Historical development and main directions of world psychology. The idealistic direction of Russian psychological thought at the beginning of the 20th century

There are the following main directions in psychology: behaviorism, Gestalt psychology, psychoanalysis.

(from the English behavior - behavior) - the founder of this direction, the American physiologist J.B. (1878-1958) proposed behavior as a subject of study, since everything else (consciousness, sensations, etc.) is a “black box” , inaccessible for research by natural scientific means. The scientific search of behaviorists was aimed at clarifying the laws connecting influencing stimuli and behavioral responses.

In the future, this should have helped in predicting and purposefully changing human behavior.

For behaviorists, the behavior of humans and animals in terms of its structure, mechanisms and incentives is not fundamentally different. They believed that it was quite acceptable, when studying the behavior of animals, to transfer the discovered facts and laws to humans and, conversely, to interpret the types and forms of behavior of animals “in a human way.” Therefore, animals were used as test subjects, mainly rats and pigeons, since they were cheap. However, it was impossible to completely abandon the study of mental phenomena, given their actual significance in human life and behavior. Watson's views were softened by his followers, who tried to simultaneously bring the science of behavior closer to reality and reconcile it with the existing philosophical understanding of man.

Neobehaviorists abandoned the simplified understanding of behavior as a system of reactions to external stimuli. E. Ch. (1886-1959) introduced into behaviorism the ideas of activity, rationality and expediency of behavior. He saw the organizing and directing principle of behavior in the goal, understood as the final result that should be achieved as a result of the practical implementation by the body of a system of behavioral acts.

A special role in behaviorism was played by B.F. (1904-1990), a recognized authority in the theory and practice of learning, the author of programmed training, and a talented and interesting psychologist.

Behaviorism has been subject to extensive criticism many times. Its influence as a theoretical concept is small, which cannot be said about practical psychology. Psychological tests and diagnostic techniques built on behavioral principles, consulting techniques, especially in the field of personnel management, and educational programs for raising and training children and adults have become widespread all over the world.

Gestalt psychology (rel. Gestalt - image, structure, form) originated in Germany among scientists who had a fundamental education in the field of physics and mathematics. Representatives of this direction M. (1880-1943), W. Koehler (1887-1967), K. (1890-1947) argued that there are laws for the formation of complex, integral systems of mental phenomena and their functioning, which cannot be explained by elementary laws of combination of elements , as traditional (associationist) psychology did. The surrounding world, they argued, consists of organized forms, and the very perception of this world is also organized. Gestaltists began to conduct socio-psychological experiments to study personality and interpersonal behavior, during which they were repeatedly convinced of the presence of a “silent organization” that makes its own adjustments to the processes of perception.

The ideas of Gestalt psychologists played a positive role in the development of a number of important issues psychology, in particular such categories as perception, thinking, memory, personality and interpersonal relationships. They also contributed to the introduction into psychology of useful theories and concepts borrowed from the field of natural science research. Based on this concept, Gestalt therapy is being developed, which is today popular in many countries of the world, including Russia.

Psychoanalysis was developed by the Austrian doctor Z. (1856-1939), who began with research and generalization of psychotherapeutic practice, and then turned the accumulated experience into a psychological theory. In this direction, psychology regained the living person and, since ancient times, its inherent depth of penetration into the essence of the soul and behavior. With dramatic acuteness, psychoanalysis raised the question of the irrational in the seemingly rational behavior of a person, seeing the reason for everything in the same something that cannot be studied by natural scientific methods. Behaviorists called it a “black box”, Gestaltists called it a “silent organization”, and Freud introduced the concept of “Id” - “It”. The human Self is the realm of the conscious, intelligent repository of outer experience, which is regulated by the reality principle, but its energy is weak. On the contrary, it has colossal psychic energy, guided by the principle of pleasure.

For psychoanalysis key concepts became “consciousness” and “unconsciousness”, and the latter was assigned a particularly important role in the determination of human behavior. Freud wrote that there is strong evidence that subtle and difficult intellectual work, requiring deep and intense thinking, can take place outside the sphere of consciousness, that there are people in whom self-criticism and conscience turn out to be unconscious and, remaining as such, determine the most important actions. According to Freud, guilt can also be unconscious. The conflict between unconscious drives and social demands and prohibitions marked the beginning of the study of psychological defense mechanisms!

The fate of psychoanalytic teaching in different countries developed differently. At first, everyone except Freud's closest students and followers and some practicing doctors treated him very coolly. Perhaps no other branch of psychology has been so harshly criticized as psychoanalysis. Then it found supporters in Germany and Austria, in other European countries and, finally, in the USA. Having achieved enormous success on both continents, psychoanalysis continues to lead the way in France and Canada. In other countries, it is gradually being replaced by methods of other types of psychotherapy, in particular those developed by numerous followers of Freud. Here are a few names that are no less famous in the world than the name of Freud himself.

A. (1870-1937) - Austrian psychologist, founder of individual psychology, the main provisions of which can be formulated as follows:
there is no direct relationship mental development humans from organic factors;
From the first years of life, a child develops a deeply felt feeling own inferiority and the desire for creative self-improvement to overcome this inferiority complex;
a person is a being who initially strives for a certain life goal, acting generally rationally, actively, expediently and deliberately, and not passively and reactively;
The goals of life are determined by the person himself. Much in human behavior depends on the nature of these goals; under their influence, he forms images, memory, develops a certain perception of reality, certain personality and character traits, inclinations and abilities, moral character, affects and feelings.

K. G. (1875-1961) - Swiss psychologist (psychiatrist) and philosopher, founder of analytical psychology, viewed the psyche as a complex whole, the relatively independent parts of which are peculiarly separated from each other. The center of human individuality is the so-called “I” complex, with which two types of the unconscious are associated: personal and collective. The first is the life experience acquired by a person, the second is passed on to him by inheritance and reflects the social knowledge accumulated by humanity (myths, impressions, images, etc.). Jung introduced into psychology the concept of two personality types: introverts (from the Latin intro - movement inward and verto - to turn, turn) and extroverts (from the Latin extra - outside and verto...). The personality typology he created is one of the most interesting and productive psychological concepts.

E. (1900-1980) - German-American psychologist, philosopher and sociologist, representative of humanistic psychoanalysis, according to which a person has two ways of existence - having and being. Human activity is subordinated to the satisfaction of a basic need - gaining unity with the world and with oneself. Society and life circumstances shape a person's character. Where personal freedom is suppressed, where “to have” prevails over “to be,” pathological characters arise. In such a society, people cease to be themselves, automatically adopting the type of thinking and behavior that is imposed by society, the model of ideology and culture adopted in it, or just as automatically opposing themselves to it. Total alienation sets in as a characteristic of human existence. Fromm sees the only adequate answer to the problem of human existence in love - a form of human relationships that allows one to find the true Self.

Russian psychology also did not escape the global crisis of the 20th century. Fundamentals of a new direction in domestic psychology were laid down by the outstanding physiologists I.M. Sechenov and I.P. , which predetermined its natural-scientific character.

In Soviet psychology in the 1920-1930s. (1896-1934), with the participation of his students A.N. and A.R. Luria, a holistic cultural-historical theory was developed. Vygotsky expressed the idea that the basic unit that preserves the properties of the whole is the most complex forms of reflex activity - the use of means (tools). In psychology, such means (tools) are signs, by operating with which and influencing another, a person forms his own inner world. Cultural signs (myths, religion, art, science) ensure the preservation and transmission of culture. Its core is language as the most developed system. Mental functions given by nature (natural) are transformed through the “appropriation” of tools into functions of the highest level of development, becoming “cultural”. Mechanical memory turns into logical memory, impulsive action into voluntary action. Vygotsky called the area of his research - the study of tools and signs artificially created by man, thanks to which higher mental functions arise - instrumental psychology.

Developing Vygotsky's ideas, his students and followers developed a general psychological concept of activity. Leontyev proposed a diagram of the structure of activity (activity - action - operation), correlated with the structure of the motivational sphere (motive - goal - condition). Managing an organization external activities, a person simultaneously controls internal (mental) activity. The main structural unit is considered to be action: a process aimed at achieving a goal - an image of the desired result. But the main motivator for activity is motive. The method (set of operations) by which the goal will be achieved is determined by the specific conditions of the activity. Based on the proposed scheme, the highest forms of mental processes were studied: perception (perceptual activity), thinking (mental activity), memory (mnemonic activity), etc. In his fundamental work “Problems of psychic development,” Leontiev analyzed the development of the psyche, revealing the mechanisms of origin consciousness and its role in the regulation of human activity. The principle of the unity of psyche and activity was also implemented when considering the activity of animals in the process of adaptation to the surrounding world. The criterion for the emergence of the psyche was identified, the stages of its development were described, and a series of experimental works on these problems were carried out.

Currently, the activity approach is one of the most influential areas of world psychology. Representatives of this direction have achieved particular success in the field of learning and mental development, neuropsychology and psychophysiology.

So inside scientific psychology There are different approaches to the subject of its research. Psychology is a science that studies:
the soul as a property of the body, consisting in the ability to predict the implementation of what has the opportunity to be realized (comes from Aristotle);
consciousness as the ability to think, feel, desire... (the definition appeared in the 17th century in connection with the development of the natural sciences);
behavior as a set of reactions of the body to environmental stimuli (the direction of “behaviorism” arose in the USA at the beginning of the 20th century);
Gestalt as a functional structure that organizes the diversity of individual phenomena (the direction of “Gestalt psychology” arose in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century);
the unconscious as a set of mental processes and states caused by phenomena of reality, the influence of which the subject is not aware of (the direction of “psychoanalysis” arose in Austria at the beginning of the 20th century);
psyche as higher form the relationship of living beings with the objective world, expressed in their ability to realize their motives and act on the basis of information about them;
psyche as the property of highly organized matter to reflect objective reality and, on the basis of the mental image formed in this case, it is advisable to regulate the activity of the subject and his behavior (the definition was given in the 19th-20th centuries).

The main directions in psychology listed above, to one degree or another, relate to the natural scientific areas of psychology. In the middle of the 20th century. As a social movement of psychologists not oriented towards the natural sciences, a new direction arose - humanistic psychology. The name was proposed by Doctor of Philosophy, professor from Boston A.R. Cohen, but the “spiritual father” of this trend is rightfully considered the American psychologist A. (1908-1970). For a humanistic psychologist, belief in human freedom and refusal to manipulate him in the name of any goals and ideals is the basis of psychological practice. Representatives of this approach put forward the postulate that each person has innate potentials that are updated under the influence of social conditions. They assign the main role in studying a person to his personal experience.

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Autonomous non-profit organization

Non-state educational institution

higher education

"Siberian Institute of Business, Management and Psychology"

Psychology faculty

Department of Psychology

Course work

General psychology

Topic: “Idealistic and materialistic approaches to defining the subject in psychology”

Completed by: A.Sh. Tsotskolauri,

student gr. 255-un

grade book No. 15-5026

Checked by: associate professor, candidate of psychology, science

Krasnoyarsk 2016

INTRODUCTION

II. COMPARATIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF IDEALISTIC AND MATERIALIST VIEWS ABOUT THE SUBJECT OF PSYCHOLOGY

2.1 Idealist approach

2.2 Materialistic approach

CONCLUSION

APPLICATION

The famous German psychologist of the 19th century. Hermann Ebbinghaus has an aphorism: “Psychology has a long past and a short history" These words perfectly reflect the essence of the historical development of the branch of psychological knowledge. After all, psychology emerged as an independent science only towards the end of the 19th century. .

Even in ancient times, people noticed that there are material phenomena - the surrounding nature, people, various objects, and non-material ones - images of various people and objects, memories of them, experiences, mysterious, difficult to explain.

Unable to correctly understand these phenomena, to reveal their nature and causes of occurrence, people began to consider them to exist independently, regardless of the surrounding real world.

This is how the idea of the world and soul, of matter and psyche as independent principles arose. These ideas took shape in philosophical, mutually exclusive directions: materialism and idealism.

