, so the analysis and generalization of data is difficult (which is why the need to develop and use hidden equipment like the famous Gesell mirror). Here, most clearly, a serious shortcoming of the method of observation is revealed - it is difficult to overcome subjectivity. Since observation itself is studied in psychology, it was found that it largely depends on the personality of the observer, his individual psychological characteristics, attitudes and attitudes towards the observed, as well as on his powers of observation and attentiveness. To make the results of observation more reliable and stable, it is necessary to use not one, but several researchers to observe the same fact, which reduces the efficiency of the method. Finally, fifthly, observation can never be a single fact, it must be carried out systematically, with repetition and a large sample of subjects.

Therefore, there are longitudinal (longitudinal) observations that allow one (or several) subjects to be observed for a long time (in this sense, A. Gesell's observations of 165 children over 12 years are unprecedented). Of similar value are the diary entries of parents, fixing the development of one child day by day, and historical diaries, memoirs and fiction allow a deeper understanding of the attitude towards children of different ages at different historical stages.

A variation of observation is self-observation in the form of a verbal report about what a person sees, feels, experiences, does - it is better to apply it only to subjects who are already able to analyze their inner world, understand their experiences, evaluate their actions. Another observation option is psychological analysis products of activity, successfully applied at all age levels. In this case, it is not the process of activity that is studied, but its result (children's drawings and crafts, diaries and poems of adolescents, manuscripts, designs, works of art by adults, etc.). Psychologists often use the method of generalizing independent characteristics obtained by observing a person in various activities.

Most often, observation is an integral part of experimental psychological research. In particular, this can be done in the form of a biographical method. As an independent method, observation is of little value, except in rare cases of its use in relation to infants and non-speaking young children.

For more than 100 years, experimental methods have been operating in psychology, involving the active intervention of the researcher in the activity of the subject in order to create conditions in which the desired psychological fact is revealed. Let me remind you that the first experimental methods were developed specifically for children.

The experiment differs from observation in 4 features:

1. in the experiment, the researcher himself causes the phenomenon he is studying, and the observer cannot actively intervene in the observed situations;
2. the experimenter can vary, change the conditions for the flow and manifestation of the process under study;
3. in the experiment, it is possible to alternately exclude individual conditions (variables) in order to establish regular relationships that determine the process under study;
4. the experiment also allows you to vary the quantitative ratio of conditions, allows mathematical processing of the data obtained in the study.

In developmental psychology, both traditional types of experiment - natural and laboratory - are successfully used, and most developmental studies include a stating and formative form of experiment. In the ascertaining experiment, certain psychological characteristics and levels of development of the corresponding mental quality or property are revealed. Still, a formative experiment (which can be educational or educative) is becoming more important in developmental psychology. A formative experiment involves purposeful influence on the subject in order to create, develop certain qualities and skills. In fact, this is a developing method in the conditions of a specially created experimental pedagogical process. In a certain sense, similar tasks are solved in trainings that are adapted or specially developed for children of different ages (for example, personal growth training for adolescents, communication training for schoolchildren, psycho-gymnastics for preschoolers, etc.), and correctional systems.

As varieties of objective experimental methods of psychology, the twin method, sociometry, analysis of performance results, modeling, questioning and testing (for the purpose of diagnosis or prognosis) are used.

Most of the listed methods are research. They allow you to get something new as a result (facts, patterns, mechanisms of mental processes). But sometimes in psychology it is required to compare some parameters of a person, human activity with some existing standards, norms, i.e. the purpose of the test is pursued. Then we are talking about diagnostics, in which testing is widely used - a short, standardized, usually time-limited test, designed to establish individual differences in compared values.

Advantages experimental method are undoubted. It allows the psychologist to:

1. do not wait until the studied feature manifests itself in the activity of the subject, but create the conditions for its maximum manifestation;
2. repeat the experiment the required number of times (for this there are different forms of the same test, for example, several forms of 16-PF Cattell, forms A-B-C of Eysenck, etc.);
3. the identified feature can be measured in different children under the same conditions and in one child in different conditions, which increases the reliability of the data obtained;
4. the experiment is more convenient in terms of standardization of the obtained materials, their quantitative calculation.

However, the experiment also has a number of disadvantages:

1. any experiment is always limited to a certain set of actions, tasks, answers and therefore never gives rise to broad generalizations in terms of a holistic view of a developing person;
2. An experiment is always just a snapshot of the activity, personality of the child at this particular moment, so it requires mandatory repetition.

In addition to the principles, the formation of developmental psychology was influenced by the formation of its categorical structure, i.e. those constant problems (invariant) that make up its subject and content.

Currently, there are several main categories of psychological science: motive, image, activity, personality, communication, experience. It must be emphasized that these categories are common to all areas of psychology, including developmental psychology. Naturally, these categories had different meanings in different spheres and different schools, but they were always, one way or another, present in psychological concepts.

Developmental psychology studies, first of all, the genesis, the dynamics of the formation of an image, motive, activity in children and among different peoples. Thus, stand out various parties mental development - the development of personality, intelligence, social development, which have their own stages and patterns that have become the subject of research by many famous psychologists– V. Stern, J. Piaget, L.S. Vygotsky, P.P. Blonsky and others.

One of the first in psychology was the category of the image, which became the leading one in the study of cognition. Even in antiquity, scientists studied how the image of the world is formed in a person; Subsequently, the focus of attention of psychologists was the image of oneself, its content and structure. If in the first psychological theories the image of oneself was considered mainly as one of the areas of consciousness, then in modern science"Image-I" has become one of the leading concepts of personality psychology.

The image of an object was considered by many scientists as a signal on the basis of which a reflex, human behavior, is born and begins to function. Studying the process of forming an idea of ​​the surrounding reality, I.M. Sechenov came to the conclusion that the image is closely connected with movement and regulates human activity. He argued that mental development occurs through internalization - the transition of external images and actions into internal ones, which, gradually curtailing and automating, form the mental qualities of a person. Thus, thought is the internalization of relations between objects, and self-esteem is the internalization of norms of behavior.

The image as a sensory basis of thought was an unshakable postulate for scientists who considered the psyche as a sensory mosaic consisting of sensations and ideas. The ugly nature of thinking became at the beginning of the 20th century. one of the most important discoveries of the Würzburg school. The image as the basis of perception, which has a holistic and systemic character, has become the leading category in Gestalt psychology.

Considering the genesis of gestalts, scientists came to the conclusion that the elements of the field are combined into a structure depending on such relationships as proximity, similarity, isolation, symmetry. There are a number of other factors on which the perfection and stability of a figure or structural unification depend - rhythm in the construction of rows, the commonality of light and color, etc. The action of all these factors obeys the basic law, called by Wertheimer the law of pregnancy (the law of "good" form), which is interpreted as a desire (even at the level of the electrochemical processes of the cerebral cortex) to simple and clear forms, uncomplicated and stable states.

Studying the process of development of images, scientists noticed that the main properties of perception: constancy, correctness, meaningfulness appear gradually, with the maturation of gestalts. These data led Gestalt psychologists to the conclusion that the leading mental process, which actually determines the level of development of the child's psyche, is perception. It is on how the child perceives the world, scientists have argued, that his behavior and understanding of the situation depend.

Studies of the development of perception in children, which were conducted in Koffka's laboratory, showed that a child is born with a set of vague and not very adequate images. outside world. Gradually, these images are differentiated and become more and more accurate. So, at birth, children have a vague image of a person, the gestalt of which includes his voice, face, hair, and characteristic movements. So Small child(one or two months) may not recognize even a close adult if he drastically changes his hairstyle or replaces his usual clothes with a completely unfamiliar one. However, by the end of the first half of the year, this vague image breaks up, turning into a series of clear images: the image of a face in which eyes, mouth, hair stand out as separate gestalts; images of voice, body, etc.

Koffka's research has shown that color perception also develops. At first, children perceive the environment only as colored or uncolored, without distinguishing colors. In this case, the uncolored is perceived as a background, and the colored is perceived as a figure. Gradually, the colored is divided into warm and cold, and in the environment, children already distinguish several sets of "figure - background". This is uncolored-colored warm, uncolored-colored cold, which are perceived as several different images. For example: colored cold (background) - colored warm (figure) or colored warm (background) - colored cold (figure). Thus, the previously single gestalt turns into four, which more accurately reflect the color. Over time, these images are also crushed, as several colors stand out in warm and cold. This process goes on for a long time until, finally, the child begins to perceive all colors correctly. Based on these experimental data, Koffka came to the conclusion that the combination of the figure and the background against which the given object is demonstrated plays an important role in the development of perception.

