In language, the word “personality” has a wide range of uses. Personality - this is both a person and something connected with a person, some kind of cut, angle, perspective. On the one hand, an aspect, a projection, on the other, a fundamental principle.
However, in psychology, personality is most often defined through a set of social, acquired qualities. As noted in the Big Psychological Dictionary, personality is a special quality of people acquired by them in a sociocultural environment in the process of joint activity and communication.
In the process of interaction and communication, people mutually influence each other, as a result of which intelligence, views, social attitudes, attitudes towards society, specific people and oneself are formed.
Personality is a dynamic, relatively stable, holistic system of intellectual, socio-cultural and moral-volitional qualities of a person, which are expressed in the individual characteristics of his consciousness, behavior and activity.
The problem of personality in psychology has not been fully studied and is of great interest to specialists. At the same time, along with the concept of “personality”, scientists use the terms “individual” and “individuality”.
Individual is a separate representative of the biological species homo -apien- (reasonable man), a representative of the human community.
The individual properties of a person include not only his innate properties (gender, physique, inclinations, etc.), but also those acquired in the course of life (abilities, character, value orientations, etc.).
Being born as an individual, a person is included in the system of social relationships, as a result of which he acquires social qualities, that is, he becomes a personality. This means that not every individual is a person. One is not born with a personality; a personality is formed and can also be destroyed.
Thus, if the concept of “individual” correlates with the holistic (biosocial) organization of a person, then the concept of “personality” characterizes his sociocultural organization. However, if personality is social in its essence, then in its mode of existence it is individual.
Individuality- the concept is narrower and contains only those individual or personal properties of a person, such a combination of them that distinguishes a given person from other people.
Individuality is the originality of a person. Each person is individual, but the individuality of some manifests itself very clearly, while that of others is barely noticeable. Individuality characterizes a person more specifically, in more detail and, thus, more completely.
The discrepancy between the concepts of individual, personality and individuality corresponds to relatively independent directions in the scientific study of man: biogenetic, sociogenetic and personogenetic.
An individual is a person, taken separately from a community, who is characterized by certain biological characteristics, qualities and stability of mental processes. In other words, this means an individual person who is singled out from a social group or society due to certain specific characteristics, a set of properties.
Today there are many concepts and terms that have fairly similar meanings, but specific subtleties still distinguish them. This means, for example, the context of use of the word.
Suppose the words “being” and “world” have similar meanings, including the totality of all life categories, but the first concept is not popular in everyday life, which cannot be said about its philosophical meaning.
The point is that the “world” is narrower in meaning, which cannot be said about being, although at first glance the difference is minimal. The word “individual” also has a similar meaning to other words: person, subject, personality. In reasoning, they can be used all together, implying the same thing, but you should see the difference so as not to be mistaken with the context. What is meant by the term “individual”? Who is this?
Individual and individuality
Despite the similarity in roots, it is necessary to distinguish between these two words. Individuality means the totality of qualities and characteristics inherent in the individual that have accumulated in the process of development.
The point is that a person is an individual by the fact of his birth, without having an individuality that grows over time. The embryo in the mother's belly is able to respond to external stimuli: sound, light, touch.
This involves shining a light on the mother's belly and touching the belly. And since the embryo has the ability to perceive, then we can safely say that it becomes an individual in the intrauterine state. There, it is also possible for some features to form, i.e., the emergence of individuality.
Human
Man is a representative of the species Homo Sapiens, the result of a biological revolution. As mentioned earlier, the concepts of “man”, “individual” and “personality” are interchangeable, but it is the first concept that contains the entire human essence and has the unity of social, biological and mental levels.
However, it was precisely this generalization that gave rise to the need to highlight features, subtleties and specifics, which led to the emergence of the two remaining terms.
Man is multifaceted. This is evidenced by the heterogeneity of the evolution occurring in it: biological, sociocultural, cosmogenic. The question of the nature of human origin still remains open to researchers. Within its framework, a religious position manifests itself, which states that man was created by God. However, there are other guesses and opinions on this issue; many philosophers and scientists have tried to understand the human essence.
In particular, the 20th century gave the world such researchers as Edmond Husserl, Jacques Lacan, Claude Levi-Strauss and others. All of them wrote works devoted to man, his perception of the world, determination of his place in the world and knowledge.
