Most psychologists now agree with the thesis that a person is not born but becomes a personality. But points of view on the laws by which personality develops differ significantly. This concerns the understanding of the driving forces of development, patterns and stages of development, affiliation, specificity and role in this process of crises of personal development, opportunities to accelerate development and other issues.
Problems of development and personality formation were dealt with by L.S. Vygotsky, A.N. Leontiev, L.I. Bozhovich, O.V. Zaporozhets, Rubinstein, D.B. Elkonin, O.RLuria and others. It should be noted that it was D.B. Elkonin, L.I. Bozhovich and O.V. Zaporozhets made the greatest contribution to the development of psychological theory child development. Therefore, in the future we will rely mainly on their work.
D.B. Elkonin developed the concept of mental development, in which he combined two lines: cognitive and personal development of children from birth to graduation. According to his theory, development cognitive sphere the child and his personality goes in line with various leading activities that successively replace each other in ontogenesis. The first type of activity from which the formation of a child’s personality begins, even before the development of her communicative function, is her direct emotional communication with her mother and other people around her. Forms of communication are then developed through role play, joint learning and labor activity children, revealing new opportunities for personal improvement. At this time, the primary development of the motivational-need sphere in children (the “I want” sphere) occurs.
Another group of leading activities consists of those in the middle of which the development of the cognitive sphere and the corresponding abilities of people occurs. This is manipulative object activity of a young child, games with objects of school-age children, learning and work in school childhood. This is the sphere of “I can”, “I can”.
If all types of communication and activities of children are arranged in the order of their formation, then the following age range is obtained:
1. Direct emotional communication (baby age).
2. Object-manipulative activity (early age).
3. Role-playing game (preschool age).
4. Educational activities (junior school age).
5. intimate and personal communication (adolescence).
6. Educational and professional activities (early adolescence).
Thus, from birth to early adolescence (until graduation), the leading activities of the subject plan consistently and periodically replace each other, on the one hand, and forms of communication, on the other, which ensures the consistent development of cognitive processes and the personality itself.
D.B. Elkonin divided the entire process of child development from birth to graduation into three age stages: early childhood (preschool), junior school age (from 1 to 4-5 grades), middle and senior school age (5-8 and 10-11 grades). Each of these stages consists of two periods, beginning with the leading activity of communication aimed at personal development, and ending with the coming to the fore of activities related to the formation of the cognitive sphere.
One stage is separated from another by moments that can be called “critical periods of development.” In these circumstances, a discrepancy arises between the cognitive (operational and technical) capabilities of the child and his personality.
D.B. Elkonin’s system of views on personality formation was developed and continued by D.I. Feldstein. The focus of his attention is the social development of the individual, which is understood as an interconnected process of socialization and individualization, that is, the attraction of the child to the same social norms for all and at the same time his gradual transformation into a unique personality. Recognizing the thesis put forward by D.B. Elkonin that the development of personality is ahead of the formation of the child’s cognitive sphere, D.I. Feldshtein formulates a pattern that he calls the “mechanism retroactive effect". Its essence lies in the fact that new formations of one level, for example, personal, come into conflict with the sphere of activity where they were formed (for example, in communication), but receive the opportunity for implementation in another sphere.
D.I. Feldshtein also made some changes to the dismissed periodization of child development in comparison with the concept of D.B. Elkonina. Instead of three age stages divided into two periods each, he hypothesizes two developmental phases with four periods each. Age periodization D.I. Feldstein looks like this:
Phase I - up to 10 years:
1st period - up to 1 year; 2nd period - from 1 year to 3 years; 3rd period - from 3 to 6 years; 4th period - from 6 to 8 years.
Phase II - from 10 to 17 years:
1st period - from 10 to 15 years; 2nd period - from 15 to 17 years. In the middle of each of the six identified periods, three phases of development are noted:
Development of one specific aspect of activity;
Maximum realization, the culmination of the development of this aspect of activity;
Saturation of this type of activity and updating of the other side of the activity.
Understanding the role of childhood in personality development is extremely difficult if one does not take into account the place this period of life occupies in the entire process of a person’s personal development. In this regard, one should turn to the theory of personality development developed by E. Erikson.
Personal development, according to this theory, is, of course, a natural change of stages, during each of which qualitative transformations occur inner world, relationships and behavior of a person, as a result of which she as a person acquires something new, characteristic of a given stage of development.
Personal new formations, according to E. Erikson, do not arise just like that - their appearance at a certain stage is prepared by the entire process of previous personality development. Something new in it can arise and establish itself only when appropriate psychological and behavioral conditions were created for it in the past.
E. Erikson, based on his concept, identified eight stages of personality development:
1. Early childhood (from birth to 1 year). The development of a child is determined almost exclusively through the communication of adults, primarily the mother, with him. At this stage, prerequisites for future manifestations of desire for people or alienation from them may already arise.
2. Late period infant (from 1 year to 3 years). The child develops such personal qualities, such as independence and self-confidence, but their formation also largely depends on the nature of communication and relationships between adults and the child. Until the age of three, a child acquires certain personal forms of behavior - a child of this age is already a person.
3. Early childhood (from 3 to 5 years). A vivid imagination, active study of the world around us, imitation of adults, and inclusion in gender-role behavior develop.
4. Middle childhood (from 5 to 11 years). A strong sense of duty and desire for achievement is established, and cognitive and communication skills are developed. Happening active absorption instrumental and objective actions, task orientation.
5. Puberty, adolescence and youth (from 11 to 20 years). There is life self-determination, the development of a time perspective - plans for the future, an active search for oneself and experimentation in different roles, a clear gender polarization in forms of behavior, and the formation of a worldview.