The division of psychology into materialistic and idealistic runs through the entire history of the development of psychology up to the present time. Moreover, each of the directions makes its own contribution to the knowledge of the psyche.

Materialism proceeds from the principle of the primacy of material existence, the secondary nature of the spiritual, mental, which is considered as a derivative of the external world, independent of the subject and his consciousness. Because in development scientific knowledge about the psyche, the decisive role is played by the identification of its natural dependencies on what is not psychic, then it is materialism that acts as the driving force of the progress of psychology. In ancient times, materialistic ideas were manifested in various teachings about the soul as a particle of the elements of nature: fire - Heraclitus, air - Anaximenes, atoms - Democritus, etc.

Along with the views of philosophers who materialistically explained mental processes, the views of doctors on the dependence of a person’s character on the mixture of various components in the body were important. Such a naive materialistic orientation could not help explain the subject’s ability to comprehend abstract truths, subordinate actions to ethical ideals, and turn his own consciousness into an object of analysis. These real properties of the human psyche were interpreted by idealism - Plato, Augustine, as the generation of a special incorporeal essence - the soul, dominating everything earthly and material.

The object of this work will be the development of the subject of psychology.

The subject is materialistic and idealistic views in the interpretation of the subject of psychology.

The goal is to conduct a comparative analysis of materialistic and idealistic concepts of the subject of psychology.

Getting to know any science begins with defining its subject and describing the range of phenomena that it studies. The difficulty in defining the subject of psychology lies, first of all, in the fact that the phenomena studied by psychology have long been distinguished by the human mind and delimited from other manifestations of life as special. Gradually, ideas emerged about various categories of phenomena, which began to be called mental functions, properties, processes, states, etc. Ideas about the subject of psychology are very vague. Without a clear understanding of the subject, experimental research becomes difficult. For successful practical work of psychologists, an understanding of the subject of psychology is also necessary. Otherwise, it is impossible to understand that psychologists do something significantly different compared to other specialists: doctors, teachers, etc.

I. HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SUBJECT OF PSYCHOLOGY

1.1 Characteristics of psychology as a science

The difficulty of identifying the features of psychology as a science is that they have long been recognized by the human mind as extraordinary phenomena. It is quite obvious that the perception of any real object is fundamentally different from the object itself. An example is the deeply ingrained idea of the soul as a special being, separate from the body. Even primitive man knew that people and animals die, that man dreams. In this regard, the belief arose that a person consists of two parts: tangible, that is, the body, and intangible, that is, the soul.

At all times, humanity has been interested in questions about what a person is: what determines the reasons and patterns of his actions, the laws of behavior in society, the inner world. The task was to understand how mental images arise, what consciousness, thinking, creativity are, and what their mechanisms are. Psychology, which since its inception has been balancing between science, art and faith, seeks to answer all these and many other questions. The difficulties of its formation are connected, firstly, with the fact that this is the science of the most complex of all that is known to mankind. Even the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, beginning his treatise “On the Soul,” wrote: “Among other knowledge, research about the soul should be given one of the first places, since it is knowledge about the most sublime and amazing.”

Secondly, in psychology, a person simultaneously acts as both an object and a subject of knowledge. A unique phenomenon occurs: a person’s scientific consciousness becomes scientific self-consciousness.

Thirdly, in psychological research the difficult and ambiguously solved problem of objectivity is particularly acute. scientific knowledge.

The difficulties of the formation and development of psychology are determined, finally, by the fact that it is a very young science. Despite the fact that questions about the essence and characteristics of the human psyche were posed in the works of ancient and medieval philosophers, scientific psychology received official formalization a little over a hundred years ago - in 1879, when the German psychologist W. Wundt opened the first laboratory of experimental psychology in Leipzig .

And already at the end of the 19th century - the beginning of the 20th century, many psychological schools appeared, differing in their approaches to understanding the nature of the psyche: functionalism, behaviorism, reflexology, psychoanalysis, humanistic schools, Gestalt psychology. The presence of a large number of schools emphasizes the complexity of the tasks facing psychology and the possibility of interpreting mental phenomena from various theoretical positions.

The emergence of psychology as an independent, truly scientific discipline also occurred against the background of discoveries that were made within the framework of natural science research. Psychology arose at the intersection of two large areas of knowledge - philosophy and natural sciences, and it has not yet been determined whether to consider it a natural science or a humanities one.

The words “psychologist” and “psychology” went beyond scientific treatises and were developed in everyday life: psychologists are called experts on human souls, passions and characters; The word "psychology" is used in several meanings - it is understood as both scientific and non-scientific knowledge. In everyday consciousness, these concepts are often confused.

Every person has a stock of everyday psychological knowledge, the basis of which is life experience. We can understand another, influence his behavior, predict his actions, help him. Being a good everyday psychologist is one of important requirements requirements for specialists in those professions that involve constant communication with people, such as a teacher, doctor, manager, salesman, etc. The brightest examples of everyday psychology are those works of literature and art that present a deep psychological analysis life situations and motives for the characters' behavior. The content of everyday psychology is embodied in rituals, traditions, proverbs, sayings, parables, rituals that consolidate centuries-old folk wisdom.

The word “psychology” itself first appeared in the 16th century; it is derived from the Greek words “psyche” (soul) and “logos” (knowledge, science): literally translated, psychology is the science of the soul. This definition does not correspond to modern views on psychological science. The title reflects ideas about psychology characteristic of the period of its origin and initial development within the framework of philosophy.

Nowadays, instead of the concept of “soul”, the concept of “psyche” is used. To understand what “psyche” is, it is necessary to consider mental phenomena. Mental phenomena are usually understood as facts of internal, subjective experience. The fundamental property of subjective phenomena is their direct presentation to the subject. This means that we not only see, feel, think, remember, desire, but also know what we see, feel, think; We not only strive, hesitate, or make decisions, but we also know about these aspirations, hesitations, and decisions. In other words, mental processes not only occur in us, but are also revealed directly to us.

This unique feature of subjective phenomena being revealed to our consciousness amazed the imagination of everyone who thought about the mental life of man. And she made such an impression on some scientists that they associated with her the solution to two fundamental questions: about the subject and about the method of psychology.

Psychology, they believed, should deal only with what is experienced by the subject and directly revealed to his consciousness, and the only method for studying these phenomena is introspection. However, this conclusion was overcome by the further development of psychology, due to the fact that there are a number of other forms of manifestation of the psyche that psychology has identified and included in its scope of consideration. Among them are facts of behavior, unconscious mental processes, psychosomatic phenomena, i.e. products of material and spiritual culture. In all these facts, phenomena, products, the psyche manifests itself, reveals its properties and therefore can be studied through them. However, psychology did not come to these conclusions immediately, but in the course of heated discussions and dramatic transformations of ideas about its subject.

The uniqueness of psychological science is determined both by the subject of scientific knowledge and by methods that allow not only to describe the phenomena being studied but also to explain them, to discover the underlying patterns and to predict their further development.

“Method is the path of knowledge, it is the way through which the subject of science is learned” (S.L. Rubinstein). The doctrine of method constitutes a special field of knowledge - methodology, which is defined as a system of principles and methods of organizing, constructing theoretical and practical activities. The methodology of psychological research of the world is represented at several levels. The basic level, which creates the basis for all subsequent levels, is the philosophical level of the methodology, represented by the most general principles of knowledge of the world and ideological attitudes.

The second level of methodology is determined by general scientific principles, reflecting the specifics of scientific knowledge of the world and science as a special sphere human activity. The third level consists of concrete scientific principles of psychology.

Next come research methods, which are ways of obtaining psychological facts and interpreting them. Finally, the last level of methodology is represented by specific empirical techniques with the help of which psychological data is collected and processed.

Modern psychology has a comprehensive system of various research methods and techniques, among which there are basic and auxiliary ones. The main methods of psychology include observation and experiment.

1.2 Stages of development of the subject of psychology

Since ancient times, the needs of social life have forced a person to distinguish and take into account the peculiarities of the mental make-up of people. The philosophical teachings of antiquity already touched upon some psychological aspects, which were resolved either in terms of idealism or in terms of materialism. Psychology went through several stages in its development. Conventionally, there are four main stages in the development of psychology as a science. Stage I - psychology as the science of the soul. Stage II - psychology as the science of consciousness. Stage III- psychology as the science of behavior. Stage IV - psychology as a science that studies objective patterns, manifestations and mechanisms of the psyche.

Stage I (IV century BC - mid-17th century AD) psychology as the science of the soul.

The most important directions in the development of the doctrine of the soul are associated with the name of Plato (347-427 BC) and Aristotle (322-384 BC). Plato drew the line between the material material body and the immaterial, immaterial soul, between the “mortal” and the “immortal.” A fundamentally different idea was given by Aristotle in his treatise “On the Soul”. According to Aristotle, the soul is the form of a living organic body that ensures its purpose. The soul is the basis of all life manifestations; it is inseparable from the body. This position contradicts Plato, but both of them are united in the fact that the soul is the goal of the activity of the living body. They tried to explain all the incomprehensible phenomena in human life by the presence of a soul: sleep, dreams, trance states, mastery of magical skills, death, etc. At this stage, psychology was pre-scientific, since it did not have its own research methods, but used the philosophical method of logical reasoning.

The idea that something special lives in a person, different from his physical body, developed in ancient times. A common feature of primary views on mental phenomena was the invariable attribution of mystery and sacredness to them. Other most important characteristic These views - animism - the belief that every object of not only living, but also inanimate nature certainly has a soul and, in addition, souls can exist independently of objects and are special beings. The doctrine of the soul initially developed within the framework of ancient Greek philosophy and medicine. The successes achieved by ancient philosophers and physicians in the development of the doctrine of the soul served as the foundation for all further developments of psychological knowledge, which at this stage mainly boiled down to expanding the range of phenomena under consideration. This is how psychology began, this is how the first speculative attempts were made to find answers to the questions: what is the soul? What are its functions and properties? How does it relate to the body? This is how the historically first subject of psychology was formed - the soul as something that distinguishes living from non-living, giving the possibility of movement, sensation, passion, thought.

Stage II (mid-17th century - mid-19th century) - psychology as the science of consciousness. Arises in connection with the development of natural sciences. The ability to think, feel, sense, desire is called consciousness. The main method of studying mental phenomena is considered to be a person’s observation of himself (the method of introspection) and the description of facts. Philosophical discussion ceases to be the only tool of knowledge.

The formation of the subject of psychology at this stage is associated with the ideas of F. Bacon, W. Hobbes, D. Locke in that the phenomena of consciousness are the area that should replace the concept of the soul. D. Locke formulated ideas about internal experience as a new subject of psychological research. A new direction of research is emerging in which the phenomena of consciousness are recognized as the only subject of study. All psychology as an independent science developed on the basis of this idea.

At the origins of this new psychology is the French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650). Descartes's view of the relationship between soul and body is defined as dualism, i.e. recognition of two substances that are not reducible to each other and have independent properties. The body has, according to Descartes, the property of extension; the soul has the property of thinking. Accordingly, Descartes talks about them, creating, in fact, two different doctrines. The body, according to his ideas, acts according to the laws of mechanics. His theory anticipated the idea of a reflex, which arose later in science. According to Descartes, people have reason; animals are soulless, they do not think. It is the rational soul that constitutes the essence of man; it allows him to control his behavior. Descartes' famous phrase "I think, therefore I am" stems from his attempt to find something beyond doubt; such an undoubted fact is the fact of the presence of doubt itself, and therefore of thinking. Thus, the soul in Descartes' system turned out to be intellectualized; it includes everything that can be thought, observed, realized. Beginning with R. Descartes, psychology began to be interpreted not as a science of the soul, but as a science of consciousness.

Another major psychologist of that time was the American scientist William James (1842 - 1910), creator of the “stream of consciousness” theory. Based on the introspection of other people, clinical material and observation, he created a special approach to consciousness and his own theory.

