Abstract of a 1st year student of distance learning

Novosibirsk Pedagogical College No. 3

Since ancient times, thanks to social needs, people had to distinguish and take into account the individual mental characteristics of people. Even then, people began to think about the existence of a certain spiritual principle that guided their behavior. The first theories trying to explain human behavior involved external factors, for example, a certain “Shadow” that lives in the body and leaves it after death, or Gods, who were considered responsible for all the actions of people. In later times, Greek philosophers, especially Aristotle, advanced the idea of ​​the existence of the soul. They believed that the soul is one with the body and controls thoughts and feelings, and these, in turn, are based on the experience of a lifetime. Aristotle, in his treatise “On the Soul,” laid the foundations of psychology as an independent field of knowledge. So initially psychology acted as a science of the soul.

Psychology (from the Greek psyche - soul and logos - teaching, science) is the science of the patterns of development and functioning of the psyche as a special form of life. For several centuries, psychology designated its studied phenomena with the general term “soul” and dealt with this within the framework of philosophy. Information about these phenomena has accumulated in many other areas of research, as well as in various areas of practice (especially medical and pedagogical). From the middle of the 16th century. Thanks to widespread experimental work, psychology began to separate itself from both philosophy and physiology.

Psychology, as a special scientific discipline, originated in the depths of philosophy, and therefore is in a related relationship with it. The psychological “dimension” of personality is very difficult to isolate and study without focusing on the philosophical teaching about man, the specifics of his existence (individual and social), about the nature of human consciousness and activity.

The formation of psychology as a science has a long period, but a fairly short history. Since Ancient Greece, attempts have been made to explain mental phenomena. The psyche and soul were considered as an indispensable attribute of nature: everything has a soul, and it, in turn, is the source of movement and development. The soul is a substance independent of the physical body, which influences a person’s destiny, his health, and success. This approach is called animism (from the Latin anima - soul, spirit). Subsequently, ideas about the nature of the psyche were developed by Democritus and Plato. Democritus is the founder of materialistic views on the psyche. He believed that the soul consists of atoms. He gave an explanation for the phenomenon of causality and showed that there are no uncaused phenomena. Plato, on the contrary, spoke about the primacy of ideas and the secondary nature of the material world. He believed that any knowledge is a process of recollection of the soul. The philosophy of idealism originates from Plato. The great minds of antiquity assumed that there is a connection between the psyche and the brain. They believed that the psyche depends on the environment, and distinguished stable individual signs of the human psyche.

In the Middle Ages, under conditions of total dominance of religion, there was a ban on the study of man. And yet, starting from the 15th century, the development of psychological thought continued, and it was associated with the blossoming mechanics. Descartes was the first to apply the laws of mechanics to the psyche. He compared the work of the body with technical devices. He also believed that the animal is soulless, and its behavior is a reaction to external influences. Descartes introduced the concepts of reflex and consciousness, but “torn” them. Spinoza made an attempt to overcome Descartes' dualism. He wanted to create a doctrine about man as an integral being. He identified 3 main motives for human activity: attraction, joy, sadness. Based on these motives, various emotional states appear. Locke developed the ideas of sensory sources of knowledge of the world. His doctrine is called sensationalism, because he argued that there is nothing in the mind that does not pass through the senses.

In the 18th century French philosophers Diderot, Holbach, Helvetius, Condillac first put forward ideas about the social determination of the human psyche. These ideas formed the basis of some of the provisions of modern psychology.

At the beginning of the 19th century. New approaches to the psyche have emerged. There is a promise for the formation of psychology as a science. Among the prerequisites are the development of the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system. In the second half of the 19th century. knowledge from the fields of biology, physiology, and medicine became the basis for the creation of scientific psychology.

From the perspective of scientific methodology, the history of psychology can be described as a sequence of stages in the formation of ideas about the subject, method and explanatory principles within the framework of scientific paradigms, in the sequence of their emergence, coexistence, competition and change at different stages of the formation of psychology as a single independent scientific discipline.

In the history of psychology there is a period when it was formed in the depths of other scientific disciplines, and a period when it became an independent scientific discipline.

The period of formation of psychology within the framework of other scientific disciplines is characterized by:

1. lack of independence of psychological knowledge. This knowledge was presented as one of the parts of philosophical and medical teachings. At first it was in the form of a doctrine of the soul, then - a philosophical theory of knowledge, doctrines of experience and consciousness;

2. lack of communities that would share common views on the subject and method of study;

3. speculative nature of the research. During this period, there was a complete absence of an 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 explanations for such phenomena as sleep, dreams, trance states, the effects of prohibitions (taboos), mastery of magical skills, death, etc. A common feature of primary views on mental phenomena was the invariable attribution of mystery and sacredness to them. 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.

The doctrine of the soul has its basis in ancient Greek philosophy and medicine. Science in Ancient Greece arose due to two circumstances:

1. science is a special field of human activity. It was formed independently of religion and existed separately from it;

2. the orderliness of the cosmos (all things) was considered based not on the power of a super being, but on the law. The Greeks highly revered the law, and even the supreme gods were subordinate to it.

New ideas about the soul were not religious and were not based on traditions. These ideas were entirely secular, open to all, and open to rational criticism. The purpose of constructing the doctrine of the soul was to identify the properties and laws of its existence, i.e. 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 the souls of 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 Descartes, 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. 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 divided the material mortal body and the immaterial immortal soul. Individual souls are imperfect images of the one universal world soul. Each soul has a portion of the universal spiritual experience which it recalls, and this is the essence of individual cognition. This doctrine laid the foundations of the philosophical theory of knowledge and determined the orientation of psychological knowledge towards solving philosophical, ethical, pedagogical and religious problems.

A fundamentally different idea of ​​the soul was given by Aristotle in his psychological treatise “On the Soul”. According to Aristotle, the soul is nothing more than the form of a living organic body. The soul provides purpose. It is the basis of all life manifestations and is inseparable from the body. This situation completely contradicts Plato’s teaching about the infusion of souls at birth and their expiration at death. But both philosophers agree that the soul determines the purpose of the activity of the living body. The concept of a goal, a final cause, was introduced by Aristotle to explain the determinism of the behavior of living organisms. This explanation was teleological, leading to the paradox of the influence of the future on the past, but it made it possible to introduce the activity of living organisms into the circle of explainable phenomena. Aristotle gave one of the earliest formulations of the explanatory principles of psychology - development, determinism, integrity, activity.

Plato's student, Aristotle's follower Theophrastus (372 - 287 BC) in his treatise “Characters” gave a description of 30 different characters, developing the Aristotelian idea of ​​this property of a person. His work marked the beginning of a separate line in popular psychology, which was continued in the Renaissance by Montaigne, in the Age of Enlightenment by La Bruyère, La Rochefoucauld, then by von Kniege, and in our time by Carnegie.

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 3rd – 4th centuries. AD in the works of Plotinus (205 – 270), Aurelius Augustine (354 – 430) and early Christian philosophers and theologians, the inner world of man and the possibilities of self-knowledge are highlighted as the subject of research, descriptions of the phenomena of consciousness appear for the first time, for example, its focus on the subject, highlighted by Thomas Aquinas (1226 – 1274).

From 5th to 14th centuries. in the works of Boethius (480 - 524), Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus (1256 - 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 it closer 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 characteristics. 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 soul and the irrational, sentient, bodily soul, 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 Bacon are the idea of ​​the role of society and tools in the processes of cognition. .

Ideas about the soul changed radically after René Descartes (1596 – 1650) introduced the concept of “consciousness”. It was considered as a criterion distinguishing between soul and body. Introspection, according to Descartes, is so obvious that it was used by him to provide indisputable proof of the very existence of the subject, formulated in the form of an aphorism “I think, therefore I exist.” According to the criterion of introspection, only man has a soul, and animals do not have a soul and act like mechanical devices. To explain actual bodily actions in animals and humans, Descartes introduced the idea of ​​a reflex, in which the principle of mechanistic determinism was implemented. The essence of the reflex, according to Descartes, is that external influences through the movement of animal spirits along the nerves lead to the movement of certain muscles, which represents the action of the body. Descartes' teaching formed the basis of new psychological knowledge, since it introduced the following ideas:

On the accessibility of the inner world through introspection;

About the reflex as a mechanism of behavior;

About the leading role of the external world in the determination of behavior, as well as its mechanistic interpretation;

About the psychophysical problem and its dualistic solution.

These innovations for a long time determined the course of development of the philosophical doctrine of cognition, and then served as an important factor in the formation and development of scientific paradigms in psychology.

By the middle of the 17th century. experience was accepted as the subject of the philosophical theory of knowledge. The concept of experience included ideas, sensations, feelings and the results of introspection. At this time, the idea developed and began to dominate that knowledge is based on experience, and we go, which constitute the content of consciousness, appear on the basis of experience. This point of view goes back to sensationalism, a doctrine that developed in antiquity, according to which there is nothing in the mind that was not previously in the feeling. It was the most important role of the idea of ​​experience that determined the name of an entire direction of research within the philosophy of knowledge - empirical psychology. This term, coined by Christian Wolff (1679 – 1754), emphasized the task of studying specific phenomena of mental life using introspection, in contrast to rational psychology, which was concerned with the eternal, unchanging, immortal soul. The doctrine of consciousness was formed within the framework of philosophy, and even using the results of natural science, it did not have an experimental character in the modern sense of the word.

The basis for the study of consciousness is both from Wolff’s predecessors - Hobbes (1588 - 1679) and Locke (1632 - 1704), and from thinkers who developed this teaching until the second half of the 19th century. – Condillac (1715 – 1780), Herbart (1776 – 1841), Lotze (1817 – 1881), it was precisely the method of introspection; they were united by the idea of ​​​​the special essence of the phenomena being studied, comprehended exclusively by introspection. Both external and internal experience are accessible only to introspection.

Leibniz (1646 – 1716) introduced the term “apperception” in addition to the concept of “perception”, interpreting it as a mental force that determines the purposefulness of actions, their active, conscious, voluntary nature. Thus, if the Cartesian and Lockean ideas about consciousness exhausted the entire phenomenology of states of mind, then Leibniz was the first to identify a circle of unconscious phenomena inaccessible to introspection.

During this period, associative and empirical psychology acted as branches of the philosophical theory of knowledge and therefore could not be in conflict.

It is with the development of empiricism in the philosophical doctrine of knowledge that the emergence of the name of a new discipline - psychology - is associated. The appearance of the term “psychology” is usually associated either with the theological works of the Reformation figure Philip Melanchthon (1497 – 1560), or with the designation of a special branch of literature introduced in the 16th century. philosophers Gocklenius and Kassmann. Leibniz proposed the term “pneumatology” to denote knowledge about the soul, but his student Wolf introduced the term “psychology” into widespread use.