6. Early adulthood (from 20 to 40-45 years). The desire for contacts with people, the desire and ability to devote oneself to other people. Giving birth and raising children. Love and work. Satisfaction with personal life.
7. Middle adulthood (from 40-45 to 60 years). Creation. Productive and creative work over yourself and other people. Mature, fulfilling, varied life, satisfaction with family relationships, parental pride in their children. Training and education of the new generation.
8. Late adulthood (over 60 years). Fullness of life. Constant reflection on the past, its assessment. The ability to accept the inevitable.
It should be pointed out that in each of the identified stages of personality development, only certain points are indicated that explain its course, and only a few that are characteristic of of this age, personal new formations.
IN domestic psychology It is generally accepted that personal development occurs in the process of socialization and education. Socialization is generally understood as the process during which a human being with certain biological inclinations, through assimilation of a system of knowledge, norms and values, acquires the qualities necessary for its functioning in society. In this understanding, socialization is the process of development of a person as a social being, his formation as an individual. The essence of the socialization process is that a person gradually assimilates social experience and uses it to adapt to society.
The process of socialization is inextricably linked with communication and joint activities. At the same time, socialization is not a mechanical reflection of directly felt or observed social experience. The assimilation of experience is subjective in nature: the perception of the same social situations may vary. Different individuals can extract different social experiences from objectively identical situations, which is the basis of another process - individualization. Socialization and individualization are not two opposing processes. In the process of socialization, a person acquires his own individuality, social experience is not only assimilated, but also actively processed, becoming a source of individualization of the individual.
The life path of a person is the history of the formation and development of personality in certain society. In progress public education and education, i.e. in the process of forming people of a given generation, “ typical characters era", socially valuable properties behavior, basic worldview and readiness to work.
Individual variability of all these properties of a person as a person is determined by: the interaction of the main components of status (economic, legal, family, school);
change of roles and systems of relations in teams (macro and micro groups);
Of particular importance is the specific influence of social development of the individual on the intensification of verbal, speech-mental processes of human brain activity. However, such an influence of the history of personality formation on the ontogenetic evolution of the individual occurs only at a certain stage of ontogenesis and gradually increases with the accumulation of life experience and social. This is explained by the fact that the beginning of personality occurs much later than the beginning of the individual.
"begins" long before birth, and the newborn baby comes to external environment with a specific development history. The origin of an individual has deep origins in phylogenesis and heredity, transmitted through the parental pair.
It has been established that from the first weeks of a child’s life, a mass of sensorimotor skills and mechanisms of behavior, orientation in the outside world and communication with people are formed very intensively, and with increasing speed.
From the moment of birth, a person depends on the social conditions of existence, education and health. He is formed as an animated being, whose mental evolution is, perhaps, more important than physical, an indicator of the normality of ontogenetic development and readiness for specific human mechanisms (upright posture, articulation, motor speech, social contacts, objective activity in the form of a game).
Soon after birth, events occur that are important for the formation of his future personality - the formation of communication during contacts with close adults. Communication is directly related to the development of children’s personality, because, even in its original direct emotional form, it leads to the establishment of connections between the child and the people around him and turns out to be the first component of the “totality” of social relations, which constitute the essence of personality.
However, the social conditioning of development and the presence of a complex, individually acquired neuropsychic apparatus are not yet sufficient to assert that a newborn or infant is a person, that the beginning of personality is the moments of birth, humming, babbling, and the appearance of the first selective reactions to a person. One cannot consider it more convincing that the typological properties of the nervous system and temperament, just like the inclinations, are considered natural basis personalities manifest themselves quite clearly during these periods. All these genotypically determined properties of a person as an individual initially exist regardless of what kind of personality, with what set of social characteristics will have it. It can be considered established that, based on the most various types The same type of character can be formed, just as contrasting character traits can be found in people with the same type of nervous system. Only during the development of the emerging person are these properties included in the general one and mediated by it.
At the first stages of personality formation, neurodynamic properties influence the pace and direction of education personal properties person. However, the very personal properties of a person are connected with the modern way of life for a given society and people, with the history of social development.
The formation of initial personality traits is associated with the formation of a complex social connections regulated by norms and rules, mastering the means of communication with their symbolic apparatus, objective activity with its social motivation, awareness of family and other roles.
Just as the beginning of an individual is a long and multiphase process of embryogenesis, so the beginning of a personality is a long and multiphase process of early socialization of an individual, most intensely occurring in the second or third years of a person’s life.
Subsequently, the formation of personality traits proceeds unevenly and heterochronically, corresponding to the sequence of assimilation of roles and changes in the child’s position in society.
The starting points for the beginning of ontogenesis and the history of personality development are separated by many months of life and significantly various factors. The “personality” is always younger than the “individual” in the same person. The history of a person, although marked by the date of birth, begins much later. Its especially early milestones are the child’s admission to kindergarten, and, most importantly, to school, which determines a wider range of social connections and inclusion in the system of institutions and communities characteristic of modernity. Under the influence of the social environment and upbringing, a certain type of reflection, orientation in the surrounding sphere and regulation of movement develops in the child, consciousness is developed, i.e. the most general structure of man as a subject of activity.
Thus, one is not born a person, one becomes a person (A., S.). Being born as an individual, a person is included in the system of social relationships and processes, as a result of which a special social quality is acquired - he becomes a person.
LECTURE TOPIC: The problem of personality formation in ontogenesis.
Plan:
1. Necessary and sufficient criteria for personality formation.
2. Stages of personality formation.
2.1. Features of the process of personality formation.
2.2. Stages of personality formation according to A.N. Leontiev.
2.3. Stages of personality development in ontogenesis according to L.I. Bozovic.
2.4. System-level concept of personality development L.I. Antsyferova.
2.5. Age periodization of personality development.
2.6. The concept of personality formation in pedagogy and psychology.
3. Mechanisms of personality formation.
1. Necessary and sufficient criteria for personality development.
L.I. Bozhovich identifies two main criteria for the formation of a personality.