Personality
First we need to say what this concept is. The term “” is deep in its meaning and is quite difficult to understand. First, it is necessary to talk about it within the historical context.
Even in ancient Rome, a person was understood as a ritual mask taken from the face of the deceased owner of the house, which was subsequently kept in the house. The meaning of the word was associated with individual rights, name and privileges, transmitted only through the male line of the family. Transporting yourself to Ancient Greece, you can discover another meaning of personality - it is a mask that the actors of the play put on their faces.
The philosopher of Ancient Greece, Theophastus, identified as many as thirty personality types in his treatise “Ethical Characters”. As for Russia, the concept of “personality” for a long time signified something vile and offensive and denoted the “mask” under which the real person was located.
What is the fundamental difference between the concept of “personality” and the individual? occurs under the influence of social relations, external environment, cultural characteristics and upbringing. As a socio-psychological phenomenon, personality implies the importance of a person in society and emphasizes his individuality.
The relationship between the individual, personality and man
When talking about an individual, it is necessary to emphasize his inherent characteristics: activity, stability, integrity, interaction with nature and its change. The individual’s activity is revealed in the ability and change of oneself, as well as in overcoming the obstacles of the external world.
Resilience refers to the preservation of basic relationships with the outside world, as well as the ability to be flexible and plastic, which are necessary in changing conditions of reality.
Integrity indicates the systematic connections of various functions and mechanisms through which an individual exists in the life world.
In psychology there are a number of concepts that directly affect the relationship between the individual and personality. For example, V.A. Petrovsky, the basis of whose theory was the statement about the unity of the personality and the individual, however, did not identify them with each other.
Personality is rather a set of properties acquired by an individual due to the constant sociogenic need for personal self-identification, thanks to which the interdependence of the three hypostases of personal existence is established:
- A stable set of intra-individual properties;
- Inclusion of an individual in the area of interindividual connections;
- Representation of the individual in the relationships of other people.
The individual and his structure
An individual's personality can be divided into three interacting structures, as Jung says: the ego, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The first contains the entire set of thoughts, feelings, sensations and memories, thanks to which a person perceives himself holistically, fully and feels like one of the people.
Conflicts and memories, previously well imprinted in the memory, but forgotten over time, belong to the category of the personal unconscious. The reason why these memories are left behind and become forgotten lies in their lack of vividness. There are echoes of Freud in this, but Jung went further and said that the personal unconscious contains complexes that hiddenly influence the behavior of the individual.
For example, if an individual has a hidden thirst for power, he will even unconsciously strive for it. A similar scheme also works with a person who is under significant influence from parents or friends.
Once formed, a complex is difficult to overcome because it takes root in any relationship. What about the collective unconscious? This is a deeper layer of structure in which universal human memories and thoughts of ancestors are latent. Feelings and memory of the universal human past lie in every individual. The content of the collective unconscious is the same for absolutely all people and is a legacy of the past.
Archetypes of the collective unconscious according to Jung
By archetypes, Jung means universal mental structures that are in a person from birth; they are part of the collective unconscious.
There may be countless archetypes, but Jung identifies only a few of the most significant: mask, shadow, anime and animus, self:
- A mask is a mask, a public face that a person puts on when going out into society and interacting with other people. The function of a mask is to hide one's true face, in some cases to achieve certain goals. The danger of wearing a mask often lies in the alienation from true emotional experience and characterizes a person as stupid and narrow-minded.
- The shadow is the complete opposite of the previous archetype. It includes everything secret, dark hidden, animal component that cannot be pulled out due to the subsequent negative reaction from the public. However, the shadow also has a positive component - it contains a person’s creativity, an element of spontaneity and passion.
- Anime and animus refer to the androgynous predisposition in all people. In other words, it speaks of the presence of the feminine principle (anima) in a man, and the masculine principle (animus) in a woman. Jung came to this conclusion based on observations of the production of hormones of the opposite sex in men and women.
- The Self is the most important archetype around which the others revolve. When the integration of all parts of the human soul occurs, the individual feels completeness and harmony with himself.
Individual and development
Self-improvement, development, accumulation of knowledge - all this happens gradually. The individual is not limited to development in the early stages, but continues to develop dynamically throughout life. It happens that a person reaches the peak of his perfection only in old age.
