In what year did psychology emerge as an independent science? The main tasks of science

Since ancient times, the needs of social life have forced a person to distinguish and take into account the peculiarities of the mental make-up of people. The philosophical teachings of antiquity already touched upon some psychological aspects, which were resolved either in terms of idealism or in terms of materialism. Thus, the materialistic philosophers of antiquity Democritus, Lucretius, Epicurus understood the human soul as a type of matter, as a bodily formation formed from spherical, small and most mobile atoms. But the idealist philosopher Plato understood the human soul as something divine, different from the body. The soul, before entering the human body, exists separately in the higher world, where it cognizes ideas - eternal and unchanging essences. Once in the body, the soul begins to remember what it saw before birth. Plato's idealistic theory, which interprets the body and psyche as two independent and antagonistic principles, laid the foundation for all subsequent idealistic theories.

The great philosopher Aristotle, in his treatise “On the Soul,” singled out psychology as a unique field of knowledge and for the first time put forward the idea of the inseparability of the soul and the living body. The soul, the psyche, manifests itself in various abilities for activity: nourishing, feeling, moving, rational; Higher abilities arise from and on the basis of lower ones. The primary cognitive ability of a person is sensation; it takes the forms of sensory objects without their matter, just as “wax takes the impression of a seal without iron and gold.” Sensations leave a trace in the form of ideas - images of those objects that previously acted on the senses. Aristotle showed that these images are connected in three directions: by similarity, by contiguity and contrast, thereby indicating the main types of connections - associations of mental phenomena.

Thus, stage I is psychology as the 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.

Stage II – psychology as a science of consciousness. It appears in the 17th century in connection with the development of natural sciences. The ability to think, feel, desire was called consciousness. The main method of study was a person's observation of himself and the description of facts.

Stage III – psychology as a science of behavior. Appears in the 20th century: The task of psychology is to conduct experiments and observe what can be directly seen, namely: behavior, actions, human reactions (the motives causing actions were not taken into account).

Stage IV – psychology as a science that studies objective patterns, manifestations and mechanisms of the psyche.

The history of psychology as an experimental science begins in 1879 in the world's first experimental psychological laboratory, founded by the German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig. Soon, in 1885, V.M. Bekhterev organized a similar laboratory in Russia.

2. Branches of psychology

Modern psychology is a widely developed field of knowledge, including a number of individual disciplines and scientific areas. Thus, animal psychology studies the peculiarities of the psyche of animals. The human psyche is studied by other branches of psychology: child psychology studies the development of consciousness, mental processes, activity, the entire personality of a growing person, and the conditions for accelerating development. Social psychology studies the socio-psychological manifestations of a person’s personality, his relationships with people, with a group, the psychological compatibility of people, socio-psychological manifestations in large groups (the effect of radio, press, fashion, rumors on various communities of people). Pedagogical psychology studies the patterns of personality development in the process of learning and upbringing. We can distinguish a number of branches of psychology that study the psychological problems of specific types of human activity: labor psychology examines the psychological characteristics of human labor activity, the patterns of development of labor skills. Engineering psychology studies the patterns of processes of interaction between humans and modern technology with the aim of using them in the practice of designing, creating and operating automated control systems and new types of technology. Aviation and space psychology analyzes the psychological characteristics of the activities of a pilot and cosmonaut. Medical psychology studies the psychological characteristics of the doctor’s activities and the patient’s behavior, develops psychological methods of treatment and psychotherapy. Pathopsychology studies deviations in the development of the psyche, the breakdown of the psyche in various forms of brain pathology. Legal psychology studies the psychological characteristics of the behavior of participants in criminal proceedings (psychology of testimony, psychological requirements for interrogation, etc.), psychological problems of behavior and the formation of the personality of the criminal. Military psychology studies human behavior in combat conditions.

Thus, modern psychology is characterized by a process of differentiation that gives rise to significant ramifications into separate branches, which often diverge very far and differ significantly from each other, although they retain general subject of study– facts, patterns, mechanisms of the psyche. The differentiation of psychology is complemented by a counter process of integration, as a result of which psychology merges with all sciences (through engineering psychology - with technical sciences, through educational psychology - with pedagogy, through social psychology - with social and social sciences, etc.).

3. Objectives and place of psychology in the system of sciences

The tasks of psychology mainly boil down to the following:

learn to understand the essence of mental phenomena and their patterns;
learn to manage them;
use the acquired knowledge in order to increase the efficiency of those branches of practice at the intersection of which already established sciences and industries lie;
to be the theoretical basis for the practice of psychological services.

By studying the patterns of mental phenomena, psychologists reveal the essence of the process of reflecting the objective world in the human brain, find out how human actions are regulated, how mental activity develops and the mental properties of the individual are formed. Since the psyche and consciousness of a person is a reflection of objective reality, the study of psychological laws means, first of all, the establishment of the dependence of mental phenomena on the objective conditions of human life and activity. But since any human activity is always naturally conditioned not only by the objective conditions of human life and activity, but also sometimes by subjective ones (attitudes, attitudes of a person, his personal experience, expressed in the knowledge, skills and abilities necessary for this activity), then psychology is faced with the task identifying the features of the implementation of activities and its effectiveness, depending on the relationship between objective conditions and subjective aspects.

Thus, by establishing the laws of cognitive processes (sensations, perceptions, thinking, imagination, memory), psychology contributes to the scientific construction of the learning process, creating the opportunity to correctly determine the content of educational material necessary for the assimilation of certain knowledge, skills and abilities. By identifying the patterns of personality formation, psychology assists pedagogy in the correct construction of the educational process.

The wide range of problems that psychologists are engaged in solving determines, on the one hand, the need for relationships between psychology and other sciences involved in solving complex problems, and on the other hand, the identification within psychological science itself of special branches involved in solving psychological problems in one or another area of society .

What is the place of psychology in the system of sciences?