He argued that the development of color vision is based on the contrast in the perception of the "figure - background" combination and formulated one of the laws of perception, which was called transduction. This law stated that children do not perceive the colors themselves, but their relationships. So, in Koffka's experiment, children were asked to find a candy that was in one of two cups covered with colored cardboard. The candy was always in the cup, which was closed with a dark gray cardboard, while there was never any candy under the black one. In the control experiment, the children had to choose not between a black and dark gray lid, as they are accustomed to, but between dark gray and light gray. If they perceived a pure color, they would choose the usual dark gray cover, but the children chose light gray, as they were guided not by the pure color, but by the ratio of colors, choosing a lighter shade. A similar experiment was carried out with animals (chickens), which also perceived only combinations of colors, and not the color itself.

The development of images in children was studied by another representative of this school, G. Volkelt. He paid special attention to the study of children's drawings. Of great interest are his experiments on the study of the drawing of geometric figures by children of different ages. So, four-five-year-old children depicted a cone as a circle and a triangle located next to each other. Volkelt explained this by the fact that they still do not have an adequate image for this figure, and therefore in the drawing they use two similar gestalts. Over time, integration and refinement of gestalts takes place, thanks to which children begin to draw not only planar, but also three-dimensional figures. Volkelt also carried out a comparative analysis of the drawings of those objects that the children saw and those that they did not see, but only felt. It turned out that in the case when children felt, for example, a cactus covered with a scarf, they drew only thorns, conveying their general feeling from the object, not its form. What happened, as the Gestalt psychologists proved, was the grasping of an integral image of the object, its “good” form, and then “enlightenment” and differentiation. These studies of Gestalt psychologists were of great importance for domestic work on the study of visual perception and led the psychologists of this school (A.V. Zaporozhets, L.A. Venger) to the idea that there are certain images - sensory standards that underlie perception and perception. object recognition.

The same transition from grasping the general situation to its differentiation occurs in intellectual development, argued W. Koehler. Explaining the phenomenon of insight (enlightenment), he showed that at the moment when phenomena are viewed from a different angle, they acquire a new function. The connection of objects in new combinations associated with their new functions leads to the formation of a new gestalt, the awareness of which is the essence of thinking. Koehler called this process "Gestalt restructuring" and believed that such a restructuring occurs instantly and does not depend on the subject's past experience, but only on the way objects are arranged in the field. It is this “restructuring” that occurs at the moment of insight.

Proving the universality of the problem-solving mechanism discovered by him, Koehler conducted a series of experiments to study the process of thinking in children. He created for children problem situations; for example, they were asked to get a typewriter that stood high on a cabinet. For this it was necessary to use miscellaneous items- ladder, box or chair. It turned out that if there was a ladder in the room, the children quickly solved the proposed problem. It was more difficult to guess to use the box, but the most difficult was the option when there were no other objects in the room, except for the chair, which had to be moved away from the table and used as a stand. Köhler explained these results by the fact that from the very beginning the ladder is functionally recognized as an object that helps to get something high up. Therefore, its inclusion in the gestalt with the wardrobe does not present any difficulty for the child. The inclusion of the box already needs some rearrangement, since it can be recognized in several functions. As for the chair, the child is aware of it not by itself, but already included in another gestalt - with a table, with which it appears to the child as a single whole. Therefore, to solve this problem, children must first break the previously holistic image (table - chair) into two, and then connect the chair with the wardrobe in new look realizing its new functional role. That is why this option is the most difficult to solve.

These experiments, proving the universality of insight, revealed, from Koehler's point of view, the general direction of mental development and the role of learning in this process. Proving the main position of this school that mental development is associated with an increase in the number of gestalts and their differentiation, i.e. with the transition from grasping the general situation to its differentiation and the formation of a new gestalt, more adequate to the situation, he revealed the conditions conducive to this transition. Such development, Köhler believed, occurs both suddenly and in the process of learning, which also leads to the formation of a new structure and, consequently, to a different perception and awareness of the situation. Under certain conditions, training can contribute to the development of thinking, and this is not associated with the organization of the child's search activity according to the type of trial and error, but with the creation of conditions conducive to insight. Thus, Koehler's experiments proved the instantaneous, and not the extended in time, nature of thinking, which is based on insight. Somewhat later, K. Buhler, who came to a similar conclusion, called this phenomenon "aha-experience", emphasizing its suddenness and simultaneity. Wertheimer, who studied the process of creative thinking in children and adults, came to similar conclusions about the role of insight in the restructuring of previous images in solving problems.

Works on the genesis of perception and thinking in Gestalt psychology have demonstrated the relationship between sensory and mental images. The study of this connection, as well as the combination of a mental image and a word, has been and remains one of the most important tasks of psychology. Suffice it to say that such great scientists as A.A. Potebnya, L.S. Vygotsky, J. Piaget, D. Bruner and others devoted the most significant works to the study of this problem.

Both sensual and mental images are included in the content of consciousness, so their totality can be considered as a kind of analogue of the philosophical category "consciousness". However, for psychology, the question of the degree of awareness of images is also significant, since the unconscious and supraconscious play no less important role than consciousness.

J. Piaget, speaking about the genesis of images of the surrounding world, came to the conclusion that mental development is associated with internalization, since the first mental operations- external, sensorimotor - subsequently pass into the internal plan, turning into logical, proper mental operations. He also described the main property of these operations - their reversibility. Characterizing the concept of reversibility, Piaget cited as an example arithmetic operations - addition and subtraction, multiplication and division, which can be read both from left to right and from right to left.

The study of the process of development of images led D. Bruner to the conclusion that perception is selective and can be distorted under the influence of internal motives, goals, attitudes or defense mechanisms. Thus, the more value children attribute to certain objects, the more they seem to physical quantity. He also showed that in a situation of frustration, even neutral words are often perceived by children as disturbing and threatening, hence their inappropriately aggressive behavior in such cases. Based on these studies, Bruner introduced the term social perception, emphasizing the dependence of perception on the social experience of children.

Analyzing the structure of perception, Bruner singled out three components in it: ideas about the surrounding world in the form of actions, in the form of images and in the form of words (linguistic form). From the standpoint of his theory of perceptual hypotheses, all cognitive processes are processes of categorization, i.e. objects of the surrounding world are combined with each other on the basis of the rules of association (categories) learned by children. When combined, hypotheses consistently arise about what qualities serve as the basis for combining these objects and whether all these objects have these qualities. Thus, the mastery of conceptual thinking occurs as one learns which properties of the environment are most significant for grouping objects into certain classes.

Another very important problem for developmental psychology was the study of the genesis of activity. Speaking about the category of activity, it is necessary to remember that in psychology both external activity (behavior) and internal, primarily mental, activity are considered. In the early stages of the development of psychology, scientists did not question the position that behavior is the same psychological concept like thinking. However, over time, psychologists, as mentioned above, began to identify the psyche only with consciousness, and all external manifestations of activity were taken out of the scope of the mental proper. Only the study of internal, mental activity was left to the share of psychological research, which hindered the development of objective methods for studying the psyche and experimental psychology.

In the middle of the last century, the English psychologist G. Spencer for the first time stated that the subject of psychology is the association between the internal and external, i.e. between consciousness and behavior. Thus, the unique position of psychology was not only fixed, but the status of external activity as a psychological category was also legitimized. In modern psychology, there are several schools that consider the category of activity to be the leading one - this is both behaviorism and domestic psychology, in which the theory of activity occupies one of the central places. The study of internal and external activities, their interrelationships and mutual transitions is one of the central problems of developmental psychology.

An experimental study of the conditions that promote or hinder the formation of new types of activity, i.e. the formation of connections between stimuli and reactions was the focus of attention of E. Thorndike, who stood at the origins of the behavioral direction. He invented special "problem boxes", which were experimental devices of varying degrees of complexity. An animal placed in such a box had to overcome various obstacles and find a way out on its own. Experiments were carried out mainly on cats, less often on dogs and lower monkeys. Later, special devices for children were designed. An animal placed in a box could get out of it and receive top dressing only by activating a special device - pressing a spring, pulling a loop.

The behavior of the animals was the same. They made many erratic movements - rushing in different directions, scratching the box, biting it, etc., until one of the movements accidentally turned out to be successful. On subsequent trials, the number of useless movements decreased, the animal needed less and less time to find a way out, until it began to act without error. The progress of the experiments and the results were depicted graphically in the form of curves, where repeated samples were marked on the abscissa axis, and the elapsed time (in minutes) was marked on the ordinate axis. The resulting curve (Thorndike called it the learning curve) gave grounds to assert that the animal operates by trial and error. This was regarded as a general pattern of behavior, which, according to Thorndike, was also confirmed by his experiments on children.