First criterion: a person can be considered a person if there is a hierarchy in one specific sense, namely, if he is capable overcome your own immediate impulses for the sake of something else. In such cases the subject is said to be capable of indirect behavior. At the same time, it is assumed that the motives by which immediate impulses are overcome are socially significant. They are social in origin and meaning, that is, they are given by society, brought up in a person.
Second necessary criterion personality - ability to conscious leadership own behavior. This leadership is carried out on the basis of conscious motives, goals and principles.
The second differs from the first criterion in that it presupposes conscious subordination of motives. Simply mediated behavior (the first criterion) may be based on a spontaneously formed hierarchy of motives, and even “spontaneous morality”: a person may not be aware of what exactly made him act in a certain way, nevertheless, his behavior quite moral. So, although the second sign also refers to indirect behavior, it is precisely conscious mediation. It presupposes the presence self-awareness as a special authority of the individual.
2. Stages of personality formation.
Let's take a closer look the process of personality formation.
First, let's imagine the most general picture of this process. According to ideas in Russian psychology, personality, like everything specifically human in the human psyche, is formed through the assimilation, or appropriation, of socially developed experience by the individual.
Experience that is directly related to the individual is a system of ideas about the norms and values of a person’s life: about his general orientation, behavior, relationships with other people, with himself, with society as a whole, etc. They are recorded in various forms- in philosophical and ethical views, in works of literature and art, in codes of laws, in systems of public rewards, rewards and punishments, in traditions, public opinions.... right down to parental instructions to the child about “what is good” and “what is Badly".
It is clear that in different cultures, in different historical times, these systems of norms, requirements, and values were different and sometimes differed greatly. However, this does not change their meaning. It can be expressed using concepts such as “objective pre-existence” or “social plans” (programs) of the individual.
The society organizes special activities aimed at implementing these “plans”. But in the person of each individual it meets a being who is by no means a passive being. The activity of society meets the activity of the subject. The processes that play out at the same time constitute the most important, sometimes dramatic, events in the course of the formation and life of an individual.
Personality formation, although it is a process of mastering special field social experience, but the process is completely special. It differs from the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and methods of action. After all, here we are talking about such assimilation, as a result of which new motives and needs are formed, their transformation, subordination, etc. And all this cannot be achieved through simple assimilation. The learned motive in best case scenario motive known But not really working i.e. the motive is false. Knowing what you should do, what you should strive for, does not mean wanting to do it, really striving for it. New needs and motives, as well as their subordination, arise in the process of not assimilation, but experiences, or residence. This process always occurs only in a person’s real life. It is always emotionally rich, often subjectively creative.
Let's consider stages personality formation. Let's dwell on the most important and very large stages. Figuratively speaking A. N. Leontyeva, personality is “born” twice.
First her birth dates back to preschool age and is marked by the establishment of the first hierarchical relationships of motives, the first subordination of immediate impulses to social norms. In other words, what is reflected in the first criterion of personality arises here.
A. N. Leontyev illustrates this event with an example that is widely known as the “bitter candy effect.”
A preschool child receives from an experimenter an almost impossible task: to get a distant object without getting up from his chair. The experimenter leaves, continuing to observe the child from the next room. After unsuccessful attempts, the child gets up, takes the object that attracts him and returns to his place. The experimenter enters, praises him and offers him candy as a reward. The child refuses her, and after repeated offers begins to cry quietly. The candy turns out to be “bitter” for him.
What does this fact mean? Analysis of the events shows that the child was placed in a situation of conflict of motives. One of his motives is to take the thing of interest (immediate motivation); the other is to fulfill the adult’s condition (“social” motive). In the absence of an adult logo, immediate impulse took over. However, with the arrival of the experimenter, the second motive became actualized, the significance of which was further enhanced by the undeserved reward. The child’s refusal and tears are evidence that the process of mastering social norms and subordinating motives has already begun, although it has not yet reached its end.
The fact that it is in the presence of an adult that the child’s experiences begin to be determined by a social motive is very significant. It serves as a clear confirmation of the general position that the “knots” of personality are tied in interpersonal relationships and only then become elements of the internal structure of the personality. It is quite possible to say that here we are observing an early stage of “tying” such knots.
Second the birth of personality begins in adolescence and is expressed in the emergence of the desire and ability to realize one’s motives, as well as to carry out active work to subordinate and resubordinate them. Let us note that this ability for self-awareness, self-leadership, and self-education is reflected in the second personality trait discussed above.
The mandatory nature of this ability is fixed in such a legal category as criminal liability for actions committed. This responsibility, as is known, rests with every mentally healthy person who has reached the age of majority.
L.I. Bozovic believes that developmental crises should be considered as turning points in the ontogenetic development of personality, the analysis of which makes it possible to reveal the psychological essence of the process of personality formation. As you know, crises arise at the junction of two ages. Each age is characterized by central systemic neoplasms that arise in response to the child’s needs and include an affective component, and therefore carry a motivating force. Therefore, the central new formation for a given age, which is a generalized result of the child’s mental development in the corresponding period, becomes the starting point for the formation of the personality of a child of the next age. In child psychology, three critical periods are most often mentioned: 3, 7 and 12–16 years. L.S. Vygotsky analyzed the crisis of another year, and divided the teenage crisis into two phases: negative (13-14 years old) and positive (15-17 years old).