According to Jung, the most important goal of an individual’s entire life is to find oneself, to find one’s own essence.
This state is akin to the unity of all components, merging into one whole; only the integrity of the individual will give him happiness and bring complete harmony. The pursuit of this goal is called individualization. It implies the desire for integrity of opposing intrapersonal forces. It turns out that the archetype of the self combines opposites and is the peak in which everything is organically connected with each other.
Conclusion
So, an individual is a single human being, which contains a set of personal qualities, characteristics, physiological characteristics, psychological and biological components.
An individual is similar in meaning to a person and a person, but it was shown how these concepts differ. Man is a generalized concept that requires clarification due to the subtleties in unraveling the human essence. And personality is a socio-psychological category in which the qualities and characteristics of an individual’s character have found their place. This concept is much deeper than it seems at first glance; many psychoanalysts, including Freud and Jung, dealt with issues of personality, its structure and development.
The individual is always in the process of becoming, striving to achieve a self in which harmony and unity reside. An individual constantly interacts with the surrounding space and other individuals, putting masks on his face.
A person’s secret desires spur him to commit extravagant acts while in the collective unconscious. The individual is part of all humanity, where everyone strives for harmony and happiness, but not everyone achieves the final goal.
From birth, every person has a specific set of genes that distinguishes its owner from the mass of other people. But they constitute only certain development possibilities. In the process of living in society, in interaction with other people, specific human characteristics are formed: character, motivational sphere, individual qualities.
These traits help you realize your potential and achieve your life goals. The complex ambiguous structure of a human being can be reflected in the person-individual-personality system, where the path to the socialization of an individual is possible only after the formation of his personality. The highest level of development of an individual is the self-realization of all potential capabilities, which is available only with a formed individuality.
Personality is the definition of a complex psychological formation, a special property that arises at a certain stage of human development. One is not born a personality, one is born an individual. For a more accurate relationship in human nature with the concepts of individual, personality, individuality, one should consider their exact definition. The correct correlation of these concepts will form a holistic view of the structure of the concepts individual-individuality-personality-.
A person is a concept that includes the relationship of all the characteristics characteristic of people, regardless of whether a particular person has them or not.
Individual is a word of Latin origin (“individuum”), which means “indivisible.” This is a separate independent organism, a biological being, a representative of the human community. An individual is a person as a single human being, a representative of the species Homo sapiens, a product of the unity of innate and acquired, a bearer of individually unique natural properties. The concept of “individual” outlines the natural bodily existence of a person.
An individual is, first of all, a bearer of biological properties, and a “personality” is a bearer of socio-psychological ones. An individual can be considered a newborn child and an adult, a representative of a wild tribe and a person from a civilized country. When a person is born, he finds a formed system of social relations. His life in society creates such an interweaving of relationships that forms a person similar to other people. But at the same time, he is different: he thinks, acts, suffers in his own way.
The concept of “personality” is one of the most controversial and difficult to define in modern psychology. This concept is a kind of key to psychology and the resolution of its most significant problems. A single generally accepted definition of this concept still does not exist. The English word "personality" comes from the Latin "persona", which means "mask". This word denoted the mask that ancient theater actors wore during theatrical performances. From the very beginning, the concept was associated with the external social image that a person assumes when performing life roles. However, it is clear that the meaning of personality is much more complex and elusive than the external social image. To understand its fullness, it is important to highlight the following points:
- This is a deep essential characteristic of a person. Personality contains properties that distinguish one person from another: special, most striking and noticeable psychological traits. This is an internal force that acts and unites all reactions, all possible options for individual behavior.
- This is an entity that denotes stable forms of behavior. Personality properties are very persistent, consistently manifested in different situations, statements, in relation to others and in the internal attitude towards oneself. At the same time, it is a psychological entity on which new and unique forms of behavior also depend.
- It is the result of development and depends on biological heredity and social conditions. The history of the individual is the personality. It is formed through interaction with the social environment through communication and general activity.
- This is a stable psychological structure, a set of traits that dictate a certain logic of behavior. This structure constitutes the core of a person’s personality.