In his later work, Thorndike focused on studying the dependence of learning on factors such as rewards and punishments. Based on the materials received, he deduced the basic laws of learning:

1. The law of repetition (exercise). Its essence is that the more often the connection between the stimulus and the reaction is repeated, the faster it is fixed and the stronger it is. According to this law, the reaction to a situation is associated with this situation in proportion to the frequency, strength and duration of the repetition of connections.
2. The law of effect, which states that of several reactions to the same situation, ceteris paribus, those that cause a feeling of satisfaction are more firmly associated with the situation. Later, this law was modified, as it turned out that the result of any of his activities is important for the child, i.e. at the end of the learned reaction, there must be a reinforcement, no matter positive or negative.
3. The law of readiness, the essence of which is that the formation of new connections depends on the state of the subject.
4. The law of associative shift, which states that if, with the simultaneous appearance of two stimuli, one of them causes a positive reaction, then the other acquires the ability to cause the same reaction. In other words, a neutral stimulus, associated by association with a significant one, also begins to cause the desired behavior.

Thorndike also pointed out additional terms learning success - the ease of distinguishing between a stimulus and a reaction and the child's awareness of the connection between them.

The data obtained by Thorndike led him to the conclusion that learning by trial and error occurs in the formation of not only motor acts, but also intellectual ones, i.e. he, like Sechenov, argued that mental processes are internalized external reactions.

The study of the development of complex forms of behavior was also at the center of the scientific interests of another representative of the school of behaviorism, B. Skinner. He sought to understand the causes of behavior and learn how to manage it. Based on the idea that not only skills, but also knowledge are variations of behavior, Skinner introduced its special kind - operant behavior. He believed that the human psyche is based on reflexes of various kinds and varying degrees difficulties. Comparing his approach to the formation of reflexes with that of Pavlov, he emphasized the essential differences between them. He called the conditioned reflex formed in Pavlov's experiments stimulus behavior, since its formation is associated with an association between different stimuli and does not depend on the subject's own activity. So, a dog is always given meat on a call, regardless of what it is doing at that moment. Thus, an association arises between meat and a bell, in response to which salivation is observed. However, Skinner emphasized that such a reaction is quickly formed, but also quickly disappears without reinforcement, it cannot be the basis of the subject's permanent behavior.

In contrast to this approach, in operant learning, only behavior, operations that the subject is performing at the moment are reinforced. Great importance It also has the fact that the complex reaction is broken down into a number of simple ones, following one after another and leading to the desired goal. So, when teaching a pigeon a complex reaction (leaving the cage by pressing a lever with its beak), Skinner reinforced each movement of the pigeon in the right direction, ensuring that in the end the pigeon accurately performed this complex operation. This approach to the formation of the desired reaction had great advantages over the traditional one. First of all, this behavior was much more stable, the capacity for it faded very slowly even in the absence of reinforcement. Skinner drew attention to the fact that even a single reinforcement can have a significant effect, since at least a random connection is established between the reaction and the appearance of the stimulus. If the stimulus was meaningful to the individual, he will try to repeat the response that brought him success. Such behavior Skinner called superstitious, pointing to its significant prevalence.

Equally important is the fact that learning under operant conditioning is faster and easier. This is due to the fact that the experimenter has the opportunity to observe not only the final result (product), but also the process of performing the action (after all, it is decomposed into components that are implemented in a given sequence). In fact, there is an exteriorization not only of performance, but also of orientation and control over the action, and what is especially important, such an approach is possible when teaching not only certain skills, but also knowledge. The method of program training developed by Skinner made it possible to optimize the educational process, to develop corrective programs for underachieving and mentally retarded children. These programs had huge advantages over traditional training programs, as they gave the teacher the opportunity to instantly notice the student's mistake, control and, if necessary, correct the process of solving the problem. In addition, the efficiency and accuracy of execution increased the motivation for learning, the activity of students, and also made it possible to individualize the learning process depending on the pace of learning. However, these programs also had a significant drawback. Exteriorization, which plays a positive role at the beginning of learning, hinders the development of convoluted, mental actions, hinders the internalization and curtailment of the problem solution scheme developed by the teacher.

The study of the dynamics of the development of cognitive processes and behavior of children showed the enormous role of communication in the formation of their psyche. The words that a person is a social being, that is, cannot exist outside of communication with others, belong to Aristotle. Over time, psychology received more and more data about the crucial role of other people in the development of the psyche, in shaping ideas about oneself and about the world. With the development of social psychology, a serious study of the mutual communication of adults began, especially those belonging to different nations and cultures; studied features mass communications. Different aspects of communication (communicative, perceptual, interactive) were identified, its structure and dynamics were studied. An analysis of the direction of development of psychology shows that the importance of this category and the proportion of studies devoted to various problems of communication will continue to grow.

In developmental psychology, the huge role of the adult and the “adult-child” relationship has become one of the axioms, indicating that the full-fledged mental development of the child is impossible in isolation. We also study the role of communication in the process of inculturation of children, their mastery of the norms and rules of behavior adopted in a given social group, the attitudes and value orientations that are significant for it.

One of the first to speak about the role of communication in the process of socialization of children was D.M. Baldwin, who emphasized that interpersonal communication is the most important factor in the formation of the human psyche. Many psychoanalysts, primarily E. Erickson, also wrote about the importance of communication and the role of an adult as a translator of cultural norms. He called the process of personal formation the process of identity formation, emphasizing the importance of preserving and maintaining the integrity of the personality, the integrity of the Ego, which is the main factor in resistance to neurosis. He identified three parts in the identity structure:

1. somatic identity, manifested in the fact that the body seeks to maintain its integrity when interacting with the outside world,
2. personal identity, which integrates the external and internal experience of a person,
3. social identity, which consists in the joint creation and maintenance by people of a certain order, stability.

Communication has a significant impact on the development of all kinds of identity, especially social. Considering the role of the environment, culture and social environment of the child, Erickson focused on the relationship between the child and the family, and more specifically, on the relationship "child - mother". At the same time, he emphasized that the formation of social identity is influenced not only by parents and people close to the child, but also by friends, work, and society as a whole. Erickson attached great importance to the external stability of the system in which a person lives, since the violation of this stability, the change in landmarks, social norms and values ​​also violates the identity and devalues ​​a person's life. He considered the "innate drives" of a person to be fragments of aspirations that are collected, acquired significance and organized in childhood. The lengthening of the period of childhood is precisely connected with the need for the socialization of children. Therefore, Erickson argued that the "instinctive weapons" (sexual and aggressive) in humans are much more mobile and plastic than in animals. The organization and direction of development of these innate inclinations are connected with the methods of upbringing and education, which change from culture to culture and are predetermined by traditions. In other words, each society develops its own institutions of socialization in order to help children with different individual qualities become full-fledged members of this social group.

The development of communication between adults and children was the focus of M.I. Lisina and her staff. Several stages were identified in this process during the first seven years of children's lives, as well as the criteria for their formation and those neoplasms in the structure of personality and intellect that are directly related to one or another stage of communication. In this concept, communication is considered as a condition and one of the main factors in the mental and personal development of the child, it ensures the assimilation of the socio-historical experience of mankind. The development of communication with an adult occurs as a change of four qualitative steps:

1. situational-personal communication - genetically the first form of communication between a child and an adult (it is typical for children in the first six months of life);
2. situational business communication is the second most common form of communication among children, which is typical for young children;
3. extra-situational-cognitive communication that occurs at preschool age;
4. extra-situational-personal communication with an adult, which occurs in the second half of the preschool period.

In the process of development of communication, its motivation also changes. In accordance with the steps mentioned above, the following motives for children's communication were identified:

1. need for benevolent attention (2-6 months);
2. need for cooperation (6 months - 3 years);
3. the need for a respectful attitude of an adult (3-5 years);
4. the need for mutual understanding and empathy (5-7 years).

As studies by M.I. Lisina and A. Ruzskaya showed, a slightly different motivation is present when communicating with peers:

1. the need for participation in peer games, their attention and goodwill (2-4 years);
2. the need for cooperation and recognition by peers (4-6 years);
3. the need for empathy and mutual understanding (senior preschool age).

In the works of A.S. Zaluzhny and S.S. Molozhavyi, who studied the dynamics and stages of development of children's groups, intra-group differentiation, types of leadership in children's groups, it was shown that endogenous and exogenous factors influence the growth of organization and the increase in the existence of the team. Exogenous factors were understood as any impact of the environment, and endogenous - the behavior of individual members of the team. One of the most significant internal factors, as shown by the studies of A.S. Zaluzhny and A.B. Salkind, is a phenomenon of leadership. Much experimental work has been devoted to leadership in children's groups and group differentiation, and it has been shown that leaders not only organize the team, but also help direct the excess energy of the group in the right direction.

As the team develops, a leader, or leader, is allocated, the center is grouped around this leader, and children drop out of the group. According to scientists, unpopular children are either disorganizers who interfere with the work of others, or passive children engaged in some extraneous activity. Zalkind and Zaluzny developed methods for correcting the communication of children, believing that active disorganizing children should be placed in groups of older and stronger children, and isolated, anxious children in groups of younger ones, where they can show their abilities and even become leaders. Salkind emphasized that all children should go through the school of leadership, this is especially important in adolescence, as it helps to neutralize Negative consequences puberty.

