(Psychology of development and developmental psychology.)
M.: Gardariki, 2005 - 349 p.
The textbook "Age Psychology" is a detailed course in the discipline "Psychology of Development and Developmental Psychology" developed in accordance with the State Educational Standard of Higher Professional Education.
The book implements a periodization approach to the analysis of age development, the methodological principles of which were laid down by L.S. Vygotsky, D.B. Elkonin.
The proposed textbook can be used in the training of specialists in a number of specialties - "Psychology", "Sociology", "Social Pedagogy", "Social Work" and others.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
Section one. SUBJECT, OBJECTIVES AND METHODS OF PSYCHOLOGY OF BREAKING AND AGE PSYCHOLOGY
Chapter I. The subject of developmental psychology. Theoretical and practical tasks of developmental psychology
§ 1. Characteristics of developmental psychology, developmental psychology as a science
§ 2. The problem of determining mental development
§ 3. Basic concepts of developmental psychology
Chapter II. Organization and methods of research in developmental and developmental psychology
§ 1. Observation and experiment as the main methods of research in developmental psychology
§ 2. Method of observation
§ 3. Experiment as a method of empirical research
§ 5. Auxiliary research methods
§ 6. Scheme of organization of empirical research
Section two. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF AGE PSYCHOLOGY
Chapter III. The emergence of developmental psychology as an independent field of psychological science
§ 1. Formation of developmental (children's) psychology as an independent field of psychological science
§ 2. The beginning of a systematic study of child development
§ 3. From the history of the formation and development of Russian developmental psychology in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries.
Chapter IV. Theories of Child Development in the First Third of the 20th Century: Statement of the Problem of Mental Development Factors
§ 1. Statement of questions, definition of the range of tasks, clarification of the subject of child psychology
§ 2. The mental development of the child and the biological factor of the maturation of the body
§ 3. Mental development of the child: biological and social factors
§ 4. The mental development of the child: the influence of the environment
Section three. BASIC CONCEPTS OF HUMAN MENTAL DEVELOPMENT IN ONTOGENESIS IN FOREIGN PSYCHOLOGY
Chapter V. Mental development as personality development: a psychoanalytic approach
§ 1. Mental development from the standpoint of classical psychoanalysis 3. Freud
§ 2. Psychoanalysis of childhood
§ 3. Modern psychoanalysts on the development and upbringing of children
Chapter VI. Mental development as personality development: E. Erickson's theory of psychosocial personality development
§ 1. Ego - the psychology of E. Erickson
§ 2. Research methods in the works of E. Erickson
§ 3. Basic concepts of Erikson's theory
§ 4. Psychosocial stages of personality development
Chapter VII. The mental development of a child as a problem of learning the right behavior: behaviorism about the laws of child development
§ 1. Classical behaviorism as a science of behavior
§ 2. Behavioral theory of J. Watson
§ 3. Operant learning
§ 4. Radical behaviorism of B. Skinner
Chapter VIII. The mental development of the child as a problem of socialization: social learning theories
§ 1. Socialization as a central problem of the concepts of social learning
§ 2. The evolution of social learning theory
§ 3. The phenomenon of learning through observation, through imitation
§ 4. The dyadic principle of studying child development
§ 5. Changing ideas about the psychological nature of the child
Chapter IX. Mental development as the development of the intellect: the concept of J. Piaget
§ 1. The main directions of research on the intellectual development of the child J. Piaget
§ 2. Early stage of scientific creativity
§ 3. Operational concept of intelligence by J. Piaget
§ 4. Criticism of the main provisions of the theory of J. Piaget
Section four. MAIN REGULARITIES OF HUMAN MENTAL DEVELOPMENT IN ONTOGENESIS IN RUSSIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Chapter X. Cultural-historical approach to understanding mental development: L.S. Vygotsky and his school
§ 1. Origin and development of higher mental functions
§ 2. The problem of the specifics of human mental development
§ 3. The problem of an adequate method for studying the mental development of a person
§ 4. The problem of "training and development"
§ 5. Two paradigms in the study of mental development