Personality is characterized by special psychological formations, the relationship of which gives a person the opportunity to perform actions on the basis of free, independent and responsible choice, to defend his position, and create a special level and structure of personality. Psychological formations of personality include:
- inner world;
- character;
- capabilities;
- personal values;
- morality;
- personal choice;
- independence;
- responsibility;
- goals and prospects;
- personal way of acting.
When a personality is born, or “I myself!”
The transformation of an individual into a personality occurs in early preschool age, when the relationship between objective and sensory-practical actions is formed.
This process forms the image of “I” and causes “spiritualization” of the child’s entire life activity. A manifestation of this process in the child’s behavior is the desire for complete independence, when parents increasingly hear from the child “I myself!”
In the development of a child, this means his gradual liberation from adults, the development of subjectivity. Most psychologists agree that this very moment is the birth of a personality, its true essence, a holistic “I” with its own worldview.
Can every person be called a person?
Most psychologists believe that every person can be called a personality, but they make some clarifications. It is more correct to consider a newborn child, a teenager, a person of adolescence as a growing, developing personality. They are carriers of the makings of a future personality - a future integral system of properties.
The famous Russian psychologist L.I. Bozhovich believed that a person should be called a person who reaches a certain level of mental development, which is characterized by the perception of himself as a single whole, different from others. This means that a person can be called a person who has reached such a level of mental development that makes him capable of managing his own behavior and activities, and to some extent even mental development.
“I stand on this and cannot do otherwise!”
In the “individual-individuality-personality” system, the pinnacle of human development is at the level of individuality. At the same time, a person can become an individual only after the formation of personality.
Individuality– this is the definition of a bright personality that stands out for its noticeable originality. B. G. Ananyev believed that personality is the top of the entire structure of human properties, and individuality is its depth. Individuality reflects the unity of all levels of human organization. Each person has individual characteristics, but not everyone is an individual in the sense of harmony between different properties.
The formation of personality occurs in the process of socialization through the development of social norms and rules of behavior, the formation of relationships with others.
The formation of individuality is the process of individualization of the inner world and behavior. The psychological condition for individuality is maturity. The formation of individuality occurs in the process of human self-realization.
A formed individuality is a personality that has become original and has achieved self-determination in its own reality of existence.
Individuality is a new level of spiritual life to which the personality rises in the process of deep and purposeful development. As if after a kind of exam on the integrity of his inner “I”, a person becomes an individual.
The famous psychologist A.G. Asmolov once expressed a competent idea that one is born as an individual, becomes an individual, and defends individuality.
Correlation of the concepts “person-individual-personality-individuality” in the video.
Society is a system of concrete historical social connections, a system of relationships between people. An individual person is also a certain system with a complex structure that does not fit into the spatial and physical framework of the human body.
Its stable components make up the concepts "person", "individual", "personality" And "individuality". The very obvious fact that man, on the one hand, is a part of nature, a natural being of a special kind, and on the other hand, is part of socio-practical existence, suggests that in its structure the concepts of “man”, “personality”, “individuality” "include both social and natural (biological) components, although in different proportions. The most general, generic concept is the concept "Human".Human- is a subject of socio-historical activity and culture, or, more precisely, a subject of these social relations and thereby the global historical and cultural process. By its nature, it is an integral biosocial (biopsychosocial) system, a unique creature capable of conceptual thinking, producing tools, possessing articulate speech and moral qualities.
A person is considered as an individual as a single representative of the human race. The definition of this concept does not require any specific characteristics. Individual- it is always one of many, and it is always impersonal. The concept of an individual does not capture any special or individual properties of a person, therefore it is very poor in content, but rich in scope to the same extent, because each person is an individual. The concept of an individual does not capture either the biological or social qualities of a person, although they are, of course, implied. In the question of the relationship between society and the individual, two tendencies often appear: either their dualistic opposition, or the dissolution of the individual in the system of social relations. The antinomy of the social and the individual is overcome if we keep in mind that the individual is not just a single empirical being “embedded” in society, but an individual form of existence of the same society.
The human individual, taken in the aspect of his social qualities (views, abilities, needs, interests, moral beliefs, etc.), forms the concept of personality. Personality- this is a dynamic, relatively stable integral system of intellectual, socio-cultural and moral-volitional qualities of a person, expressed in the individual characteristics of his consciousness and activity. Although the natural basis of a personality is formed by its biological characteristics, the determining factors of its development (essential basis) are not its natural qualities (for example, this or that type of higher nervous activity), but socially significant qualities.