Modern psychology is among the sciences, occupying an intermediate position between the philosophical sciences, on the one hand, the natural sciences, on the other, and the social sciences, on the third. This is explained by the fact that the center of her attention always remains a person, whom the above-mentioned sciences also study, but in other aspects. It is known that philosophy and its component - the theory of knowledge (epistemology) resolves the issue of the relationship of the psyche to the surrounding world and interprets the psyche as a reflection of the world, emphasizing that matter is primary and consciousness is secondary. Psychology clarifies the role that the psyche plays in human activity and its development (Fig. 1).

According to the classification of sciences by Academician A. Kedrov, psychology occupies a central place not only as a product of all other sciences, but also as a possible source of explanation for their formation and development.

Rice. 1. Classification by A. Kedrov

Psychology integrates all the data of these sciences and, in turn, influences them, becoming a general model of human knowledge. Psychology should be considered as the scientific study of human behavior and mental activity, as well as the practical application of acquired knowledge.

4. Main historical stages in the development of psychological science

The first ideas about the psyche were associated with animism ( lat. anima - spirit, soul) - the most ancient views, according to which everything that exists in the world has a soul. The soul was understood as an entity independent of the body that controls all living and inanimate objects.

According to the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (427-347 BC), a person’s soul exists before it enters into union with the body. She is the image and outflow of the world soul. Mental phenomena are divided by Plato into reason, courage (in the modern sense - will) and desires (motivation). Reason is located in the head, courage in the chest, lust in the abdominal cavity. The harmonious unity of reason, noble aspirations and lust gives integrity to a person’s mental life.

The origins of psychology as a science

At the beginning of the 19th century, the development of psychological knowledge was stimulated by discoveries not in the field of mechanics, but in the field of physiology, which was guided by the “anatomical principle.” Human mental functions were studied from the point of view of their dependence on the structure of the organ and its anatomy. The differences between the sensory and motor fibers of the peripheral nervous system were rediscovered (see above), and the reflex arc was described. Later, the law of “specific energy of the sense organs” was formulated, according to which nervous tissue does not possess any other energy than that known in physics. The Austrian anatomist F. Gal, who studied the dependence of sensations on the nervous substrate, pointed to the convolutions of the cerebral cortex as the place where “mental forces” are localized (before him it was generally believed that they were in the cerebral ventricles).

Before objective methods for studying holistic behavior were found, major advances were made in the experimental analysis of the activity of the sense organs in connection with the discovery of a natural, mathematically calculable relationship between objective physical stimuli and the mental effects they produce - sensations. This played a decisive role in the transformation of psychology into an independent experimental science.

Physiologist Ernst Weber (1795-1878) studied the dependence of the continuum of sensations on the continuum of external physical stimuli that caused them. His experiments and mathematical calculations became the origins of psychophysics. The table of logarithms turned out to be applicable to the phenomena of mental life and the behavior of the subject. The breakthrough from psychophysiology to psychophysics separated the principle of causality and the principle of regularity. Psychophysics has proven that in psychology, and in the absence of knowledge about the bodily substrate, the laws that govern its phenomena can be discovered strictly empirically.

At the same time, the Englishman John Mile (1806-1873) started talking about mental chemistry.

Hermann Helmholtz (1821-1894) played a great role in creating the foundations on which psychology as a science was built. The brilliant thinker is responsible for many discoveries, including those about the nature of the psyche. They discovered the speed of impulse transmission along a nerve and the law of conservation of energy. “We are all children of the sun,” he said, “for a living organism, from the position of a physicist, is a system in which there is nothing but transformations of various types of energy.” His experiments indicated that the image of an external object arising in consciousness is generated by a bodily mechanism independent of consciousness. This is how the separation of the psyche and consciousness was outlined.

The Dutch physiologist F. Donders (1818-1898) devoted his research to measuring the speed of a subject's reaction to objects perceived by him. Soon, I.M. Sechenov, referring to the study of reaction time as a process requiring the integrity of the brain, emphasized: “Mental activity, like any earthly phenomenon, occurs in time and space.”

The position that the mental factor is a regulator of the body’s behavior has also found recognition in the works of the physiologist E. Pfluger. The scientist criticized the reflex scheme as an arc in which centripetal nerves, thanks to switching to centrifugal ones, produce the same standard muscle reaction. After decapitating the frog, he placed it in various conditions. It turned out that her neuromuscular reactions changed when the external environment changed (she crawled on the table, swam in water). E. Pfluger concluded that the reason for its adaptive actions is not the neuromuscular connection itself, but the sensory function, which allows one to distinguish between conditions and, in accordance with them, change behavior.

E. Pfluger's experiments revealed a special causality - mental. Feeling (what E. Pfluger called “sensory function”) is, he believed, not a physiological, but a psychological essence; “sensory function” consists in distinguishing the conditions in which the organism is located and in regulating, in accordance with them, response actions. Distinguishing what is happening in the external environment and responding to what is happening in it is the fundamental purpose of the psyche, its main life meaning. The researcher’s experiments undermined the generally accepted opinion that the psyche and consciousness are one and the same (what kind of consciousness can we talk about in a headless frog!). Along with consciousness, there is a huge area of the unconscious psyche (unconscious), which cannot be reduced to either the nervous system or the system of consciousness.

A revolution in psychological thinking was made by the teachings of Charles Darwin (1809-1882), from which it followed that man is a descendant of the ape. Darwin's teaching marked a sharp turn from mechanodeterminism to biodeterminism. First of all, Charles Darwin pointed to natural selection as a factor in the survival of organisms in an external environment that constantly threatens their existence. He noted that in the course of evolution, those who were able to adapt most effectively survive; those who survive the struggle for existence pass on their properties to their offspring. Since natural selection cuts off everything unnecessary for life, it also destroys mental functions that do not contribute to adaptation. This encourages us to consider the psyche as an element of the body’s adaptation to the external environment.