Newly born baby ( newborn) is a creature that acts under the influence of its inherent biological needs directly coming from the body. Then the child’s behavior and activity begin to be determined by the perception of those objects of the external world in which they “crystallized”, i.e. found its embodiment, his biological needs. During this period, he is a slave to the situation currently affecting him.
However, already in the second year life situation changes significantly. During this period, the first personal new formation is formed - motivating ideas, expressed in the child’s ability to act in accordance with his internal motives. Motivating ideas are the result of the first synthesis of intellectual and affective components, providing the child with a “separation” from the situation directly affecting him. They give rise to his desire to act in accordance with his inner impulses and cause a “rebellion” in the child if the implementation of his activity meets resistance from the environment. Of course, this “rebellion” is spontaneous, not intentional, but it is evidence that the child has entered the path of personality formation, and not only reactive, but also active forms behavior.
This situation is clearly illustrated by the case of a 1 year 3 month old boy described by L.I. Bozovic in the book “Personality and its formation in childhood.” This boy, while playing in the garden, took possession of another child's ball and did not want to give it back. At some point, they managed to hide the ball and take the boy home. During dinner, he suddenly became very agitated, began to refuse food, act up, climb out of his chair, and tear off his napkin. When he was lowered to the floor (i.e. given freedom), he ran back to the garden shouting “me... me” and calmed down only when he received the ball back.
At the next stage ( crisis 3 years) the child identifies himself as a subject in the world of objects that he can influence and change. Here the child is already aware of his “I” and demands the opportunity to show his activity (“I myself”). This not only determines new step in overcoming situational behavior, but also generates in the child the desire to actively influence the situation, transforming it to satisfy his needs and desires.
At the third stage ( crisis 7 years) the child develops awareness of himself as a social being and his place in the system of social relations available to him. Conventionally, this period can be designated as the period of the birth of the social “I”. It is at this time that the child develops an “internal position” that gives rise to the need to take a new place in life and perform new socially significant activities. And here, as in all other cases, the child has a protest if the circumstances of his life do not change and thereby interfere with the manifestation of his activity.
Finally, at the last stage of age development in teenager self-awareness arises in the proper sense of the word, i.e., the ability to direct consciousness to one’s own mental processes, including complex world your experiences. This level of development of consciousness gives rise to the need in adolescents to look back at themselves, to know themselves as a person, different from other people and in accordance with the chosen model. This, in turn, gives him a desire for self-affirmation, self-realization and self-education.
At the end adolescence as a new formation of this period, self-determination arises, which is characterized not only by an understanding of oneself - one’s capabilities and aspirations, but also by an understanding of one’s place in human society and your purpose in life.
L.I. Antsyferova develops system-level concept of personality development. It should be noted that L.I. Antsyferova believes that the mental and social development of the individual is not limited to any specific periods of time, certain periods. The more mature a person is from a psychological and social point of view, the more his ability for further development increases. According to the author, it is necessary to study the psychological organization of personality from the perspective of a process-dynamic approach. Understanding the individual path of personality development as multiple transitions from one stage to another, from a simpler level of functioning to a more complex one confronts researchers with the need to specifically resolve the developmental paradox. This paradox lies in the fact that the higher arises from the lower, in which the higher does not yet exist. Psychological research confirm the existence of a single-plane type of development, i.e. development within the same level of complexity, which ensures the continuous nature of development. Zaporozhets A.V. substantiates the hypothesis that, in addition to staged development, there is also functional development, which occurs within the same stage of development and leads to the accumulation of qualitatively new elements, which form a potential development reserve or the rudiments of a more complex level of functioning.
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LECTURE TOPIC: The problem of personality formation in ontogenesis.
Plan:
1. Necessary and sufficient criteria for personality development.
2. Stages of personality formation.
2.1. Features of the process of personality formation.
2.2. Stages of personality formation according to A.N. Leontiev.
2.3. Stages of personality development in ontogenesis according to L.I. Bozovic.
2.4. System-level concept of personality development L.I. Antsyferova.
2.5. Age periodization of personality development.
2.6. The concept of personality formation in pedagogy and psychology.
3. Mechanisms of personality formation.
1. Nnecessary and sufficient criteria for formingdetailspersonalities.
L.I. Bozhovich identifies two main criteria for the formation of a personality.
First criterion: a person can be considered a person if there is a hierarchy in one specific sense, namely, if he is capable overcome your own immediate impulses for the sake of something else. In such cases the subject is said to be capable of indirect behavior. At the same time, it is assumed that the motives by which immediate impulses are overcome are socially significant. They are social in origin and meaning, that is, they are given by society, brought up in a person.
Second necessary criterion personality - ability to conscious leadership own behavior. This leadership is carried out on the basis of conscious motives, goals and principles.
The second differs from the first criterion in that it presupposes conscious subordination of motives. Simply mediated behavior (the first criterion) may be based on a spontaneously formed hierarchy of motives, and even “spontaneous morality”: a person may not be aware of what exactly made him act in a certain way, nevertheless, his behavior quite moral. So, although the second sign also refers to indirect behavior, it is precisely conscious mediationvanno. It presupposes the presence self-awareness as a special authority of the individual.
2. Stages of personality formation.
Let's turn to more detailed consideration the process of personality formation.
First, let's imagine the most general picture of this process. According to ideas in Russian psychology, personality, like everything specifically human in the human psyche, is formed through the assimilation, or appropriation, of socially developed experience by the individual.
Experience that is directly related to the individual is a system of ideas about the norms and values of a person’s life: about his general orientation, behavior, relationships with other people, with himself, with society as a whole, etc. They are recorded in various forms - in philosophical and ethical views, in works of literature and art, in codes of laws, in systems of public rewards, rewards and punishments, in traditions, public opinions... up to parental instructions to the child that "What is good and what is bad".