The concept of personality usually does not include the natural individual characteristics of an individual. And this is apparently correct, because the essence of man, as we have already said, is social. But it should be borne in mind that natural individuality influences the development of personality and its perception to the extent that the biological generally influences the social in a person. A personality is all the more significant the more it accumulates a person’s sociocultural experience and, in turn, makes an individual contribution to his development. The problem of personality in philosophy is the question of what is the essence of man as a person, what is his place in the world and in history. Personality here is considered as an individual expression and subject of social relations, activities and communication of people.
The social and active essence of a person, first of all, underlies the socialization of the individual, in the process of which the formation of personality occurs. Socialization is the process of assimilation by an individual of a certain system of knowledge, norms and values, allowing him to carry out his life activities in a way adequate for a given society. Individuality- this is a unique, original way of being of a specific person as a subject of independent activity, an individual form of human social life. Personality is social in its essence, but in its mode of existence it is individual. Individuality expresses the individual’s own world, his special life path.
Natural inclinations and innate characteristics play an important role in the development of individuality. Individuality is the unity of unique and universal properties of a person, formed in the process of interaction of his qualities - general, typical (universal human natural and social characteristics), special (specific historical, formational) and individual (unique physical and spiritual-mental characteristics). With the historical development of human activity, the individualization of man and his relationships in various areas of life is increasingly developing. The formation of individuals is the greatest value, since the development of the diversity of individual abilities and talents, their competitiveness in historical terms is one of the necessary conditions for social progress.
Theories of personality.
Three main concepts of personality have emerged in the humanities. The most common in sociology is status-role concept of personality . Proponents of this theory were prominent sociologists Merton, Parsons, Mitt and others. From the point of view of this theory, personality arises and is formed only when a person is included in a social group, enters various social institutions in which he acquires status, roles associated with him, learns norms, values, attitudes, etc. At the same time, the social role is considered as a way of human behavior in accordance with his status. Thus, personality can be viewed as a function of a variety of social roles, and role behavior as a tool for adaptation to certain social situations.
Individual- a bearer of various social statuses, and a person can determine for himself which status is dominant and main for him. Statuses can be prescribed And natural. Natural do not depend on the choice of a person and even society (gender status, age). Prescribed status imposed on a person by society, acquired by a person in society and through his own efforts. The system of existing statuses of various social institutions offers a person a choice, which he makes on the basis of objective and subjective conditions. All statuses prescribe certain roles - a set of actions that a person must perform in order to comply with them. A person has a whole set of statuses and roles and this can, in some cases, lead to role conflicts - to situations where the performance of some role functions makes it impossible to perform others. Social role is related to role behavior and role expectations. The fulfillment of role expectations largely determines the possibility of role actions. Through role expectations, society influences the individual, and in this sense, the autonomy (freedom) of the individual always has a certain limit.
Rice. 10. Social status and its main types
Z. Freud's concept. The famous Austrian thinker and psychiatrist builds his reasoning about personality based on the recognition of the dominance of the animal nature in man as a biological being. Like an animal, man strives to satisfy needs that bring him a sense of satisfaction. Society imposes on a person a system of prohibitions aimed at preserving society as an integrity and establishing a certain social order. In this regard, in the structure of the human personality, he distinguishes three components: “it” or “id” - unconscious, impulsive drives of a biological order, eros as a source of activity ( libido- sexual desire); “I” or “ego” is a person’s self-awareness; “super-ego” or “super-ego” are norms imposed by society and accepted by a person.
Human self-awareness as a mediating link between “it” and “super-ego” seeks a compromise between deep drives and socially acceptable forms of their implementation.
Rice. 11. Personality structure according to Freud
Behavioral concept of personality arose and developed within the framework of psychology behaviorism. From this point of view, individual behavior consists of three types of behavior: unconditional reflex behavior, which is determined by the system of unconditioned reflexes and is little recognized by the individual; conditioned reflex behavior, which is determined by a system of conditioned reflexes formed during the life of an individual and containing his life experience (therefore, such behavior can be quite diverse depending on living conditions, and it can also be little conscious); operant behavior which represents spontaneously chosen forms of behavior, enshrined in habits and stereotypes. Operant behavior is largely individual and, as a rule, has a certain rational justification.