Chapter XI. Stages of human mental development: the problem of periodization of development in ontogenesis
§ 1. The problem of the historical origin of age periods. Childhood as a cultural and historical phenomenon
§ 2. The category of "psychological age" and the problem of periodization of child development in the works of L.S. Vygotsky
§ 3. Ideas about age dynamics and periodization of development by D.B. Elkonin
§ 4. Modern trends in solving the problem of periodization of mental development
Section five. ONTOGENETIC HUMAN MENTAL DEVELOPMENT: AGE STAGES
Chapter XII. Infancy
§ 1. Newborn (0-2 months) as a crisis period
§ 2. Infancy as a period of stable development
§ 3. Development of communication and speech
§ 4. Development of perception and intelligence
§ 5. Development of motor functions and actions with objects of life
§ 7. Psychological neoplasms of the infantile period. One year crisis
Chapter XIII. Early childhood
§ 1. The social situation of the development of a child at an early age and communication with an adult
§ 2. Development of objective activity
§ 3. The emergence of new activities
§ 4. Cognitive development of the child
§ 5. Development of speech
§ 6. New directions in the management of mental development in early childhood
§ 7. Personal development in early childhood. Crisis of three years
Chapter XI V. Preschool Childhood
§ 1. The social situation of development in preschool age
§ 2. Game as a leading activity of preschool age
§ 3. Other activities (productive, labor, educational)
§ 4. Cognitive development
§ 5. Communication with adults and peers
§ 6. Basic psychological neoplasms. personal development
§ 7. Characteristics of the crisis of preschool childhood
Chapter XV. Junior school age
§ 1. The social situation of development and psychological readiness for schooling
§ 2. Adaptation to school
§ 3. Leading activity of a younger student
§ 4. Basic psychological neoplasms of a younger student
§ 5. Crisis of adolescence (pre-adolescent)
Chapter XVI. Adolescence (adolescence)
§ 1. The social situation of development
§ 2. Leading activity in adolescence
§ 3. Specific features of the psyche and behavior of adolescents
§ 4. Features of communication with adults
§ 5. Psychological neoplasms of adolescence
§ 6. Personal development and the crisis of transition to adolescence
Chapter XVII. Youth
§ 1. Youth as a psychological age
§ 2. The social situation of development
§ 3. Leading activity in adolescence
§ 4. Intellectual development in youth
§ 5. Personal development
§ 6. Communication in youth
Chapter XVIII. Adulthood: youth and maturity
§ 1. Adulthood as a psychological period
§ 2. The problem of periodization of adulthood
§ 3. The social situation of development and leading activities in the period of maturity
§ 4. Development of personality in the period of adulthood. Normative crises of adulthood
§ 5. Psychophysiological and cognitive development during adulthood
Chapter XIX. Adulthood: aging and old age
§ 1. Old age as a biosociopsychological phenomenon
§ 2. The relevance of the study of gerontopsychological problems
§ 3. Theories of aging and old age
§ 4. The problem of age limits of old age
§ 5. Age-related psychological tasks and personality crises in old age
§ 6. The social situation of development and leading activities in old age
§ 7. Personal characteristics in old age
§ 8. Cognitive sphere during aging
Appendix
Remark 1
Modern education is characterized by the introduction Federal state educational standard at all levels of education, while the content component of textbooks and teaching aids used in universities and colleges was revised. The changes also affected textbooks on developmental psychology.
Let us present a brief review of textbooks and teaching aids created in recent years.
Textbook of developmental psychology by A.K. Belousova
The textbook was created for university students in accordance with the standards of the second generation, published in 2012. The textbook systematizes modern ideas about ontogeny psyche a person, modern periodizations of mental development are presented; the complex of methods of developmental psychology, the historical aspect of the development of developmental psychology as a science are considered, the issues of the implementation of professional self-determination and deviant behavior are considered in a special way. The main difference between this textbook and row other textbooks and teaching aids on developmental psychology is the use of the latest achievements in the field of developmental psychology, the methodological apparatus of modern developmental psychology is defined.