The psyche could no longer be imagined as an isolated “island of the spirit.” In psychology, the “organism-environment” relationship becomes fundamental, instead of the individual organism. This gives rise to a new systematic style of thinking, which later led to the conclusion that the subject of psychology should not be the consciousness of the individual, but his behavior in the external environment, which changes (determines) his mental makeup.

The concept of individual variation is an integral part of Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory. Therefore, these include variations in the sphere of the psyche. This gave impetus to the development of a new direction in psychology, the subject of which was the study of individual differences between people determined by the laws of heredity. Later it developed into a large branch of differential psychology.

In addition, Darwinism stimulated the study of the psyche in the animal world, and became the basis of zoopsychology, a broad study (using objective experimental methods) of the mechanisms of mental regulation of animal behavior.

Charles Darwin, analyzing instincts as motivating forces of behavior, criticized the version of their rationality. At the same time, he emphasized that the roots of instincts go back to the history of the species, without them a living organism cannot survive; instincts are closely related to emotions. C. Darwin approached their study not from the point of view of their awareness by the subject, but based on observations of expressive movements that previously had a practical meaning (for example, clenching fists and baring teeth in the affect of anger, that once these aggressive reactions meant a readiness to fight ). Naturalists of the pre-Darwinian period considered feelings to be elements of consciousness. According to Darwin, emotions that grip an individual act as phenomena that, although mental, are primary in relation to his consciousness. The greatest interest is in Charles Darwin's book "The Descent of Man and Sexual Selection", published in 1872.

Simultaneously with Charles Darwin, the ideas of evolutionary psychology were developed by the English philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). In his work “Fundamentals of Psychology” (1855), he defined life as a continuous adaptation of “internal relations to external ones.” The main provisions of his work are as follows. What happens inside the organism (and therefore consciousness) can only be understood in the system of its relations (adaptation) to the external environment. To survive, the body is forced to establish a connection between the objects of this world and its reactions to them. He ignores random connections that are not essential for survival, but firmly fixes the connections necessary to solve this problem and keeps them “in reserve” in case of new confrontations with everything that may threaten his existence. Adaptation in this case means not only adaptation to new situations of the senses as sources of information about what is happening outside (as, for example, the sensitivity of the eye changes in the dark). There is a special type of association - between internal mental images and muscular actions that realize the adaptation of the whole organism. Thus a sharp turn was accomplished in the movement of psychological thought. From the “field of consciousness” she rushed into the “field of behavior”.

In distinguishing the psyche and consciousness, studies of hypnosis were of great importance. The founder of scientific hypnology should be considered the Portuguese abbot Faria, who was the first to use the method of verbal immersion in hypnosis.

Hypnotic sessions gained great popularity in Europe thanks to the work of the Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815). According to his mystical theory, the world is permeated with a special liquid - magnetic fluid (from the Latin fluidus - fluid), which has healing powers. Accumulating as in reservoirs in individuals especially gifted for its perception, the magnetic fluid, according to the views of F.A. Mesmer, can be transmitted to patients through touch and heal them. Later, the English doctor Braid gave a decisive role in hypnosis to the psychological factor. From the late 70s of the 19th century, the French neurologist Jean Martin Charcot (1825-1893), teacher and mentor of the young Austrian doctor Z. Freud, began to study the phenomena of hypnosis.

Hypnosis (from the Greek hypnos - sleep) not only demonstrated facts of mentally regulated behavior with consciousness turned off (thereby supporting the idea of an unconscious psyche). To induce a hypnotic state, “rapport” was required - creating a situation of interaction between the doctor and the patient. The unconscious psyche discovered in this case is therefore socially unconscious, because it is initiated and controlled by the person who performs the hypnosis.

Using hypnosis methods in everyday work, the teacher creates an atmosphere of trust, increases the degree of influence on the student, his receptivity, and causes a state of increased functioning of mnestic functions (memory, attention). This is achieved by adapting to the language and train of thought of the interlocutor. Like a chameleon, it is necessary to imitate intonation, rhythm, degree of volume and speed of speech, imitate demeanor, facial expressions, gestures and mood, and adopt characteristic turns of speech.

By the 70s of the last century, there was a need to combine disparate knowledge about the psyche for study into a special scientific discipline. The transformation of psychology into an independent science became possible because psychology gradually transformed from a descriptive science into an experimental science. The beginning of the construction of psychology as an independent science was laid by W. Wundt (1832-1920) and F. Brentano (1838-1917).

W. Wundt organized the first psychological institute in Leipzig (1875). In this regard, the publication of his work “Fundamentals of Physiological Psychology” was very important. In it, the subject of psychology was recognized as “direct experience” - the content of consciousness; the main method is introspection (the subject's observation of processes in his consciousness, which required special long-term training).

Simultaneously with W. Wundt, the philosopher F. Brentano outlined a program for the study of psychology in his work “Psychology from an Empirical Point of View” (1874). According to F. Brentano, the field of psychology is not the content of consciousness (sensations, perceptions, thoughts, feelings), but its acts, mental actions, thanks to which it appears. For example, one phenomenon is light, another is the act of seeing light. According to the philosopher, the study of acts is a unique sphere of psychology.

In scientific developments, the level of theoretical ideas about the subject of psychology differed from the level of specific empirical work, where an increasingly wider range of phenomena fell under the power of experiment.

The methods of experimental psychology began to be developed by the German psychologist G. Ebbinghaus (1850-1909). He experimented with mnemonic processes that were more complex than sensory processes. In the book “On Memory” (1885), the scientist presented the results of experiments conducted on himself in order to derive the laws by which learned material is stored and reproduced. When solving the problem, he composed 2,300 nonsense words consisting of three sounds - consonant + vowel + consonant (for example, “mon”, “pit”, etc.). Various options were tried and carefully calculated regarding the time and volume of their memorization, the dynamics of their forgetting (the “forgetting curve” acquired a reputation as “classical”, showing that approximately half of what was forgotten falls in the first half hour after memorization), subsequent reproduction of material of varying volumes, various fragments of this material (the beginning of the list of syllables and its end).