W. James believed that, in addition to the question of how the soul works, what underlies it, how it changes and for what reasons, etc., no less, and perhaps more important, is the question of what the value it has for a person, what it serves (this direction is called “functionalism”). According to James, the main thing is that the soul allows a person to adapt to the world, feeling as comfortable as possible in it.

By the end of the 19th century. it was discovered that the introspection method does not reveal the main aspects of the psyche, if only because the range of phenomena studied in psychology is not limited to the phenomena of consciousness. These circumstances alone deprive introspection of the status of a method. It is equally important that introspection can be applied only to a small number of objects corresponding to the subject of psychology.

During this period, the formation of the necessary components of the structure of scientific knowledge - its own subject and method - was not completed.

Stage III (mid-19th century - mid-20th century) - psychology as a science of behavior. Since the 60s XIX century a new period in the development of psychological science began. There is a transformation of the subject of psychology; ideas about the “soul” and “consciousness” turn out to be insufficient. During this period, not only theoretical, but practical psychology was born.

A radical revolution in ideas about the subject and method of psychology was accomplished by J. B. Watson (1878-1958). The date of birth of behaviorism (from the English behavior - behavior) is considered to be the publication in 1913 of the article “Psychology from the point of view of a behaviorist.”

From the point of view of this paradigm, psychology is an objective experimental branch of the natural sciences. Behaviorists reject the method of introspection and reject the idea of consciousness as a subject of psychological research, and also believe that any psychological structures and processes that are not observable by objective methods either do not exist, since their existence cannot be proven, or are inaccessible to scientific research.

What can be the subject of study? Behaviorist answer: behavior, activity. “We are replacing the stream of consciousness with a stream of activity,” announced D. Watson

Activity - external and internal - was described through the concept of "reaction", which included those changes in the body that could be recorded by objective methods - this includes movements and, for example, secretory activity,

As a descriptive and explanatory one, D. Watson proposed the S - R scheme, according to which an impact, i.e., a stimulus (S), gives rise to some behavior of the organism, i.e. reaction (R), and, importantly, in the ideas of classical behaviorism, the nature of the reaction is determined only by the stimulus. Watson's scientific program was also connected with this idea - to learn to control behavior.

One of the most authoritative behaviorists is B. Skinner, who suggested that behavior can be built on a different principle, namely, determined not by the stimulus preceding the reaction, but by the likely consequences of behavior. This does not mean freedom of behavior, in general it means that, having a certain experience, an animal or a person will strive to reproduce it if it had pleasant consequences, and avoid it if the consequences were unpleasant. In other words, it is not the subject who chooses the behavior, but the likely consequences of the behavior that control the subject.

Behaviorism continues to this day; many researchers and practitioners, including in pedagogy and psychotherapy, are focused on it, although among the most popular foreign theories it, compared with psychoanalysis and humanistic psychology, is in the background. At the same time, his undoubted merit is recognized as the fact that he showed the possibility of an objective approach to mental phenomena, and also developed methodologies and techniques for experimental research. And so, behaviorism made behavior the subject of study.

Until the middle of the 20th century, a large number of competing incompatible and even incomparable trends had formed in psychology, which realized potentially logically possible versions of understanding the subject and method of psychology. This was a unique situation in the history of science. The state of psychology during this period represented a stage of open crisis.

Stage IV (mid-20th century to the present) psychology as a science that studies facts, patterns and mechanisms of the psyche. Psychology studies the inner world of subjective (mental) phenomena, processes and states, conscious or unconscious of the person himself, as well as his behavior. Thus, over time and the development of science, the understanding of the subject of psychology has changed.

At this stage of development of psychology, the subject is man as a subject of activity, system qualities its self-regulation, patterns of formation and functioning of the human psyche, its ability to reflect the world, cognize and regulate its interaction with it.

Thus, the basic principles of psychology were formed: recognition of the causality of mental phenomena by material reality; study of mental phenomena in development; recognition of the inextricable relationship between the psyche and activity; study of the human psyche taking into account the relationship of biological and social factors.

II. Comparative characteristics of idealistic and materialistic ideas about the subject of psychology

2.1 Idealist approach

The struggle between materialism and idealism, which began more than two thousand years ago, continues to this day. The emergence of idealism can be explained by the low level of knowledge of people, and its preservation to this day is supported by class contradictions.

The idealistic approach assumes that human mental life is a manifestation of the divine mind, which only it can understand through its own manifestations. This is how the concept of the subjective world appeared and exists, which can only be explored through introspection.

In foreign psychology, there are many directions that, despite all their external differences, retain the idealistic essence common to all of them - the affirmation of the conditionality of human behavior by the spiritual principle inherent in it. Let us present several points of view of idealistic views.

Psychology originated in the depths of philosophy, and the first ideas about its subject were associated with the concept of “soul.”

Plato's idealistic theory, which interprets the body and psyche as two independent and antagonistic principles, laid the foundation for all subsequent idealistic theories.

According to Plato (427-399 BC), we are surrounded by many individual concrete things. Each of them loses its beauty over time and is replaced by other beautiful things and phenomena. What is common to everything visible, which is the source of beauty and the model for all manifestations of the material world, was called by Plato an idea, which is a universally valid ideal form.

Everything that exists, according to Plato, consists of three sides: being, the sensory world and non-being. Being constitutes the world of ideas. Non-existence is the material world created by God from the four elements - water, earth, air and fire. The world of sensory things is the result of the penetration of being into non-being.

In humans, Plato distinguished two levels of the soul - the highest and the lowest. The highest level is represented by the rational part of the soul. She is immortal, incorporeal and has a controlling function in relation to the lower soul and the entire body. The temporary home of the rational soul is the brain. The lower soul is represented by two parts: the lower noble part of the soul and the lower lustful soul.

The human body is only a temporary refuge for the soul. Her main place of residence is in the divine heights, where she finds peace and rest from bodily passions and joins the world of ideas.

Plato's research laid new trends not only in philosophy, but also in psychology. He was the first to identify stages in the process of cognition, discovering the role of inner speech and the activity of thinking.

In the idealistic system of G.V. Hegel (1770-1831), psychology constitutes one of the sections of the doctrine of the subjective spirit (individual consciousness). Individual consciousness goes through three stages in its development. At the first stage, the spirit appears in direct intertwining with the body (spirit as soul); constitutes the subject of anthropology. It examines various forms of the mental make-up of people in connection with their racial, age and physiological characteristics, concepts of character and temperament, as well as sensations. At the second stage - reflection - the spirit represents consciousness. The phenomena of consciousness constitute the subject of the phenomenology of spirit. Issues of consciousness development are discussed here. It leads the way from consciousness in general to self-consciousness and from it to reason. At the third stage, the spirit is considered as it reveals itself as mind (theoretical spirit, i.e. knowledge), will (practical spirit) and morality (free spirit). This stage of development of the spirit is the subject of psychology proper. The problems of alienation of the spirit and its objectification revealed in Hegel's system - in morality, law, state, religion, etc. - bring us closer to a new understanding of human consciousness: it is found not only in the word, but in the most diverse manifestations of human creative activity, in practice. At the same time, the sources of thinking and its endless creative power remain unexplained here.

G. Leibniz (1646-1716) began the idealistic tradition in German philosophy and psychology - a contemporary of all the main geniuses of the 17th century. and their ideological opponent. The ideas of Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke were critically reworked and synthesized by Leibniz into his own original system of principles and concepts. Leibniz was not satisfied with the remaining opposition between spirit and matter, mental and physical, and in order to restore their unity, he puts forward a doctrine that makes it possible to explain the infinite diversity of the world based on a substantial basis that is uniform in nature and origin, but different in quality in its states. Leibniz tries to establish a connection between the sensory and the rational. But since rational knowledge does not grow from experience, the unity of experience and reason appears in Leibniz’s teaching not as an ascent from sensory forms to ideas, but as the imposition of the rational on sensory experience. Therefore, in a significant part, cognitive errors arise not so much through the fault of feelings, but because of the weakness of the mind itself and attention, as a desire for clarity and memory.

Leibniz develops a system of views, modeled and through analogy with the psychological characteristics of man and representing a kind of idealistic reincarnation of the atomistic picture of the world.

The “true atoms of nature” are soul-like units - monads, of which the universe consists of countless numbers. Monads are simple, indivisible and eternal. They are autonomous, and the influence of one monad on another is excluded. The leading and fundamental properties of each monad are activity and ideas.

Leibniz's teaching introduced many ideas and trends that would have a significant impact on the subsequent development of psychology. Leibniz was the first to show the active nature of consciousness, its dynamism and its constant variability. Leibniz's doctrine of perceptions and apperceptions will become the initial foundation on which subsequent concepts of the soul in German psychology will be built. First of all, inclusion in the sphere of the psyche, in addition to conscious phenomena to conscious perceptions, expanded the boundaries of the psyche. The logical consequence of this new approach was the rehabilitation of the animal psyche. Leibniz becomes the harbinger of the doctrine of the thresholds of consciousness, which he came out with in the 19th century. Herbart and which will become the starting point in Fechner’s psychophysical measurements and experiments. From Leibniz, German psychology learned the principle of psychophysical parallelism, on the basis of which experimental psychology in Germany would be built.

2.2 Materialistic approach

The materialistic approach to the study of mental reality is based on the fact that there are material, objective reasons any of its properties that can be known using objective methods.

One of the first philosophers who belonged to the materialist camp was Democritus (460-370 BC), he believed that there is an infinite variety of atoms, the collision and separation of which give rise to their different combinations, ultimately forming various bodies and things . Main and a necessary condition the movement of atoms, their connection and separation is emptiness.

As a result mechanical processes their connection creates everything that surrounds a person, including himself. Animals arose from water and mud. From them came man. All living beings were constantly changing.

The soul of animals and humans is what makes them move. It consists of a special kind of atoms, distinguished by their shape and extreme mobility. Soul atoms are round, smooth and akin to fire atoms. The cognitive sphere of the soul included sensations, perceptions and thinking. Democritus considered sensations and perceptions to be the original form of cognitive activity. Considering them as the initial link of the cognitive process, he clearly understood that feelings cannot reflect the essence of things. Only thinking allows you to see something beyond the senses.

A worthy place among the creators of a new methodology and fighters against dominant scholasticism and biblical mythology belongs to the greatest English thinker of the 17th century - B.T. Hobbes (1588-1679).

There is nothing in the world, Hobbes believed, except material bodies that move according to the laws of mechanics. Accordingly, all mental phenomena were brought under these global laws. Material things, affecting the body, cause sensations. According to the law of inertia, ideas appear from sensations in the form of their weakened trace. They form chains of thoughts following each other in the same order in which sensations change.

Hobbes argued that there can only be one truth, and it is the one that is achieved and acquired on the basis of experience and reason. According to Hobbes, knowledge must begin with sensibility as initial stage on the way to generalizations. The universal properties of things are established using induction, which is the path from knowledge of actions to knowledge of causes. In Hobbes' methodology, induction and deduction, sensory and rational knowledge are mutually proposed and interdependent stages of a single cognitive process.

Mental is a special internal state of moving matter. It consists in a specific form of movement that occurs in a living body as a result of external influences. The psychic begins with external pressures on the sense organs. External influences, spreading through the nervous system to the brain and heart, cause countermovement in the latter.

Hobbes made the first sketch of the associative mechanism; in this respect, it can be considered a harbinger of future associative psychology, which had a direct influence on the formation theoretical foundations experimental psychology during its emergence.

A fundamentally new approach to the subject of psychology developed under the influence of the works of I.P. Pavlova (1859-1963) and V.M. Bekhterev (1857-1927). Reflexology is a natural scientific direction that arose in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, the founder of which was V.M. Bekhterev. In contrast to subjective idealistic psychology, which discovered mental processes from the work of the brain, reflexology considered mental activity in connection with continuous processes. However, reflexology remained in the position of mechanism, essentially considering mental processes as accompanying acts of behavior.