At the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries. psychological knowledge begins to go beyond the boundaries of philosophy - into linguistics, ethnography, biology and medicine. Spencer formulated the principle of adaptation of organisms to the environment, Darwin outlined a non-teleological explanation of the purposefulness of behavior, studied instinctive behavior and emotions, showed the evolutionary origin of some forms of human behavior, Galton raised the question of the heredity of psychological characteristics, the English neurologist Jackson successfully studied the patterns of localization and distribution of mental functions provided by various brain structures. Fruitful contact with physiology and anatomy was developed during the development of Descartes' ideas about the reflex. The original speculative idea acquired a specific anatomical and physiological expression in the works of Prochazka, Bell and Magendie as a reflex arc along which nervous excitation spread from the receptor to the effector so that the sensory stimulus caused a motor response. Based on the idea of ​​a reflex, Sechenov formulated one of the main programs for transforming psychology into a scientific discipline.

During this period, the most important problem became the development of psychology’s attitude to such general scientific values, which had been formed by that time in the natural sciences, such as methods of experimental research, requirements for its generality, objectivity, and the quantitative nature of knowledge.

Thus, during the period when psychological knowledge was formed in the depths of other sciences, there was a rejection of the pre-scientific concept of the soul as an immaterial, incorporeal substance. Human consciousness and experience began to be studied on the basis of introspection. There was a need to move from philosophical research of the epistemological type to concrete scientific methods. This period can be called pre-paradigm. It is characterized by the following phenomena:

1. a lot of observations have accumulated that were easily accessible to the researcher (through self-observation);

2. It was difficult to assess logical contradictions and the degree of importance of observations. As a consequence, any results obtained were considered equally valuable and relevant;

3. scientific paradigms were set by schools in which the authority of the leader (founder) interrupted the need for strict compliance of the results with the basic requirements for scientific knowledge;

4. in the pre-paradigm period, dominant views changed very rarely. Even taking into account the fact that they were no longer viable enough.

During the period of development of psychological knowledge in the depths of other sciences, there was no formation of the necessary components of the structure of scientific knowledge - its own subject and method, institutions such as specialized laboratories, scientific periodicals that ensure communication of the scientific community, and the community of professional psychologists itself did not exist.

In the 60s In the 19th century, a new period in the development of psychological science began. It is characterized by the following features:

1. new scientific paradigms, institutions and psychological professional communities emerge;

2. within paradigms, ideas about the subject and method of research are formed;

3. the subject and method of psychology are consistent with general scientific norms and values;

4. contacts with other sciences are developing, resulting in the emergence of new paradigms and branches of psychology;

5. There is a great diversity and competition of paradigms.

The establishment of psychology as an independent scientific discipline is associated with the emergence of the first scientific programs created by Wundt and Sechenov. Wundt's program was oriented towards the general scientific experimental method. But Wundt called introspection the only direct method of psychology, since the subject of psychology is the direct experience of the person himself. The role of experiment is limited only to imparting accuracy and reliability to research results. The most important role of 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, and in 1881 he founded the scientific journal Philosophical Research. Wundt also established a permanent membership in the scientific psychological community 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 Titchener (1867 – 1927), a successor of Wundt’s ideas in the USA.

By the end of the 19th century. there was an awareness that introspection does not reveal the main aspects of the psyche. And initially because the range of phenomena studied in psychology is not limited to the phenomena of consciousness. And also introspection can be applied only to a small number of objects corresponding to the subject of psychology.

Significant changes in ideas about the subject and method of psychology were made by S. Freud (1856 - 1939), who founded the paradigm of psychoanalysis. Before psychoanalysis became a version of popular psychology, it was aimed at the study of personality and was built in accordance with such principles as the principle of determinism, the principle of development, the principle of activity, the source of which, according to Freud's teaching, lies within the subject. Psychoanalysis abandoned introspection as a research method.

A major revolution in ideas about the subject and method of psychology was made by Watson (1878 - 1958). The date of birth of behaviorism is considered to be the publication in 1913 of the article “Psychology from the point of view of a behaviorist.” According to this direction, psychology is an objective experimental branch of the natural sciences. The subject of psychology is behavior, which is understood as a set of observable muscular and glandular reactions to external stimuli. The research method is behavioral experiment.

In the period from 1910 to 1930s. In psychology, many competing incompatible and even incomparable paradigms have emerged. This was a unique situation in the history of science. No other discipline has seen so many different paradigms collide. Here is an incomplete list of the actual psychological paradigms that were formed during the open crisis: behaviorism; Tolman's cognitive behaviorism; psychoanalysis; the teachings of Freud, Jung, Adler; Gestalt psychology; Lewin's dynamic psychology; descriptive psychology of Dilthey and Spranger; Piaget's genetic psychology; cultural-historical theory of Vygotsky; various versions of activity theory: Basov, Rubinstein; reactology in the versions of Kornilov and Bekhterev; psychology of attitude Uznadze. The state of psychology in 1910 – 1930s. represented a stage of open crisis. This period continues to the present day, characterized by diversity and competition of paradigms. Thanks to many competing paradigms, we have the most complete understanding of the subject and method in psychology. In order to get out of the crisis productively, it is necessary for the psychological community to develop a common opinion about the basic scientific values, principles, subject and method of psychology.

The structure of modern psychology represents all stages of its formation. The strict requirements of research practice, as well as intra- and inter-paradigm criticism lead to the transformation of borrowed principles and concepts. Competition and interconnections of paradigms in psychology lead to its intensive development. We can highlight some main directions of development of psychological science:

1. development of already existing paradigms. For example, psychosemantics appeared on the basis of Leontiev’s theory of activity. The subject of her research is the genesis, structure and functioning of the system of meanings in the individual consciousness. It uses modern techniques and does not need the method of introspection;

2. emergence of new paradigms. For example, in the 1950s - 1960s. humanistic psychology appeared. The subject of its study is the holistic personality of a person;

3. the formation of different versions of explanatory principles, ideas about the subject and method of psychology. In the 1960s - 1980s. Based on the principle of integrity, the principle of consistency was formulated. Different paradigms explore different aspects of this principle;

4. the emergence of new explanatory principles. For example, the principle of subjectivity most fully outlines the subject and method of psychology, and now it is going through a stage of intensive development;

5. expansion of the most developed paradigms to other branches of psychology. For example, the scope of research in cognitive psychology has expanded significantly. This direction began to develop in the 1950s. in opposition to the dominance of behaviorism;

6. development of connections between psychology and other sciences. This process leads to the emergence of new branches of psychology. Thus, in contact between psychology and linguistics, psycholinguistics was formed, with neurology, neurophysiology and psychophysiology - neuropsychology, with population genetics - genetic psychophysiology.

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Like, it originates back thousands of years. The term "psychology" (from the Greek. psyche- soul, logos- doctrine, science) means “teaching about the soul.” Psychological knowledge has developed historically - some ideas were replaced by others.

Studying the history of psychology, of course, cannot be reduced to a simple listing of the problems, ideas and ideas of various psychological schools. In order to understand them, you need to understand their internal connection, the unified logic of the formation of psychology as a science.

Psychology as a doctrine about the human soul is always conditioned by anthropology, the doctrine of man in his integrity. Research, hypotheses, and conclusions of psychology, no matter how abstract and particular they may seem, imply a certain understanding of the essence of a person and are guided by one or another image of him. In turn, the doctrine of man fits into the general picture of the world, formed on the basis of a synthesis of knowledge and ideological attitudes of the historical era. Therefore, the history of the formation and development of psychological knowledge is seen as a completely logical process associated with a change in the understanding of the essence of man and with the formation on this basis of new approaches to explaining his psyche.

History of the formation and development of psychology

Mythological ideas about the soul

Humanity began with mythological picture of the world. Psychology owes its name and first definition to Greek mythology, according to which Eros, the immortal god of love, fell in love with a beautiful mortal woman, Psyche. The love of Eros and Psyche was so strong that Eros managed to convince Zeus to turn Psyche into a goddess, making her immortal. Thus, the lovers were united forever. For the Greeks, this myth was a classic image of true love as the highest realization of the human soul. Therefore, Psycho - a mortal who has gained immortality - has become a symbol of a soul searching for its ideal. At the same time, in this beautiful legend about the difficult path of Eros and Psyche towards each other, a deep thought is discerned about the difficulty of a person mastering his spiritual nature, his mind and feelings.

The ancient Greeks initially understood the close connection of the soul with its physical basis. The same understanding of this connection can be seen in the Russian words: “soul”, “spirit” and “breathe”, “air”. Already in ancient times, the concept of the soul united into a single complex those inherent in external nature (air), the body (breath) and an entity independent of the body that controls life processes (the spirit of life).

In early ideas, the soul was endowed with the ability to leave the body while a person sleeps and live its own life in his dreams. It was believed that at the moment of death a person leaves the body forever, flying out through the mouth. The doctrine of transmigration of souls is one of the most ancient. It was represented not only in Ancient India, but also in Ancient Greece, especially in the philosophy of Pythagoras and Plato.

The mythological picture of the world, where bodies are inhabited by souls (their “doubles” or ghosts), and life depends on the arbitrariness of the gods, has reigned in the public consciousness for centuries.

Psychological knowledge in the ancient period

Psychology how rational knowledge of the human soul originated in antiquity in the depths on the basis of the geocentric picture of the world, placing man at the center of the universe.

Ancient philosophy adopted the concept of the soul from previous mythology. Almost all ancient philosophers tried to express with the help of the concept of soul the most important essential principle of living nature, considering it as the cause of life and knowledge.

For the first time, man, his inner spiritual world, becomes the center of philosophical reflection in Socrates (469-399 BC). Unlike his predecessors, who dealt primarily with problems of nature, Socrates focused on the inner world of man, his beliefs and values, and the ability to act as a rational being. Socrates assigned the main role in the human psyche to mental activity, which was studied in the process of dialogic communication. After his research, the understanding of the soul was filled with ideas such as “good”, “justice”, “beautiful”, etc., which physical nature does not know.

The world of these ideas became the core of the doctrine of the soul of the brilliant student of Socrates - Plato (427-347 BC).

Plato developed the doctrine of immortal soul, inhabiting the mortal body, leaving it after death and returning to the eternal supersensible world of ideas. The main thing for Plato is not in the doctrine of immortality and transmigration of the soul, but in studying the content of its activities(in modern terminology in the study of mental activity). He showed that the internal activity of souls gives knowledge about reality of supersensible existence, the eternal world of ideas. How does a soul located in mortal flesh join the eternal world of ideas? All knowledge, according to Plato, is memory. With appropriate effort and preparation, the soul can remember what it happened to contemplate before its earthly birth. He taught that man is “not an earthly plant, but a heavenly plant.”

Plato was the first to identify such a form of mental activity as inner speech: the soul reflects, asks itself, answers, affirms and denies. He was the first to try to reveal the internal structure of the soul, isolating its threefold composition: the highest part - the rational principle, the middle - the volitional principle and the lower part of the soul - the sensual principle. The rational part of the soul is called upon to harmonize the lower and higher motives and impulses coming from different parts of the soul. Such problems as the conflict of motives were introduced into the field of study of the soul, and the role of reason in resolving it was considered.

Disciple - (384-322 BC), arguing with his teacher, returned the soul from the supersensible to the sensory world. He put forward the concept of the soul as functions of a living organism,, and not some independent entity. The soul, according to Aristotle, is a form, a way of organizing a living body: “The soul is the essence of being and the form not of a body like an ax, but of a natural body that in itself has the beginning of movement and rest.”