A course of lectures on developmental psychology M.E. Khilko
This textbook is intended for students of higher educational institutions, structurally consists of 14 topics. Topic 1 is devoted to the consideration of developmental psychology as a science, the subject, tasks, methods of developmental psychology are presented in sufficient detail. In topic 2, the author highlights the main theories of mental development, the description of biogenetic and sociogenetic concepts, the psychoanalytic theory of child development, the theory of social learning, the theory of cognitive development, the cultural-historical concept and a number of others will be of interest to students. Topic 3 considers the psychological problems of personality development, in particular, such issues as: features of the development process, driving forces, conditions and sources of personality development, patterns of mental development, etc. A separate chapter (topic 4) presents the periodization of mental development, considers different approaches to periodization, the concept of age, sensitivity, critical and crisis periods is given. In topics 5-14, the main features of the mental development of children and adults at different stages of development are considered, in particular, the authors consider the period of neonatality, early childhood, preschool childhood, the period of primary school age, features of adolescence, youth, adult psychology. Each age period is characterized by a social situation of development, changes in mental activity, crisis manifestations, neoplasms. At the end of the textbook, there is a list of references that can help university students learn developmental psychology.
Textbook of developmental psychology L.F. Obukhova.
The textbook was published in 2016, intended for students of higher educational institutions, structurally represented by ten chapters, which reveal childhood as a subject of psychological science, and present in detail the main concepts of child development. The textbook contains two appendices - the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Declaration of the Rights of the Child. An important distinguishing feature of this textbook is the presence after each chapter of questions for self-control, as well as a list of additional literature on the studied educational material.
Textbook on developmental psychology and developmental psychology O.V. Khukhlaeva
This textbook was published in 2013, fully complies with the Federal State Educational Standard of Higher Education, and is intended for students of higher educational institutions. The textbook presents the main aspects of the development of people at different age stages - from birth to old age. When presenting the educational material, the author uses the principle of implementing a practice-oriented orientation, the main neoplasms and lines of development at different age stages are substantively presented. At the end of each chapter, questions are given to control students' knowledge.
© G. S. Abramova, 2018
© Prometheus Publishing House, 2018
* * *
I dedicate with love and gratitude to the bright memory of my parents - Abramova Nina Mikhailovna and Abramov Sergey Vladimirovich
It so happened that the book I wrote for myself became a textbook. A lot of time has passed since the day when I wrote its first pages. Today, this time is already measured in years. Everything has changed - the country in which I live, my marital status, my age, and even the way I write these lines. Only love for people and the desire to share what I saw and experienced remained unchanged for me. Developmental psychology and developmental psychology are very vibrant areas of knowledge, they are daily updated with new data about the lives of people in different cultures. Theories and hypotheses are born and die, but people's thirst for knowledge of their own purpose, mechanisms and patterns of their own development remains. This thirst creates different types of knowledge, one of them is scientific. The reader will form his own opinion about him and my work, and I can only hope for the possibility of feedback.
Denmark: spring-summer 2008, spring-summer 2017
Foreword
A person's interest in himself is natural and justified. Interest in other people often has completely different reasons, and their diversity is as great as the diversity of human destinies. Science attempts to analyze people's lives by organizing people's direct, lively interest in each other with the help of theories, categories, concepts, and other means and ways of thinking that people of science possess. The results of their work allow us to see in a single stream of human lives those unique facts, laws and regularities that reproduce the life of a person as a person, to see and understand that each person reproduces human in his destiny and creates his own life, expanding, clarifying, supplementing the idea, knowledge about what a person is.
Life is arranged in such a way that sooner or later any of us is faced with a life situation that forces us to discuss, pose, formulate questions: “What is happening to me? Why is this happening to me?" Thus, a person meets the need for new knowledge about himself. This is where science comes to the rescue, offering a generalized knowledge in which you can (I think you need to) find the answer to questions about what is happening to me.