Bekhterev rejected the methods and theories of prevailing subjective psychology and put forward the study of objectively observable reactions of the body instead of the internal content of mental processes. Rejecting subjective psychology, he advocated objective psychology, calling it the “science of behavior.” At one time, this had a positive significance in the fight against idealism in psychology. Since 1918, Bekhterev spoke from a mechanistic position against psychology as a science, putting forward “reflexology” instead as an independent field of knowledge.

CONCLUSION

Materialism and idealism in psychology are two main philosophical trends, the struggle of which affects the development of psychological thought throughout its history.

Psychology has come a long way in its development. It is probably not wrong to say that the first psychological views appeared along with humanity itself. Throughout the development of psychological science, idealistic and materialistic directions developed in parallel. Teachings based on materialistic views primarily contributed to the development of natural scientific understanding of the nature of mental phenomena and the formation of experimental psychology. In turn, teachings based on idealistic philosophical views introduced ethical aspects of the psyche into psychology. Thanks to this, modern psychology considers such problems as personal values, ideals, and morality.

There is no consensus among scientists regarding the definitions of the subject of psychology as a science. The problem of methodology is closely related to the variety of definitions of the subject of psychology.

Only that science that is capable of studying the laws of mental activity with possible accuracy can provide not only knowledge of this activity, but also its management on a scientific basis. That is why scientific psychology is becoming one of the most important disciplines, the importance of which will increasingly increase with the development of society and with the further improvement of its methods.

materialistic psychology morality ideal

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ANNEX 1

Comparative characteristics of materialistic and idealistic views

Criteria	Materialistic	Idealistic
	Democritus Lucretius
Understanding the Soul	The soul as a type of matter, as a bodily formation, consisting of spherical, small and most mobile atoms	The soul acts as a beginning, between the world of ideas and sensual ideas, and is the guardian of human morality
Functions of the soul	The soul is secondary The soul is mortal, appears and disappears along with the body Soul corporeal The soul serves as a source of energy The soul is renewed Only those beings who can feel can have a soul. The soul is a product of the organization of the body, and is not its principle Consists of 4 parts by Epicurus and Lucretius	The soul is primary The soul is immortal, unchanging, constant. Does not depend on the body The soul is higher than the corruptible body and can rule over it The soul is constant and a person cannot change it, the content of the knowledge that is stored in the soul is also unchanged Consists of several parts that have different properties

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Stages of development of psychology

Stage I- psychology as science of the soul. This definition of psychology was given more than two thousand years ago. They tried to explain all the incomprehensible phenomena in human life by the presence of a soul. This long stage, called pre-scientific in the literature, is defined from the V - IV centuries. BC. until the beginning of the 18th century.

Stage II- psychology as science ofconsciousness. It appears in the 17th century in connection with the development of natural sciences. The ability to think, feel, desire was called consciousness. The main method of study was a person's observation of himself and the description of facts. According to the new approach, a person always sees, hears, touches, feels, and remembers something. It is precisely such phenomena that psychology should study, since, unlike the soul, they can be experimentally studied, measured, scientifically generalized, and causal relationships and relationships can be established in them.

Stage III- psychology as behavioral science. Behaviorism took shape at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. in USA. “Behaviour” in English means “behavior”. The task of psychology is to set up experiments and observe what can be directly seen, namely human behavior, actions, reactions (the motives causing actions were not taken into account).

However, many “traditional” psychologists have expressed serious objections to some of the original components of the behaviorist approach. Behavior and psyche are, although connected, but by no means identical realities. Thus, when exposed to the same stimulus, it is possible that there may be not just one reaction, but a certain set of them, and, conversely, the same response is sometimes obtained in the presence of different stimuli. In psychology it is recognized, for example, that a person often looks at one thing and sees another, thinks about one thing, experiences another, says a third, does a fourth.

Stage IV- psychology as a science that studies objective patterns, manifestations and mental mechanisms.

Materialistic and idealistic understanding of the psyche.

Even in ancient times, people noticed that there are material phenomena (the surrounding nature, people, various objects) and non-material phenomena (images of various people and objects, memories of them, experiences), mysterious, difficult to explain.

Unable to correctly understand these phenomena, to reveal their nature and causes of occurrence, people began to consider them to exist independently, regardless of the surrounding real world.

This is how the idea of the world and soul, of matter and psyche as independent principles arose. These ideas took shape in philosophical, mutually exclusive directions: materialism and idealism.

The essence of idealistic understanding mental phenomena lies in the fact that the psyche is considered as something primary, existing independently, independently of matter.

The psyche, according to idealists, is a manifestation of an ethereal, immaterial basis - the “absolute spirit”, “idea”.

Depending on historical conditions, idealism has changed its forms, but its essence remains the same.

Materialistic understanding of the psyche: psyche is a secondary phenomenon, derived from matter, and matter is primary, the basis, carrier of the psyche.

The primacy of matter and the secondary nature of the psyche proves that the psyche arises at a certain stage in the development of matter.

Before living beings with a psyche appeared on earth, inanimate nature existed; its age is estimated at billions of years. The first living beings appeared several million years ago.

The psyche, according to materialistic teaching, is understood as a property of organized matter - the brain.

The fact that the psyche is indeed a product of brain activity is proven by experiments on animals and observations of people.

With certain brain damage, mental changes always inevitably occur:

with damage to the occipito-parietal cortex of the left hemisphere of the brain, a person’s orientation in space is disrupted;

damage to the temporal regions impairs the perception (understanding) of speech and music.

In his work “Reflexes of the Brain” (1863) I.M. Sechenov wrote that mental activity is reflexive, or reflecting reality. Brain reflexes include three parts:

First, the initial link is excitation in the senses caused by external influences.

Second– the central link is the processes of excitation and inhibition occurring in the brain. On their basis arise mental phenomena (sensations, ideas, feelings).

Third, the final link is the external movements and actions of a person.

All three links are interconnected with each other.

The meaning of the provisions put forward by Sechenov:

the causality of mental phenomena by external influences is revealed;

the psyche is considered as a result of the physiological processes of excitation and inhibition in the cerebral cortex;

the psyche is considered as a regulator of external movements and behavior in general.

Further theoretical and experimental substantiation of the reflex theory of brain activity is given in the works of I.P. Pavlova. Teaching of I.P. Pavlova about conditioned reflexes, about temporary nerve connections that arise in the cerebral cortex, revealed the physiological mechanism of mental activity.

Psyche there is brain activity that reflects the surrounding reality and is characterized by the physiological mechanisms that underlie it.

Development of ideas about the subject of psychology within the framework of religious systems and rituals.

In the history of psychology, there is a period of formation of psychological knowledge within the framework of other scientific disciplines and a period of the formation of psychology as an independent scientific discipline.

The most characteristic features of the period of formation of psychological knowledge within the framework of other scientific disciplines are:

1) the lack of independence of psychological knowledge, its presentation as an integral part of philosophical and medical teachings, first in the form of the doctrine of the soul, then - the philosophical theory of knowledge, doctrines of experience and consciousness;

2) the absence of a community that would share common views on the subject and method of study;

3) the speculative nature of the research, the lack of development of an experimental (experimental) approach to research.

This period was preceded by the emergence and development of ideas about the soul within the framework of religious systems and rituals that ensured the unity and existence of primitive societies. Ideas about the soul provided an explanation for such phenomena as sleep, dreams, trance states, the effect of prohibitions (taboos), mastery of magical skills (for example, success in hunting), death, etc. The common feature of the primary views on mental phenomena was the invariable attribution them of mystery, sacredness.

Another important characteristic of these views is animism - the belief that every object of not only living, but also inanimate nature certainly has a soul and, in addition, souls can exist independently of objects and are special beings.

 Animism is the belief that every object has a soul that can exist independently of that object.

The doctrine of the soul (5th century BC - beginning of the 17th century AD). The doctrine of the soul initially developed within the framework of ancient Greek philosophy and medicine. The origin of science in Ancient Greece is associated with two

circumstances:

1) science as a special field of human activity was formed as external to religion and separated from it;

2) the orderliness of the cosmos (all things) was recognized as based not on the power of a super being, but on the law; Among the Greeks, even the supreme gods were subject to law.

New ideas about the soul were not religious, sacred, based on traditions, but secular, open to everyone, accessible to systematic rational criticism. The purpose of constructing the doctrine of the soul was to identify the properties and laws of its existence, that is, the doctrine of the soul had a distinct nomothetic character. Another event that influenced the development of the doctrine of the soul was the transition from spontaneous and irrational animism, according to which all events take place under the influence of souls natural objects, to hylozoism - a philosophical doctrine based on the idea of the inseparability of life from matter, of life as a universal property of matter. This doctrine introduced the starting point about the integrity of the observable world. Although this point of view, shared, in particular, by Democritus, leads to panpsychism (the idea of the animation of objects of both living and inanimate nature), hylozoism includes the soul within the scope of natural laws and makes its study accessible.

 Hylozoism is a philosophical doctrine based on the idea of life as a universal property of matter.

Panpsychism is the idea of the animation of objects of both living and inanimate nature.

These were the initial conditions for the formation of the doctrine of the soul and its starting points. The development of precisely these provisions determined the history of the formation of psychological knowledge for a long time.

The most important directions in the development of ideas about the soul are associated with the teachings of Plato (427-347 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC). Plato drew the line between the material, material, mortal body and the immaterial, immaterial, immortal soul. Individual souls are imperfect

images of a single universal world soul - have different abilities, powers of the soul. Three types of soul - plant, animal and rational

(human) represent three stages of life with continuity. In plants, the soul performs only vegetative (vegetative) and metabolic functions; sensory-motor functions of the soul are inherent in both humans and animals, but not in plants; functions of the rational soul,

which only a person possesses, allow one to build conclusions that underlie higher memory, voluntary, free choice, etc.

Thus, Aristotle gave one of the earliest formulations of the explanatory principles of psychology - development, determinism, integrity, activity. Plato's student and Aristotle's follower Theophrastus (372-287 BC) in his treatise “Characters” gave a description of 30 different characters, developing the Aristotelian idea of this human property.

His work marked the beginning of a separate line in popular psychology, which was continued in the Renaissance by M. Montaigne, in the Enlightenment by J. Labruyère, F. La Rochefoucauld, then by A. von Knigge (“The Art of Treating People,” 1788), and in our time time - Dale Carnegie. The doctrine of the soul was widely used and developed in ancient medicine. Hippocrates (c. 460 - c. 377 BC) formulated the position that the brain is the organ of thinking and sensation. He developed a doctrine of temperaments, suggesting the different roles of the four body fluids (blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile), and was the first to propose a typology of temperaments based on body features. Considering the connection between the characteristics of the soul, temperament and typologies of people with the physical and climatic conditions of the area (the essay “On Airs, Waters, Places”), Hippocrates initiated research into the psychological characteristics of ethnic groups. The Roman physician Claudius Galen (c. 130 - c. 200) continued this line of observation and identified the sensory and motor functions of the spinal cord. The successes achieved by ancient philosophers and physicians in the development of the doctrine of the soul served as the foundation for all further developments of psychological knowledge, which at this stage mainly boiled down to expanding the range of phenomena under consideration. In the III-V centuries. n. e. in the works of Plotinus (205-270),

Aurelius Augustine (354-430) and early Christian philosophers and theologians highlight the inner world of man and the possibilities of self-knowledge as the subject of research; for the first time, descriptions of the phenomena of consciousness appear, for example, its intentionality (direction towards an object), highlighted by Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274). From V to XIV centuries. in the works of Boethius (480-524), Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus (1265-1308), an idea of personality is formed. It is important to note that the powerful influence of Christian theology, the foundations of which included the philosophy of Neoplatonism, gave these works an ethical-theological character, bringing them closer to

him to the line laid down by the teachings of Plato.