Aristotle identified different levels of activity abilities in the body. These levels of abilities constitute a hierarchy of levels of soul development.

Aristotle distinguishes three types of soul: vegetable, animal And reasonable. Two of them belong to physical psychology, since they cannot exist without matter, the third is metaphysical, i.e. the mind exists separately and independently of the physical body as the divine mind.

Aristotle was the first to introduce into psychology the idea of ​​development from the lower levels of the soul to its highest forms. Moreover, each person, in the process of transforming from a baby into an adult being, goes through the stages from plant to animal, and from there to the rational soul. According to Aristotle, the soul, or "psyche", is engine allowing the body to realize itself. The psyche center is located in the heart, where impressions transmitted from the senses are received.

When characterizing a person, Aristotle put first place knowledge, thinking and wisdom. This attitude towards man, inherent not only to Aristotle, but also to antiquity as a whole, was largely revised within the framework of medieval psychology.

Psychology in the Middle Ages

When studying the development of psychological knowledge in the Middle Ages, a number of circumstances must be taken into account.

Psychology did not exist as an independent field of research during the Middle Ages. Psychological knowledge was included in religious anthropology (the study of man).

Psychological knowledge of the Middle Ages was based on religious anthropology, which was especially deeply developed by Christianity, especially by such “church fathers” as John Chrysostom (347-407), Augustine Aurelius (354-430), Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), etc.

Christian anthropology comes from theocentric picture world and the basic principle of Christian dogma - the principle of creationism, i.e. creation of the world by the Divine mind.

It is very difficult for modern scientifically oriented thinking to understand the teachings of the Holy Fathers, which are predominantly symbolic character.

Man in the teachings of the Holy Fathers appears as central being in the universe, the highest level in the hierarchical ladder of technology, those. created by God peace.

Man is the center of the Universe. This idea was also known to ancient philosophy, which viewed man as a “microcosm,” a small world that embraces the entire universe.

Christian anthropology did not abandon the idea of ​​the “microcosm,” but the Holy Fathers significantly changed its meaning and content.

The “Church Fathers” believed that human nature is connected with all the main spheres of existence. With his body, man is connected to the earth: “And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul,” says the Bible. Through feelings, a person is connected with the material world, with his soul - with the spiritual world, the rational part of which is capable of ascending to the Creator himself.

Man, the holy fathers teach, is dual in nature: one of his components is external, bodily, and the other is internal, spiritual. The soul of a person, feeding the body with which it was created together, is located everywhere in the body, and is not concentrated in one place. The Holy Fathers introduce a distinction between “internal” and “external” man: “God created inner man and blinded external; The flesh was molded, but the soul was created.”* In modern language, the outer man is a natural phenomenon, and the inner man is a supernatural phenomenon, something mysterious, unknowable, divine.

In contrast to the intuitive-symbolic, spiritual-experiential way of understanding man in Eastern Christianity, Western Christianity followed the path rational comprehension of God, the world and man, having developed such a specific type of thinking as scholasticism(of course, along with scholasticism, irrationalistic mystical teachings also existed in Western Christianity, but they did not determine the spiritual climate of the era). The appeal to rationality ultimately led to the transition of Western civilization in modern times from a theocentric to an anthropocentric picture of the world.

Psychological thought of the Renaissance and Modern times

Humanistic movement that originated in Italy in the 15th century. and spread in Europe in the 16th century, it was called “Renaissance”. Reviving ancient humanistic culture, this era contributed to the liberation of all sciences and arts from dogmas and restrictions imposed on them by medieval religious ideas. As a result, the natural, biological and medical sciences began to develop quite actively and made a significant step forward. Movement began in the direction of forming psychological knowledge into an independent science.

Enormous influence on psychological thought of the 17th-18th centuries. provided by mechanics, who became the leader of the natural sciences. Mechanical picture of nature determined a new era in the development of European psychology.

The beginning of the mechanical approach to explaining mental phenomena and reducing them to physiology was laid by the French philosopher, mathematician and natural scientist R. Descartes (1596-1650), who was the first to develop a model of the body as an automaton or system that works like artificial mechanisms in accordance with the laws of mechanics. Thus, a living organism, which was previously considered as animate, i.e. gifted and controlled by the soul, he was freed from its determining influence and interference.

R. Descartes introduced the concept reflex, which later became fundamental for physiology and psychology. In accordance with the Cartesian reflex scheme, an external impulse was transmitted to the brain, from where a response occurred that set the muscles in motion. They were given an explanation of behavior as a purely reflexive phenomenon without reference to the soul as the force driving the body. Descartes hoped that over time, not only simple movements - such as the protective reaction of the pupil to light or the hand to fire - but also the most complex behavioral acts could be explained by the physiological mechanics he discovered.

Before Descartes, it was believed for centuries that all activity in the perception and processing of mental material is carried out by the soul. He also proved that the bodily structure is capable of successfully coping with this task even without it. What are the functions of the soul?

R. Descartes considered the soul as a substance, i.e. an entity that does not depend on anything else. The soul was defined by him according to a single sign - the direct awareness of its phenomena. Its purpose was the subject’s knowledge of his own acts and states, invisible to anyone else. Thus, there was a turn in the concept of “soul”, which became the basis for the next stage in the history of constructing the subject of psychology. From now on this subject becomes consciousness.

Descartes, based on a mechanistic approach, posed a theoretical question about the interaction of “soul and body,” which later became the subject of discussion for many scientists.

Another attempt to build a psychological doctrine of man as an integral being was made by one of the first opponents of R. Descartes - the Dutch thinker B. Spinoza (1632-1677), who considered the whole variety of human feelings (affects) as motivating forces of human behavior. He substantiated the general scientific principle of determinism, which is important for understanding mental phenomena—universal causality and natural scientific explainability of any phenomena. It entered science in the form of the following statement: “The order and connection of ideas are the same as the order and connection of things.”

Nevertheless, Spinoza’s contemporary, the German philosopher and mathematician G.V. Leibniz (1646-1716) considered the relationship between spiritual and physical phenomena based on psychophysiological parallelism, i.e. their independent and parallel coexistence. He considered the dependence of mental phenomena on physical phenomena to be an illusion. The soul and body act independently, but there is a pre-established harmony between them based on the Divine mind. The doctrine of psychophysiological parallelism found many supporters in the formative years of psychology as a science, but currently belongs to history.

Another idea by G.V. Leibniz that each of the countless number of monads (from the Greek. monos- unified), of which the world consists, is “psychic” and endowed with the ability to perceive everything that happens in the Universe, has found unexpected empirical confirmation in some modern concepts of consciousness.

It should also be noted that G.V. Leibniz introduced the concept "unconscious" into the psychological thought of modern times, designating unconscious perceptions as “small perceptions.” Awareness of perceptions becomes possible due to the fact that a special mental act is added to simple perception (perception) - apperception, which includes memory and attention. Leibniz's ideas significantly changed and expanded the idea of ​​the psyche. His concepts of the unconscious psyche, small perceptions and apperception have become firmly established in scientific psychological knowledge.

Another direction in the development of modern European psychology is associated with the English thinker T. Hobbes (1588-1679), who completely rejected the soul as a special entity and believed that there is nothing in the world except material bodies moving according to the laws of mechanics. He brought mental phenomena under the influence of mechanical laws. T. Hobbes believed that sensations are a direct result of the influence of material objects on the body. According to the law of inertia, discovered by G. Galileo, ideas appear from sensations in the form of their weakened trace. They form a sequence of thoughts in the same order in which sensations change. This connection was later called associations. T. Hobbes proclaimed reason to be a product of association, which has its source in the direct influence of the material world on the senses.

Before Hobbes, rationalism reigned in psychological teachings (from lat. pationalis- reasonable). Beginning with him, experience was taken as the basis of knowledge. T. Hobbes contrasted rationalism with empiricism (from the Greek. empeiria- experience) from which it arose empirical psychology.

In the development of this direction, a prominent role belonged to T. Hobbes’ compatriot, J. Locke (1632-1704), who identified two sources in the experience itself: feeling And reflection, by which I meant the internal perception of the activity of our mind. Concept reflections firmly established in psychology. The name of Locke is also associated with such a method of psychological knowledge as introspection, i.e. internal introspection of ideas, images, perceptions, feelings as they appear to the “inner gaze” of the subject observing him.

Beginning with J. Locke, phenomena become the subject of psychology consciousness, which give rise to two experiences - external emanating from the senses, and interior, accumulated by the individual's own mind. Under the sign of this picture of consciousness, the psychological concepts of subsequent decades took shape.

The origins of psychology as a science

At the beginning of the 19th century. new approaches to the psyche began to be developed, based not on mechanics, but on physiology, which turned the organism into an object experimental study. Physiology translated the speculative views of the previous era into the language of experience and studied the dependence of mental functions on the structure of the sense organs and the brain.

The discovery of differences between the sensory (sensory) and motor (motor) nerve pathways leading to the spinal cord made it possible to explain the mechanism of nerve communication as "reflex arc" the excitation of one shoulder of which naturally and irreversibly activates the other shoulder, generating a muscle reaction. This discovery proved the dependence of the body’s functions regarding its behavior in the external environment on the bodily substrate, which was perceived as refutation of the doctrine of the soul as a special incorporeal entity.

Studying the effect of stimuli on the nerve endings of the sensory organs, the German physiologist G.E. Müller (1850-1934) formulated the position that nervous tissue does not possess any other energy than that known to physics. This provision was elevated to the rank of law, as a result of which mental processes moved into the same row as the nervous tissue that gives rise to them, visible under a microscope and dissected with a scalpel. However, the main thing remained unclear - how the miracle of generating psychic phenomena was accomplished.

German physiologist E.G. Weber (1795-1878) determined the relationship between the continuum of sensations and the continuum of physical stimuli that cause them. During the experiments, it was discovered that there is a very definite (different for different sense organs) relationship between the initial stimulus and the subsequent one, at which the subject begins to notice that the sensation has become different.

The foundations of psychophysics as a scientific discipline were laid by the German scientist G. Fechner (1801 - 1887). Psychophysics, without touching on the issue of the causes of mental phenomena and their material substrate, identified empirical dependencies based on the introduction of experiment and quantitative research methods.

The work of physiologists on the study of sensory organs and movements prepared a new psychology, different from traditional psychology, which is closely related to philosophy. The ground was created for the separation of psychology from both physiology and philosophy as a separate scientific discipline.

At the end of the 19th century. Almost simultaneously, several programs for building psychology as an independent discipline emerged.

The greatest success fell to the lot of W. Wundt (1832-1920), a German scientist who came to psychology from physiology and was the first to begin collecting and combining into a new discipline what had been created by various researchers. Calling this discipline physiological psychology, Wundt began studying problems borrowed from physiologists - the study of sensations, reaction times, associations, psychophysics.

Having organized the first psychological institute in Leipzig in 1875, V. Wundt decided to study the content and structure of consciousness on a scientific basis by isolating the simplest structures in internal experience, laying the foundation structuralist approach to consciousness. Consciousness was divided into psychic elements(sensations, images), which became the subject of study.