Psychological practice required information about higher mental functions in order to diagnose individual differences between people regarding the acquisition of knowledge and the performance of complex forms of activity. The first solution to this problem was presented by the French psychologist Henri Binet (1857-1911). In search of psychological means by which it would be possible to separate children who are capable of learning, but lazy, from those who suffer from congenital intellectual defects, A. Binet turned experimental tasks to study attention, memory, and thinking into tests, establishing a scale for each division which corresponded to tasks that could be performed by normal children of a certain age.

Later, the German scientist W. Stern introduced the concept of “intelligence quotient” (in English - IQ). It correlated “mental” age (determined according to A. Binet’s scale) with chronological (“passport”) age. Their discrepancy was considered an indicator of either mental retardation or giftedness.

The more successful experimental work was in psychology, the more extensive the field of phenomena it studied became. The understanding of consciousness as a world closed in itself collapsed. Perception and memory, skills and thinking, attitudes and feelings began to be interpreted as the body’s “tools”, working to solve the problems that life situations confront it with.

At the beginning of the 20th century, several directions in psychology emerged, differing from each other in their understanding of the subject of psychology, research methods and a system of basic concepts. In Europe these were Freudianism and Gestalt psychology, in the USA - functionalism, behaviorism and the school of Kurt Lewin.

In 1912, in Frankfurt am Main, under the leadership of M. Wertheimer (1880-1943), a new psychological school arose - Gestalt psychology (from the German "gestalt" - form, structure). It included famous psychologists V. Kohler (1887-1967) and K. Koffka (1886-1941). In M. Wertheimer's experiments on perception, it was established that in the composition of consciousness there are integral formations (gestalts) that cannot be decomposed into sensory primary elements, i.e. mental images are not complexes of sensations.

The progressive significance of Gestalt psychology consisted in its overcoming of “atomism” in psychology - the idea that images of consciousness are built from bricks of sensations. There is a certain initial orderliness of sensory-intellectual structures. M. Wertheimer became an adherent of the active essence of consciousness: consciousness is active, through certain actions it builds its images of the external world, relying on initially existing structures - gestalts.

In the research of Gestalt psychologists, more than a hundred patterns of visual perception were discovered: apperception (the dependence of perception on past experience, on the general content of a person’s mental activity), the interaction of figure and background, the integrity and structure of perception, pregnancy (the desire for simplicity and orderliness of perception), constancy of perception ( constancy of the image of an object despite changes in the conditions of its perception), the phenomenon of “proximity” (the tendency to combine elements adjacent in time and space), the phenomenon of “closure” (the tendency to fill the gaps between the elements of the perceived figure).

Adaptive forms of behavior were explained by the universal concept of “insight” (from the English “insight” - insight) - a sudden grasp of relationships when solving problematic problems. But, unfortunately, the Gestaltists tried to explain consciousness based on itself.

At this time, its leading direction in American psychology emerged - behaviorism (from the English "behavior" - behavior). 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. Only actual behavior was studied. This fit well with the pragmatic direction of all American science at that time. One of the founders of behaviorism was E. Thorndike (1874-1949), who presented extensive experimental material in his doctoral dissertation “Animal Intelligence. Experimental Study of Associative Processes.”

He studied the laws of intelligence as learning in animals. To do this, I used so-called “problem” boxes. An animal placed in a box could leave it, or receive feeding, only by activating a special device - by pressing a spring, pulling a loop, etc. Initially, the animal made many movements, rushing in different directions, scratching the box, etc., until one of the movements accidentally turned out to be successful for it. “Trial, error and random success” was the conclusion adopted by the scientist for all types of behavior, both animals and humans. E. Thorndike's discoveries were interpreted as laws of skill formation. In this case, intelligence meant the body’s development of a “formula” for real actions that would allow one to successfully cope with a problematic situation. A “probabilistic style of thinking” was introduced: in the organic world, only those who manage, through “trial and error,” to select the most advantageous of many possible options for reacting to the environment survive.

Behaviorism considered the complex behavior of animals and humans as a set of motor reactions (R) in response to external influences - stimuli (S). S->R - this is the formula of behaviorism. The achievement of behaviorism was the development of experimental techniques based on the control of external influences and the body's response to these influences. According to behaviorism, a person at birth has a certain number of innate behavior patterns, on top of which more complex forms are built - “behavior regulators.” Successful reactions are consolidated and tend to be reproduced in the future. The consolidation of reactions occurs according to the “law of exercises” - as a result of repeated repetition, they become automated. American behaviorists draw a parallel between the periods of child development and the supposed eras of development of primitive society.

Within the framework of behaviorism, many patterns of skill development have been established. But the most important components of action were ignored - motivation and mental image of action as an indicative basis for its implementation. The social factor was completely excluded from psychology. The brain was viewed as a "black box".

This understanding opened up broad prospects for the introduction of statistical methods into psychology. Many of them are associated with the development of F. Galton (nephew of Charles Darwin) of problems of genetics of behavior and individual differences. F. Galton used tests concerning the functioning of the senses, reaction time, figurative memory and other sensory-motor functions. In his laboratory in London, anyone could determine their physical and mental capabilities for a small fee. He designated his tests with the word “test”, which later became widely accepted in the psychological lexicon. In his book “Hereditary Genius” (1869), the researcher argued, citing many facts, that outstanding abilities are inherited.

Functionalism expanded the subject area of psychology, covering mental functions as internal operations that are performed not by an incorporeal subject, but by an organism in order to satisfy its need to adapt to the environment.