Answers can be very different, but they will all be related to the period of life that a person is going through, and periods are different: critical, sensitive, stable. Each period has its origin and, in a certain sense, can be predicted even by the person himself, if he knows how (learned, wanted to learn) to analyze his life.
Developmental and developmental psychology, one of the most complex and interesting branches of modern psychology, provides such an opportunity to analyze one's own and other people's lives. Without knowledge of the periods of a person's life, it is impossible to work as a teacher at school, a kindergarten teacher, a doctor in a hospital, a lawyer in court, a psychotherapist in a clinic. Without this knowledge, it is difficult to be a mother, father, grandfather, grandmother and ... even a child (especially an adult child).
Listeners and students to whom I gave courses in developmental psychology and developmental psychology, special courses on specific problems, were always interested in factual material and perceived the theory of psychology with great difficulty. However, years passed, and, meeting with matured students - already teachers, psychologists, mothers and fathers, I heard from them the words that “some kind of general knowledge about life” is important.
Probably, I once searched for similar knowledge myself. For me it became a kind of reading task. That's what I tried to do in this book.
I am infinitely grateful to all the readers of my books, who found the strength and time to talk to me about them.
Once again I express my endless love to my family for their help and support in my work.
Belarus, January 1999 Denmark, May 2017
Chapter 1
What is developmental psychology and developmental psychology?
The scientist has ready-made concepts and will try to explain the "facts" with these concepts, so he will be biased, will look through certain glasses and, how do you know if these glasses will clarify or distort the picture?
The mother knows her child intimately, but for the most part this knowledge is for now. If psychology equips her with certain points of view that make clear the main features of development, she will be better able to follow her child.
- Psychologists divorced, but there is no sense from them.
(From conversation).
Keywords: science, subject of science, regularity, "I" of the researcher, mental reality, age, picture of the world.
As a result of studying this chapter, students should:
know features of scientific knowledge;
be able to distinguish between everyday and scientific knowledge;
own concept of psychic reality.
I could continue the epigraph with quotes from other authors, but I will allow myself to cite only one - the one that is most often encountered in conversations with adults about children. This is a question - rhetorical, emotionally rich, more often anxious than optimistic - What will happen to him next?
Developmental psychology is a science. Serious, academic science, consisting of several sections - branches, each of which studies any age - from infancy to senility (child psychology, preschool psychology, gerontopsychology (this is about old people).
Like any science, it discusses the question of its subject, methods, methods, criteria of truth, argues about the presence of this truth in a particular theory. Like any science, it seeks to describe its subject in special terms - scientific concepts, to separate it from the subjects of other sciences, even related ones, for example, from general psychology, psychophysiology, which also study age: those large biological clocks that start their course from the moment of birth person. Everyone knows the direction of movement of this clock - from birth to death. Their course is inexorable, it is determined by nature itself, and it is obvious that every person obeys this course. But this is more of a lyrical digression than a description of the subject of developmental psychology.
Developmental psychology tries to study the patterns of mental development of a person, a normal person. Thus, it raises the most important questions about the existence of the regularities themselves, about the degree of their universality, that is, their obligation for everyone. At the same time, a question arises (and a very specific one) about what mental development is and who can determine it. In addition, the eternal philosophical question arises about what kind of person is considered normally developing.
If you take these questions to yourself in such a way, for example, you will feel how important they can be for your destiny:
– Am I a normal person?
– Am I an advanced person?
– Does my development correspond to my age?
- What will change (and will it change at all) in my inner world with age?
Can I change myself?
These same questions can be asked about anyone. The accuracy of the answer to them can significantly affect the fate of a person - on his own decisions and the decisions of other people, on which his important personal events may depend.
Developmental psychology studies not only what is happening to a person today, it has data on what can be in a person’s life in general, as it tries to study his whole life. Naturally, some ages receive more attention, while others receive less. This happens, as E. Fromm wrote, partly because “a scientist who studies a person is more than all other researchers exposed to the influence of the social climate. This happens because not only he himself, his way of thinking, his interests and the questions posed by him are determined by society (as happens in the natural sciences), but also determined by society and the very subject of research - man. Every time a psychologist talks about a person, the model for him is people from his immediate environment - and above all, himself. In modern industrial society, people are guided by the mind, their feelings are poor, emotions seem to them an unnecessary ballast, and this is the case both with the psychologist himself and with the objects of his research.