“Direct experience” was recognized as a unique subject of psychology, not studied by any other discipline. The main method is introspection, the essence of which was the subject’s observation of the processes in his consciousness.

The method of experimental introspection has significant drawbacks, which very quickly led to the abandonment of the program for the study of consciousness proposed by W. Wundt. The disadvantage of the introspection method for building scientific psychology is its subjectivity: each subject describes his experiences and sensations that do not coincide with the feelings of another subject. The main thing is that consciousness is not composed of some frozen elements, but is in the process of development and constant change.

By the end of the 19th century. The enthusiasm that Wundt's program once aroused has dried up, and the understanding of the subject of psychology inherent in it has forever lost credibility. Many of Wundt's students broke with him and took a different path. Currently, W. Wundt’s contribution is seen in the fact that he showed which path psychology should not take, since scientific knowledge develops not only by confirming hypotheses and facts, but also by refuting them.

Realizing the failure of the first attempts to build a scientific psychology, the German philosopher V. Dilypey (1833-1911) put forward the idea of ​​“two hesychologies”: experimental, related in its method to the natural sciences, and another psychology, which, instead of the experimental study of the psyche, deals with the interpretation of the manifestation of the human spirit. He separated the study of connections between mental phenomena and the physical life of the organism from their connections with the history of cultural values. He called the first psychology explanatory, second - understanding.

Western psychology in the 20th century

In Western psychology of the 20th century. It is customary to distinguish three main schools, or, using the terminology of the American psychologist L. Maslow (1908-1970), three forces: behaviorism, psychoanalysis And humanistic psychology. In recent decades, the fourth direction of Western psychology has been very intensively developed - transpersonal psychology.

Historically the first was behaviorism, which got its name from his proclaimed understanding of the subject of psychology - behavior (from the English. behavior - behavior).

The founder of behaviorism in Western psychology is considered to be the American animal psychologist J. Watson (1878-1958), since it was he who, in the article “Psychology as the Behaviorist Sees It,” published in 1913, called for the creation of a new psychology, stating the fact that After half a century of its existence as an experimental discipline, psychology failed to take its rightful place among the natural sciences. Watson saw the reason for this in a false understanding of the subject and methods of psychological research. The subject of psychology, according to J. Watson, should not be consciousness, but behavior.

The subjective method of internal self-observation should accordingly be replaced objective methods external observation of behavior.

Ten years after Watson's seminal article, behaviorism began to dominate almost all of American psychology. The fact is that the pragmatic focus of research on mental activity in the United States was determined by demands from the economy, and later - from the means of mass communications.

Behaviorism included the teachings of I.P. Pavlov (1849-1936) about the conditioned reflex and began to consider human behavior from the point of view of conditioned reflexes formed under the influence of the social environment.

J. Watson's original scheme, explaining behavioral acts as a reaction to presented stimuli, was further improved by E. Tolman (1886-1959) by introducing an intermediary link between a stimulus from the environment and the individual's reaction in the form of the individual's goals, his expectations, hypotheses, and cognitive map peace, etc. The introduction of an intermediate link somewhat complicated the scheme, but did not change its essence. The general approach of behaviorism to man as animal,distinguished by verbal behavior, remained unchanged.

In the work of the American behaviorist B. Skinner (1904-1990) “Beyond Freedom and Dignity,” the concepts of freedom, dignity, responsibility, and morality are considered from the perspective of behaviorism as derivatives of the “system of incentives,” “reinforcement programs” and are assessed as a “useless shadow in human life."

Psychoanalysis, developed by Z. Freud (1856-1939), had the strongest influence on Western culture. Psychoanalysis introduced into Western European and American culture the general concepts of “psychology of the unconscious”, ideas about the irrational aspects of human activity, conflict and fragmentation of the inner world of the individual, the “repressiveness” of culture and society, etc. and so on. Unlike behaviorists, psychoanalysts began to study consciousness, build hypotheses about the inner world of the individual, and introduce new terms that pretend to be scientific, but cannot be empirically verified.

In psychological literature, including educational literature, the merit of 3. Freud is seen in his appeal to the deep structures of the psyche, to the unconscious. Pre-Freudian psychology took a normal, physically and mentally healthy person as an object of study and paid main attention to the phenomenon of consciousness. Freud, having begun to explore as a psychiatrist the inner mental world of neurotic individuals, developed a very simplified a model of the psyche consisting of three parts - conscious, unconscious and superconscious. In this model 3. Freud did not discover the unconscious, since the phenomenon of the unconscious has been known since antiquity, but swapped consciousness and the unconscious: the unconscious is a central component of the psyche, upon which consciousness is built. He interpreted the unconscious itself as a sphere of instincts and drives, the main of which is the sexual instinct.

The theoretical model of the psyche, developed in relation to the psyche of sick individuals with neurotic reactions, was given the status of a general theoretical model that explains the functioning of the psyche in general.

Despite the obvious difference and, it would seem, even the opposition of approaches, behaviorism and psychoanalysis are similar to each other - both of these directions built psychological ideas without resorting to spiritual realities. It is not for nothing that representatives of humanistic psychology came to the conclusion that both main schools - behaviorism and psychoanalysis - did not see the specifically human in man, ignored the real problems of human life - problems of goodness, love, justice, as well as the role of morality, philosophy, religion and were nothing else, as “slander of a person.” All these real problems are seen as deriving from basic instincts or social relations and communications.

“Western psychology of the 20th century,” as S. Grof writes, “created a very negative image of man - some kind of biological machine with instinctive impulses of an animal nature.”

Humanistic psychology represented by L. Maslow (1908-1970), K. Rogers (1902-1987). V. Frankl (b. 1905) and others set themselves the task of introducing real problems into the field of psychological research. Representatives of humanistic psychology considered a healthy creative personality to be the subject of psychological research. The humanistic orientation was expressed in the fact that love, creative growth, higher values, and meaning were considered as basic human needs.

The humanistic approach moves further away from scientific psychology than any other, assigning the main role to a person’s personal experience. According to humanists, the individual is capable of self-esteem and can independently find the path to the flourishing of his personality.

Along with the humanistic trend in psychology, dissatisfaction with attempts to build psychology on the ideological basis of natural scientific materialism is expressed by transpersonal psychology, which proclaims the need for a transition to a new paradigm of thinking.

The first representative of transpersonal orientation in psychology is considered to be the Swiss psychologist K.G. Jung (1875-1961), although Jung himself called his psychology not transpersonal, but analytical. Attribution of K.G. Jung to the forerunners of transpersonal psychology is carried out on the basis that he considered it possible for a person to overcome the narrow boundaries of his “I” and personal unconscious, and connect with the higher “I”, the higher mind, commensurate with all of humanity and the cosmos.

Jung shared the views of Z. Freud until 1913, when he published a programmatic article in which he showed that Freud completely wrongfully reduced all human activity to the biologically inherited sexual instinct, while human instincts are not biological, but entirely symbolic in nature. K.G. Jung did not ignore the unconscious, but, paying great attention to its dynamics, gave a new interpretation, the essence of which is that the unconscious is not a psychobiological dump of rejected instinctive tendencies, repressed memories and subconscious prohibitions, but a creative, reasonable principle that connects a person with all of humanity, with nature and space. Along with the individual unconscious, there is also a collective unconscious, which, being superpersonal and transpersonal in nature, forms the universal basis of the mental life of every person. It was this idea of ​​Jung that was developed in transpersonal psychology.

American psychologist, founder of transpersonal psychology S. Grof states that a worldview based on natural scientific materialism, which has long been outdated and has become an anachronism for theoretical physics of the 20th century, still continues to be considered scientific in psychology, to the detriment of its future development. “Scientific” psychology cannot explain the spiritual practice of healing, clairvoyance, the presence of paranormal abilities in individuals and entire social groups, conscious control of internal states, etc.

An atheistic, mechanistic and materialistic approach to the world and existence, S. Grof believes, reflects a deep alienation from the core of existence, a lack of true understanding of oneself and psychological suppression of the transpersonal spheres of one’s own psyche. This means, according to the views of supporters of transpersonal psychology, that a person identifies himself with only one partial aspect of his nature - with the bodily “I” and hylotropic (i.e., associated with the material structure of the brain) consciousness.

Such a truncated attitude towards oneself and one’s own existence is ultimately fraught with a feeling of the futility of life, alienation from the cosmic process, as well as insatiable needs, competitiveness, vanity, which no achievement can satisfy. On a collective scale, such a human condition leads to alienation from nature, to an orientation towards “limitless growth” and a fixation on the objective and quantitative parameters of existence. As experience shows, this way of being in the world is extremely destructive both on a personal and collective level.

Transpersonal psychology views a person as a cosmic and spiritual being, inextricably linked with all of humanity and the Universe, with the ability to access the global information field.

In the last decade, many works on transpersonal psychology have been published, and in textbooks and teaching aids this direction is presented as the latest achievement in the development of psychological thought without any analysis of the consequences of the methods used in the study of the psyche. The methods of transpersonal psychology, which claims to understand the cosmic dimension of man, however, are not associated with the concepts of morality. These methods are aimed at the formation and transformation of special, altered human states through the dosed use of drugs, various types of hypnosis, hyperventilation, etc.

There is no doubt that the research and practice of transpersonal psychology have discovered the connection between man and the cosmos, the emergence of human consciousness beyond ordinary barriers, overcoming the limitations of space and time during transpersonal experiences, proved the very existence of the spiritual sphere, and much more.

But in general, this way of studying the human psyche seems very disastrous and dangerous. The methods of transpersonal psychology are designed to break down the natural defenses and penetrate into the spiritual space of the individual. Transpersonal experiences occur when a person is intoxicated by a drug, hypnosis, or increased breathing and do not lead to spiritual purification and spiritual growth.

Formation and development of domestic psychology

The pioneer of psychology as a science, the subject of which is not the soul or even consciousness, but mentally regulated behavior, can rightfully be considered I.M. Sechenov (1829-1905), and not the American J. Watson, since the former, back in 1863, in his treatise “Reflexes of the Brain” came to the conclusion that self-regulation of behavior the body through signals is the subject of psychological research. Later I.M. Sechenov began to define psychology as the science of the origin of mental activity, which included perception, memory, and thinking. He believed that mental activity is built according to the type of reflex and includes, following the perception of the environment and its processing in the brain, the response of the motor apparatus. In the works of Sechenov, for the first time in the history of psychology, the subject of this science began to cover not only the phenomena and processes of consciousness and the unconscious psyche, but also the entire cycle of interaction of the organism with the world, including its external bodily actions. Therefore, for psychology, according to I.M. Sechenov, the only reliable method is the objective, and not the subjective (introspective) method.

Sechenov's ideas influenced world science, but they were mainly developed in Russia in the teachings I.P. Pavlova(1849-1936) and V.M. Bekhterev(1857-1927), whose works approved the priority of the reflexological approach.