The pinnacle and completion of the stage of development of psychological knowledge within the framework of the doctrine of the soul was the system of views of Francis Bacon (1561-1626). The study of the soul formed part of a unified science of man, the construction of which Bacon planned. The novelty of Bacon's approach consisted in the rejection of a speculative solution to questions about the nature of the soul and the transition to an empirical study of its abilities.

However, this intention could not be realized, because at that time ideas about neither the general scientific method nor the subject of research had yet been formed. Bacon, in accordance with tradition, separated the science of the body from the science of the soul, and in the doctrine of the soul he singled out the science of the rational divine

the soul and the irrational soul, sentient, corporeal, common to humans and animals.

Bacon's teaching revived the idea of hylozoism: both living and dead bodies (for example, a magnet) have the ability to choose. Important new components of the doctrine of the soul, introduced by F. Bacon, are the idea of the role of society and tools in the processes of cognition.

Modern idea of the subject of psychology and its tasks.

Modern psychology is a widely developed field of knowledge, including a number of individual disciplines and scientific areas. Thus, animal psychology studies the peculiarities of the psyche of animals. The human psyche is studied by other branches of psychology: child psychology studies the development of consciousness, mental processes, activity, the entire personality of a growing person, and the conditions for accelerating development. Social psychology studies the socio-psychological manifestations of a person’s personality, his relationships with people, with a group, the psychological compatibility of people, socio-psychological manifestations in large groups (the effect of radio, press, fashion, rumors on various communities of people). Pedagogical psychology studies the patterns of personality development in the process of learning and upbringing. We can distinguish a number of branches of psychology that study the psychological problems of specific types of human activity: labor psychology examines the psychological characteristics of human labor activity, the patterns of development of labor skills. Engineering psychology studies the patterns of processes of interaction between humans and modern technology with the aim of using them in the practice of designing, creating and operating automated control systems and new types of technology. Aviation and space psychology analyzes the psychological characteristics of the activities of a pilot and cosmonaut. Medical psychology studies the psychological characteristics of the doctor’s activities and the patient’s behavior, develops psychological methods of treatment and psychotherapy. Pathopsychology studies deviations in the development of the psyche, the breakdown of the psyche in various forms of brain pathology. Legal psychology studies the psychological characteristics of the behavior of participants in criminal proceedings (psychology of testimony, psychological requirements for interrogation, etc.), psychological problems of behavior and the formation of the personality of the criminal. Military psychology studies human behavior in combat conditions. Thus, modern psychology is characterized by a process of differentiation that gives rise to significant ramifications into separate branches, which often diverge very far and differ significantly from each other, although they retain general subject of study– facts, patterns, mechanisms of the psyche. The differentiation of psychology is complemented by a counter process of integration, as a result of which psychology merges with all sciences (through engineering psychology - with technical sciences, through educational psychology - with pedagogy, through social psychology - with social sciences).

The main tasks of psychology are: 1) identification of the laws of the psyche; 2) disclosure of those connections and relationships that could be classified as natural; 3) establishing the mechanisms of mental activity; 4) studying the nature and action of these mechanisms together with other sciences. economic and social sciences, etc.).

Principles of constructing psychological research.

Objectivity in the study of mental phenomena. This principle means that when studying mental phenomena one should always strive to establish the material causes of their occurrence. Because of this, this principle requires that any mental phenomena be considered in unity with those external causes and internal conditions in which they arise and manifest themselves. Constructing psychological research in accordance with the principle of objectivity means the practical implementation of one of the basic principles of psychology - the principle of determinism - the causality of mental phenomena.

The principle of objectivity also requires the study of a person in the process of his activity, since the mental characteristics of a person can only be judged by his real actions. Based on this principle, it is necessary to study mental phenomena both in the most typical and atypical conditions for a given person. Only in this case can you comprehensively characterize a person and not miss anything significant. All obtained facts, including those that contradict each other, must be subjected to a comprehensive analysis. Conflicting facts should attract especially close attention; in no case can they simply be discarded, but they must either find an explanation for them or conduct additional study.

Analytical-synthetic study of personality. In the mental appearance of each person there is something common, characteristic of all people of a given era. At the same time, people living in states with different social systems have specific features that reflect the social relations that exist in a given society. Thus, we are specifically talking about the special appearance of the Soviet person, which developed under the conditions of developed socialism. At the same time, each person is a unique individual.

The existence of the general, special and individual in the personality of each person makes it necessary to be guided by the analytical-synthetic principle when constructing research.

The study of mental phenomena in their development– an important principle for constructing psychological research.

The objective world is in constant motion and change, and therefore its reflection cannot be frozen, motionless. The constant change in the psyche as a reflection of the changing reality requires the study of mental phenomena in their development.

If mental phenomena are continuously changing and developing, then this must necessarily be taken into account when constructing any research aimed at their comprehensive study.

General characteristics of psychology as a science.

The famous German psychologist of the 19th century. Hermann Ebbinghaus has an aphorism: “Psychology has a long past and a short history.” These words perfectly reflect the essence of the historical development of the branch of psychological knowledge. After all, psychology emerged as an independent science only towards the end of the 19th century. However, as a special branch of knowledge, it has existed since ancient history. Aristotle is usually considered the founder of psychology, who wrote the first systematic treatise on the soul. But “knowledge about the soul” (namely, this is the literal translation of the term “psychology” from the Greek language - “psyche” and “logos”, i.e. “soul” and “word, knowledge”) for a long time was attributed to the field of philosophy and religion or medicine.

For many centuries, the soul was considered the subject of psychology. Ideas about it in all centuries have been vague. Each researcher proposed his own concept. So, for example, in Ancient Greece, the philosopher Heraclitus considered the soul and mind to consist of world fire - the origin of all things; Anaximenes - from the air; Empedocles - from the fusion of the roots of all things, the four eternal elements: earth, water, air and fire. Alcmaeon was the first to suggest that the “organ of the soul” was the brain. Before him, it was believed that the soul was “located” in the heart, in the blood, or even existed separately from the body. All these concepts are very far from modern ideas about psychology, but one way or another they contributed to the accumulation of knowledge about man.

Aristotle was the one who first spoke about the inseparability of the soul from the body. He also spoke about the existence of three types of soul: plant, animal and rational. In his opinion, in humans all these three species coexisted together. This was a big breakthrough in knowledge about the psyche. After all, if we translate these ideas into the language of modern psychology, we can say that Aristotle discovered the existence of three levels - an elementary way of reflecting at the level of the simplest reactions to external stimuli, psychophysiology, for the activity of which the autonomic nervous system is responsible, and consciousness - the product of the active activity of the brain. Thus, for Aristotle, the soul is an active, purposeful principle of a living body, inseparable from it.

In addition to philosophers, theologians also had their own idea of the soul. According to theistic views, the human soul is a unique immortal spiritual principle created by God. Pantheism defined the soul as an individual manifestation of a single spiritual substance (microcosm as a reflection of the macrocosm).

In modern times, René Descartes proposed a dualistic view that separates the soul and body as two independent substances. In modern European philosophy, the term “soul” began to be primarily used to designate the inner world of man.

So, knowledge about the soul, of course, accumulated, but at the same time, what is called a dispute about terms arose. The struggle between idealistic and materialistic ideas about the soul pulled this branch of knowledge into the sphere of either theology or natural science. But neither one nor the other sphere could give a complete picture of man. Only in the century before last, clear ideas about the subject of psychology, its own methodology and categorical apparatus (a set of basic concepts) were formed.

So currently subject of psychology As a science, it is not the concept of the soul that is vague in its interpretation, but the more rigorous concept of the psyche. The object of research in psychological science is the patterns of emergence and development, as well as manifestations of the human psyche. In addition, the object of psychology research includes mental processes and states of a person, the mental qualities of a person as a biosocial system, that is, a unique being that is a complex alloy of biological and social properties.

In modern science, psyche is understood as the property of highly organized matter to actively and adequately reflect the realities of the surrounding world.

So, we can say that by the end of the 19th century. psychology as a system of knowledge has reached a paradigmatic stage - the stage of a formed science. The term "paradigm" was coined by the American philosopher and historian of science Thomas Kuhn. He put forward the concept of scientific revolutions as a change of paradigms - the original conceptual schemes, ways of posing problems and research methods that dominate the science of a certain historical period. In the process of formation and development of any science, he put forward three stages: pre-paradigm, when the methodology and categorical apparatus have not yet been fully developed, the stage of paradigm dominance and, finally, the stage of crisis of science of transition to a new paradigm. Psychology also has all these stages. Soviet psychology was based on the Marxist theory of reflection. Currently, the emphasis has shifted. A new paradigm of Russian psychological science is gradually emerging. What it will be depends largely on the new generation of psychologists.

The concept of the subject and object of psychological science.

The subject of psychology are the laws of the emergence, development and manifestation of the psyche in general and the consciousness of man as a concrete historical personality in particular. Psychology studies the inner world of a person as a conscious subject of social development, which should be taken into account in the process of education and training, when predicting the behavior and activities of people. For a more complete and correct understanding of the subject of psychology, it is necessary, at least in general terms, to reveal the essence of mental phenomena that appear in the form of internal experiences (sensations, thoughts, feelings), inaccessible to direct observation and called the psyche.

every science has its own item, your direction of knowledge and with a specific bow an object research. Moreover, from the point of view of modern science an object - it's not the same as item Sciences.

An object - not the whole subject, but only that aspect of the subject, sometimes quite insignificant, that is being studied subject of science, i.e. scientists. An object - this is only an aspect of an object that is included in one or another process of spiritual development, in the cognitive activity of the subject. Moreover, another part of the subject, and often a very significant one, inevitably remains outside the process of cognition.

Taking this difference into account is especially important for understanding the specifics of branches of science that have a complex, multifaceted subject, which includes psychology, in which, as we have already seen, more and more new objects of research are being identified.

Taking this distinction into account, the subject and object of psychology are defined as follows.

Subject of psychology - This psyche as the highest form of relationship between living beings and the objective world, expressed in their ability to realize their motives and act on the basis of information about it.

At the human level, the psyche acquires a qualitatively new character due to the fact that its biological nature is transformed by sociocultural factors. From the point of view of modern science, the psyche is a kind of mediator between the subjective and objective, it implements historically established ideas about the coexistence of external and internal, bodily and mental.

Object of psychology - This patterns of the psyche as a special form of human life and animal behavior. This form of life activity, due to its versatility, can be studied in a wide variety of aspects, which are studied in various branches of psychological science.

They have as their object: norms and pathology in the human psyche; types of specific activities, development of the human and animal psyche; human attitude to nature and society, etc.

The scale of the subject of psychology and the possibility of identifying various objects of research within it have led to the fact that currently, within the framework of psychological science, there are general psychological theories. oriented towards various scientific ideals, and psychological practice, developing special psychotechniques for influencing and controlling consciousness.

The presence of incommensurable psychological theories also gives rise to the problem of differences between the subject and the object of psychology. For a behaviorist, the object of study is behavior; for a Christian psychologist, it is a living knowledge of sinful passions and the pastoral art of healing them. for a psychoanalyst - the unconscious, etc.

The question naturally arises: is it possible to talk about psychology as a single science with a common subject and object of study, or should we recognize the existence of many psychologies?

Today, psychologists believe that psychological science is a single science, which, like any other, has its own special subject and object. Psychology as a science deals with the study of the facts of mental life, as well as the discovery of the laws to which mental phenomena are subject. And no matter how complex ways psychological thought has advanced over the centuries, changing its object of study and thereby penetrating ever deeper into its large-scale subject, no matter how the knowledge about it has changed and enriched, no matter what terms they are designated, we can identify the main blocks of concepts , which characterize the actual object of psychology, distinguishing it from other sciences.

Methods of psychology.

Methods of psychology: classification, general characteristics, capabilities and limitations “Method is the path of knowledge, it is the way through which the subject of science is learned” - S.L. Rubinstein. Not all methods were invented by psychologists; some were adapted in connection with the specifics of scientific facts: they are not given directly, they are meaningful and they are judged by their external manifestations. That. not absolutely valid methods.