It's hard to disagree with this. In this regard, I recall the words of D. B. Elkonin, said at one of the lectures on child psychology: “I became a real psychologist only when my grandson was born.”
The “I” of the researcher is in contact with the “I” of the researched by those facets that each of them has. The miracle of developmental psychology is that it allows the researcher to experience in their own lives the many experiences associated with a renewed understanding of the lives of others. The development, renewal of vision can be observed in the texts of Z. Freud and J. Piaget, L. S. Vygotsky and D. B. Elkonin, in the works of E. Erikson and E. Fromm. This is a fascinating and, in my opinion, little explored page in the history of developmental psychology.
So, developmental psychology as a science begins from the moment when two people meet with different goals: the first person is an adult who aims to obtain true, accurate knowledge about the patterns of mental development, and the second person can be a child, the same age as an adult or someone older than him in age - a person whom the psychologist will call the subject, the subject.
The very possible difference in physical age gives rise to the problem of understanding. This problem becomes much more complicated when it comes to the study of the child. How to do it to get accurate data?
I leaf through old and new books, read tricky titles: experimental genetic method, clinical observation, longitudinal study, step-by-step formation method, participant observation, laboratory experiment, etc. similar. We leave the detailed description of these procedures to special editions, in this book I will try to highlight the main thing in all methods(naturally, the main thing from my point of view): they dismember, divide the continuous course of a person's life into separate situations, natural from the point of view of the researcher, experimenter. Strict fixation of these situations in the materials of scientific protocols makes it possible to analyze these situations, and not the vision of the scientist himself. Although, if the protocol is not formalized (there is no standard form), then, naturally, the situation under study will be seen and understood differently by all its participants and persons who try to repeat it.
A researcher in developmental psychology deals with a situation recorded in a protocol. It is for him the subject of analysis and explanation - interpretation.
There is one type of research that seems to overcome this fragmentation and situationality in human understanding, and that is diaries. Diaries of people themselves, written in the first person, and diaries that tell about the life of someone - the famous diaries of a mother, for example, describing the development of a child.
Since its inception, psychology as a science has found it difficult to isolate and retain its subject of study. One of the reasons for this is the decrease in the professionalism of psychologists and the fact that each person has an illusory confidence that he will always be able to understand, investigate, control another person, because he himself is also a person.
The fantasy of a researcher, experimenter, scientist completes the system of life facts to a theory, to a generalization that allows using it in the future to understand other facts.
Scientists use such concepts to describe their experimental and theoretical work: practical and theoretical relevance, subject, tasks, methods and research hypotheses. These are very important points in the organization of scientific work, since it is they that make it possible to clarify the connection between their individual work and what their colleagues, domestic and foreign, are doing in this direction.
Practical relevance is a description of those persons or areas of activity where the acquired knowledge can be used in practice.
Theoretical relevance involves the formulation of the problem (or problems) from the point of view of science itself, the laws of its development as a special phenomenon in the life of society, as a special phenomenon in the life of the scientist himself.
At the moment of realizing the theoretical relevance of his work, a scientist necessarily turns to his feelings about the value, the truth of the knowledge he receives, which can aggravate his relations with colleagues, even with the entire scientific community.
The concept of a problem and theoretical relevance allows a scientist to realize his philosophical position in understanding human life and concretize it in the form of his own theory, clarifying the laws of human life. The history of science and our time provide many examples of the personal scientific courage of scientists who managed to declare the existence of their own theoretical position in the understanding of man.
Almost any author of any theory - Z. Freud, K. Jung, L. S. Vygotsky, J. Piaget and other famous and not so famous researchers - experienced a moment of intellectual and emotional tension associated with presenting his position to the scientific community, saying: “ I think otherwise" or "I think so." In this regard, it is enough to recall the fact from the biography of Z. Freud, when for eight years he was practically deprived of communication with the scientific community, as he expressed his point of view.