During the Soviet period of Russian history, in the first 15-20 years of Soviet power, an inexplicable, at first glance, phenomenon emerged - an unprecedented rise in a number of scientific fields - physics, mathematics, biology, linguistics, including psychology. For example, in 1929 alone, about 600 book titles on psychology were published in the country. New directions are emerging: in the field of educational psychology - pedology, in the field of psychology of work activity - psychotechnics, brilliant work has been carried out in defectology, forensic psychology, and zoopsychology.

In the 30s Psychology was dealt a crushing blow by the resolutions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and almost all basic psychological concepts and psychological research outside the framework of Marxist principles were prohibited. Historically, psychology itself has fostered this attitude toward psychic research. Psychologists - first in theoretical studies and within the walls of laboratories - seemed to relegate to the background, and then completely denied a person’s right to an immortal soul and spiritual life. Then the theorists were replaced by practitioners and began to treat people as soulless objects. This arrival was not accidental, but prepared by previous development, in which psychology also played a role.

By the end of the 50s - early 60s. A situation arose when psychology was assigned the role of a section in the physiology of higher nervous activity and a complex of psychological knowledge in Marxist-Leninist philosophy. Psychology was understood as a science that studies the psyche, the patterns of its appearance and development. The understanding of the psyche was based on Lenin's theory of reflection. The psyche was defined as the property of highly organized matter - the brain - to reflect reality in the form of mental images. Mental reflection was considered as an ideal form of material existence. The only possible ideological basis for psychology was dialectical materialism. The reality of the spiritual as an independent entity was not recognized.

Even under these conditions, Soviet psychologists such as S.L. Rubinstein (1889-1960), L.S. Vygotsky (1896-1934), L.N. Leontyev (1903-1979), DN. Uznadze (1886-1950), A.R. Luria (1902-1977), made a significant contribution to world psychology.

In the post-Soviet era, new opportunities opened up for Russian psychology and new problems arose. The development of domestic psychology in modern conditions no longer corresponded to the rigid dogmas of dialectical-materialist philosophy, which, of course, provides freedom of creative search.

Currently, there are several orientations in Russian psychology.

Marxist-oriented psychology. Although this orientation has ceased to be dominant, unique and obligatory, for many years it has formed the paradigms of thinking that determine psychological research.

Western-oriented psychology represents assimilation, adaptation, imitation of Western trends in psychology, which were rejected by the previous regime. Usually, productive ideas do not arise along the paths of imitation. In addition, the main currents of Western psychology reflect the psyche of a Western European person, and not a Russian, Chinese, Indian, etc. Since there is no universal psyche, the theoretical schemes and models of Western psychology do not have universality.

Spiritually oriented psychology, aimed at restoring the “vertical of the human soul”, is represented by the names of psychologists B.S. Bratusya, B. Nichiporova, F.E. Vasilyuk, V.I. Slobodchikova, V.P. Zinchenko and V.D. Shadrikova. Spiritually oriented psychology is based on traditional spiritual values ​​and recognition of the reality of spiritual existence.

The emergence and development of psychology as a science. The main stages in the development of psychology as a science.

The formation of psychology as a science was closely connected with the development of philosophy and natural sciences. The first ideas about the psyche developed in primitive society. Even in ancient times, people drew attention to the fact that there are real phenomena, material (objects, nature, people) and non-material (images of people and objects, memories, experiences) - mysterious, but existing independently, regardless of the surrounding world.

The greatest philosopher of antiquity Democritus (V-IV centuries BC) asserts that the soul also consists of atoms, and with the death of the body the soul also dies. The soul is the driving principle, it is material. A different idea of ​​the essence of the soul develops Plato (428-348 BC). Plato argues that everything is based on ideas that exist in themselves. Ideas form their own world; the world of matter opposes it. Between them, the world soul acts as an intermediary. According to Plato, a person does not so much know as remember what the soul already knew. The soul is immortal, Plato believed. The first work dedicated to the soul was created Aristotle (384-322 BC). His treatise “On the Soul” is considered the first psychological work.

By the beginning of the 17th century, the formation of psychological views during this period was associated with the activities of a number of scientists: Rene Descartes (1595-1650), B. Spinoza (1632-1677), D. Locke (1632-1704), etc.

The evolutionary teachings of Charles Darwin (1809-1882) played a major role in this regard. A number of fundamental studies appear on the general patterns of development of sensitivity and specifically on the work of various sense organs (I. Müller, E. Weber, G. Helmholtz, etc.). The work of Weber, devoted to the question of the relationship between the increase in irritation and sensation, acquired particular significance for the development of experimental psychology. These studies were then continued, generalized and subjected to mathematical processing by G. Fechner. Thus the foundations of experimental psychophysical research were laid. The experiment begins to very quickly take root in the study of central psychological problems. In 1879, the first psychological experimental laboratory opened in Germany (W. Wund), in Russia (V. Bekhterev).

1879 is the conventional date of the origin of psychology as a science (system).

V. Wulf is the founder of psychology.

First stage. Antiquity - the subject of psychology is the soul. During this period, two main directions emerged in understanding the nature of the soul: idealistic and materialistic. The founders of the idealistic movement were Socrates and Plato (the soul is an immortal principle). The materialistic direction in understanding the soul was developed by Democritus, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes. Aristotle is considered the founder of psychology, who in his work “On the Soul” summarized the knowledge available at that time about the soul, understanding by this the way of organizing a living body, he identified three types of soul: the vegetable soul, the animal soul and the rational soul.

Second stage XVII - XIX centuries. – the subject of psychology becomes consciousness. Consciousness was understood as a person’s ability to feel, remember, and think. In the 17th century, the works of R. Descartes played a major role in changing the subject of psychology. He was the first to identify a psychophysical problem, i.e. relationship between soul and body. He introduced the concept of consciousness and reflex.

19th century – Wilhelm Wundt. Wundt is considered the founder of experimental psychology. Wundt and his colleagues identified 3 main components of consciousness: sensations, images and feelings.

The third stage 1910-1920 – USA – behaviorism emerges. J. Watson is considered the founder of behaviorism. Behavior becomes the subject of psychology. Classical behaviorism denied the role of consciousness in behavior. It was believed that in the formation of behavioral skills consciousness does not play any role, and skills are formed through mechanical repeated repetition of the same action. Classical behaviorism does not deny the existence of consciousness.

The fourth stage 1910 - 1920 - Europe. The subject of psychology is the psyche. Various psychological trends and schools are emerging.

Basic concepts in foreign psychology: behaviorism, depth psychology, Gestal psychology, humanistic psychology, cognitive psychology, genetic psychology.

Behaviorism(English behavior - behavior) is one of the directions in foreign psychology, the program of which was proclaimed in 1913 by the American researcher John Watson, who believed that the subject of study should not be consciousness, but behavior. By studying the direct connections between stimuli and reactions (reflexes), behaviorism attracted the attention of psychologists to the study of skills, learning, and experience; opposed associationism and psychoanalysis. Behaviorists used two main directions for studying behavior - conducting experiments in laboratory, artificially created and controlled conditions, and observing subjects in their natural habitat.

Depth psychology (Freudianism) is a group of trends in modern foreign psychology, focused primarily on unconscious mechanisms psyche.

Gestalt psychology- a direction in foreign psychology, based on the integrity of the human psyche, not reducible to the simplest forms. Gestalt psychology studies the mental activity of the subject, built on the basis of the perception of the surrounding world in the form of gestalts. Gestalt (German Gestalt - form, image, structure) is the spatially visual form of perceived objects. One striking example of this, according to Keller, is a melody, which is recognizable even if it is transposed to other elements. When we hear a melody for the second time, we recognize it thanks to memory. But if the composition of its elements changes, we will still recognize the melody as the same.

Cognitive psychology- a branch of psychology that studies cognitive, i.e. cognitive, processes of human consciousness. Research in this area is usually related to issues of memory, attention, feelings, presentation of information, logical thinking, imagination, and decision-making ability.

Humanistic psychology- a number of directions in modern psychology that are focused primarily on the study of human semantic structures. In humanistic psychology, the main subjects of analysis are: highest values, self-actualization of the individual, creativity, love, freedom, responsibility, autonomy, mental health, interpersonal communication. Humanistic psychology emerged as an independent movement in the early 60s of the 20th century as a protest against the dominance of behaviorism and psychoanalysis in the United States, receiving the name of the third force.

Genetic psychology–. The subject of her research is the development and origin of intelligence, the formation of concepts: time, space, object, etc. Genetic psychology studies children's logic, the characteristics of a child's thinking, the mechanisms of cognitive activity, the transition of forms of thinking from simple to complex. The founder of genetic psychology, Swiss psychologist J. Piaget (1896-1980), is one of the most famous scientists, whose work constituted an important stage in the development of psychology.

Domestic psychology. Cultural-historical concept of the development of the psyche by L.S. Vygotsky. Subjective-activity approach of S.L. Rubinstein. Development by A.N. Leontyev of the theory of activity. Integrative approach to human cognition B.G. Ananyeva.

Vygotsky and his concept . He showed that humans have a special type of mental functions that are completely absent in animals. Vygotsky argued that the highest mental functions of humans, or consciousness, are of a social nature. In this case, higher mental functions mean: voluntary memory, voluntary attention, logical thinking, etc.

First part of the concept - "Human and nature". Its main content can be formulated in the form of two theses. The first is the thesis that during the transition from animals to humans there was a fundamental change in the relationship of the subject with the environment. Throughout the existence of the animal world, the environment has acted on the animal, modifying it and forcing it to adapt to itself. With the advent of man, the opposite process is observed: man acts on nature and modifies it. The second thesis explains the existence of mechanisms for changing nature on the part of humans. This mechanism consists in the creation of tools of labor and the development of material production.

Second part of the concept- “Man and his own psyche.” It also contains two provisions. Mastery of nature did not pass without a trace for man; he learned to master his own psyche, he acquired higher mental functions, expressed in forms of voluntary activity. Under the higher mental functions of L.S. Vygotsky understood a person’s ability to force himself to remember some material, pay attention to some object, and organize his mental activity. A person mastered his behavior, like nature, with the help of tools, but special tools - psychological. He called these psychological tools signs.

The third part of the concept- “Genetic aspects”. This part of the concept answers the question “Where do sign-means come from?” Vygotsky proceeded from the fact that labor created man. In the process of joint labor, communication took place between its participants using special signs that determined what each participant in the labor process should do. A person has learned to control his behavior. Consequently, the ability to command oneself was born in the process of human cultural development.

Subject of psychology Rubinstein is “psyche in activity.” Psychology studies the psyche through activity. Rubinstein introduces the principle of the unity of consciousness and activity, which essentially means the unity of the subjective and objective. Consciousness is formed in activity and manifests itself in it.

The psyche, personality, consciousness are formed and manifested in activity.

The psyche is known through activity, but is experienced directly.

The psyche already exists in the prenatal period and forms the basis for further activity, and activity is a condition for the development of the psyche.