Thus, in the works of scientists from different areas, the importance of communication for the development of the personality of children, their assimilation of the norms and rules of the society in which they live, their culture was shown. However, communication is also necessary for the full intellectual development of children, the formation of their thinking and speech, which has also been proven by many psychologists.

Speaking about the fact that there are natural and higher, i.e. culturally conditioned, mental functions, L.S. Vygotsky came to the conclusion that the main difference between them is the level of arbitrariness. Unlike natural mental processes that cannot be regulated by a person, people can consciously control higher mental functions. This regulation is associated with the mediated nature of higher mental functions, and they are mediated by a sign, or stimulus-means, X, which creates an additional connection between the influencing stimulus S and the person's reaction R (both behavioral and mental).

Unlike a stimulus-means that can be invented by the child himself (for example, a stick instead of a thermometer), signs are not invented by children, but acquired by them in communication with adults. Thus, the sign first appears on the outer plane, on the plane of communication, and then passes into the inner plane, the plane of consciousness. Vygotsky wrote that each higher mental function appears on the stage twice: once as external, interpsychic, and the other as internal, intrapsychic.

Signs, being a product of social development, bear the imprint of the culture of the society in which the child grows up. Children learn signs in the process of communication and begin to use them to control their inner mental life. Thanks to the internalization of signs, the sign function of consciousness is formed in children, the formation of such actually human mental processes as logical thinking, will, and speech is carried out.

D. Bruner also wrote about the importance of communication and culture for the intellectual development of children. On the basis of his cross-cultural studies, Bruner defined intelligence as the result of the child's assimilation of "amplifiers" developed in a given culture, i.e. ways, signs, operations that help the child cope with the solution of the tasks facing him. Success is increased by artificially strengthening the motor, sensory and mental capabilities of a person. "Enhancers" can be both real, technical, and symbolic, with different cultures producing different "amps".

The category of motive is no less important in psychology. Already in the first psychological theories, scientists considered the source of activity, sought to find the cause that prompts a person to move, i.e. tried to understand the motives that underlie our behavior. There have been attempts to find a material explanation for these urges, with motives associated with moving atoms and "animal spirits"; there were also theories based on the intangibility of motives. So, Plato spoke of a passionate, or lustful, soul, which is the bearer of motives, and Leibniz believed that activity, an impulse to action, is a property of the soul-monad. However, regardless of the interpretation of the nature of the motive, it was usually associated with emotions and was one of the main problems for all psychologists. Therefore, it is natural that in modern psychology the concept of motive (needs, drives, aspirations) has become the leading category for almost all psychological schools.

Domestic psychology scientists emphasized the connection between the development of motives and the process of personality formation, its socialization. Revealing the dynamics of the formation of motives, the transformation of "known" motives into "actual" ones, as well as the relationship between motives and goals, A.N. Leontiev proved the leading role of culture, interpersonal communication in the complex process of ascent from an individual to a personality. S.L. wrote about the development of motives that form the orientation of the personality. Rubinshtein, the connection between motivation and relationships that people enter into in the process of their personal development was studied by V.N. Myasishchevsh.

The study of the relationship between the genesis of motives and the process of personality formation was one of the central problems for humanistic psychology. Speaking about the structure of personality, A. Maslow associated it with the “pyramid of needs” of a person, which looks like this:

• physiological needs - food, water, sleep, etc.;
• the need for security - stability, order;
• the need for love and belonging - family, friendship;
• need for respect - self-respect, recognition;
• the need for self-actualization - the development of abilities.

Subsequently, studying the development of needs, Maslow abandoned such a rigid hierarchy, combining all needs into two classes - the needs of need (deficit) and the need for development (self-actualization). Thus, he singled out two levels of human existence - existential, focused on personal growth and self-actualization, and deficient, focused on satisfying frustrated needs. Later, he singled out groups of existential and deficient needs, and also introduced the term metamotivation to denote the actual existential motivation leading to personal growth.

The scientist believed that every person is born with a certain set of qualities, abilities that make up the essence of his "I", his "Self" and which a person needs to realize and manifest in his life and activities. It is conscious aspirations and motives, and not unconscious instincts, that constitute the essence of human personality distinguish man from animals. However, the desire for self-actualization encounters various obstacles, misunderstanding of others and their own weaknesses, self-doubt. Therefore, the main thing in personal growth is the awareness of one's needs, especially the need for self-actualization.

One of the most significant concepts of motivation in developmental psychology in recent years has been the theory of attachment, developed by the English psychologist and psychiatrist D. Bowlby. Working with juvenile delinquents led him to the idea that the main problems experienced by them in the process of socialization are due to a violation of communication with parents, a lack of warmth and care at an early age. His idea was that in the first months of life, a close emotional bond is established between mother and child, which is not reducible to either sexuality or instinctive behavior. A sharp break in this connection leads to serious disturbances in the mental development of the child, primarily in the structure of his personality. These disorders may not appear immediately (this is the difference between the phenomena described by Bowlby and hospitalism and similar forms of deviations), but much later, often only in adolescence.

Bowlby argued that a mother is a reliable protection for a small child, a kind of base that he leaves from time to time, trying to explore the world around him. However, this exploratory activity is stable and adequate in cases where the child is sure that he can return to the protection of his mother at any moment. Thus, the main purpose of forming an emotional bond between a child and mother is to give the child a sense of security and safety. It is the warmth and affection emanating from the mother in the first years of life that are important for the child, Bowlby emphasized, and not the proper care and education carried out by her. His research has shown that children who have close emotional contact with their mother have a higher level of cognitive activity than children who grew up in cold families, or children who lost their mother at preschool age. He also revealed the fact that adolescents who did not have a stable emotional connection with their mother are more likely to experience depression, and changes in the personality structure are formed.

Bowlby's work, as well as the research of other psychologists, proved a close relationship between motivation and human experiences. Those. the category of motive is closely connected with the category of experience, the emotional response of a person to the phenomena of the external world, his actions and thoughts. Even Epicurus argued that it is experiences that direct and regulate behavior, and modern psychologists consider them as such. Despite the fact that the problem of the nature and dynamics of emotional processes has not yet received an unambiguous solution in psychology, the very fact of the importance of emotions and experiences not only in the regulation of activity, but also in the appropriation of knowledge, identification with the outside world, including significant people, does not raises doubts.

Evidence of the vitality of the formation of basic experiences was given by D. Watson in his experiments on the formation of emotions. He experimentally proved that it is possible to form a fear response in response to a neutral stimulus. In his experiments, children were shown a rabbit, which they picked up and wanted to stroke, but at that moment they received a discharge. electric current. Naturally, the child frightenedly threw the rabbit and began to cry. However, the next time he again approached the animal and received an electric shock, therefore, on the third or fourth time, the appearance of a rabbit even at a distance from them caused an emotion of fear in most children. After this negative emotion was fixed, Watson tried once again to change the emotional attitude of the children, forming an interest and love for the rabbit. In this case, the child began to show it when he ate something tasty. The presence of this important primary stimulus was an indispensable condition for the formation of a new reaction. At first, the children stopped eating and began to cry, but since the rabbit did not approach them, remaining far away, at the end of the room, and delicious food was nearby, the child quickly calmed down and continued to eat. After the children stopped crying when the rabbit appeared at the end of the room, the experimenter gradually moved it closer and closer to the child, while adding tasty things to his plate. Gradually, the children stopped paying attention to the rabbit and in the end they reacted calmly, even when it was located near their plate, took it in their arms and tried to feed it with something tasty. Thus, Watson argued, our emotions are the result of our habits and can change dramatically depending on the circumstances.

Watson's observations showed that in the event that the fear reaction formed on the rabbit was not altered to a positive one, in the future a similar feeling of fear arose in children at the sight of other fur-covered objects. Based on this, he sought to prove that people, on the basis of conditioned reflexes it is possible to form persistent affective complexes according to a given program. Moreover, he believed that the facts discovered by him prove the possibility of the formation of a certain, strictly defined model of behavior in all people. He wrote: “Give me one hundred children of the same age, and after a certain time I will form absolutely identical people out of them, with the same tastes and behavior.”

Emotions also play a decisive role in the process of socialization of children. The dynamics of entering social reality involves understanding the features of this reality, accepting its norms and values ​​as one's own ideals and attitudes. However, unlike social adaptation, socialization implies not only the passive acceptance of certain norms and rules of behavior, but also their active use, i.e. the development of certain knowledge and skills that are adequately applied by a person in a given social reality. One of the important constituents is the national culture, a positive emotional attitude towards which helps people to form a national identity. This aspect of socialization, associated with the development of an active position, with the desire to fulfill oneself within the framework of a specific social situation, causes the greatest difficulties.