It is clear that in different cultures, in different historical times, these systems of norms, requirements, and values were different and sometimes differed greatly. However, this does not change their meaning. It can be expressed using concepts such as “objective pre-existence” or “social plans” (programs) of the individual.
The society organizes special activities aimed at implementing these “plans”. But in the person of each individual it meets a being who is by no means a passive being. The activity of society meets the activity of the subject. The processes that play out at the same time constitute the most important, sometimes dramatic, events in the course of the formation and life of an individual.
Personality formation, although it is a process of mastering a special sphere of social experience, is a completely special process. It differs from the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and methods of action. After all, here we are talking about such assimilation, as a result of which new motives and needs are formed, their transformation, subordination, etc. And all this cannot be achieved through simple assimilation. A learned motive is at best a motive. known But not really working i.e. the motive is false. Knowing what you should do, what you should strive for, does not mean wanting to do it, really striving for it. New needs and motives, as well as their subordination, arise in the process of not assimilation, but experiences, or residence. This process always occurs only in a person’s real life. It is always emotionally rich, often subjectively creative.
Let's consider stages personality formation. Let's dwell on the most important and very large stages. Figuratively speaking A. N. Leontyeva, personality is “born” twice.
First her birth dates back to preschool age and is marked by the establishment of the first hierarchical relationships of motives, the first subordination of immediate impulses to social norms. In other words, what is reflected in the first criterion of personality arises here.
A. N. Leontyev illustrates this event with an example that is widely known as the “bitter candy effect.”
A preschool child receives from an experimenter an almost impossible task: to get a distant object without getting up from his chair. The experimenter leaves, continuing to observe the child from the next room. After unsuccessful attempts, the child gets up, takes the object that attracts him and returns to his place. The experimenter enters, praises him and offers him candy as a reward. The child refuses her, and after repeated offers begins to cry quietly. The candy turns out to be “bitter” for him.
What does this fact mean? Analysis of the events shows that the child was placed in a situation of conflict of motives. One of his motives is to take the thing of interest (immediate motivation); the other is to fulfill the adult’s condition (“social” motive). In the absence of an adult logo, immediate impulse took over. However, with the arrival of the experimenter, the second motive became actualized, the significance of which was further enhanced by the undeserved reward. The child’s refusal and tears are evidence that the process of mastering social norms and subordinating motives has already begun, although it has not yet reached its end.
The fact that it is in the presence of an adult that the child’s experiences begin to be determined by a social motive is very significant. It serves as a clear confirmation of the general position that the “knots” of personality are tied in interpersonal relationships and only then become elements internal structure personality. It is quite possible to say that here we are observing an early stage of “tying” such knots.
Second the birth of personality begins in adolescence and is expressed in the emergence of the desire and ability to realize one’s motives, as well as to carry out active work on their subordination and resubordination. Let us note that this ability for self-awareness, self-leadership, and self-education is reflected in the second personality trait discussed above.
The mandatory nature of this ability is fixed in such a legal category as criminal liability for actions committed. This responsibility, as is known, rests with every mentally healthy person who has reached the age of majority.
L.I. Bozovic believes that developmental crises should be considered as turning points in the ontogenetic development of personality, the analysis of which makes it possible to reveal the psychological essence of the process of personality formation. As you know, crises arise at the junction of two ages. Each age is characterized by central systemic neoplasms that arise in response to the child’s needs and include an affective component, and therefore carry a motivating force. Therefore, the central new formation for a given age, which is a generalized result of the child’s mental development in the corresponding period, becomes the starting point for the formation of the personality of a child of the next age. In child psychology, three critical periods are most often mentioned: 3, 7 and 12 - 16 years. L.S. Vygotsky analyzed the crisis of another year, and divided the teenage crisis into two phases: negative (13-14 years old) and positive (15-17 years old).
Newly born baby ( newborn) is a creature that acts under the influence of its inherent biological needs directly coming from the body. Then the child’s behavior and activity begin to be determined by the perception of those objects of the external world in which they “crystallized”, i.e. found its embodiment, his biological needs. During this period, he is a slave to the situation currently affecting him.
However, already in the second year life situation changes significantly. During this period, the first personal new formation is formed - motivating ideas, expressed in the child’s ability to act in accordance with his internal motives. Motivating ideas are the result of the first synthesis of intellectual and affective components, providing the child with a “separation” from the situation directly affecting him. They give rise to his desire to act in accordance with his inner impulses and cause a “rebellion” in the child if the implementation of his activity meets resistance from the environment. Of course, this “rebellion” is spontaneous, not intentional, but it is evidence that the child has embarked on the path of personality formation, and not only reactive, but also active forms of behavior have become available to him.
This situation is clearly illustrated by the case of a 1 year 3 month old boy described by L.I. Bozovic in the book “Personality and its formation in childhood" This boy, while playing in the garden, took possession of another child's ball and did not want to give it back. At some point, they managed to hide the ball and take the boy home. During dinner, he suddenly became very agitated, began to refuse food, act up, climb out of his chair, and tear off his napkin. When he was lowered to the floor (i.e. given freedom), he ran back to the garden shouting “me... me” and calmed down only when he received the ball back.
At the next stage ( crisis 3 years) the child identifies himself as a subject in the world of objects that he can influence and change. Here the child is already aware of his “I” and demands the opportunity to show his activity (“I myself”). This not only determines a new step in overcoming situational behavior, but also gives rise to the child’s desire to actively influence the situation, transforming it to satisfy his needs and desires.