. Development by A.N. Leontyev of the theory of activity . According to A.N. Leontiev, “a person’s personality is “produced” - created by social relations into which the individual enters in his objective activity.” Personality first appears in society. A person enters history as an individual endowed with natural properties and abilities, and he becomes a person only as a subject of social relations. Thus, the category of the subject’s activity comes to the fore, since “it is the activity of the subject that is the initial unit of psychological analysis of the individual, and not actions, not operations or blocks of these functions; the latter characterize activity, not personality.”

Integrative approach to human cognition B.G. Ananyeva. Ananiev considers a person in the unity of four sides: 1) as a biological species; 2) in ontogenesis, the process of a person’s life path as an individual; 3) as a person; 4) as part of humanity.

Personality is a “conscious individual” (B.G. Ananyev), i.e. a person capable of conscious organization and self-regulation of his activities based on the assimilation of social norms of morality and legal behavior. B.G. Ananyev suggested anthropological approach to human research , which was implemented through systematic and long-term genetic research. In these studies he shows that individual development is an internally contradictory process. Development, according to Ananyev, is an increasing integration, synthesis of psychophysiological functions. B.G. Ananiev in practice began to study man as an integral phenomenon. He identified important interrelated features in it, which we call macrocharacteristics, such as the individual, the subject of activity, personality and individuality. The scientist studied these macro-characteristics in a real environment - in the totality of interconnected natural, social and spiritual factors.

4.Modern psychology, its tasks and place in the system of sciences .

In recent years, there has been a rapid development of psychological science, due to the variety of theoretical and practical problems facing it. In our country, the interest in psychology is especially indicative - it is finally beginning to be given the attention it deserves, and in almost all sectors of modern education and business.

The main task of psychology is the study of the laws of mental activity in its development. Objectives: 1) learn to understand the essence of phenomena and their patterns; 2) learn to manage them; 3) use the acquired knowledge in the education system, in management, in production in order to increase the efficiency of various branches of practice; 4) be the theoretical basis for the activities of psychological services.

Over the past decades, the range and directions of psychological research have expanded significantly, and new scientific disciplines have emerged. The conceptual apparatus of psychological science has changed, new hypotheses and concepts are put forward, psychology is continuously enriched with new empirical data. Thus, B.F. Lomov in the book “Methodological and Theoretical Problems of Psychology,” characterizing the current state of science, noted that at present “the need for further (and deeper) development of methodological problems of psychological science and its general theory is sharply increasing.”

The area of ​​phenomena studied by psychology is enormous. It covers processes, states and properties of a person that have varying degrees of complexity - from the elementary discrimination of individual characteristics of an object that affects the senses, to the struggle of personal motives. Some of these phenomena have already been studied quite well, while the description of others comes down to simply recording observations.

For many decades, psychology was primarily a theoretical (worldview) discipline. Currently, its role in public life has changed significantly. It is increasingly becoming an area of ​​special professional practical activity in the education system, industry, public administration, medicine, culture, sports, etc. The inclusion of psychological science in solving practical problems significantly changes the conditions for the development of its theory. Problems, the solution of which requires psychological competence, arise in one form or another in all spheres of social life, determined by the increasing role of the so-called human factor. The “human factor” refers to a wide range of socio-psychological, psychological and psychophysiological properties that people possess and which one way or another manifest themselves in their specific activities.

The understanding of the possibilities of using psychological data in other sciences largely depends on what place psychology is given in the system of sciences. Currently, the nonlinear classification proposed by Academician B. M. Kedrov is considered the most generally accepted. It reflects the diversity of connections between sciences, due to their subject proximity. The proposed diagram has the shape of a triangle, the vertices of which represent the natural, social and philosophical sciences. This situation is due to the real closeness of the subject and method of each of these main groups of sciences with the subject and method of psychology, oriented depending on the task at hand. side of one of the vertices of the triangle.

Psychology as a science

Society sciences philosophy The science

Ways to obtain psychological knowledge. Everyday psychological knowledge about yourself and other people. Sources of scientific psychological knowledge. The main differences between everyday and scientific psychological knowledge.

Ways to gain psychological knowledge . As the Russian philosopher and psychologist Georgy Ivanovich Chelpanov (1862-1936) once said: “Not from observing only oneself, but from Observing all living beings in general, the psychologist strives to build laws of mental life" Psychology draws these observations from a number of other sciences. We can depict the material that a psychologist needs to build a system of psychology in the following form. A psychologist needs three groups of data: 1) Data comparative psychology:. this includes the so-called “psychology of peoples” (ethnography, anthropology), as well as history, works of art, etc.; animal psychology; child psychology. 2) Abnormal phenomena ( mental illness; hypnotic phenomena, sleep, dreams; mental life of the blind, deaf and dumb, etc.). 3) Experimental data.

So, we see that for a modern psychologist, first of all, it is necessary to have data from comparative psychology. This includes the “psychology of peoples,” which includes the history and development of religious ideas, the history of myths, morals, customs, language, the history of arts, crafts, etc. among uncultured peoples. History, while describing the past life of peoples, also describes such moments in their lives as popular movements, etc., this provides rich material for the so-called psychology of the masses. The study of language development also provides very important material for psychology. Language is the embodiment of human thought. If we trace the development of language, then we can at the same time trace the progress of the development of human ideas. Works of art also provide very important material for psychology: for example, to study such a passion as “avarice,” we should turn to its depiction in Pushkin, Gogol and Moliere.

The psychology of animals is important because in the mental life of animals the same “abilities” that appear in a vague form in humans arise in a simple, elementary form, as a result of which they are accessible to easier study; for example, instinct in animals appears in a much clearer form than in humans.

The psychology of the child is important because, thanks to it, we can see how higher abilities develop from elementary ones. For example, the development of the ability to speak could be traced in a child, starting from its most rudimentary form.

The study of abnormal phenomena, which include mental illness, so-called hypnotic phenomena, as well as sleep and dreams, is also necessary for a psychologist. What is not clearly expressed in a normal person is expressed extremely clearly in a mentally ill person. For example, the phenomenon of memory loss is also noticeable in a normal person, but it is especially pronounced in the mentally ill.

If, further, we take people with various physical defects who lack, for example, the organ of vision, hearing, etc., then observations of them can provide extremely important material for psychology. A blind person does not have an organ of vision, but he has an idea of ​​space, which, of course, differs from a sighted person’s idea of ​​space. The study of the features of the blind man's idea of ​​space gives us the opportunity to determine the nature of the idea of ​​space in general.

Experimental data obtained empirically during the observation of individual mental facts give us the opportunity to classify the phenomena of mental reality and establish an experimentally verifiable natural connection between them. The most effective method for obtaining this data is a laboratory experiment.

This is the abundant material on which the system of psychology is built.

Everyday psychological knowledge about yourself and other people. Everyday psychology is psychological knowledge that is accumulated and used by a person in everyday life. They are usually specific and formed in a person during his individual life as a result of observations, introspection and reflection. People differ in terms of psychological insight and worldly wisdom. Some are very insightful, capable of easily discerning a person’s mood, intentions or character traits by the expression of their eyes, face, gestures, posture, movements, and habits. Others do not have such abilities and are less sensitive to understanding the behavior and internal state of another person. The source of everyday psychology is not only a person’s own experience, but also the people with whom he directly comes into contact.

The content of everyday psychology is embodied in folk rituals, traditions, beliefs, proverbs and sayings, aphorisms of folk wisdom, fairy tales and songs. This knowledge is passed on from mouth to mouth and written down, reflecting centuries of everyday experience. Many proverbs and sayings have direct or indirect psychological content: “There are devils in still waters”, “It lays softly, but sleeps hard”, “A frightened crow is afraid of a bush”, “A fool loves praise, honor and glory”, “Seven times measure - cut once", "Repetition is the mother of learning." Rich psychological experience has been accumulated in fairy tales.

The main criterion for the truth of knowledge of everyday psychology is its plausibility and obvious usefulness in everyday life situations. The features of this knowledge are specificity and practicality. They always characterize the behavior, thoughts and feelings of people in specific, albeit typical situations. Knowledge of this type reveals the inaccuracy of the concepts used. Everyday terms are usually vague and ambiguous. Our language contains a large number of words denoting mental facts and phenomena. By the way, many of these words are similar to similar terms in scientific psychology, but are less precise in use.

Data processing methods.

· methods of quantitative analysis, here we mean a very broad group of methods of mathematical data processing and statistical methods as applied to problems of psychological research.

· methods of qualitative analysis: differentiation of factual material into groups, description of typical and exceptional cases.

Interpretive methods.

It is necessary to clearly understand that the actual data themselves mean little. The researcher obtains results in the process of interpreting factual data, so a lot depends on one or another interpretation.

· The genetic (phylo- and ontogenetic) method allows one to interpret all factual material in terms of development, highlighting phases, stages of development, as well as critical moments in the formation of mental functions. As a result, “vertical” connections are established between levels of development.

· The structural method establishes “horizontal” connections between various elements of the psyche, using conventional methods for studying various structures, in particular, classification and typologization.

Advantages:

The wealth of information collected (provides both analysis of verbal information and actions, movements, deeds)

The naturalness of the operating conditions has been preserved

It is acceptable to use a variety of means

It is not necessary to obtain the preliminary consent of the subject

Efficiency of obtaining information

Relative cheapness of the method

Ensures high accuracy of results

Repeated studies under similar conditions are possible

almost complete control over all variables is exercised

flaws:

Subjectivity (results largely depend on experience, scientific views, qualifications, preferences)

2. it is impossible to control the situation, to interfere in the course of events without distorting them

3. due to the passivity of the observer, they require a significant investment of time

the operating conditions of the subjects do not correspond to reality

2. the subjects know that they are the objects of research.

Structure of the psyche

Emotional-volitional processes

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Emotional-volitional processes.

feelings are the highest manifestation of the human psyche, reflecting the inner world and the ability to perceive other people; the highest feelings are love, friendship, patriotism, etc.;

Emotions – the ability to experience and convey significant situations;

Motivation is the process of managing human activity, encouraging action;

Will is an element of consciousness, which consists in the ability to act in accordance with a decision, often contrary to circumstances.

Phylogeny is a historical development that covers millions of years of evolution (the history of the development of various types of organisms).

Stage I. A.N. Leontyev in his book “Problems of Psyche Development” showed that the first stage of psyche development is the stage of the elementary sensory psyche. Thus, animals with an elementary sensory psyche are characterized by instinctive behavior. Instinct is those actions of a living creature that do not require training. The animal “seems to know” from birth what to do. When applied to a person, instinct is an action that a person performs as if automatically, without even thinking about it (removing his hand from the flame of a fire, waving his hands when falling into water).

Stage II evolution of the psyche - the stage of the perceptual psyche (perceiving). Animals that are at this stage reflect the world around them no longer in the form of individual elementary sensations, but in the form of images of integral objects and their relationships with each other. This level of mental development requires a new stage of development of the nervous system - the central nervous system. Together with instincts in the behavior of such animals, the skills mastered in the course of life by each individual creature begin to play a major role. Skill - mastering, in the process of life experience, one’s own forms of behavior, individual for each animal, based on conditioned reflexes.