Various classifications of methods:

2 main groups

Subjective - introspection (not to be confused with introspection)
objective: observation and experiment (more on them later)

according to the criterion of immediacy-mediation of penetration into the psyche of the subject:

direct (introspection) (has largely disappeared from psychological methods) – another name for “subjective”

indirect

According to the dynamics aspect

Cross-sectional

Longitudinal

According to the degree of generalization of results

Broad representativeness (e.g. Questionnaire)

Narrow (e.g. Case study)

According to the subject's inclusion

Interactive (interaction with the subject, e.g. Clinical conversation)

Artifactual (analysis of activity products, biographies, drawing tests)

According to the degree of formalization of the research procedure

Algorithmized formal (tests, questionnaires)

Informal (the procedure depends on the actions of the subject, for example, psychotechnical methods, participant observation method)

By data processing method

Quantitative analysis method

Qualitative analysis

Intervention criterion – (intervention) ( most popular)

Observation – maximally non-interventional

experiment

Methods observation and experiment

Scientific observation – purposeful recording of manifestations of behavior and judgments. The requirement of objectivity (the possibility of repetition and control) and unambiguity of information is important; a clearly defined goal, hypothesis; plan

Kinds:

Open (subject knows he is being watched)

Hidden (the subject does not know that he is being watched)

Direct – direct contact

Indirect - through something else, for example. questionnaires, videos, etc.

Included (the researcher carries out the activity together with the subject)

Third-party (eg Gesell's mirror)

Natural-field (in real conditions) / laboratory

Intermittent/single

Continuous (everything is permanently fixed) / Selective (fixed at certain times)

Structured (fixed according to plan) / arbitrary

Ascertaining / Evaluating (severity of parameters)

Systematic (clear goal) / exploratory (no clear goal)

Self-observation method (different from introspection) - observe yourself as you observe others

Meta-observation is observation of observation, the object is the activity of the observer itself.

The fact that the observer himself influences the result.

Restrictions– observer effect, observer expectations, anthropomorphic fallacy (attributing human thoughts, feelings or motives to animals, in particular as a way of explaining their behavior). Disadvantages – difficulties in control and evaluation; uneconomical time; not every phenomenon is observable

The advantage is the observation of a wide range of immediate reactions in natural conditions.

Experiment – active intervention of the researcher in the activities of the test subject, in order to create conditions in which the influence of independent variables on the dependent variable is revealed. The concept of ecological validity is important—i.e. correlation of the obtained data with reality.

Kinds:

Natural

Laboratory
Ascertaining (revealing already established structures)
Formative (influencing the test person with the aim of developing certain qualities in him), often social in a group of people. Galperin.
Blind (no one knows which group they are in) and double blind experiment (no one knows who is in which group)

Types according to A.R. Luria (3 groups)

Methods of structural analysis (the structure of the psychological process being studied is identified and analyzed)
A set of experimental genetic methods (the stages of development of the process being studied are traced or an activity is formed)
Experimental pathological methods (syndromic analysis) (detection of changes in painful disorders and their factors of occurrence)

A special case of an experiment: the test is a standardized psychological test, the characteristic of the method is the presence of “norms”. Often diagnostic purpose.

Individual-group
Verbal-actional
Projective (eg TAT)
Types by form: questionnaires, drawings, actions.

A special case is modeling: the creation of a formal model of a mental or socio-psychological process, that is, a formalized abstraction of this process, reproducing some of its basic, key, in the opinion of a given researcher, moments for the purpose of its experimental study or for the purpose of extrapolating information about it to what the researcher considers to be special cases of this process.

Experiment stages:

Create several test groups that are similar to everything except the changing condition
Change a condition that is hypothesized to influence behavior in groups
Leave unchanged in one group (control)
Record changes in behavior in groups

Variables are quantities that can change during an experiment:

External ones are superfluous. The influence must be eliminated
Independent – conditions that vary in an experiment
Dependents

Dangers

Placebo effect
Experimenter effect (unwitting influence of the researcher)

Pros - creation of certain controlled conditions; the ability to vary conditions, the ability to vary quantitative ratios (for stat processing)

Observation and experiment are inseparable in scientific practice (observation can initiate an experiment, precede it; observation can be included in the experiment - for example, T. Dembo’s Experiment “studying anger, the test creates a situation of intense need - to find a solution to a problem that cannot be solved ( get an object located at a considerable distance, but within the circle drawn in chalk) and observe how the person behaves.”

Methods that occupy an intermediate position combine observation and experiment.
1. Psychotherapeutic methods
  Psychotechnical
  Conversation method - Dialogue between two people, during which one person reveals the psychological characteristics of the other

You can mention a person as an object of study:

Subject activity during the study

The potential for self-creation - a person is able to change constantly

The reconstructive nature of experimental procedures - the psyche cannot be observed directly; it is important to create reconstructions of phenomena that are not directly observable.

Prerequisites for the emergence of scientific psychology.

Firstly

Secondly

Third

Psychology is the science of the laws of development and functioning of the psyche. The interaction of all living beings with the surrounding world is carried out through a special kind of mental processes and states. These special processes are inseparable from physiological processes, but cannot be reduced to them. For many centuries, these amazing and mysterious phenomena were designated general term"soul" and were considered a product of the highest essence - God. In the views of the ancients, the soul was interpreted animalistically, i.e. as a special ethereal entity that inhabits the human body. But Aristotle already proposed an interpretation of the soul as a way of organizing a living body and its behavior, which served as a powerful stimulus for the development of scientific views in the field of the psyche in the West. Having emerged as a branch of philosophical science, psychology has been inextricably linked with it for more than two millennia. Within the framework of philosophy, a huge amount of knowledge has been accumulated about various mental processes and states, the processes of perception and cognition of the surrounding world, emotional processes, mechanisms of development of mental phenomena have been studied, and attempts have been made to typology of people. The biological basis of the psyche has been studied in medical science. Much knowledge about the psyche has been accumulated in astrology, the so-called occult sciences. The accumulation of knowledge about the nature and mechanisms of mental functioning occurred at two levels: empirical (experimental) and theoretical, and led in the second half of the 19th century to the emergence of psychology as an independent science. The emergence of scientific psychology is associated with the name of W. Wundt, who in 1879 created the largest psychological school, called structuralist. Since that time, the development of psychological science has progressed by leaps and bounds. Already at the end of the 19th century - the beginning of the 20th century, many psychological schools appeared, differing in their approaches to understanding the nature of the psyche: functionalism, behaviorism, reflexology, psychoanalysis, humanistic schools, Gestalt psychology. The presence of a large number of schools emphasizes the complexity of the tasks facing psychology and the possibility of interpreting mental phenomena from various theoretical positions. At the same time, when studying certain mental processes and states, an eclectic approach is often used, synthesizing the points of view of various schools.

Formation of the first paradigms.

Since the 60s of the XIX century. A new period in the development of psychological science has begun. The main characteristics of which are:

1. The emergence of the first scientific paradigms, institutions and professional psychological community,

2. Formation of intra-paradigm ideas about the subject and method of research, development of ideas corresponding to various aspects of the subject, research in various paradigms.

3. Coordination of ideas about the subject and method of psychology with general scientific values,

4. Development of contacts with other disciplines, and, as a consequence, the emergence of new paradigms and branches of psychology.

5. Diversity and competition of paradigms.

The stage of formation of the first paradigms can be designated from the 60s of the 19th century to the 10s of the 20th century. The emergence of psychology as an independent discipline is associated with the emergence of the first scientific programs developed by I.M. Sechenov and V. Wundt. It is important to note that Sechenov’s progressive program had a strong influence on the formation of the first paradigms in Russia (N.N. Lange, V.M. Bekhterev, I.P. Pavlov, A.A. Ukhtomsky), but did not become an independent paradigm.

Wundt's program was focused on the general scientific experimental method. As Wundt himself wrote, “no difference between psychological and natural scientific methods can be allowed” (Wundt V., 1912; cited by Zhdan A.N., 1990).

However, Wundt considered introspection to be the only direct psychological method, since the subject of psychology is direct experience, as it is given to the person himself.

The role of experiment is limited only to imparting accuracy and reliability to its results.

Wundt identified the main tasks of psychology:

1. analysis of the process of consciousness by the method of introspection,

2. identification of elements of consciousness,

3. establishing the patterns of their connection.

It is obvious that Wundt's program logically followed from empirical and associative psychology. Using the concepts of “apperception”, “experience” and “association” established in the philosophy of knowledge, and believing that complex mental phenomena cannot be reduced to the sum of their constituent parts, Wundt inherited, although not in its original form, historically established explanatory principles.

The culture of experiment and its importance were learned by Wundt in the laboratory of the physicist and physiologist G. Helmholtz, during the years of his work with him. However, Wundt believed that the experimental method is applicable only for studying the simplest psychological phenomena, but not higher ones related to language, culture, etc. According to Wundt, the methods of sociology and anthropology are applicable for these purposes.

The experiment-oriented line of Wundt’s program was recorded in such works as “Essays on the Theory of Perception” (1862), “Foundations of Physiological Psychology” (1874), and the cultural and historical line - in the 10-volume work “Psychology of Nations” (1900-1920). It is important to note that the experimental line of Wundt’s program had an immeasurably greater historical impact on the emerging new discipline than the cultural-historical one. This revealed the need of the emerging psychological community to develop a general scientific culture of research.

The most important role of V. Wundt in the formation of psychology as an independent scientific discipline was that it was he who organized the first specialized institutes of psychological science. In 1879, Wundt founded a scientific laboratory in Leipzig (Institute of Experimental Psychology), which conducted research and trained experimentalists (more than 150 psychologists from 6 countries were trained), and in 1881 the scientific journal “Philosophical Research”, contrary to the name, was entirely dedicated to psychological issues.

Wundt also established fixed membership in the Scientific Psychological Society through the holding of the First International Congress of Psychology in Paris in 1889.

Introspection, proposed by Wundt as a method of psychology, was further developed in the paradigm of Structural Psychology, which was founded by E. Titchener (1867-1927), a successor of Wundt’s ideas in the USA.

The tasks of structural psychology were:

1. in the decomposition of the “state of mind into its component parts”,

2. in establishing how these parts are connected,

3. in establishing the correspondence of the laws of combination of this connection with the physiological organization.

It can be seen that these tasks do not contradict the tasks of psychology proposed by Wundt.

The difference was that Titchener studied the structure of consciousness, abstracting from the functional role of the psyche in behavior.

Titchener's most important innovation was the method of analytical introspection. In accordance with paradigmatic requirements, he strictly limited the possible content of the subject's report of introspection. Thus, it was required that the results of introspection be given in terms of elements of the structure of consciousness, but not in terms of objects of the external world or stimuli.

Titchener argued that introspection in experienced specialists is no different from external observation, characteristic of any other scientific method. Another blow to the method of introspection was also dealt by Wundt's follower O. Külpe (1862-1915), the founder and leader of the Würzburg school. His views on the method of introspection differed from Wundt's views. Wundt's introspection unfolded, like Titchener's, in synchrony with observed conscious experience.

Külpe's systematic introspection was separated from the experience by a time interval and was retrospective. The subject solved the problem proposed to him, and then described in detail the course of mental processes during its solution. This modification of introspection, according to Külpe, did not lead to a split into the observed and observing parts of the subject of observation, which led to the possibility of studying thinking.

Thus, by the end of the 19th century, it was discovered that the method of introspection does not reveal the main aspects of the psyche, if only because the range of phenomena studied in psychology is not limited to the phenomena of consciousness. These circumstances alone deprive introspection of the status of a method.

The use of introspection as a technique encounters an unpredictable dependence of the results of introspection on the following factors:

1. cultural affiliation of the subject,

2. the degree of mastery of self-observation, which is limited by age characteristics, cultural behavior, and language competence.