At the third stage ( crisis 7 years) the child develops awareness of himself as a social being and his place in the system of social relations available to him. Conventionally, this period can be designated as the period of the birth of the social “I”. It is at this time that the child develops an “internal position” that gives rise to the need to take a new place in life and perform new socially significant activities. And here, as in all other cases, the child has a protest if the circumstances of his life do not change and thereby interfere with the manifestation of his activity.
Finally, at the last stage of age development in teenager self-awareness in the proper sense of the word arises, i.e., the ability to direct consciousness to one’s own mental processes, including the complex world of one’s experiences. This level of development of consciousness gives rise to the need in adolescents to look back at themselves, to know themselves as a person, different from other people and in accordance with the chosen model. This, in turn, gives him a desire for self-affirmation, self-realization and self-education.
At the end of adolescence, self-determination arises as a new formation of this period, which is characterized not only by an understanding of oneself - one’s capabilities and aspirations, but also by an understanding of one’s place in human society and one’s purpose in life.
L.I. Antsyferova develops system-level concept of personality development. It should be noted that L.I. Antsyferova believes that the mental and social development of the individual is not limited to any specific periods of time, certain periods. The more mature a person is from a psychological and social point of view, the more his ability for further development increases. According to the author, it is necessary to study the psychological organization of personality from the perspective of a process-dynamic approach. Understanding the individual path of personality development as multiple transitions from one stage to another, from a simpler level of functioning to a more complex one confronts researchers with the need to specifically resolve the developmental paradox. This paradox lies in the fact that the higher arises from the lower, in which the higher does not yet exist. Psychological research confirms the existence of a single-plane type of development, i.e. development within the same level of complexity, which ensures the continuous nature of development. Zaporozhets A.V. substantiates the hypothesis that, in addition to staged development, there is also functional development, which occurs within the same stage of development and leads to the accumulation of qualitatively new elements, which form a potential development reserve or the rudiments of a more complex level of functioning.
The potential sphere that accumulates at each stage opens up the possibility of personality development in different directions and at the same time creates determinants for the implementation of only some of these directions. Provisions on the formation of a potential sphere or functional reserve in the process of activity have been developed in relation to the motivational sphere of the individual (V.G. Aseev), to the abilities of the individual (T.I. Artemyeva), to the intellect (Ya.A. Ponomarev). Emerging potentialities, qualitatively new elements in the incentive and executive sphere of the personality under the influence of new life tasks and social demands give rise to psychological new formations and a transition to a new level of personality functioning. This level is characterized not only by a new personality quality, but also by new psychological strategies and tactics corresponding to it. effective solution life tasks.
The position that each stage of personality development is characterized by special psychological new formations, a new principle of functioning, means that all stages of mental development are of enduring importance for the full formation of personality. From this point of view, the process of personality development is irreversible. This does not mean that a personality trait formed in the early stages of ontogenesis cannot be transformed at subsequent stages or even re-educated. There are enormous possibilities for transformation and re-education of the individual. And yet the process of personality development is irreversible. The same personality traits, but formed at different stages of personality development or arising as a result of personality re-education, in their own way psychological structure will differ significantly from each other. The conditions for their formation and the mechanisms of functioning will be different.
Research shows that new formations at each level, each stage of personality development continue to develop and form, becoming part of the next stage or more high level development. They can also become deformed and replaced by others. Becoming the basis of new psychological formations, previously formed personality traits are transformed under the influence of the latter, acquiring systemic qualities of a higher level of personal development. At the same time, the quality of the holistic formation of personality changes.
The principle of enduring significance and at the same time qualitative transformation and enrichment of psychological strategies, tactics and personality traits as part of higher levels of development makes it possible to substantiate the structural-level concept of the psychological organization of personality. This concept proposes a solution to the question of how the ontogenetic stages or levels of personality development are related to each other with the psychological organization of the personality. It is suggested that the stages of development that a person has gone through gradually develop into a hierarchical organization, in which later psychological new formations, strategies and tactics do not cancel, but are qualitatively modified - they enrich, limit, regulate, subjugate formations more early stages and levels through their inclusion in new systems psychological relationships personality to the world, to new life positions.
The idea that in an adult, each of the ontogenetic stages he has passed through corresponds to a certain level in the hierarchy of his behavior, was developed by J. Piaget in relation to the development of intelligence. Criticizing her, S.L. Rubinstein proved that J. Piaget’s position does not take into account the fact of qualitative transformation by genetically later and more complex levels of previous, simpler ones.
The further a person moves along the path of life, the more significant a place in the personality structure begins to be occupied by configurations of properties or traits that were formed as the individual’s reactions to his own qualities and forms of behavior. We can distinguish complexes of protective, compensating, complementary, reinforcing, accentuated and other properties. They gradually become functionally autonomous and begin to determine the types and levels of a person’s personal functioning. The personality thus creates, creates itself.
L.I. Antsyferova suggests that a free and easy transition from one level of personality functioning to another, the ability certain time function at a simpler level, requiring less psychological stress, and again without special effort returning to a higher level is a sign and guarantee of the psychological health of the individual.
There are observations that show that in certain situations a person develops forms of behavior that, according to some external signs, are similar in psychological tactics to behavior characteristic of the early stages of ontogenetic development of the individual. For example, “childish behavior”, often observed in expectant young mothers. This phenomenon is usually called regression, but it is not a real return to early forms behavior. This is the level of functioning of a mature personality required in a given specific case for effective empathic emotional communication with a small child.
Similarly, in pathopsychological cases, with the collapse or functional impairment of the highest levels of personality functioning, there is no return to previously passed stages of its development. Moreover, the pathological process covers all levels of personal organization, as a result of which even the elementary forms of behavior of a pathologically altered personality are qualitatively different from those similar to them, but characteristic of the early stages of its formation.
Age periodization of personality development.