Stage III mental development – ​​stage of intelligence (highest level of behavior). Features of “reasonable” animal behavior:

– no lengthy trial and error, the correct action occurs immediately;

– the entire operation takes place as an integral continuous act;

– the correct solution found will always be used by the animal in similar situations;

– the animal’s use of other objects to achieve a goal.

Thus, in the psyche of animals we find many existing preconditions on the basis of which, under special conditions, human consciousness arose.

10. The concept of consciousness. Structure of consciousness. Conscious and unconscious as the main form of reflection of the external world .

Consciousness is the highest, human-specific form of generalized reflection of the objective stable properties and patterns of the surrounding world, the formation of a person’s internal model of the external world, as a result of which knowledge and transformation of the surrounding reality is achieved.

The function of consciousness is to formulate the goals of activity, to preliminary mentally construct actions and anticipate their results, which ensures reasonable regulation of human behavior and activity. A person’s consciousness includes a certain attitude towards the environment and other people.

The following properties of consciousness are distinguished: building relationships, cognition and experience. This directly follows the inclusion of thinking and emotions in the processes of consciousness. Indeed, the main function of thinking is to identify objective relationships between phenomena of the external world, and the main function of emotion is the formation of a person’s subjective attitude towards objects, phenomena, and people. These forms and types of relationships are synthesized in the structures of consciousness, and they determine both the organization of behavior and the deep processes of self-esteem and self-awareness. Really existing in a single stream of consciousness, an image and a thought can, colored by emotions, become an experience.

Consciousness develops in humans only through social contacts. In phylogenesis, human consciousness developed and becomes possible only under conditions of active influence on nature, in conditions of labor activity. Consciousness is possible only in the conditions of the existence of language, speech, which arises simultaneously with consciousness in the process of labor.

And the primary act of consciousness is the act of identification with the symbols of culture, which organizes human consciousness, making a person human. The isolation of meaning, symbol and identification with it is followed by implementation, the child’s active activity in reproducing patterns of human behavior, speech, thinking, consciousness, the child’s active activity in reflecting the world around him and regulating his behavior.

Division of the psyche into conscious and unconscious is the basic premise of psychoanalysis, giving it the opportunity to understand and subject to scientific research important pathological processes in mental life.

Consciousness is, first of all, a body of knowledge about the world. It is no coincidence that it is closely related to cognition. If cognition is consciousness in its active orientation outward, towards an object, then consciousness itself, in turn, is the result of cognition. A dialectic is revealed here: the more we know, the higher our cognitive potential and vice versa - the more we know the world, the richer our consciousness. The next important element of consciousness is attention, the ability of consciousness to concentrate on certain types of cognitive and any other activity, to keep them in its focus. Next, apparently, we should name memory, the ability of consciousness to accumulate information, store, and, if necessary, reproduce it, as well as use previously acquired knowledge in activities. But we not only know something and remember something. Consciousness is inseparable from the expression of a certain attitude towards the objects of cognition, activity and communication in the form of emotions. The emotional sphere of consciousness includes feelings themselves - joy, pleasure, grief, as well as moods and affects, or, as they were called in the past, passions - anger, rage, horror, despair, etc. To those mentioned earlier we should add such an essential component of consciousness as will, which is a person’s meaningful striving towards a certain goal and directs his behavior or action.

1. A person who has consciousness distinguishes himself from the world around him, separates himself, his “I” from external things, and the properties of things from themselves.

2. Able to see himself in a certain system of relationships with other people.

3. Able to see himself as being in a certain place in space and at a certain point on the time axis connecting the present, past and future.

4. Able to establish adequate cause-and-effect relationships between phenomena of the external world and between them and his own actions.

5. Gives an account of his feelings, thoughts, experiences, intentions and desires.

6. Knows the peculiarities of his individuality and personality.

7. Able to plan his actions, foresee their results and evaluate their consequences, i.e. capable of carrying out deliberate voluntary actions.

All these signs are contrasted with the opposite features of unconscious and unconscious mental processes and impulsive, automatic or reflexive actions.

The set of mental phenomena, states and actions that are not represented in a person’s consciousness, that lie outside the sphere of his mind, that are unaccountable and cannot, at least at the moment, be controlled, is covered by the concept unconscious . The unconscious appears as an attitude, instinct, attraction, as sensation, perception, idea and thinking, as intuition, as a hypnotic state or dream, a state of passion or insanity. Unconscious phenomena include imitation and creative inspiration, accompanied by a sudden “illumination” of a new idea, born as if from some push from within, cases of instantaneous solution of problems that have long eluded conscious efforts, involuntary memories of what seemed firmly forgotten, and other

A game is a special type of activity, the result of which is not the production of any material or ideal product. The game does not create a socially significant product. The formation of a person as a subject of activity begins in the game, and this is its enormous, enduring significance.

INTRODUCTION

The history of psychology reveals for us the ways of searches, discoveries, misconceptions and discoveries that were made long before the recognition of psychology as an independent science, and over the last almost one and a half centuries of its development as an integral system of scientific knowledge about human mental life. The history of psychology is a complex discipline that synthesizes knowledge from other branches of psychology and makes it possible to bring this knowledge into a system. She studies the patterns of formation and development of views on the psyche based on the analysis of various approaches to understanding its nature and functions.

Also in this work we will consider the formation of psychology from the direction that determined some scientific nature of psychology in connection with the introduction of the method of an objective approach (behaviorism), to the diametrically opposite direction, where the main role in psychology is given to a person’s personal experience (humanistic approach).

Modern psychology is a complex, highly branched system of sciences. It identifies many industries that represent relatively independently developing areas of scientific research.

The main tasks of the work will be to trace the development of psychology from antiquity to the present day. Let us consider the features of the modern stage of development of psychology and the use of various approaches to provide psychological assistance.

Stages of development of psychology as a science

Psychology and its principles have come a long way in development. The subject of psychology and the methods of studying the psyche (the subject of studying psychology) have also changed.

Table 1. Stages of development of psychology as a science.

	Definition of the subject of psychology	Characteristics of the stage
	Psychology as a 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.
	Psychology as the science of consciousness	Begins 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 human observation of himself
	Psychology as the science of behavior	Begins in the 20th century. The task of psychology is to observe what can be directly seen (human behavior, actions, reactions). Motives causing actions were not taken into account
	Psychology as a science that studies facts, patterns and mechanisms of the psyche	It was formed on the basis of a materialistic view of the world. The basis of modern Russian psychology is the natural understanding of the theory of reflection

First stage (I).

In ancient times it was believed that the soul was present in nature wherever there was movement and warmth. The first philosophical doctrine, based on the belief in the universal spirituality of the world, was called “animism” (from the Latin Anima-soul, spirit). It was based on the belief that everything that exists in the world has elements of the soul. Subsequently, the animalistic idea of ​​the soul gave way to hylozoism (from the Greek Hyle - substance, matter and zoe - life). Such natural philosophers as Thales, Anaximenes and Heraclitus interpret the soul as the life-giving form of the element that forms the origin of the world (water, air, fire) that animates people and animals. No boundaries were drawn between living, non-living and mental.

All this was considered as the passage of a single primary matter (primordial matter). Later, two opposing points of view on the psyche emerged: the materialistic one of Democritus and the idealistic one of Plato. According to Democritus, the soul is a material substance that consists of atoms of fire, spherical and light, and very mobile. Democritus tried to explain all mental phenomena by physical and even mechanical reasons. With the death of the body, as the philosopher believed, the soul also dies. According to Plato, the soul has nothing in common with matter, unlike the latter, which is ideal. The soul is an invisible, sublime, divine, eternal principle. The body is a visible, transitory, perishable beginning. The soul and body are in a complex relationship. By its divine origin, the soul is bound to control the body. Plato is the founder of dualism in psychology, which interprets the material and spiritual, body and psyche as two independent and antagonistic principles.

The first attempt to systematize knowledge about the psyche was made by Aristotle, who is rightfully considered the founder of psychology. Aristotle's merit was that he was the first to postulate the functional relationship of the soul (psyche) and body (organism). The essence of the soul, according to Aristotle, is the realization of the biological existence of the organism. A significant contribution to the development of ideas about the natural scientific basis of psychology was made by ancient Greek, ancient Roman and ancient Eastern doctors.

During the Middle Ages, Arabic-language science achieved significant success, assimilating the culture of the Hellenes, the peoples of Central Asia, India and China.

The Renaissance brought a new worldview, in which a research approach to the phenomena of reality was cultivated. A society of natural scientists is being created, interest in the psychology of creativity is intensifying, and interest in the human personality is growing. Experimentation takes priority in science.

Second stage.(II)

In the 17th century The methodological prerequisites for the scientific understanding of the psyche and consciousness were laid. The soul begins to be interpreted as consciousness, the activity of which is directly related to the work of the brain. Unlike the psychology of the soul, the psychology of consciousness considers introspection of one’s inner world to be the main source of knowledge. This specific cognition is called the method of introspection.

The formation of psychological views during this period is associated with the activities of a number of scientists.R. Descartes laid the foundations for the deterministic concept (physical, behavioral and mental events are not random, but rather due to the action of specific causal factors) of behavior and the introspective concept of consciousness (a method of psychological research that involves observing one’s own mental processes without the use of any instruments or standards). Locke professed the experiential origin of the entire structure of human consciousness. In experience itself, D. Locke identified two sources: the activity of the external sense organs (external experience) and the internal activity of the mind that perceives its own work (internal experience). This position of D. Locke became the starting point for the development of introspective psychology. G. Leibniz introduced the concept of the unconscious psyche, believing that in the consciousness of the subject there is a continuous work of mental forces hidden from him in the form of a special dynamics of unconscious perceptions.

In the 18th century An associative theory has emerged, the emergence and development of which is associated with the names of T. Hobbes and D. Hartley.

Third stage (III).

An important role in identifying psychology as an independent branch of knowledge was played by the development of the method of conditioned reflexes in physiology and the practice of treating mental illnesses, as well as conducting experimental studies of the psyche.

At the beginning of the 20th century. The founder of behaviorism, D. Watson, proposed a program for building a new psychology. Behaviorism recognized behavior and behavioral reactions as the only object of psychological study. Consciousness as a phenomenon that cannot be observed was excluded from the sphere of behaviorist psychology.

Fourth stage (IV).

It is characterized by a variety of approaches to the essence of the psyche, the transformation of psychology into a multidisciplinary applied field of knowledge that serves the interests of practical human activity.

Scientific movements in psychology differ in their subject matter, problems studied, conceptual field, and explanatory schemes. The psychological reality of a person appears in them from a certain angle of view, certain aspects of his mental life come to the fore, are studied thoroughly and in detail, others are either not studied at all or receive too narrow an interpretation.

Psychology as a science originated in Ancient Greece and is still a relevant field. Based on the treatises and works of scientists, mechanisms, models and systems have been developed to study the behavior, perception, awareness and adaptability of a person in society. Let's learn a brief history of psychology, and also get acquainted with famous figures who made a huge contribution to the development of this humanitarian science.