Since socialization is actually reduced to an adequate internalization of external requirements, their transformation into the "subjective reality of the individual", the most important question arises about the psychological ways of translating these requirements into the internal structure of the personality. One of the most important ways is emotional mediation, the formation of emotions (both positive and negative) in relation to the norms, values ​​and rules accepted in society. These emotions, in contrast to those that arise in relation to concepts that are vital for a person (food, danger, etc.), can be called social.

Great importance was attached to social emotions by the famous Russian scientist G.A. Shpet, in whose works this problem acquired a modern sound. He believed that not objective connections and knowledge, but subjective experiences determine the process of referring oneself to a given ethnic group or a specific social group. Therefore, when rejected by the former group, the subject can “change his people”, “enter the composition and spirit of another people”, but this process requires long and hard work and time. In the event that only external assimilation of a new language, culture or norms of behavior occurs, a person remains marginal, since in order to fully identify himself with the new society, emotional acceptance of those objective elements that make up the content of social consciousness is necessary. Shpet's research led him to the conclusion that one of the main components of mentality is the commonality of emotional experiences, the relationship of a given people to certain historical and social objects.

Social experiences reveal for people the meaning attached to the environment by the social or national group to which they belong. Such familiarization of the child with social experiences arises under the influence of others, who pass on emotional standards to him. Emotional standards contain certain cultural knowledge, moral and evaluative categories, stereotypes, an adequate emotional attitude to which optimizes the process of socialization. At first, this knowledge is neutral for the child (as well as for an adult entering a new society), but then gradually acquire emotional richness.

The study of the motivational and emotional development of children, as already mentioned, is directly related to the study of the formation of their personality. However, the category of personality itself, unlike others, appeared in psychology relatively recently, although questions about the essence of a person, the development of his idea of ​​himself and self-assessment were raised in antiquity. However, at that time the concepts of personality and man were considered as identical, and there were no modern concepts of personality, individual and individuality. For a long time, as already noted, the main questions in psychology were the questions of cognition and the categories of the image and internal, mental activity remained leading. Not without reason, the well-known scientist W. Wundt spoke about the dictates of "intellectualism" in psychology, opposing his voluntaristic psychology to the former one, which mainly studies "a person who knows", and not who feels. Only with the advent of depth psychology, it was the personality that became one of the leading categories and remains so in modern psychology, in which the problem of personality, its structure and genesis is studied by various schools (humanistic, behaviorism, domestic psychology).

At the beginning of the XX century. one of the few psychologists who interpreted personality as an integrative whole, considering it an extremely important category, was V.M. Bekhterev. He introduced the concepts of individual, individuality and personality into psychology, believing that the individual is biological basis, over which is built social sphere personality. Studying individual characteristics, which, according to Bekhterev, are innate, he argued that individual typology largely determines the characteristics of personal development. He attributed the speed of differentiation and generalization of combination (conditioned) reflexes, abilities, interests and inclinations of children, resistance to group pressure to individual qualities.

Of great importance were Bekhterev's studies of the personality structure (in which he singled out passive and active, conscious and unconscious parts), their role in various types of activity and their relationship. It is interesting that, like Freud, he noted the dominant role of unconscious motives in sleep or hypnosis and considered it necessary to investigate the influence of experience acquired at this time on conscious behavior. Investigating the correction of deviant behavior, he proceeded from the limitations of those methods of correction that put positive reinforcement of desirable behavior and negative reinforcement of undesirable behavior at the forefront. He believed that any reinforcement could fix the reaction. You can get rid of unwanted behavior only by creating a stronger motive that absorbs all the energy spent on unwanted behavior. Thus, for the first time in psychology, ideas about the role of sublimation and canalization of energy in a socially acceptable way appear, which were subsequently actively developed by psychoanalysis.

In modern psychology, there are several concepts that characterize spiritual world of a person, his self-consciousness and values, features of aspirations and attitudes towards the outside world. Each of them has a specific meaning, emphasizing a certain aspect in the complex picture of the inner world of people.

The term "individual" refers to a person biological class Homo sapiens. Individual properties characterize what is common to all people, are innate, and some of them are inherited. By themselves, the qualities of an individual do not contain psychological properties, but they are necessary for the normal development of the psyche, the formation of individual characteristics and personality traits (for example, the cerebral cortex is necessary for the development of cognitive processes).

Individuality is determined by those special features that are inherent in each particular person and distinguish people from each other. Individual characteristics are not inherited, i.e. are not transmitted to children from parents, but are associated with the specifics of the nervous system and therefore appear from birth. The close connection of individuality with the activity of the brain also determines the fact that the influence of the social situation on the formation of individual characteristics is limited. Individual qualities, of course, develop throughout life, becoming more and more pronounced and vivid. Therefore, small children are more similar to each other than teenagers or adults. At the same time, some features that are not in demand by the situation, on the contrary, fade, some partially change. However, it is impossible to completely change the individuality of a person.

Modern psychology distinguishes two levels of the formation of individuality. One of them - associated with the features of the structure and dynamics of the nervous system - is represented by individual features or qualities, for example, the speed of switching or orientation. Since these traits are related, as has been said, to dynamics, they have been called psychodynamic qualities. The lateral organization of the brain (dominance of the right or left hemisphere) also influences the development of personality.

However, it is not so much these traits in themselves that are important, but their connection with each other, the disposition of individual characteristics that develops into a certain type of personality. It is the combination individual traits provides the originality of behavior, communication and knowledge of a person, which is manifested in the individual lifestyle inherent in him.

The concept of the subject is connected, first of all, with the understanding of the fact that activity comes from it, and not from outside. The subject, as a carrier of activity, chooses the direction and objects of his activity himself, since the source of energy is in himself, and not in the external world. The environment, the psychological "field of objects" can only actualize this or that need, expand the ways of satisfying it.

The concept of personality implies mainly those qualities that have been formed in a person under the influence of communication with others, the impact of a social situation. Since all people who have not been subjected to artificial isolation in the first months of life (not children - Mowgli) are influenced by the environment, then each person is a person in this sense, since his individual prerequisites for the development of the psyche change under the influence of culture, society.

Another level of personality development implies the ability of people to act on the basis of their own motivation even in emergency circumstances, to make reasonable and informed choices and overcome the pressure of the “field”, the situation. As a rule, this happens in those cases when the requirements of the environment conflict with the leading motivation of a person, with his need to remain true to himself, his vocation, to fulfill himself.

Interest in individual characteristics, distinguishing people from each other, arose in antiquity. The first theories explaining the nature of temperament (as this characteristic of a person was called) belong to the same period. Famous scientists Hippocrates and Galen developed a humoral concept that connects temperament with various body juices - mucus, yellow and black bile and blood. Violation of the harmonious ratio of these juices (akrasia) leads to the dominance of one of the types of temperament - phlegmatic, choleric, melancholic or sanguine. Subsequently, the number of personality types was increased, but the idea that an objective and organic criterion should underlie temperament remained unchanged. In the XIX and XX centuries. new concepts have appeared that connect temperament with the constitution - the structure of the skull, facial features (E. Kretschmer) or body proportions (W. Sheldon), i.e. the size of the forehead or lips, the height and fullness of a person were associated with certain qualities - kindness or anger, mobility or apathy. Although these theories are now purely historical meaning, some stereotypes in the perception of people associated with them have remained in everyday psychology to this day.

Experiments I.P. Pavlova revealed the physiological foundations of temperament associated with the functioning of the nervous system. Subsequently, the works of other physiologists and psychophysiologists made it possible to clarify those dynamic characteristics of the nervous system that determine the features of the appearance of psychological traits. At the same time, the studies of V.N. Myasishchev, B.M. Teplova, V.L. Nebylitsyna, G. Eysenck, G. Allport, R. Kettel and other psychologists reliably showed the impossibility of identifying the physiological foundations of temperament with the psychological individuality, degree of activity, emotionality or speed of reaction of people. The materials of these numerous works made it possible to identify the so-called psychodynamic qualities, which make it possible to combine certain psychophysiological characteristics with psychological traits.

Ability has been considered one of the most important characteristics of individuality since antiquity. Initially, they were associated with intelligence and oratory, as well as with the speed of assimilation of the material. In the XVII-XVIII centuries. the study of abilities led scientists to the idea that another approach to their definition is possible. From the point of view of the French educators Diderot and Helvetius, it is the environment, education and upbringing that a child receives that determine his fate, mental and personal development, social status and success. However, the impact of the environment is not direct, it is mediated by cognitive processes, i.e. It manifests itself mainly in the fact that people receive different information, different education, they form different abilities and, as a result, different lifestyles. At the same time, abilities were understood as the ability to carry out certain activities. Thus, abilities were studied only during the performance of a specific task and had a qualitative characteristic - the level of performance. At the same time, the speed and ease of learning, the speed of information processing and other parameters that characterize abilities in modern psychology were not taken into account at all. Naturally, with this understanding, Helvetius came to the conclusion that abilities are not innate, but are acquired in the learning process.