Pedagogy and psychology distinguish the following age stages of personality formation:early childhood (pre-school) age (0--3),kindergarten (4--6), junior school age (6--10), middle school age (11--15), senior school age (16-17).
In early childhood Personal development takes place primarily in the family, which, depending on the educational tactics adopted in it, either acts as a pro-social association or collective (with the predominance of “family cooperation” tactics), or distorts the development of the child’s personality. The latter occurs in groups of a low level of development, where confrontation dominates the relationship between parents and children. Depending on the nature of family relationships, for example, a child’s personality may initially develop either as a gentle, caring, unafraid to admit his mistakes and missteps, an open little person who does not shy away from responsibility, or as a cowardly, lazy, greedy, capricious self-lover. The importance of the period of early childhood for the formation of personality, which has been noted by many psychologists, lies in the fact that a child from the first year of his conscious life is in a fairly developed group and, to the extent of his inherent activity, assimilates the type of relationships that have developed in it, transforming them into the features of his developing personality.
Phases of development in early childhood age, the following results are recorded:
- first - adaptation at the level of mastering the simplest skills, mastering language as a means of joining social life with the initial inability to isolate one’s “I” from surrounding phenomena;
- second - individualization, contrasting oneself with others: “my mother”, "I mom’s”, “my toys”, etc., demonstrating in behavior one’s differences from others;
- third - integration, which allows you to manage your behavior, take into account those around you, obey the demands of adults, present realistic requests to them, etc.
The upbringing and development of a child, starting and continuing in the family, with 3--4 years, occurs simultaneouslyin kindergarten, in a group of peers under the guidance of a teacher, where a new situation of personality development arises. The transition to this new stage of personality development is not determined by psychological laws (they only ensure his readiness for this transition), but is determined externally by social reasons, which include the development of the system preschool institutions, their prestige, parents’ employment in production, etc. If the transition to a new period is not prepared within the previous age period by the successful passage of the integration phase, then here (as at the boundary between any other age periods) conditions arise for a crisis in personality development - the child’s adaptation in kindergarten turns out to be difficult.
Preschool age characterized by the inclusion of a child in a group of peers in kindergarten, managed by a teacher, who, as a rule, becomes for him, along with his parents, the most reference person. The teacher, relying on the help of the family, strives, using various types and forms of activities (playing, educational, labor, sports, etc.) as a mediating factor, to rally children around him, forming humanity, hard work, and other social values - qualities.
Three phases of personality development within this period it is assumed: adaptation- mastering the norms and methods of behavior approved by parents and educators in conditions of interaction with others; individualization- the child’s desire to find something in himself that sets him apart from other children, either positively in various types of amateur activities, or in pranks and whims - in both cases, focusing on the assessment not so much of other children as of parents and teachers ; integration- harmonization of the preschooler’s unconscious desire, to designate through his actions his own uniqueness and the readiness of adults to accept only that in him that corresponds to the socially conditioned and most important task for them of ensuring the child’s successful transition to a new stage - to school and, consequently, to the third period personality development.
At primary school age the situation of personality development is in many ways similar to the previous one. Three phases, its constituents give the student the opportunity to enter a completely new group of classmates, which is initially diffuse in nature. The teacher leading this group turns out to be, in comparison with the kindergarten teacher, even more referent for the children, since she, using the apparatus of daily grades, regulates the child’s relationships, both with his peers and with adults, primarily with parents , shapes their attitude towards him and his attitude towards himself “as another”.
It is noteworthy that it is not so much the educational activity itself that acts as a factor in the development of the personality of a junior schoolchild, but rather the attitude of adults towards his educational activity, towards his academic performance, discipline and diligence. Maximum value herself educational activity as a personality-forming factor, apparently, acquires at senior school age, which is inherent conscious attitude to study, the formation of a worldview in the conditions of educational training (in the lessons of literature, history, physics, biology, etc.). The third phase of the period of primary school age means, in all likelihood, not only the integration of the schoolchild in the “students-students” system, but also, above all, in the “students-teachers”, “students-parents” system.
Specific feature adolescence, in comparison with the previous ones, is that joining it does not mean joining a new group (unless a reference group has arisen outside of school, which very often happens), but represents the further development of the individual in a developing group, but in changed conditions and circumstances (the appearance of subject teachers instead of one teacher in junior classes, the beginnings of joint work activity, the opportunity to spend time at a disco, etc.) in the presence of significant restructuring of the body in the conditions of rapid puberty.
The groups themselves become different and change qualitatively.
Many new tasks in various significant types of activity give rise to many communities, from which in some cases associations that are prosocial in nature are formed, and in others associations arise that inhibit, and sometimes distort, the development of the individual.
Microcycles of adolescent personality development occur for the same student in parallel in different reference groups that are competitive for him in their importance. Successful integration in one of them (for example, in a school drama club or in communication with a classmate at the time of first love) can be combined with disintegration in a company in which he had previously gone through the adaptation phase, not without difficulties. Individual qualities, valued in one group, are rejected in another group, where other activities and other value orientations and standards dominate, and this blocks the possibility of successful integration within it. The contradictions of a teenager’s intergroup position are no less important than the contradictions that arise within the microcycle of his development.
The need to “be a person” at this age takes on a distinct form of self-affirmation, explained by the relatively protracted nature of individualization, since significant qualities a teenager, allowing him to fit, for example, into the circle of a friendly group of peers, often do not at all meet the requirements of teachers, parents and adults in general, who in this case strive to push him back to the stage of primary adaptation.
Plurality, easy turnover and substantive differences of reference groups, while inhibiting the passage of the integration phase, at the same time create specific features of the adolescent’s psychology and participate in the formation of psychological new formations. Sustainable positive integration of the individual is ensured by his entry into a group of the highest level of development - either in the case of his transfer to a new community, or as a result of the unification of the same group of schoolchildren around an exciting activity.