A Brief History of Psychology

Where did it all start? How did psychology emerge as a science? In fact, this branch is closely connected with philosophy, history, and sociology. Today, psychology actively interacts with biology and neuropsychology, despite the fact that initially scientists in this field tried to find evidence of the existence of the soul in the human body. The name itself comes from two derivatives: logos (“teaching”) and psycho (“soul”). It was only after the 18th century that scientists made a subtle connection between the very definition of science and human character. And so a new concept of psychology appeared - researchers began to build psychoanalysis, study the behavior of each person, identify categories and pathologies that affect interests, adaptability, mood and life choices.

Many great psychologists, such as S. Rubinstein and R. Goklenius, noted that this science is important in human knowledge. From time immemorial, researchers have been studying the connection between reason and religion, faith and spirituality, consciousness and behavior.

What it is

Psychology as an independent science studies mental processes, human interaction with the outside world and behavior in it. The main object in the teaching is the psyche, which translated from ancient Greek means “spiritual”. In other words, the psyche is the realized actions of a person, which are based on primary knowledge about reality.

Brief theses defining psychology:

• This is a way of knowing yourself, your inner and, of course, the world around you.
• This is a “spiritual” science, because it forces us to constantly develop, asking eternal questions: who am I, why am I in this world. That is why there is a subtle connection between psychology and sciences such as philosophy and sociology.
• This is a science that studies the interaction of the external world with the psyche and its influence on others. Thanks to numerous studies, a new branch was created - psychiatry, where scientists began to identify pathologies and psychological disorders, as well as stop them, treat them, or completely destroy them.
• This is the beginning of the spiritual path, where great psychologists, together with philosophers, sought to study the connection between the spiritual and material world. Despite the fact that today the awareness of spiritual unity is just a myth that came from the depths of time, psychology reflects a certain meaning of being - ordered, cultivated, organized thousands of years later.

What does psychology study?

Let's answer the main question - what does the science of psychology study? First of all, all mental processes and their components. Researchers have found that these processes can be divided into three types: will, feelings, cognition. These include human thinking, memory, emotions, goals, and decision making. This is where the second phenomenon that science studies appears - mental states. What psychology studies:

• Processes. Attention, speech, sensitivity, affect and stress, feelings and motives, representation and curiosity.
• States. Fatigue and emotional outbursts, satisfaction and apathy, depression and happiness.
• Properties. Abilities, unique character traits, types of temperament.
• Education. Habits, skills, areas of knowledge, abilities, adaptability, personal traits.

Let's now begin to formulate an answer to the main question - how did psychology emerge as a science? Initially, researchers paid attention to simple mental phenomena, which they began to observe. It was noted that any mental process can last just a few seconds or more, sometimes reaching 30-60 minutes. This caused and subsequently all mental activity of people was classified as complex brain processes.

Today science studies each individual individually, identifying new mental phenomena, although previously everything was divided into several types. Feelings of depression, causes of irritation, absent-mindedness, mood swings, character and temperament formation, self-development and evolution are only a small part of what influenced the development of psychology as a science.

The main tasks of science

How did psychology emerge as a science? It all started when thinkers and philosophers began to pay attention to mental processes. This became the main objective of the teaching. Researchers analyzed the features of all processes directly related to the psyche. They believed that this direction reflects reality, that is, all events influence the psycho-emotional state of a person, which prompts him to take one action or another.

Analysis of all phenomena related to the psyche and their development is the second task of science. Then a third, important stage in psychology appeared - the study of all the physiological mechanisms that control mental phenomena.

If we talk about the tasks briefly, we can divide them into several points:

1. Psychology should teach us to understand all psychological processes.
2. After this, we learn to control them, and then completely manage them.
3. We direct all knowledge into the development of psychology, which is closely related to many humanities and natural sciences.

Thanks to the main tasks, fundamental psychology (that is, science for the sake of science) was divided into several branches, which include the study of children's characters, behavior in the work environment, temperament and traits of creative, technical and sports individuals.

Techniques used by science

All stages of the development of psychology as a science are associated with great minds, thinkers and philosophers, who developed an absolutely unique field that studies the behavior, character and skills of people. History confirms that the founders of the doctrine were Hippocrates, Plato and Aristotle - authors and researchers of antiquity. It was they who suggested (of course, at different periods of time) that there are several types of temperament that are reflected in behavior and goals.

Psychology, before becoming a full-fledged science, has come a long way and affected almost every famous philosopher, doctor and biologist. One of these representatives is Thomas Aquinas and Avicenna. Later, at the end of the 16th century, Rene Descartes participated in the development of psychology. In his opinion, the soul is a substance within a substance. It was Descartes who first introduced the word “dualism” into use, which means the presence of spiritual energy inside the physical body, which cooperate very closely with each other. Reason, as the philosopher established, is the manifestation of our soul. Despite the fact that many of the scientist’s theories were ridiculed and refuted several centuries later, he became the main founder of psychology as a science.

Immediately after the works of Rene Descartes, new treatises and teachings began to appear, written by Otto Kasman, Rudolf Gocklenius, Sergei Rubinshein, and William James. They went further and began to promulgate new theories. For example, W. James at the end of the 19th century proved the existence of a stream of consciousness through clinical research. The main task of the philosopher and psychologist was to discover not only the soul, but also its structure. James proposed that we are a dual being, inhabited by both subject and object. Let's look at the contributions of other equally significant scientists, such as Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt and Carl Gustav Jung, etc.

S. Rubinstein

Sergei Leonidovich Rubinstein is one of the founders of a new school in psychology. He worked at the beginning of the 20th century at Moscow State University, was a teacher and at the same time conducted research. Sergei Leonidovich Rubinstein's main contribution was made to educational psychology, logic and history. He studied in detail personality types, their temperament and emotions. It was Rubinstein who created the well-known principle of determinism, which meant that all human actions and actions are directly related to the external (surrounding) world. Thanks to his research, he was awarded numerous medals, orders and prizes.

Sergei Leonidovich described his theories in detail in books, which were subsequently put into circulation. These include “The Principle of Creative Amateur Performance” and “Problems of Psychology in the Works of Karl Marx.” In his second work, Rubinstein considered society as a single whole that follows a single path. To do this, the scientist had to conduct a deep analysis of the Soviet people and compare them with foreign psychology.

Sergei Leonidovich also became the founder of the study of personalities, but, unfortunately, he was unable to complete the work. However, his contribution significantly advanced the development of Russian psychology and strengthened its status as a science.

O. Kasman

Otto Kasmann played a significant role in psychology, despite the fact that for a long period he was the main pastor and theologian in the German city of Stade. It was this public religious figure who called all psychic phenomena scientific objects. There is practically no information about this founder, since quite a lot of events happened over four centuries. However, Otto Kasmann left us valuable works called Psychologia anthropologica and Angelographia.

The theologian and activist made adjustments to the term “anthropology” and explained that the biological nature of man is directly related to the abstract world. Despite the fact that Kasman made an invaluable contribution to psychology, the pastor himself carefully studied anthropology and tried to draw a parallel between this teaching and philosophy.

R. Gocklenius

Rudolf Gocklenius is an important link in psychology, despite the fact that he was a doctor of physical, mathematical and medical sciences. The scientist lived in the 16th and 17th centuries and during his long life he created many important works. Like Otto Kasmann, Goklenius began to use the word “psychology” in everyday life.

An interesting fact, but Goklenius was Kasman’s personal teacher. After receiving his doctorate, Rudolf began to study philosophy and psychology in detail. That is why today we are familiar with the name of Goclenius, because he was a representative of neo-scholasticism, which combined both religion and philosophical teachings. Well, since the scientist lived and worked in Europe, he spoke on behalf of the Catholic Church, which created a new direction of scholasticism - neo-scholasticism.

W. Wundt

The name of Wundt is known in psychology as well as Jung and Rubinstein. Wilhelm Maximilian lived in the 19th century and was an active practitioner of experimental psychology. This movement included non-standard and unique practices that made it possible to study all psychological phenomena.

Like Rubinstein, Wundt studied determinism, objectivity, and the fine line between human activity and consciousness. The main feature of the scientist is that he was an experienced physiologist who understood all the physical processes of living organisms. To some extent, it was much easier for Wilhelm Maximilian to devote his life to such a science as psychology. Over the course of his life, he trained dozens of figures, including Bekhterev and Serebrenikov.

Wundt sought to understand how our mind works, so he often conducted experiments that allowed him to figure out chemical reactions in the body. It was the work of this scientist that laid the foundation for the creation and promotion of such a science as neuropsychology. Wilhelm Maximilian loved to observe people's behavior in different situations, so he developed a unique technique - introspection. Since Wundt himself was also an inventor, many experiments were worked out by the scientist himself. However, introspection did not include the use of devices or instruments, but only observation, as a rule, of one’s own mental phenomena and processes.

K. Jung

Jung is perhaps one of the most popular and ambitious scientists who devoted his life to psychology and psychiatry. Moreover, the figure not only tried to understand psychological phenomena, he also opened a new direction - analytical psychology.

Jung carefully worked out the archetypes or structures (patterns of behavior) that come into being with a person. The scientist carefully studied each character and temperament, connected them with one link and supplemented them with new information by observing his patients. Jung also proved that several people, being in a single team, can unconsciously perform similar actions. And it was thanks to these works that the scientist began to analyze the individuality of each person, to study whether it exists at all.

It was this figure who suggested that all archetypes are innate, but their main feature is that they develop over hundreds of years and are passed on from generation to generation. Subsequently, all types directly influence our choices, actions, feelings and emotions.

Who is a psychologist today?

Today, a psychologist, unlike a philosopher, must obtain at least a bachelor's degree from a university in order to practice and research. He is a representative of his science and is called upon not only to provide psychological assistance, but also to contribute to the development of his activities. What does a professional psychologist do:

• Reveals archetypes and establishes the character and temperament of the individual.
• Analyzes the behavior of his patient, identifies the root cause and eradicates it if necessary. This allows you to change your lifestyle, get rid of negative thoughts and help you find motivation and purpose.
• Helps to get out of a depressed state, get rid of apathy, discover the meaning of life and start looking for it.
• Struggling with psychological trauma that occurred either in childhood or throughout life.
• Analyzes the patient's behavior in society and also finds the root cause. As a rule, in many cases, the family situation, relationships with peers, relatives and just strangers play an important role.

A psychologist should not be confused with a psychiatrist. The second is a scientist who has received a medical degree and has the right to engage in diagnosis and treatment. It identifies, analyzes and examines mental disorders from the most minor and subtle to the most aggressive. The psychiatrist's task is to determine whether a person is sick or not. If a deviation is detected, the doctor develops a unique technique that can help the patient, relieve his symptoms or completely cure him. Despite widespread controversy, it has been concluded that a psychiatrist is not a medical specialist, although he works directly with patients and various medications.

Psychology is relevant and important in the life of each of us. This science is a vivid example of human evolution, when, asking ourselves countless questions, we developed and each time stepped to a new stage. She studies the type of people, the phenomena when in different situations they unite in groups, disperse and lead a lonely lifestyle, show aggression, or, conversely, experience emotional overexcitation and happiness. Motivation, goals, depression and apathy, values ​​and experiences - this is only a small part that is studied by such a unique science as psychology.