In 1895, the head of the department of nervous diseases at the University of Vienna, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), while working on the “Draft Program for Scientific Psychology,” came to the need to theoretically comprehend his experience as a neurologist, who did not fit into the framework of the traditional interpretation of consciousness. Freud's psychoanalysis has influenced, either explicitly or implicitly, almost all modern psychological theories.

Orthodox psychoanalysis was founded by Sigmund Freud at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, i.e. precisely during the period of breaking down the traditional ideas about the psyche and mental processes of that time. The dominant methodological principle in psychology and medicine reflected the localizationist approach of von Virchow, i.e. search for a specific “break” corresponding to any painful phenomenon.

The emergence of new trends in psychology, sociology and philosophy revealed a narrow, primitive interpretation of the cause-and-effect relationships of the localization approach. The problem of unconscious (unconscious) mental processes is becoming the subject of close attention of researchers in various specialties.

I. Kant spoke about the unconscious in the human psyche, describing the “vague” ideas that the mind tries to master, because he is not able to “get rid of the absurdities to which the influence of these ideas leads him...”. Hegel considers the unconscious hiding place, in which “a world of infinitely many images and ideas is preserved without their presence in consciousness.” A. Schopenhauer moves a little further, formulating the conclusion about the primacy of the unconscious over consciousness in his work “The World as Will and Representation.” F. Nietzsche is already trying to fill the unconscious with certain plot mechanisms, such as the “unconscious will to power.” By the end of the 19th century, not only philosophers, but also representatives of the experimental trend in science were dealing with the problem of the unconscious. In 1868, the English physiologist Carpenter gave a presentation on the unconscious human brain activity. The report heard at the Royal Institution of London caused a lively discussion. In 1886, Myers expressed the idea of the existence of a “subcortical consciousness” that functions in many acts of human life. These facts served as the objective background for the creation of the famous psychoanalytic theory by Z. Freud.

Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1856 in Freiburg (former Moravia), part of Austria-Hungary (now Czechoslovakia). He grew up in a middle-income bourgeois family. In his autobiography (1925) he wrote: "My parents were Jews, and I remained a Jew." In 1873 he entered the medical faculty of the University of Vienna, where he showed interest in such sciences as comparative anatomy, histology, and physiology. As a student, under the guidance of Brücke, he carries out a number of completely independent studies in the listed disciplines. Since 1882 he has worked as a doctor in the department of internal medicine of the Vienna General Clinic, then in a psychiatric clinic under the leadership of Meinert.

In 1885 he left for a year-long internship with Charcot at the Salpêtrière clinic (Paris). There he mastered the method of hypnotherapy. Upon his return, he attended a course of lectures on psychology by the philosopher Franz Brentano, after which he noted the emergence of interest in human mental life and its laws. Before this, together with Karl Kohler, he discovered the local anesthetic effect of cocaine. Begins to study the pathogenesis of hysteria, publishes the first clinical articles, works with Breuer, mainly using hypnotherapy. At the same time, he continues research of a purely neurological nature (problems of infantile paralysis, aphasia, localization of brain functions).

By 1895, together with Breuer, he developed the method of hypnocatharsis. After a number of clinical publications, in 1895 he wrote the monograph “Project”, in which he made the first attempt to speculatively develop patterns of human brain activity.

In 1886 he married Martha Bernay. By 1901 (the year of publication of the monograph “The Interpretation of Dreams”) he completely abandoned the method of hypnosis and developed an original method of free association. In 1904-1905 he published “The Psychopathology of Everyday Life”, “Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious”, “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality” and other well-known monographs. By the time of World War I, Freud focused on developing the philosophical and historical-sociological aspects of society, i.e. begins to create a “metapsychological” theory. In 1908, the First International Psychoanalytic Congress was held in Salzburg. In 1909, the first international psychoanalytic journal was published. In 1909, together with K. Jung, he visited the USA, gave a course of 5 lectures at the University of Massachusetts, and upon completion of the course received an honorary doctorate of law. In 1910, the International Psychoanalytic Association was created. In 1920, the first psychoanalytic institute opened in Berlin. In 1930, Z. Freud received the international prize named after. Goethe. In 1936 he became an honorary foreign member of the Royal Scientific Society of England. In 1939, he published his last major work, “Moses and Monotheism,” in which he continued to develop his cultural and historical concepts.

Psychology has come a long way in development, the understanding of the object, subject and goals of psychology has changed. Let us note the main stages in the development of psychology as a science.

Stage I - psychology as the 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.
Stage II - psychology as the science of consciousness. It appears in the 17th century in connection with the development of natural sciences. The ability to think, feel, desire was called consciousness. The main method of study was a person's observation of himself and the description of facts.
Stage III - psychology as a science of behavior. Appears in the 20th century. The task of psychology is to set up experiments and observe what can be directly seen, namely, human behavior, actions, reactions (the motives causing the actions were not taken into account).

Psychology is a science that studies objective patterns, manifestations and mechanisms of the psyche.

In order to more clearly understand the path of development of psychology as a science, let us briefly consider its main stages and directions.

1. The first ideas about the psyche were associated with animism (from the Latin anima - spirit) - the most ancient views, according to which everything that exists in the world has a soul. The soul was understood as an entity independent of the body that controls all living and inanimate objects.

2. Later, in the philosophical teachings of antiquity, psychological aspects were touched upon, which were resolved in terms of idealism or in terms of materialism. Thus, the materialist philosophers of antiquity, Democritus, Lucretius, Epicurus, understood the human soul as a type of matter, as a bodily formation consisting of spherical, small and most mobile atoms.

3. According to the ancient Greek idealist philosopher Plato (427-347 BC), who was a student and follower of Socrates, the soul is something divine, different from the body, and a person’s soul exists before it enters in connection with the body. She is the image and outflow of the world soul. The soul is an invisible, sublime, divine, eternal principle. The soul and body are in a complex relationship with each other. By its divine origin, the soul is called upon to control the body and direct human life. However, sometimes the body takes the soul into its bonds. The body is torn apart by various desires and passions, it cares about food, is subject to illness, fears, and temptations. Mental phenomena are divided by Plato into reason, courage (in the modern sense -) and lust ().