This approach reinforced Helvetius's concept of the universal equality of people, whose individual differences are explained only by different social status and upbringing. But it also led, oddly enough, to fatalism, since a person was perceived as a toy of fate, which, on a whim, by chance, can place him in one environment or another, determining his social status and life scenario. Thus, the denial of innate features in the concept of Helvetius led to a significant extent to the denial of a person's responsibility for his own destiny.

Diderot's work showed the one-sidedness of such an understanding of the purely social nature of abilities. The role of innate inclinations in the formation of abilities was also demonstrated by the works of psychologists and psychophysiologists of the 19th-20th centuries. In modern psychology, when determining abilities, two parameters are taken into account - the level of performance of an activity, which is closely related to the social situation, learning, and the pace of learning, the speed of information processing, which is a psychodynamic quality due to innate inclinations. Since both the speed of assimilation and the level of knowledge are manifested in the activities of children, and even more so of an adult, the quality of learning and abilities, as a rule, are diagnosed in the process of mastering the activity, by how quickly and thoroughly a person masters the methods of organizing and implementing it.

Psychodynamic, naturally conditioned abilities are called fluid. This term, originally used by D. Guildford and R. Kettel, has become widespread in psychology. Fluid abilities are associated, first of all, with the general level of intelligence, with the ability to find connections, identify relationships and dependencies. Their development is influenced by the genetic factor, since the rate of their formation is higher in the early years, and the age-related decline can begin relatively early (in the third decade of life). A higher rate of development of fluid abilities than that of peers can also ensure greater productivity of children, diagnosed as giftedness. However, such heterochrony of mental development is not giftedness in the full sense of the word, since the quantitative advance of age norms for individual mental processes is not accompanied by qualitative changes in the structure of the intellect. The leveling of the rate of intellectual development with age leads to a decrease and gradual disappearance of signs of giftedness, which often explains the phenomenon of "child prodigies" who did not justify the hopes that they gave in childhood in adulthood.

On the basis of fluid abilities, crystallized ones are formed, their development is determined by the culture to which a person belongs, his activity and interests, as well as the level of his education. Genetic factors do not have a direct effect on crystallized abilities, and age-related decline may not appear until old age.

The allocation of different types of abilities is also associated with the activities that they organize. Based on this, distinguish general abilities, meeting the requirements of not one, but many types of activity and identified, as a rule, with intellect, and special abilities that meet a narrower range of requirements for a particular activity. Among the special abilities, the best studied are musical and mathematical ones, which manifest themselves very early, often as early as preschool age. talents in fiction, painting, natural sciences appear later, sometimes already in adolescence. The level and degree of development of both general and special abilities are reflected in the concepts of talent and genius.

Along with the ability, giftedness is also distinguished - a qualitatively unique combination of abilities that allows achieving outstanding results in various fields of human activity. Thus, the basis of the same achievements in the performance of any activity may be based on different abilities, at the same time, the same ability can be a condition for the success of various activities. This provides an opportunity to compensate for the low level of development of one of the abilities at the expense of others that form giftedness, and to individualize the style of the action performed. For example, in a good picture, drawing, coloring, and the psychological accuracy of the image, and the subtlety of the written details are important. Depending on the combination of abilities that provide a high level of drawing, painting, and their hierarchy, the shortcomings of the color scheme can be compensated by the boldness and accuracy of the drawing or the expressiveness of the faces of the people depicted in the picture, or the depth and novelty of the idea. Since the hierarchy of individual abilities is unique and never coincides with different people, the results of their activities (paintings, poems, sewn clothes or built houses) are always unique.

An important problem is the correlation of giftedness with the general level of intelligence and creativity. Giftedness is often directly identified with creative abilities, with the speed and ease of finding non-obvious solutions to various problems and the ability to obtain a fundamentally new result. The novelty of the product and the solutions do not always coincide with each other, which emphasizes the difficulty of correlating purely intellectual abilities with creativity and proves the need to single out the concepts of general (intellectual) giftedness and special giftedness, which may not directly correlate with high scores in intelligence tests. For example, exceeding the level of 135 points on the Binet-Simon or Stanford-Binet scale, which is assessed as a high level of intellectual abilities (and general giftedness), is not necessarily accompanied by high productivity in the creative sphere. Therefore, in recent times considerable attention is paid to the study of "non-intellectual" factors of special giftedness, necessary for creative activity in certain areas.

The psychodynamic aspect of ability and giftedness often manifests itself in characteristics not directly related to a specific activity, such as good mechanical memory, curiosity, sense of humor, high plasticity, good distribution and high concentration of attention, sometimes combined with activity and even impulsivity.

Giftedness can be considered as the next level of individuality, associated with a combination of different qualities among themselves. This combination is typical for people who have a pronounced laterality in the organization of the brain, i.e. obvious "left-handers" and "right-handers". If the former are characterized by a higher level of emotivity, imagery and a tendency to creativity in artistic activity, then the right-handed people have a more pronounced logical, rational beginning, which weakens emotionality and directs activity to a greater extent to find the right solution, rather than various ways to achieve it.

The system of individual traits develops into a personality type, i.e. into a structure that has a clear hierarchy of features that determines the predisposition to a specific, “typical” nature of interaction with the environment. The most common parameter for typology is the division by sex, which is also observed in animals. Modern studies have shown that the masculine type is characterized by a greater variation in the severity of signs than the feminine, and a more pronounced propensity for risk, enterprise, and variability of behavior.

One of the most common typologies is Jung's concept, which is based on two grounds - the dominance of extra or introversion and the development of four basic mental processes (thinking, feeling, intuition and sensation). Based on your understanding of the structure of the soul. Jung argued that introverts in the process of individualization pay more attention to the inner part of their soul, build their behavior based on their own ideas, their own norms and beliefs. Extroverts, on the contrary, are more focused on the person, on the outer part of their soul. They are perfectly oriented in the outside world and in their activities proceed mainly from its norms and rules of conduct. If for an introvert the extreme manifestation is a complete break in contacts with the outside world, which leads to fanaticism, then for extroverts it is the loss of oneself, which is fraught with dogmatism.

However, the desire to preserve the integrity of the personality does not allow one of its parties to completely subjugate the other. Therefore, these two parts of the soul, its two types, "divide the spheres of their influence." As a rule, extroverts build relationships well with a large circle of people, take into account their opinions and interests, at the same time, in a narrow circle of people close to them, they open up the other side of their personality, the introverted one. Here they can be despotic, impatient, do not take into account the opinions and positions of other people, trying to insist on their own. Communication with a wide range of unfamiliar and poorly known people is extremely difficult for an introvert who proceeds only from his positions and cannot build an adequate line of behavior, understand the point of view of the interlocutor. He either insists on his own, or simply leaves the contact. At the same time, in communicating with loved ones, he, on the contrary, opens up, his extroverted, usually repressed side of his personality takes over, he is a caring and warm family man. Like Freud, Jung often illustrated his conclusions with references to one or another historical personality. In particular, when describing extra- and introverts, he mentioned famous Russian writers L.N. Tolstoy and F.M. Dostoevsky, referring Tolstoy to typical extroverts, and Dostoevsky to introverts.

Jung also believed that each person is dominated by one or another feature, which, in combination with intro or extraversion, individualizes his development path. Thinking and feeling are alternative ways of making a decision. Since thinking is oriented towards logical premises, people of the thinking type value above all abstract principles, ideals, order and consistency in behavior. Feeling people, on the contrary, make decisions spontaneously, focusing on emotions, preferring any feelings, even negative ones, to boredom and order.

If thinking and feelings characterize active people who are capable of making decisions for one reason or another, then sensation and intuition characterize rather ways of obtaining information, and people of this type are more contemplative. At the same time, sensation is guided by direct, immediate experience, and sensing types, as a rule, respond better to the immediate situation, while intuitive types respond to the past or future. For them, what is possible is more important than what is happening in the present. Although all these functions are present in every person, one of them dominates, which is partially supplemented by the second function. Moreover, the more conscious and dominant one of these functions is, the more unconscious the rest. Therefore, the data obtained with their help can be perceived by a person not only as alien to him, but also as directly hostile.

Despite the fact that echoes of Jung's typology can be traced in modern concepts of individuality and personality, the structure of individuality proposed by G. Allport seems to be more perfect and widespread today. Allport's most important merit is that he was one of the first to speak about the specificity of each person, about the inseparable connection between individual typology and the uniqueness of the individual. He argued that each person is unique and individual, as he is the bearer of a peculiar combination of qualities that Allport called trite - a trait. He divided personality traits into basic and instrumental. The main features stimulate behavior and are congenital, genotypic, and instrumental - shape behavior and are formed during a person's life, i.e. belong to the phenotypic formations. The set of these traits makes up the core of the personality, gives it uniqueness and originality.