An individual is a separate person, as a unique combination of his innate and acquired properties.
An individual is a separate person, as a social being, who is something more than a combination of innate qualities.
Personality is a concept developed to reflect the social nature of a person, consider him as a subject of sociocultural life, define him as a bearer of an individual principle, self-revealing in the contexts of social relations, communication and objective activity. By “personality” we understand: 1) the human individual as a subject of relationships and conscious activity (“person” in the broad sense of the word) or 2) a stable system of socially significant traits that characterize the individual as a member of a particular society or community. Although these two concepts - face as the integrity of a person (Latin persona) and personality as his social and psychological appearance (Latin regsonalitas) - are terminologically quite distinguishable, they are sometimes used as synonyms.
Individuality (from the Latin individuum - indivisible, individual) - a set of characteristic features and properties that distinguish one individual from another; originality of the psyche and personality of the individual, originality, uniqueness. Individuality is manifested in traits of temperament, character, specific interests, and qualities of perceptual processes. Individuality is characterized not only by unique properties, but also by the originality of the relationships between them. The prerequisite for the formation of human individuality is, first of all, the environment where he grows up, the associations he accumulated in childhood, upbringing, peculiarities of family structure and treatment of the child. “There is an opinion that one is born as an individual, one becomes an individual, and individuality is defended.”
Man is a being who embodies the highest level of development of life, a subject of socio-historical activity. Man is a system in which the physical and mental, genetically determined and formed during life, natural, social and spiritual form an indissoluble unity.
A person acts as: an organism (endowed with a psyche); individual (which means he belongs to the genus Homo sapiens); individuality (characterizing the difference between one individual and another); subject (making changes in the surrounding world, other people and in himself); bearer of roles (sexual, professional, conventional, etc.); Self-image (system of ideas, self-esteem, level of aspirations, etc.); personality (as a systemic social quality of an individual, his personalization, reflected subjectivity in other people and in himself as another).
07. Business structure
In the structure of activity, goals and motives are first distinguished.
A goal is understood as what a person acts for, while at the same time a motive is understood as why a person acts.
Each person has his own reasons and motives for this.
Usually, human activity is determined not by any one motive and one goal, but by a whole system of goals and motives - immediate, more separate and general. It is important that a person sees not only immediate, but also distant prospects and goals; this gives strength to overcome obstacles.
Activities are assessed by the level of motivation and its direction (social or narrow personal motives). It is best when social motives acquire personal meaning.
Any type of activity is inextricably linked with movements, regardless of whether it is muscular movements of the hand when writing, working, or movement of the speech apparatus when pronouncing words. It is customary to distinguish between action and movement.
Action is an element of activity aimed at performing one simple current task. Movement is an integral part of action.
Despite the external diversity, all human movements are composed, as a rule, of three simple elements - “take”, “move”, “release” - in combination with auxiliary movements of the body, legs, and head. In different types of movements, these elements differ in their trajectory, duration, strength, speed, tempo and which parts of the body they are performed.
In terms of quality, movements are characterized by accuracy, accuracy, dexterity and coordination.
In addition to objective movements, human activity involves movements that ensure positioning of the body and maintaining posture, movement and communication. The means of communication include expressive movements (facial expressions and pantomime), semantic gestures, and finally, speech movements.
From a physiological point of view, all human movements can be divided into two groups:
– congenital (unconditioned reflex) movements;
– acquired (conditioned reflex) movements.
A person masters the vast majority of movements through life experience. Only very few movements (screaming, blinking) are innate. For example, a newborn cannot speak, read, write - these are precisely the movements that he gains with experience.
People's motor abilities vary. They are closely related to motor skills. For ballet dancers, athletes, singers, and actors, their motor abilities are brought to such a degree of perfection that they become the object of aesthetic perception.
Thus, in any activity the following components (components, stages) can be distinguished:
– goal setting (awareness of a specific task), work planning; execution, implementation of activities;
– checking the results, correcting errors, comparing the results obtained with the planned ones;
– summing up the results of activities and evaluating them.