Reason is located in the head, courage in the chest, lust in the abdominal cavity. The harmonious unity of reason, noble aspirations and lust gives integrity to a person’s mental life. The soul inhabits the human body and guides it throughout his life, and after death leaves it and enters the divine “world of ideas.” Since the soul is the highest thing in a person, he must care about its health more than the health of the body. Depending on what kind of life a person led, after his death a different fate awaits his soul: it will either wander near the earth, burdened with bodily elements, or fly away from the earth into the ideal world, into the world of ideas, which exists outside of matter and outside of the individual. consciousness. “Isn’t it a shame for people to care about money, about fame and honors, but not to care about reason, about truth and about their soul and not think about making it better?” - Socrates and Plato ask.

4. The great philosopher Aristotle, in his treatise “On the Soul,” singled out psychology as a unique field of knowledge and for the first time put forward the idea of the inseparability of the soul and the living body. Aristotle rejected the view of the soul as a substance. At the same time, he did not consider it possible to consider the soul in isolation from matter (living bodies). The soul, according to Aristotle, is incorporeal; it is the form of a living body, the cause and goal of all its vital functions. Aristotle put forward the concept of the soul as a function of the body, and not as some phenomenon external to it. The soul, or “psyche,” is the engine that allows a living being to realize itself. If the eye were a living being, then its soul would be vision. Likewise, the soul of a person is the essence of a living body, it is the realization of its existence, Aristotle believed. The main function of the soul, according to Aristotle, is the realization of the biological existence of the organism. The center, the “psyche,” is located in the heart, where impressions from the senses are received. These impressions form a source of ideas, which, combined with each other as a result of rational thinking, subordinate behavior. The driving force of human behavior is aspiration (internal activity of the body), associated with a feeling of pleasure or displeasure. Sense perceptions constitute the beginning of knowledge. Preserving and reproducing sensations provides memory. Thinking is characterized by the formation of general concepts, judgments and conclusions. A special form is nous (mind), brought from outside in the form of divine reason. Thus, the soul manifests itself in various abilities for activity: nourishing, feeling, rational. Higher abilities arise from and on the basis of lower ones. The primary cognitive ability of a person is sensation; it takes the forms of sensory objects without their matter, just as “wax takes the impression of a seal without iron.” Sensations leave a trace in the form of ideas - images of those objects that previously acted on the senses. Aristotle showed that these images are connected in three directions: by similarity, by contiguity and contrast, thereby indicating the main types of connections - associations of mental phenomena. Aristotle believed that knowledge of man is possible only through knowledge of the Universe and the order existing in it. Thus, at the first stage, psychology acted as a science of the soul.

5. In the Middle Ages, the idea was established that the soul is a divine, supernatural principle, and therefore the study of mental life should be subordinated to the tasks of theology.

Only the outer side of the soul, which is turned towards the material world, can be subject to human judgment. The greatest mysteries of the soul are accessible only in religious (mystical) experience.

6. From the 17th century. a new era begins in the development of psychological knowledge. In connection with the development of natural sciences, the laws of human consciousness began to be studied using experimental methods. The ability to think and feel is called consciousness. Psychology began to develop as a science of consciousness. It is characterized by attempts to comprehend the human spiritual world primarily from general philosophical, speculative positions, without the necessary experimental basis. R. Descartes (1596-1650) comes to the conclusion about the difference between the human soul and his body: “The body by its nature is always divisible, while the spirit is indivisible.” However, the soul is capable of producing movements in the body. This contradictory dualistic teaching gave rise to a problem called psychophysical: how are bodily (physiological) and mental (spiritual) processes in a person related to each other? Descartes created a theory that explained behavior based on a mechanistic model. According to this model, information delivered by the sensory organs is sent along sensory nerves to openings in the brain, which these nerves dilate, allowing the "animal souls" in the brain to flow through tiny tubes - motor nerves - into the muscles, which inflate, which leads to withdrawal of the irritated limb or forces one to perform one or another action. Thus, there was no longer any need to resort to the soul to explain how simple behavioral acts arise. Descartes laid the foundations of the deterministic (causal) concept of behavior with its central idea as a natural motor response of the body to external physical stimulation. This is Cartesian dualism - a body that acts mechanically, and a “rational soul” that controls it, localized in the brain. Thus, the concept of “Soul” began to turn into the concept of “Mind”, and later into the concept of “Consciousness”. The famous Cartesian phrase “I think, therefore I exist” became the basis of the postulate that the first thing a person discovers in himself is his own. The existence of consciousness is the main and unconditional fact, and the main task of psychology is to analyze the state and content of consciousness. On the basis of this postulate, psychology began to develop - it made consciousness its subject.

7. An attempt to reunite the human body and soul, separated by the teachings of Descartes, was made by the Dutch philosopher Spinoza (1632-1677). There is no special spiritual principle; it is always one of the manifestations of extended substance (matter).

Soul and body are determined by the same material causes. Spinoza believed that this approach makes it possible to consider mental phenomena with the same accuracy and objectivity as lines and surfaces are considered in geometry.

22. Significant contribution to the development of psychology of the 20th century. contributed by our domestic scientists L.S. (1896-1934), A.N. (1903-1979), A.R. Luria (1902-1977) and P.Ya. (1902-1988). L.S. Vygotsky introduced the concept of higher mental functions (thinking in concepts, rational speech, logical memory, voluntary attention) as a specifically human, socially determined form of the psyche, and also laid the foundations for the cultural-historical concept of human mental development. The named functions initially exist as forms of external activity, and only later - as a completely internal (intrapsychic) process. They come from forms of verbal communication between people and are mediated. The system of signs determines behavior to a greater extent than the surrounding nature, since a sign or symbol contains a program of behavior in a compressed form. Higher mental functions develop in the process of learning, i.e. joint activities of a child and an adult.