3. correlation of some internal plans when combining basic activity and introspection, which retrospective introspection does not save from,

4. the subject’s attitude towards participation in the study, his role in the relationship with the researcher,

Therefore, introspection is also not a method of psychological research. The cultural-historical line in Wundt's research program was opposed by the understanding psychology of the historian and literary critic W. Dilthey and his follower Spranger. They considered the main task of psychology not to explain the laws of human mental life, but to understand it in its subjectively experienced integrity.

Psychology, from their point of view, does not belong to the cycle of natural sciences, such as chemistry, physiology, but to the sciences of the spirit, to a number of humanitarian disciplines, which include, for example, history and cultural studies.

Dilthey and Spranger argued that the experimental method is not applicable in these sciences. The method of the humanities should be the method of empathy - understanding, which is also called the method of empathy.

Note that criticism of the introspective method generally applies to the method of understanding, since it is applicable only to a limited part of the totality of objects of study and can only deal with potentially conscious phenomena. The application of the method of understanding inevitably leads to erroneous judgments.

Significant changes in ideas about the subject and method of psychology were made by S. Freud (1856-1939), who founded the paradigm of psychoanalysis.

The history of the origins of psychoanalysis serves as a good illustration of the emergence and development of a paradigm, its dependence on predecessor ideas and its influence on successor paradigms.

The idea of the unconscious, the study of which is the subject of psychoanalysis, was introduced into psychology by Leibniz and developed by Helmholtz, as well as G. Fechner, who believed that most of mental activity does not reveal itself in consciousness.

Psychoanalysis in its developed form, before its transformation into a version of popular psychology, was aimed at the study of personality and was built in accordance with the principles of determinism, development, activity, the source of which, according to the teachings of Freud, lies within the subject. Psychoanalysis abandoned introspection as a research method. To obtain source material about the deep internal structures and processes of the psyche, an analysis of free associations, slips of the tongue, the specifics of forgetting, interpretation of dream retellings, etc. was used. Establishing the characteristics of deep psychological structures through the analysis of this material constitutes the essence of a new method, which Freud called psychoanalysis.

The breadth of the original psychoanalytic paradigm allowed it to differentiate into many neo-Freudian paradigms: the analytical psychology of C. Jung, the individual psychology of A. Adler, the theory of deep sources of anxiety by C. Horney, etc.

A radical revolution in ideas about the subject and method of psychology was accomplished by J.B. Watson (1878-1958). The date of birth of behaviorism (from the English Behavior - behavior) is considered to be the publication in 1913 of the article “Psychology from the point of view of a behaviorist” in the scientific psychological journal “Psychological Review”.

From the point of view of this paradigm, psychology is an objective experimental field of natural sciences. Behaviorists reject the method of introspection and reject the idea of consciousness as a subject of psychological research, and also assume that any psychological structures and processes not observed by objective methods either do not exist or are inaccessible for scientific research.

The subject of psychology from the point of view of behaviorism is behavior, understood as a set of observable muscular glandular reactions to external stimuli. The task of psychology is to identify the patterns of this connection, and the goal is to predict and control the subject’s behavior.

The method of research in behaviorism is considered to be behavioral experimentation.

Behaviorist criticism directed at introspective and depth psychology, and later at cognitive psychology, did much to highlight the logical and methodological contradictions in these paradigms, but the radical line of behaviorism did not last long. It was the idea of internal psychological structures and processes that caused a split in the ranks of behaviorism when E. Tolman formulated the main provisions of cognitive behaviorism.

Fundamental differences between everyday psychological knowledge and scientific knowledge.

Psychology has a special place in the system of sciences. Why?

Firstly, this is the science of the most complex thing so far known to mankind. Psyche is “a property of highly organized matter.”

Secondly, psychology is in a special position, because in it the object and subject of knowledge seem to merge.

Third, the peculiarity of psychology lies in its unique practical consequences.

Psychology is a very young science. In this capacity, it began to take shape in 1879, when the German psychologist W. Wundt opened the first laboratory of experimental psychology in Leipzig. The emergence of psychology was preceded by the development of natural sciences and philosophy. Psychology arose at the intersection of these sciences.

Any science has as its basis the everyday, empirical experience of people. How does everyday psychological knowledge differ from scientific knowledge? There are 5 differences.

1st difference–everyday psychological knowledge is specific, it is associated with specific situations, specific people, specific tasks. Waiters and taxi drivers are good psychologists. But in what sense and to solve what problems? To solve pragmatic problems.

Conclusion: everyday psychological knowledge is characterized by specificity, limitation of tasks, situations and persons to which it applies.

Scientific psychology, like any science, strives for generalizations. Scientific concepts reflect the most essential properties of objects and phenomena, general connections and relationships. Scientific concepts are clearly defined, correlated with each other, and linked into laws.

Scientific psychological concepts often coincide with everyday ones in their external form, that is, they are expressed in the same words, but the internal content and meaning of these words are different. Everyday terms are usually more vague and varied.

The second difference is that they are intuitive. This is due to a special way of obtaining them - through practical tests.

Scientific psychological knowledge is rational and conscious, has verbally formed hypotheses and consequences that logically follow from them.

The 3rd difference is in the methods of knowledge transfer. Life experience from the older generation is not passed on to the younger.

In science, knowledge is accumulated and transmitted; transmission is possible because this knowledge is crystallized in concepts and laws. They are recorded in scientific literature and transmitted through language and speech.

The 4th difference is in the methods of obtaining knowledge in the fields of everyday and scientific psychology. In everyday psychology, one is limited to observations and reflections.

In scientific psychology, experiment is added to these methods. The essence of the experimental method is that the researcher causes the phenomena of interest to him himself, creating appropriate conditions, then varies these conditions in order to identify the patterns to which this phenomenon obeys. With the introduction of the experimental method into psychology, psychology was formed as a science.

5th difference. The advantage of scientific psychology is that it has a variety of factual material that is not available to any bearer of everyday psychology. This material is accumulated and comprehended in special branches of psychological science, such as developmental and educational psychology, patho- and neuropsychology, occupational psychology and engineering, social, and animal psychology.

In these areas, the psychologist deals with various stages and levels of mental development of animals and humans, with mental defects and diseases. The psychologist expands the range of his research tasks, but also encounters new unexpected phenomena. The development of special branches of psychology is a “method of general psychology.” Everyday psychology lacks such a method.

What position should scientific psychologists take in relation to everyday psychology?

A scientific psychologist must at the same time be a good everyday psychologist, otherwise he will be of little use to science and will not find himself in his profession.

Scientific psychology, firstly, is based on everyday psychological experience.

Secondly, it extracts its tasks from it.

Thirdly, on last stage they are checked.

What is the subject of study of scientific psychology?

The word “psychology” translated into Russian means “the science of the soul.” Nowadays, instead of the concept of “soul”, the concept of “psyche” is used.

Mental phenomena are understood as facts of internal, subjective experience. You see this room, everything that is in it, you hear what I tell you, you try to understand it; Are you happy or bored now, you want something. All of the above are elements of your inner experience, subjective or mental phenomena. There are other forms of manifestation of the psyche - facts of behavior, unconscious mental processes, creations of human hands and minds, that is, products of material and spiritual culture. In all these facts and phenomena, the psyche manifests itself and reveals its properties.

To conclude our question, let us fix the difference between mental phenomena and psychological facts.

Mental phenomena are understood as subjective experiences or elements of the subject’s internal experience.

Psychological facts mean a wide range of manifestations of the psyche, their objective forms (behavior, bodily processes, products of human activity, socio-cultural phenomena), which are used by psychology to study the psyche - its properties, functions, patterns.

Main directions of development of psychological schools.

Basic psychological schools

In any field of knowledge there are competing concepts (views, visions of the process) and schools. In psychology at the beginning of the 20th century, divergent positions were determined by the fact that each of the schools left its own subject different from the others.

Functionalism. At the beginning of the 20th century, most psychologists continued to study consciousness, but Wundt and other scientists were searching for the “building” material of direct experience and its structures. This approach is called structuralism. Functionalism opposed him. This direction rejected the analysis of internal experience and its structures, and considered the main thing to be how these structures work when solving problems related to people’s needs.

The famous US functionalist William James (1842-1910) in his book “Fundamentals of Psychology” (1890) wrote that a person’s internal experience is not a “chain of elements”, but a “stream of consciousness”. It is distinguished by personal (in the sense of expressing the interests of the individual) selectivity (the ability to constantly make a choice). Discussing the problem of emotions, James (with the Danish physician Carl Lange) proposed the concept according to which the primary are the measurements in the muscular and vascular systems of the body, the secondary are the emotional states caused by them.

James's views on the role of consciousness in the interaction of the organism with the environment have become firmly entrenched in American psychology. Currently, James's book is used in American colleges.

Reflexology - this approach to the subject of psychology appeared under the influence of the works of I.P. Pavlova (1859-1963) and V.M. Bekhterev (1857-1927).

Experimental psychology arose from studies of the senses. She considered her subject matter to be the products of the activity of these organs - sensations.

Pavlov and Bekhterev studied the brain, the organ that controls the behavior of an entire organism in the environment. This practice became known as reflexology.

Pavlov's doctrine of behavior subsequently became known as the doctrine of higher nervous activity. He introduced a new term - conditioned reflex (the body acquires and changes its program of actions depending on conditions - external and internal). External stimuli for the body become signals that imitate them in the environment, and the reaction is consolidated if it is supported by an internal factor - the need of the body.

Bekhterev in 1907 in his book “Objective Psychology” gave conditioned reflexes a different name: but both of them stimulated psychologists to restructure their ideas about the subject of psychology.

Behaviorism is a new direction that has established behavior as a subject of psychology, understood as a set of reactions of the organism caused by its communication with the stimuli of the environment in which it adapts.

The term behavior (English - behavior). D. Watson is considered the father of behaviorism. In his article “Psychology as the Behaviorist Sees It” (1913), he proposed to abandon all concepts of subjective psychology of consciousness and replace them with objectively observable reactions of living beings to stimuli.

Behaviorism began to be called “psychology without the psyche.”

Watson believed that the psyche is identical to consciousness. By demanding the elimination of consciousness, behaviorists did not turn the body into a device devoid of mental qualities. They changed the idea of these qualities. The new direction in psychology included stimuli that were accessible to external objective observation and independent of consciousness—reactive relationships.

The designs of psychological experiments have changed. They were performed mainly on animals – white rats. Various types of labyrinths were invented as experimental devices to replace physiological apparatus. The animals released into them “learned” to find a way out of them. The theme of “learning,” acquiring skills through trial and error, became central to this school. Views on the laws of behavior of animal creatures have changed (a rat looking for its way in a maze, its success, that is, its exit from the maze depends on chance).

By excluding consciousness, behaviorism turned out to be a one-sided direction, but it changed psychological consciousness. His subject examined the construction and modification of actual bodily actions in response to a range of external challenges. Proponents of this direction believed that, based on experimental data, they would be able to explain any natural forms of human behavior (such as building a skyscraper or playing tennis). The basis of everything is the laws of learning.

Freudianism is the name of a psychological movement associated with the name of the Austrian psychologist S. Freud. The formation of his teaching dates back to the beginning of the 20th century. Freudism became widespread in bourgeois society in the 1920s.

In the structure of personality, Freud drew attention to the unconscious and turned it into an object of study. Freud noted that a person cannot always explain the motives for his actions. They are not conscious; their actual cause can be identified by studying dreams, slips of the tongue, and involuntary movements.

To interpret the true motives of behavior and make them conscious for a person and for a mentally ill person (for the purpose of his treatment) is the task of psychoanalysis, a method developed by Freud to study the unconscious.

Freud derived all personality development from two innate instincts: procreation (sexual pleasure) and preservation of life (fear of death). Living in society, a person, to some extent, suppresses these forces; they are pushed into the sphere of the unconscious and replaced by activity. For example, all Freudians argue that creativity is an unconscious manifestation of the desire for sexual pleasure.