In developmental psychology, problems can be considered several issues that are constantly present in the activities of a scientist who studies the patterns of development of mental reality.
The eternal problems of the science of developmental psychology could, I think, be formulated as follows:
What is psychic reality?
– How is it developing?
– How can we predict its development and influence it?
Naturally, these eternal questions merge with the question of what a person is, that is, with the eternal philosophical, or, as they say, methodological question.
The opportunity for scientists to work on these issues is often associated with the solution of transient problems, that is, those caused by a specific historical time, or, as they say, a social order.
Hypotheses (or hypothesis) provide a basis for constructing a pattern, correlating it with others already known; thus, hypotheses allow us to see not only the present tense of some fact, but also its possible past and future. The hypothesis deprives the fact of being static, limited, fleeting. Through a hypothesis, the fact (s) becomes the material for building a system of thinking that organizes the understanding of a person's life by a person.
The scientist is aware of his hypothesis, understands its incompleteness and limitations. People in everyday life tend to attach universal significance to hypotheses, even not paying attention to the fact that the connection they establish between facts or their properties can be random, temporary, situational in nature, for example, the connection between the fact that a child appropriates someone else's thing and theft - a fact of criminal life adults.
For a scientist studying developmental psychology, the hypothesis (s) about the connection of these facts may not exist at all, since he includes them in the context of various tasks of his research.
The tasks of the study of psychic reality are associated for the scientist with strictly defined goals, reflecting the logic of his own work with the properties of psychic reality. Thus, the purpose of the study may be to analyze the literature on the problem, or to test a specific methodology, or to conduct a trial (pilot) study, and the like.
The tasks, as they are solved, expand the information field of the psychologist's professional activity, contribute to the refinement of hypotheses, the improvement of the theory, and, if necessary, lead to the reorganization of the entire style of the scientist's professional thinking.
So, a scientist who professionally works in the field of developmental psychology deals with its problems, solves his problems in the context of contemporary social life. At the same time, the structure of science, that is, its relative stability as a socio-cultural entity, makes it possible to support research methods specific to it.
The research method is a conscious answer to the question of how a particular knowledge was obtained and how true it is. The awareness of research methods as ways of obtaining facts, in my opinion, is most clearly manifested in the content of the verbs "see" and "look", "listen" and "hear". It is known that one can look and not see, that is, not notice, not be aware of the very process of looking, which is impossible for vision. Vision is based on an active, organized attitude both to the subject to which it is directed, and to the seer's own efforts.
The method of research is precisely this organized vision, which presupposes looking only as a moment of the spontaneity of life itself.
The researcher can realize, convey to other people how his vision is organized, but it can be very difficult, almost impossible, to realize how the looking takes place.
The vision of a research scientist studying the facts of human life is active and organized not only with the help of his own reflection (his own efforts aimed at acts of his own attitude to the facts of life), but also with the help of techniques.
Techniques are means of obtaining facts that characterize the patterns of human life. These tools can be either created by the researcher himself or borrowed from colleagues who live or lived in different historical times with him. So, today we can work with the problems of J. Piaget, which were formulated by him many decades ago, etc.
Outwardly, the technique may look different: a verbal survey, drawing, action, movement, and the like. Its main difference from similar products of human activity is that, firstly, it (the technique) is included in the context of solving scientific problems; secondly, it involves correlating the obtained fact with a system of hypotheses, that is, with a scientific theory; thirdly, it always exists in the light of the specific tasks of a particular author and reflects his theoretical position; fourthly, in the content of the technique, limitations in the construction of hypotheses based on the facts obtained using this technique are recognized.
In other words, the scientist-researcher, applying the methodology for obtaining facts, is aware of the role and place of these facts both in his own thinking about them and in the life of the person being studied.
We have already said that developmental psychology deals with problems of mental development. Without understanding what the psychic is, what the psychic reality is, it is practically impossible to approach this global problem.