A.N. Leontyev conducted a series of experimental studies revealing the mechanism of formation of higher mental functions as a process of “growing” (interiorization) of higher forms of instrumental-sign actions into the subjective structures of the human psyche.

A.R. Luria paid special attention to the problems of cerebral localization and their disorders. He was one of the founders of a new field of psychological science - neuropsychology.

P.Ya. Halperin considered (from perception to thinking inclusive) as the orienting activity of the subject in problem situations. The psyche itself, in historical terms, arises only in a situation of mobile life for orientation on the basis of an image and is carried out with the help of actions in terms of this image. P.Ya. Galperin is the author of the concept of the gradual formation of mental actions (images, concepts). The practical implementation of this concept can significantly increase the effectiveness of training.

Since ancient times, the needs of social life have forced a person to distinguish and take into account the peculiarities of the mental make-up of people. The philosophical teachings of antiquity already touched upon some psychological aspects, which were resolved either in terms of idealism or in terms of materialism. So, materialist philosophers antiquities Democritus, Lucretius, Epicurus understood the human soul as a type of matter, as a bodily formation formed from spherical, small and most mobile atoms. But idealist philosopher Plato understood the human soul as something divine, different from the body. The soul, before entering the human body, exists separately in the higher world, where it cognizes ideas - eternal and unchanging essences. Once in the body, the soul begins to remember what it saw before birth. Plato's idealistic theory, which interprets the body and psyche as two independent and antagonistic principles, laid the foundation for all subsequent idealistic theories.

Great philosopher Aristotle in the treatise “On the Soul” he singled out psychology as a unique field of knowledge and for the first time put forward the idea of the inseparability of the soul and the living body. The soul, the psyche, manifests itself in various abilities for activity: nourishing, feeling, moving, rational; Higher abilities arise from and on the basis of lower ones. The primary cognitive ability of a person is sensation; it takes the forms of sensory objects without their matter, just as “wax takes the impression of a seal without iron and gold.” Sensations leave a trace in the form of ideas - images of those objects that previously acted on the senses. Aristotle showed that these images are connected in three directions: by similarity, by contiguity and contrast, thereby indicating the main types of connections - associations of mental phenomena.

Stage IV – psychology as a science that studies objective patterns, manifestations and mechanisms of the psyche.

The history of psychology as an experimental science begins in 1879 in the world's first experimental psychological laboratory, founded by the German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig. Soon, in 1885, V. M. Bekhterev organized a similar laboratory in Russia.

2. The place of psychology in the system of sciences

3. Basic psychological schools.

Psychological direction– an approach to the study of the psyche and mental phenomena, conditioned by a certain theoretical basis (concept, paradigm).

Psychological school- a certain movement in science, founded by its major representative and continued by his followers.

So in psychodynamic ( psychoanalytic) in the direction there are classical schools of Z. Freud, the school of C. Jung, Lacan, psychosynthesis of R. Assagioli, etc.

Psychology of activity- a domestic direction in psychology that does not accept purely biological (reflex) foundations of the psyche. From the perspective of this direction, a person develops through interiorization (the transition of external to internal) socio-historical experience in the process of activity - a complex dynamic system of interaction between the subject and the world (society). The activity of the individual (and the personality itself) is understood here not as a special type of mental activity, but as the real, objectively observable practical, creative, independent activity of a particular person. This direction is primarily associated with the activities of S.L. Rubinshtein, A.N. Leontyev, K.A. Abulkhanova-Slavskaya and A.V. Brushlinsky.

Behaviorism– a behavioral direction that considers learning as the leading mechanism for the formation of the psyche, and the environment as the main source of development. Behaviorism itself breaks down into two directions - reflexive (J. Watson and B. Skinner, who reduced mental manifestations to skills and conditioned reflexes) and social (A. Bandura and J. Rotter, who studied the process of human socialization and took into account certain internal factors - self-regulation, expectations , significance, accessibility assessment, etc.).

Cognitive psychology– considers the human psyche as a system of mechanisms that ensure the construction of a subjective picture of the world, its individual model. Each person builds (constructs) his own reality and, on the basis of “constructs,” builds his relationship with it. This direction gives preference to the study of cognitive, intellectual processes and considers a person as a kind of computer. To one degree or another, J. Kelly, L. Festinger, F. Heider, R. Schenk and R. Abelson contributed to it.

Gestalt psychology– one of the holistic (integral) directions, considering the body and psyche as an integral system interacting with the environment. The interaction of a person and the environment is considered here through the concepts of balance (homeostasis), the interaction of figure and ground, tension and relaxation (discharge). Gestaltists view the whole as a structure that is qualitatively different from the simple sum of its parts. People do not perceive things in isolation, but organize them through perceptual processes into meaningful wholes - gestalts (gestalt - form, image, configuration, holistic structure). This direction took its roots both in general (W. Keller, K. Koffka, M. Wertheimer), social (K. Levin), and personality psychology and psychotherapy (F. Perls).

The psychodynamic direction laid the foundation for a number of psychological schools. His “father” is S. Freud, who developed the principles of classical psychoanalysis, and his closest students and associates subsequently founded their own schools. This is K. Jung - analytical psychology, K. Horney - neo-psychoanalysis, R. Assagioli - psychosynthesis, E. Bern - transactional analysis, etc. This direction examines the “vertical structure” of the psyche - the interaction of consciousness with its unconscious part and the “superconsciousness”. This direction made the greatest contribution to personality psychology, to motivational theories, and its influence can be traced in both humanistic and existential psychology. Without this direction it is now impossible to imagine modern psychotherapy and psychiatry.