Although the main features are innate, they can change, develop in the process of a person's communication with other people. Society stimulates the development of some personality traits and qualities and inhibits the development of others. Thus, that unique set of features that underlies the “I” of a person is gradually formed. Important for Allport was the provision on the autonomy of these traits, which also develops over time. The child does not have this autonomy, since his features are not yet stable and fully formed. Only in an adult who is aware of himself, his qualities and his individuality, the features become truly autonomous and do not depend either on biological needs or on the pressure of society. This autonomy of human needs, being the most important characteristic of the formation of his personality, allows him, while remaining open to society, to maintain his individuality.

Allport developed not only his own theoretical concept of personality, but also his own methods of systematic research of the human psyche. He proceeded from the fact that certain traits exist in the personality of each person, the difference is only in the level of their development, degree of autonomy and place in the structure. Focusing on this position, he created multifactorial questionnaires, with the help of which the features of the development of personality traits of a particular person are studied. The questionnaire of the University of Minnesota (MMPI), which is currently used (with a number of modifications) not only to study the structure of personality, but also to analyze compatibility, professional suitability, etc., has become most famous. Allport himself constantly refined his questionnaires, created new ones, believing that they should be supplemented by observational data, most often joint ones.

The hierarchy of traits that determines the type of personality may not be very pronounced, the level of various parameters may approach the average, optimal. But the intensive development of one or another trait (group of traits) is also possible, which determines the specifics of this type - the accentuation of character. This concept, introduced by K. Leonhard, implies an excessive expression of individual character traits. Extreme cases of accentuation border on psychopathy, although they do not go beyond the norm. Accentuation clearly demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of each type, their advantages in certain areas of activity and communication, and vulnerability to certain stimuli. In the case of constant and active exposure to these stimuli, it is possible to go beyond the limits of the norm and the appearance of reactive states and psychopathies.

Although the development of accentuation and the degree of its severity are determined by psychodynamics, this process is greatly influenced by the social situation, communication style in the family, profession, and culture. As a rule, accentuation develops by adolescence, but now there are more and more cases of early onset of accentuation, which can sometimes be diagnosed already by the older preschool age.

The combination of individual qualities, which is unique for each person, largely determines his behavior, communication with other people and attitude towards himself. It represents the second level in the structure of individuality, that integral individuality (V. Merlin's term), which underlies the individual lifestyle, mediating the connection between psychodynamic individual traits and personality structure. The tasks of psychotherapy are largely related precisely to helping a person in creating an individual, based on his integral disposition, psychodynamic features of the style of activity and communication, which uses positive sides his individuality, if possible compensating for the negative ones.

One of the first to study the dynamics of the formation of an individual lifestyle in the process of the genesis of the personality of children was A. Adler, who proceeded from the fact that a child is not born with a ready-made personality structure, but only with its prototype. He considered the style of life to be the most important in the structure.

Developing the idea of ​​a lifestyle, Adler argued that this is the determinant that defines and systematizes a person's experience. Lifestyle is closely related to the sense of community, one of the three innate unconscious feelings that make up the structure of the "I". A sense of community, or public interest, is a kind of core that holds the whole structure of a lifestyle, determines its content and direction. The sense of community, although innate, may remain undeveloped. The underdevelopment of a sense of community can cause an antisocial lifestyle, neuroses and human conflicts. The development of a sense of community is associated with close adults who surround the child from childhood, primarily with the mother. Rejected children who grow up with cold, withdrawn mothers do not develop a sense of community. It does not develop in spoiled children either, since the feeling of community with the mother is not transferred to other people who remain strangers to the child. The level of development of a sense of community determines the system of ideas about oneself and the world, which is created by each person. The inadequacy of this system of reality hinders personal growth and provokes the development of neuroses.

Forming a life style, a person is actually the creator of his personality, which he creates from the raw material of heredity and experience. The creative “I”, about which Adler wrote, is a kind of enzyme that affects the surrounding reality and transforms it into a person’s personality, “a subjective, dynamic, unified, individual and having a unique style personality”. The creative "I", from the point of view of Adler, gives meaning to a person's life, it outlines both the very goal of life and the means to achieve it. Thus, for Adler, the formation processes life purpose, lifestyles are, in fact, acts of creativity that give the human personality uniqueness, consciousness, allow a person to control his own destiny. In contrast to Freud, he emphasized that people are not pawns in the hands of external forces, but conscious entities that independently and creatively create their lives.

If a sense of community determines the direction, style of life, then two other innate and unconscious feelings - inferiority and striving for superiority - serve as sources of energy necessary for the development of personality. Both of these feelings are positive, they are incentives for personal growth, self-improvement. If a feeling of inferiority causes a desire in a person to overcome his shortcoming, then the desire for superiority gives rise to a desire to be better than others, not only to overcome a shortcoming, but also to become the most skillful and knowledgeable. These feelings, from Adler's point of view, stimulate not only individual development but also the development of society as a whole, thanks to the self-improvement of the individual and the discoveries made by individuals.

Studying the genesis of personality structure, Rogers came to the conclusion that the inner essence of a person, his Self, is expressed in self-esteem, which reflects the true essence of this person, his "I". In young children, self-esteem is unconscious, it is more a sense of self, and not self-esteem. Nevertheless, already at an early age, it guides a person’s behavior, helping to understand the environment and select from it what is inherent in this particular individual, determines his interests, future profession, style of communication with certain people, etc. At an older age, children begin to realize themselves, their aspirations and abilities, and build their lives in accordance with a conscious self-assessment. In the event that behavior is built from self-esteem, it expresses the true essence of the personality, its abilities and skills, and therefore brings the person the greatest success. The results of activity satisfy a person, increase his status in the eyes of others; such a person does not need to repress his experience into the unconscious, since his opinion about himself, the opinion of others about him and his real Self correspond to each other, are congruent.

However, already in early childhood, a child may be imposed an assessment that is different from his true self-esteem, his Self. Most often this happens under the pressure of adults who have their own idea of ​​the child, his abilities and purpose. They impose their assessment on the child, striving for him to accept it and make it his self-assessment. Some children begin to protest against the actions, interests and ideas imposed on them, coming into conflict with others, negativism and aggression. The desire to defend oneself at all costs, to overcome the pressure of adults can also violate true self-esteem, since in his negativism the child begins to protest against everything that comes from an adult, even if it suits his interests.

However, most often, Rogers notes, children do not even try to confront their parents, agreeing with their opinion of themselves. This is because the child needs affection and acceptance from an adult. This desire to earn the love and affection of others, he called the "value condition", which in its extreme manifestation sounds like a desire to be loved and respected by everyone with whom a person comes into contact. The "condition of value" becomes a serious obstacle to personal growth, as it interferes with the realization of the true "I" of a person, the true vocation, replacing it with an image that is pleasant to others. However, the problem is not only that, trying to earn the love of others, a person renounces himself, his self-actualization, but also that when carrying out activities that are imposed by others and do not correspond to true, although not realized at the moment, desires and abilities, a person cannot be completely successful, no matter how hard he tries and convinces himself that this activity is his true calling. The need to ignore the signals about one's own insolvency or lack of success that come to the subject from the outside world is associated with the fear of changing the self-esteem to which the person is accustomed and which he considers really his own. This leads to the fact that he displaces his aspirations, and his fears, and the opinions of others into the unconscious, alienating his experience from consciousness. At the same time, a very limited and rigid scheme of the surrounding world and oneself is built, which does not correspond much to reality. This inadequacy, although not realized, but causes tension in a person, leading to neurosis.

Martsinkovskaya T.D. Chapter from the textbook "Basic Methodological Provisions of Developmental Psychology"
25.10.2003 12:42 | P.A. Malykhin

2.1. The principle of development in psychology

In psychological science, there are several methodological principles that have a great influence on the tasks it solves and on the methods of studying the spiritual life of people. The most important of them are the principles of determinism, consistency and development - the leading one for that area of ​​psychological science that describes the genesis of the psyche. However, before turning to an analysis of the role and methods of influence of the principle of development, it is necessary to dwell briefly on the description of two other methodological principles and their place in psychology.

The principle of determinism implies that all mental phenomena are connected according to the law of cause and effect, that is, that everything that happens in our soul has some reason that can be identified and studied and which explains why exactly that, and not other consequence. These connections can be explained by different reasons, and in psychology there were several approaches to explaining them.

Even in antiquity, scientists first started talking about determinism, that there is a universal law, the Logos, which determines what should happen to man, to nature as a whole. Democritus, who developed the extended concept of determinism, wrote that "people invented the idea of ​​chance to cover up ignorance of the matter and inability to manage."