Psychologists have to rely on philosophical ideas about the essence of man in order to formulate their own idea of the subject of their own scientific research at the level of a theoretical hypothesis.
From this point of view, what is important is how the researcher sees his own role in the facts he receives and analyzes, more detached and, as far as it is appropriate for science, reverent.
Perhaps there are countless variants of the manifestation of the philosophical position of the researcher, but the main line of difference between them runs, I think, through the awareness of the dependence of the fact of someone else's life under study on one's own life.
I ask the interested reader to stop his attention on the phenomena - transfer and countertransfer, present in psychotherapeutic practice. The individual nature of the relationship that arises between the researcher and the subject (the doctor and the patient, too), calls into question the possibility of studying them by experimental methods that require reproduction, repetition of the fact.
Thus, in the history of the study of man by man, a special problem arose - the problem of interaction, the essence of which could be briefly formulated as follows: the researcher and the researcher change each other in their joint action (feeling, movement).
The situation with the formative experiment, its role and place in obtaining psychological facts becomes especially difficult. It is known that a formative experiment occurs with the following scheme for organizing scientific research:
- ascertaining experiment - obtaining a system of facts;
– formative experiment – organized controlled influence on the system of facts;
- control experiment - fixing changes in the system of the studied facts.
The complexity of the analysis of the results of exposure lies in the fact that the experimenter himself is the most important source of possible changes. In turn, any possible changes on the part of the subject will be largely determined by his attitude towards the experimenter and towards himself. It is appropriate to assume that, for example, most of the problems in teaching children to read are related to the child's attitude to the person teaching him and to himself.
The problem of a formative experiment associated with the possible impact of one person on another, as it seems, not only sharpens attention to the content of the facts that developmental psychology operates with, but also makes it necessary to understand the context of the life of a researcher who addresses these facts. In this context, the content of his life philosophy, his ability to embody his own essence in relations with other people are one of the most important components of his theory, developed methodology, or simply a working hypothesis.
I will refer once again to E. Fromm: “... The world has for him (man. - G. A.) a certain meaning, and the coincidence of his own picture of the world with the ideas of the people around him is for him personally a criterion of truth, … He considers his own position logical "
Comparing one's position with the position of another person, highlighting, understanding its content distinguishes the work of a research scientist in the field of developmental psychology from the response of people of different ages to each other.
Manifestation of the content of the position requires the means to hold it. Concepts become such means in scientific everyday life.
In modern developmental psychology, more and more theoretical and research papers appear, where the researcher takes a phenomenological position.
In line with these works, much attention began to be paid to the narrative method of research, the essence of which is that a person tells about the events of his life, and the researcher fixes and analyzes his story. This is one of the methods of studying the products of human activity, which has become the most interesting in the light of changing values in scientific knowledge itself.
Interestingly, in developmental psychology, the difference in the positions of the authors is most clearly manifested as a difference in the languages of description. Thus, J. Piaget uses the language of mathematics and biology (“grouping”, “operation”, “assimilation”, “adaptation”, etc.) , and Z. Freud widely uses the language of medicine and philosophy ("unconscious", "consciousness", "suffering self" and the like).
There were many examples of using the language of other spheres of scientific knowledge, which is non-specific for developmental psychology, to formulate and solve specific and general problems. So these markings exist in different versions: J. Piaget - "stages of intelligence", Z. Freud - "Oedipus complex", K. Jung - "archetypes", E. Fromm - "escape from freedom", D. Stern - " self”, V. V. Davydov – “theoretical thinking”, L. S. Vygotsky – “cultural-historical theory”, etc. It is a great honor for a scientist and recognition of his place in science when his position is fixed and defined. Thus, it can be correlated with other positions in the historical time of science.
The position of any person (not just a scientist) in relation to these facts and patterns is manifested in his reasoning about people in general, about the age of a person, about his possibilities of change, and the like.
For a scientist, there is a problem of retaining the subject of his study, so as not to fall into the "bad" infinity of the relationship of all factors with all, which infinitely complicates the construction of a system of scientific knowledge. For people of other professions and occupations, the use of facts occurs at the level of response through their own changes or changes in another person.