A complete separation of the personality from the social conditions of its formation, bringing to the fore the unconscious, biological - this is the essence of Freudian theories. Freudianism is one of the most reactionary trends in personality psychology.

Areas of practical application of psychological knowledge.

Areas of practical application of psychological knowledge. One of the common types

psychological practice is the psychological support of enterprise activities. IN

In Russia, private enterprises have reappeared in the last decade, and the activities of psychologists in them have their own specifics. A psychologist at a commercial enterprise, depending on the relevance of the tasks facing the company, takes part in:

In recruitment and adaptation of personnel;

In personnel assessment;

In training and advanced training of personnel;

In motivating staff;

In organizing effective personnel management;

In the analysis and optimization of the social structure of the enterprise;

In management consulting.

Job practical psychologist in an educational institution, and above all in a school, it promotes the optimal conduct of the entire process of training and education and is carried out in direct interaction with teachers, schoolchildren and their parents. Two areas of work can be distinguished:

current and promising. The current direction is focused on solving pressing problems associated with certain difficulties in the education and upbringing of students, violations in their behavior, communication, and in the formation of their personality. The promising direction is aimed at developing the individuality of each child, at the formation of psychological readiness for conscious life in society. At the same time, the main task of a school psychologist is to create psychological conditions for the optimal and full development of schoolchildren’s abilities (Dubrovina I.V., Akimova M.K. et al.,

1991). Of course, the level of development of children’s abilities will be different, but the tasks that the psychologist sets and solves in relation to each child will also be different. You can indicate the most important tasks solved by a practical psychologist at school.

1. Definition of school readiness - a set of intellectual, motivational and behavioral characteristics that allow one to successfully master school curriculum in a classroom setting. If necessary, the psychologist participates in the formation of the characteristics necessary for training and/or recommends a different form of training (for example, family training).

2. Development and implementation, together with teachers and parents, of developmental programs taking into account the individual characteristics of schoolchildren in order to better adapt younger schoolchildren to school conditions.

3. Monitoring and providing psychological assistance to schoolchildren during transitional periods and difficult moments in their lives (puberty, consequences of acute and chronic diseases, stressful events in the lives of schoolchildren, etc.)

4. Carrying out diagnostic and correctional work with “difficult” schoolchildren (with underachieving, undisciplined, with children suffering from various kinds of nervous and mental disorders, with teenagers registered with juvenile affairs commissions, with children from “dysfunctional” families).

5. Conducting a diagnostic examination of schoolchildren in order to determine the intellectual, personal and emotional-volitional characteristics of students. Determination of developmental anomalies and carrying out corrective work. Identification of potentially gifted children and creation of conditions for the manifestation of their giftedness (intellectual, psychomotor, special).

6. Determination and elimination of psychological causes of violations of interpersonal relationships of students with teachers, peers, parents and other people.

7. Consulting school administration, teachers, parents on psychological problems

raising and teaching children.

8. Conducting individual and group counseling for students on educational issues,

mental development, problems of life self-determination, self-education, relationships with adults and peers, psychological problems of sexual development and sexual relationships.

9. Carrying out career guidance work aimed at identifying and developing abilities, interests, as well as the formation of adequate self-esteem of value orientations, life

prospects. Assistance in choosing a career path in life and advice on its implementation.

The tasks solved by a practical psychologist in a medical institution depend on the type of institution. In psychiatric clinics, a psychologist, together with a psychiatrist, participates in making a diagnosis and clarifying it. In addition, he is directly involved in the treatment of patients, conducting group and individual psychotherapy depending on the type of mental disorder and the severity of the disease.

In narcological medical institutions, psychologists are actively involved in the treatment of drug addictions,

substance abuse and alcoholism, using special types of psychotherapy and non-drug treatment.

Treatment often continues after discharge from the hospital, with psychotherapy carried out

outpatient (Bratus B.S. Sidorov P.I., 1984). The final stage of such treatment is the organization of territorial societies such as Alcoholics Anonymous and the promotion of their functioning.

The specifics of the work of a practical psychologist in the treatment of somatic patients depend on the specifics of the disease itself. We can distinguish some groups of patients in whose successful treatment and rehabilitation the role of a psychologist is quite large: cancer patients, patients with bronchial asthma, gynecological patients. Psychologists help patients adequately perceive and understand what happened, contribute to the formation of an adequate understanding of the disease, themselves and the upcoming treatment, and together with doctors develop and teach patients certain forms of behavior that promote recovery (for example, in the case of asthmatics, these are relaxation techniques and delayed response to allergens, for pregnant women - these are techniques for easing labor pain, etc.).

Psychology as the science of behavior

According to the established tradition in psychology, behavior is understood as the external manifestations of a person’s mental activity. And in this respect, behavior is contrasted with consciousness as a set of internal, subjectively experienced processes. In other words, facts of behavior and facts of consciousness are separated according to the method of their identification.

Behavior occurs in the external world and is detected through external observation, while the processes of consciousness occur within the subject and are detected through introspection. We now need to take a closer look at what is called human behavior.

This needs to be done for several reasons: First, to test our intuitive belief that behavior should be the object of psychological study. Secondly, to cover the widest possible range of phenomena related to behavior and give their preliminary classification. Thirdly, in order to give a psychological description of the facts of behavior. Let's do the same as when we first became acquainted with the phenomena of consciousness - let's turn to the analysis of specific examples.

Let's answer one of the questions posed earlier: What are behavioral facts? This, Firstly, all external manifestations of physiological processes associated with the state, activity, communication of people - posture, facial expressions, intonation, glances, eye shine, redness, paleness, trembling, intermittent or restrained breathing, muscle tension, etc.; Secondly, individual movements and gestures, such as bowing, nodding, nudging, squeezing a hand, knocking with a fist, etc.; thirdly, actions as larger acts of behavior that have a specific meaning

Based on these criteria, 16 types of behavior were identified. Perceptual behavior is the desire to cope with information overload through perceptual categorization, as a result of which the variety of influencing information is classified, simplified and can lead to both a clearer understanding of what is being assessed and the loss of significant information.

Defensive behavior is any real or imagined actions of psychological defense (rejection, substitution, projection, regression) that allow you to create and maintain a positive image of the “I”, a person’s positive opinion about himself.

Inductive behavior is people’s perception and evaluation of themselves based on the interpretation of the meaning of their own actions.

Habitual behavior—the satisfaction of positive reinforcement—creates a greater likelihood of repeating familiar behaviors in appropriate situations.

Utilitarian behavior is a person’s desire to solve a practical problem with maximum achievement (subjective experience of the maximum possible success).

Role behavior in accordance with role requirements, circumstances that force a person to take some actions (even if they do not coincide with personal aspirations).

Script behavior - a person is a performer of many rules of acceptable “decent” behavior corresponding to his status in a given culture and society.

Modeling behavior is behavior options of people in small and large groups (contagion, imitation, suggestion), but difficult to control both by the person himself and by other people.

Balancing behavior is when a person simultaneously has contradictory opinions, assessments, and attitudes and tries to “reconcile” them, coordinate them by changing his assessments, claims, and memories.

Liberating behavior - a person seeks to “protect himself” (physically or his reputation) from real or apparent “negative conditions of existence” (to maintain the stability of his internal emotional state through active external actions: avoiding possible failures, abandoning environments of unattractive goals, compliance.

Attributive behavior is the active elimination of contradictions between real behavior and a subjective system of opinions, weakening and eliminating cognitive dissonance between desires, thoughts and real actions, bringing them to mutual correspondence.

Expressive behavior - in those cases, areas in which a person has achieved a high level of mastery and satisfaction from a “job well done,” while maintaining consistently high self-esteem, the constant reproduction of which is the main regulator of everyday social behavior.

Autonomous behavior is when a sense of freedom of choice (even the illusion of such choice and control of one’s actions) creates a person’s readiness to overcome any barriers to achieving a goal (a high level of internal “locus of control” of one’s actions, the idea of oneself as an active “doer” and not executor of someone's orders, someone's will).

Affirmative behavior is the experience of one’s actions as the accomplishment of one’s plans with the maximum use of one’s own internal conditions.

Exploratory behavior is the desire for novelty in the physical and social environment, the willingness to “tolerate” information uncertainty, and the “reduction” of various external information to a form to which previously mastered processing techniques are applicable.

Empathic behavior is taking into account, a large coverage of sensory information underlying interpersonal interaction between people, the ability to feel and understand the emotional and mental state of another person.

Actions- even larger acts of behavior, which, as a rule, have a public, or social, sound and are associated with norms of behavior, relationships, self-esteem, etc. So, external bodily reactions, gestures, movements, actions, deeds - this is a list of phenomena related to behavior. All of them are objects of psychological interest, since they directly reflect the subjective states of the content of consciousness, the properties of the individual.

To begin with, let us define the range of development of this problem and briefly list the scientists.

Scientists who dealt with the problem of will: L.S. Vygotsky, V.I. Selivanov, E.P. Ilyin, V.A. Betz, S. Ya. Rubinstein, B. V. Zeigarnik, T. Ribot, etc.

Concept of will

Definition

Will is a certain ability of an individual, which consists of the conscious regulation of behavior and activity in order to complete assigned tasks.

Basic approaches to determining the nature of will

The development of ideas of will since ancient times is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. “Development of ideas about will”

Idealism. Will is free will, recognition of free will is a denial of the objective determinism of human behavior.
Materialism. Will is an illusion of a person who is not aware of the determinism of his own actions.

Idealist psychology

The volitional act is divorced from activity. Let us present several points of view within this direction.

Will comes down to intellect.
Will comes down to emotions.
Will as a specific experience that cannot be attributed to either intellect or emotions.

Behavioral psychology

Within this direction, behavior is reduced to the same patterns of execution, without taking into account the complexity of the nervous system of a particular organism. A diagram of this behavior is presented below.

Figure 2. “Behavior in line with behaviorism”

For a reflexologist, a volitional action is reduced to a simple sum of reflexes, for a representative of behavioral psychology - to a set of reactions: the conscious volitional process falls out of the volitional action.

In contrast to the prevailing interpretation of will in psychological literature as a phenomenon to be explained either physiologically or subjectively psychologically, Blondel put forward the position that will is a product of sociality. But his attempt to give a psychology of will, taking into account the role of social relations in its formation, proceeds from the general premises of Durkheim’s sociological school and reflects all its attitudes. The social in it is reduced to the ideological, supposedly independent of real, material social relations; at the same time, the social is contrasted with the natural, the public with the personal.

Theories of will in Russian psychology

Regulatory approach

The theory of will by L. S. Vygotsky. Within the framework of this theory, will refers to the HMF (higher mental functions). Their development is determined by the arbitrariness of human behavior with the help of one motive or another. A feature of voluntariness, according to L. S. Vygotsky, is the free choice of action.
Theory of will by V.I. Selivanov. Will represents a conscious level of regulation of one’s own activity, which manifests itself in overcoming various obstacles caused by both internal and external factors in order to complete assigned tasks. In addition, V.I. Selivanov believes that the will must necessarily be reflected in activity, in its execution. Otherwise, we cannot talk about volitional regulation in general.
Theory of will by E. P. Ilyin. Will, according to E.P. Ilyin, is a type of special voluntary control that can be realized only through volitional action, the main feature of which is volitional effort.

General conclusions on the regulatory approach to understanding will:

will is closely related to activity;
indirectness of volitional behavior;
will manifests itself in activity.

Motivational approach

Motivational-activity theory of V. A. Ivannikov. According to V. A. Ivannikov, will can be considered as “a person’s ability for conscious intentional activity or for self-determination through work on the internal plane, providing additional incentive (inhibition) to action based on free form motivation." Volitional behavior itself is realized with a lack of general motivation for a specific action.

Aspect of Choice

The concept of will by L. S. Vygotsky. The scientist distinguishes two parts of volitional action:

the closing part of the volitional process (a person making a certain decision);
executive part (activity).

The theory of regulatory-volitional processes by L. M. Wecker. Will represents the highest specific regulation of one's own behavior.