Later, in the 17th century, Descartes introduced the concept of mechanical determinism, proving that all processes in the psyche can be explained on the basis of the laws of mechanics. This is how the idea arose of a mechanical explanation of human behavior, which obeys the law of reflex. Mechanical determinism lasted almost 200 years. Its influence can also be seen in the theoretical positions of the founder of associationist psychology D. Gartley, who believed that associations both in small (psyche) and large (behavior) circles are formed and developed according to the laws of mechanics of I. Newton. Echoes of mechanical determinism can be found even in the psychology of the early twentieth century, for example, in the theory of energyism, which was shared by many famous psychologists, as well as in some postulates of behaviorism, for example, in the idea that positive reinforcement strengthens the reaction, and negative reinforcement weakens it.

But an even greater influence on the development of psychology was biological determinism, which arose with the advent of the theory of evolution. Based on this theory, the development of the psyche is determined by the desire to adapt to the environment, that is, everything that happens in the psyche is aimed at ensuring that a living being adapts as best as possible to the conditions in which it lives. The same law extended to the human psyche, and almost all psychological schools took this kind of determinism as an axiom.

The last kind of determinism, which can be called psychological, proceeds from the fact that the development of the psyche is explained and directed by a specific goal. However, unlike the understanding of the goal in antiquity, when it was somehow external to the psyche (an idea or a form), in this case the goal is inherent in the very content of the soul, the psyche of a particular living being and determines its desire for self-expression and self-realization in reality - in communication, cognition, creative activity. Psychological determinism also proceeds from the fact that the environment is not just a condition, a zone of human habitation, but a culture that carries the most important knowledge, experiences, which largely change the process of becoming a person. Thus, culture becomes one of the most significant factors influencing the development of the psyche, helping to realize oneself both as a bearer of unique spiritual values ​​and qualities, and as a member of society. Psychological determinism also suggests that the processes taking place in the soul can be directed not only to adapt to the environment, but also to resist it, if the environment interferes with the disclosure of the potential abilities of a given person.

The principle of consistency describes and explains the main types of communication between different aspects of the psyche, the spheres of the mental. He assumes that individual mental phenomena are internally interconnected, forming integrity and acquiring new properties due to this. However, as in the study of determinism, the study of these relationships and their properties has a long history in psychology.

The first studies of the connections that exist between mental phenomena represented the psyche as a sensory mosaic, which consists of several elements - sensations, ideas and feelings. According to certain laws, primarily the laws of associations, these elements are interconnected. This type of connection is called elementarism.

The functional approach, which got its name from the fact that the psyche was represented as a set of separate functions aimed at the implementation of various mental acts and processes (vision, learning, etc.), appeared, like biological determinism, in connection with the theory of evolution . Biological studies have shown that there is a relationship between morphology and function, including mental function. Thus, it was proved that mental processes (memory, perception, etc.) and acts of behavior can be represented as functional blocks. Depending on the type of determination, these blocks could act both according to the laws of mechanics (as separate parts of a complex machine) and according to the laws of biological adaptation, linking the organism and the environment into a single whole. However, this principle did not explain how, with a defect in some function, its compensation occurs, that is, how shortcomings in the work of some departments can be compensated for by the normal work of others - for example, poor hearing - by the development of tactile or vibrational sensations.

This is what explains the principle of consistency, which represents the psyche as a complex system, the individual blocks (functions) of which are interconnected. Thus, the systemic nature of the psyche implies its activity, since only in this case both self-regulation and compensation are possible, which are inherent in the mental even at the lower levels of the development of the psyche. Consistency in the understanding of the psyche does not contradict the awareness of its integrity, the idea of ​​"holism" (integrity), since each mental system (first of all, of course, the human psyche) is unique and integral.

And, finally, the principle of development, which says that the psyche is constantly changing, developing, therefore, the most adequate way to study it is to study the patterns of this genesis, its types and stages. No wonder one of the most common psychological methods is genetic.

It has already been said above that the idea of ​​development came to psychology with the theory of evolution, which proves that the psyche changes with a change in the environment and serves to adapt the organism to it. The English psychologist G. Spencer for the first time identified the stages of development of the psyche. Spencer studied the genesis of the psyche, proceeding from the fact that the human psyche is the highest stage of development, which did not appear immediately, but gradually, in the process of complicating the living conditions and activities of living beings. The initial form of mental life - sensation, developed from irritability, and then from the simplest sensations various forms of the psyche appeared, which appear to be interconnected levels of the formation of consciousness and behavior. All of them are original tools for the survival of the organism, particular forms of adaptation to the environment.

These particular forms of adaptation are:

consciousness behavior

sensation reflex

feelings instinct

memory skill

mind volitional behavior

Speaking about the role of each stage, Spencer emphasized that the main significance of the mind is that it is devoid of the limitations that are inherent in the lower forms of the psyche and therefore ensures the most adequate adaptation of the individual to the environment. This idea about the connection of the psyche and, mainly, the intellect with adaptations will become the leading one for developmental psychology in the first half of the 20th century.

Determining which types of development are inherent in the mental, the principle of development also says that there are two ways of the development of the psyche - phylogenetic and ontogenetic, that is, the development of the psyche in the process of the formation of the human race and in the process of a child's life. Studies have shown that these two types of development have a certain correspondence with each other.

The American psychologist S. Hall suggested that this similarity is due to the fact that the stages of development of the psyche are fixed in nerve cells and are inherited by the child, and therefore no changes are possible either in the rate of development or in the sequence of stages. The theory that established this rigid connection between phylogenesis and ontogenesis was called the theory of recapitulation, that is, a brief repetition in ontogenesis of the main stages of phylogenetic development.

Subsequent work proved that such a rigid connection does not exist and development can both accelerate and slow down depending on the social situation, and some stages may disappear altogether. Thus, the process of mental development is not linear and depends on the social environment, on the environment and upbringing of the child. At the same time, it is impossible to ignore the well-known analogy that really exists in a comparative analysis of the processes of cognitive development, the formation of self-esteem, self-awareness, etc. in small children and primitive peoples.

Therefore, many psychologists (E. Claparede, P.P. Blonsky and others), who studied the genesis of the psyche of children, came to the conclusion that this is a logical correspondence, which can be explained by the fact that the logic of the formation of the psyche, its self-deployment, is the same, that during development the human race, that with the development of the individual.

In addition to principles, the formation of developmental psychology is also influenced by the formation of its categorical system, that is, those permanent problems (invariants) that make up its subject and its content.

Currently, there are several main categories that have been the basis of psychological science throughout almost its entire history. These are the categories of motive, image, activity, personality, communication, experience. It must be emphasized that these categories are common to all branches of psychological science - and for general psychology, and for social or medical psychology, and for developmental psychology. Naturally, in different fields and in different schools, these categories had different meanings, but they were always, one way or another, present in psychological concepts.

From the point of view of developmental psychology, first of all, the genesis, the dynamics of the formation of an image, motive, activity in children and among different peoples is studied. Thus, various aspects of mental development are distinguished - the development of personality, intellect, social development, which have their own stages and patterns that have become the subject of research by many famous psychologists - V. Stern, J. Piaget, L.S. Vygotsky, P.P. Blonsky and others.

One of the first in psychology was the category of the image, which became the leading one in the study of cognition. Already in antiquity, scientists studied how the image of the world is formed in a person, later the image of oneself, the self-consciousness of a person, its content and structure turned out to be in the center of attention of psychologists. If in the first psychological theories the image of oneself was considered mainly as one of the areas of consciousness, then in modern science "Image-I" has become one of the leading concepts of personality psychology.

The image of an object was considered by many scientists as a signal on the basis of which a reflex, human behavior, is born and begins to function. Studying the process of forming an idea of ​​the surrounding reality, Sechenov came to the conclusion that the image is closely connected with movement and regulates human activity. He argued that mental development occurs through internalization, that is, the transition of external images and actions into internal ones, which, gradually curtailing and automating, form the mental qualities of a person. So thought is an internalization of relations between objects, and self-esteem is an internalization of norms of behavior.

The image as a sensory basis of thought was considered an unshakable postulate by scientists who considered the psyche as a sensory mosaic consisting of sensations and ideas. The ugly nature of thinking became one of the most important discoveries of the Würzburg school at the beginning of the 20th century. The image as the basis of perception, its holistic and systemic nature has become the leading category in the psychological school of Gestalt psychology.

Considering the genesis of gestalts, scientists came to the conclusion that the elements of the field are combined into a structure depending on such relationships as proximity, similarity, isolation, symmetry. There are a number of other factors on which the perfection and stability of a figure or structural unification depends - rhythm in the construction of rows, the commonality of light and color, etc. The action of all these factors obeys the basic law, called by Wertheimer the “law of pregnancy” (or the law of “good” form), which is interpreted as the desire (even at the level of the electrochemical processes of the cerebral cortex) to simple and clear forms and simple and stable states.

developments in psychology; - determination of the value of a given principle for psychology...