The ability to see these changes, to feel them is a condition for adequate perception of another person and oneself. Rigidity, orientation to a stereotype, a phantom, and not to a living reality, destroy the interaction, make it a unidirectional effect that deforms its participants.
The subject of developmental psychology that interests us can be manifested in the position of a scientist or any other person as an orientation to the facts and patterns of mental development of healthy people.
Thus, in each of us, developmental psychology begins there and then, when in our life (and a scientist in his professional activity, and this can last for decades) we plunge into the problems of inequality between people. This inequality is fixed strictly and demandingly in any language (colloquial and scientific) as an age relation between people: older - younger, and then options: weather, peers, people of the same generation, people of the first half of the 20th century, people of the past, and also people future.
It is interesting that for all the unambiguity of this relationship in the XX and XXI centuries. there is an amazing phenomenon that did not exist in past centuries - the age of a person is not an unambiguous indicator of his awareness and competence. This situation becomes even more difficult when it comes to the possession of specific skills - general cultural and professional.
Today, seniority (by age) is not necessarily an indicator of a person's maturity or development. This, in particular, leads to the fact that there is a need for a theory that would give grounds for understanding at the everyday (and even more so at the scientific) level the patterns and mechanisms of human development. This issue is especially acute in conditions of unemployment and competition for jobs. Who can and should be given priority in the presence of a vacancy? With all the specificity, this question is far from rhetorical and involves the use of knowledge about the patterns of formation of personality traits.
The construction of such a theory can (and should) be the task of scientific work - a special professional activity, but any person builds such a theory based on his personal experience, on the experience of his experiences, meetings with other people, on the experience of understanding himself. She enters into his picture of the world.
A scientist who develops such a theory is trying to master a conscious picture of the world. Given the importance for each of us of a special theory - the theory of understanding another person - let's dwell on this issue in more detail.
So, any person (scientist and layman) builds his own picture of the world, that is, he tries to understand it, explain it, systematize it. The constructed picture of the world becomes, in a certain sense, an artificial, virtual reality. The eternal question of what really is, the question of the essence of another person (in relation to our topic) remains in its entirety. I think that this is wonderful, since eternal questions are the guarantor of the search for truth, and therefore the guarantor of the existence of science itself and generalized theoretical knowledge.
The existence of a picture of the world, the very process of its formation shows that a person is fighting for a position that would set a measure for everything that exists and be able to prescribe a norm. This position of his is expressed as a worldview in which the representation of oneself and other people is structured, organized in the content of the Self-concept and the concept of the Other Person.
By themselves, these concepts, in my opinion, play the role of a stretcher in the picture of the world, which keeps the canvas of the picture in a relatively constant state. Often a person expresses both of these concepts in one word that tightly stretches or even breaks the canvas of the picture of the world, for example, “I am a bad person”, “All people are bastards”, or “I am an extra person”, “All people interfere with my life” , or “I am a genius”, “All people are mediocrity”, or ... I think that every reader can easily restore the possible emotional states that each of the statements given here can be imbued with.
Scheme. The structure of psychic reality
Isolation of it allows us to talk about the essential in the patterns of development. What are the most important properties of psychic reality? How to distinguish it from other types of realities - physical, chemical, logical and others?
I think that this question is no less difficult to answer than the question of the difference between living and non-living. We rather feel, feel, understand this difference than we can realize, that is, express in words. It is as difficult as finding synonyms for the words "life" and "death".
Questions and tasks for self-examination
1. What scientific psychological knowledge do you think you already use in your life?
2. How can the difference between worldly and scientific psychological knowledge be revealed?
3. Find any psychological test that allows you to explore the quality of mental reality. Show its possibilities for obtaining scientific knowledge.
4. Find a scientific article on developmental psychology. Analyze its structure. How do you think a scientific text differs from other types of texts? Why does this difference exist?
5. Make some schemes for a possible experimental study in developmental psychology. Describe the features of the experiment as a research method.