Humanistic psychology– a person-centered direction that considers human life as a process of self-actualization, self-realization, maximum development of individuality, and the internal potential of the individual. A person’s task is to find his own, natural path in life, to understand and accept his individuality. On this basis, a person understands and accepts other people and achieves internal and external harmony. The founders of this direction are K. Rogers and A. Maslow.

Existential psychology– the psychology of “existence”, human existence, is one of the most modern directions, most closely connected with philosophy. This direction is sometimes called phenomenology, since it attaches value to every moment of a person’s life and considers the inner world of a person as a unique universe that cannot be measured by any instrument, but can only be known through identification, that is, by becoming that person. The development of this direction is primarily associated with L. Biswanger, R. May, I. Yalom, but both C. Rogers and A. Maslow made their contribution to it.

Depth psychology- a direction that unites currents and schools that study the processes of the unconscious, the “inner psyche.” The term is used to designate the specificity of the “vertical” study of the psyche in contrast to the “horizontal” one.

Psychology of spirituality– a holistic direction that combines “purely” scientific and religious approaches to man. This direction is the future of psychology and, to one degree or another, is connected with all others. The psychological interpretation of the concept of spirituality is still being developed. However, in any case, spirituality is associated with what unites people, makes a person whole and at the same time with the manifestation of human individuality.

The outstanding German scientist G. Ebbinghaus (1850-1909) wrote in his famous psychology textbook (1908) that psychology “has a long past, but a short history.” Why is the history of psychology short? The fact is that scientific psychology is a little over a hundred years old, so psychology (compared to many other scientific disciplines) is still a very young science.

By “long past” Ebbinghaus means that over many centuries psychological knowledge accumulated in the depths of other sciences, mainly philosophy and natural science. Reflections on the human psyche and soul can be found in the thinkers of Ancient China, India, and Egypt. Naturally, the “movement of the human soul” is reflected in art. Everyday life experience has also contributed to the treasury of knowledge about the psyche.

If we talk about the emergence of pre-scientific psychology, then we can conditionally assume that this happened simultaneously with the emergence of human society.

Philosophical psychology emerged much later. M.S. Rogovin notes that its beginning cannot be designated by any specific date, if only because the process of isolating it from pre-scientific psychology was long. Most likely it can be attributed to the 7th-6th centuries. BC. “The emergence of philosophical psychology is natural in the sense that when human society reaches a certain stage of development of productive forces and production relations, culture, statehood, philosophical psychology arises - an integral part of primary and disparate scientific knowledge; due to the lack of special research methods and the presence of a myth-making element, it is still very close to pre-scientific psychology.”

In the second half of the 19th century. scientific psychology stands out from philosophy, becomes an independent scientific discipline, acquires its own scientific subject, begins to use special methods, and relies on an empirical basis in its theoretical constructions. The historical mission of distinguishing psychology into an independent scientific discipline was carried out by the German physiologist and philosopher W. Wundt (1832-1920). In 1863, in the essay “Lectures on the Soul of Man and Animals,” Wundt first formulated a program for the development of physiological (experimental) psychology; in 1874, in the fundamental work “Fundamentals of Physiological Psychology,” an attempt was made to “found a new field in science,” in 1879 In Leipzig, Wundt opened the first laboratory for the experimental study of psychic phenomena. Therefore, 1879 is conventionally considered the “year of birth” of psychology as an independent scientific discipline. Let us note that, according to Wundt, only elementary mental phenomena can be studied in the laboratory. For the study of complex mental functions such as memory, speech or thinking, the experimental method is not applicable. These functions should be studied as products of culture using non-experimental, descriptive methods, which should be done by the “second part” of psychology - “psychology of peoples” (cultural, or historical, psychology). In 1900-1920 Wundt published the 10-volume Psychology of Nations. Wundt's program received recognition from the scientific community. In 1881, the laboratory was transformed into the Psychological Institute, and in the same year Wundt began publishing a special scientific journal, Philosophische Studien. Wundt wanted to call his journal “Psychological Research,” but changed his mind, since a journal with that name already existed (although it published occult works rather than scientific ones). Later, at the beginning of the 20th century, Wundt nevertheless renamed his journal, and it became known as “Psychological Research”.

One of the first to use the term “soul” in his philosophical discussions was Heraclitus of Ephesus. He owns a famous statement, the truth of which is obvious today: “You cannot find the boundaries of the soul, no matter what path you take: so deep is its measure.” This aphorism captures the complexity of the subject of psychology. Modern science is still far from comprehending the secrets of the human soul, despite all the accumulated knowledge about the human mental world.

The treatise of the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) “On the Soul” can be considered the first special psychological work.

The term “psychology” itself appears much later. The first attempts to introduce the term “psychology” can be dated back to the end of the 15th century. In the title of the works (the texts of which have not survived to this day) by the Dalmatian poet and humanist M. Marulich (1450-1524), for the first time, as far as one can judge, the word “psychology” is used. The authorship of the term is often attributed to F. Melanchthon (1497-1560), a German Protestant theologian and teacher, an associate of Martin Luther. “Lexicography attributes the formation of this word to Melanchthon, who wrote it in Latin (psychologia). But not a single historian, not a single lexicographer has found an exact reference to this word in his works.”1 In 1590, a book by Rudolf Haeckel (Hocklenius) was published, the title of which also uses this word in Greek. The title of Haeckel’s work, which contains statements from many authors about the soul, “Psychology, that is, about the perfection of man, about the soul and, above all, about its origin...” -. But the term “psychology” became generally accepted only in the 18th century. after the appearance of the works of X. Wolf (1679-1754). Leibniz in the 17th century. used the term "pneumatology". By the way, Wolf’s own works “Empirical Psychology” (1732) and “Rational Psychology” (1734) are considered to be the first textbooks on psychology, and on the history of psychology - the work of a talented philosopher, a follower of I. Kant and F.G. Jacobi F.A. Karusa. This is the third volume of his Scientific Heritage (1808).