A prosocial reference group becomes a genuine collective, while an asocial association can degenerate into a corporate group.
The process of personality development in various groups - specific feature of youth, in terms of its time parameters, it goes beyond the boundaries of high school age, which can be designated as the period of early adolescence. Adaptation, individualization and integration of personality ensure the formation of a mature personality and are a condition for the formation of groups to which they belong. Organic integration of the individual in a highly developed group, therefore, means that the characteristics of the collective act as characteristics of the individual (group as personal, personal as group).
Thus, a multi-stage periodization scheme is constructed, in which eras, epochs, periods and phases of personality development are distinguished
All preschool and school age are included in one “the era of ascent to social maturity.” This era does not end with the period of early adolescence and the schoolchild receiving a certificate of maturity, but continues in new groups, where yesterday’s schoolchild organically enters into the rights of an economically, legally, politically and morally mature person, a full member of society.
Identifying the “era of ascent to social maturity” is necessary and appropriate. If we imagine the social environment in its global characteristics as relatively stable and remember that the goal of education literally from the first years of a child’s life and throughout all subsequent years remains the development of his personality, then the entire path to the realization of this goal can be interpreted as a single and holistic stage. In this case, in accordance with the provisions justified above, it assumes three phases of personality development, its entry into the social whole, i.e. the already mentioned adaptation, individualization and integration.
Extended in time, they act as macrophases of personality development within one era, denoted as three eras: childhood, adolescence, youth. It is in this way that the child ultimately turns into a mature independent personality, capable, ready to reproduce and raise a new person, to continue himself in his children. The third macrophase (epoch), starting at school, goes beyond its chronological limits. Adolescence acts as an era of turning point, aggravation of contradictions, which is typical for the stage of individualization.
Epochs are divided into periods of personality development in a specific environment, in types of groups characteristic of each age stage, differing in level of development. The periods, in turn, as already indicated, are divided into phases (here already micro phases) personality development.
The era of childhood - the longest macrophase of personality development - covers three age periods (pre-school, preschool, junior school), the era of adolescence and the period of adolescence coincide. The era of youth and the period of early adolescence, in turn, partially coincide (early adolescence is limited to the framework of being at school).
The first macrophase (the era of childhood) is characterized by relativethe predominance of adaptation over individualization, for the second (the era of adolescence) -individualization over adaptation (years of turning point, aggravation of contradictions), for the third (the era of youth) - dominationintegration over individualization.
This concept of personality development allows us to combine the approaches of social and developmental psychology.
So, personality is formed and develops in the conditions of a person’s specific historical existence, in activities (labor, educational, etc.). The leading role in the processes of personality formation is played by training and education.
The concept of personality formation in psychology and pedagogy.
The concept of “personality formation” is used in two senses.
First - formation of personality as its development, those. the process and result of this development. Taken in this meaning, the concept of personality formation is the subject of psychological study, the task of which is to find out what is (is available, experimentally revealed, discovered) and what can be in a developing personality under the conditions of targeted educational influences.
This is actually psychological approachto the formation of personality.
Second meaning -- formation of personality as its purposeful upbringing(if I may say so, “molding”, “sculpting”, “designing”; A.S. Makarenko successfully called this process “personality design”). This is actually pedagogical approach to identifying tasks and methods of personality formation. The pedagogical approach presupposes the need to find out what and how should be formed in an individual so that he meets the requirements that society places on him.
Mixing psychological and pedagogical approaches to personality formation should not be allowed, in otherwise there may be a substitution of the desired for the actual.
Pedagogy determines the tasks of the correct approach to the process of forming the personality of young people, and reveals what should be formed in the process of education. Pedagogy, developing methodology educational work, offers his own techniques and methods for achieving the goal, talks about how to develop integrity, truthfulness, kindness and other important personality qualities.
The task of psychology is to study the initial level of formation of personal qualities in specific schoolchildren and in specific groups (student, professional, family, etc.), to find out the results of educational work, including what is actually formed and what is not What remains is the task of which actual transformations of a teenager’s personality turned out to be productive and socially valuable, and which ones were non-productive, how the process of personality formation took place (what difficulties had to be faced, how successful it was, etc.).
Pedagogical and psychological approaches to the formation of personality are not identical to each other, but form an indissoluble unity. It is pointless to study the formation of personality from the position of a psychologist if you do not know what methods teachers used and what goals they pursued, and if you do not strive to improve these methods. The work of a teacher would be no less unpromising if he did not use the capabilities of a psychologist who identifies the real characteristics of schoolchildren, and would not be psychologically sophisticated in the causes of undesirable qualities that sometimes arise in his students, as if in parallel and independently of the application seemingly indisputable forms and methods of education, if he did not see the diverse, sometimes contradictory, psychological consequences of his specific pedagogical work etc.
In a formative psychological and pedagogical experiment, the positions of a teacher and a psychologist can be combined. However, even in this case, one should not erase the difference between what and how the psychologist as a teacher should form in the student’s personality (the goals of education are set not by psychology, but by society, and methods are developed by pedagogy), and what the teacher should research as a psychologist, finding out what was and what became in the structure of the developing personality as a result of pedagogical influence.
3. Mechanisms of personality formation.
Despite the extreme importance of this issue both for the theory of personality and for the practice of education, it is still far from sufficiently developed. Nevertheless, a number of important mechanisms in psychology have been identified and described.
Let us focus first of all on those that can be called spontaneous mechanisms of personality formation. These include the fairly general mechanism for shifting motive to goal, as well as more special mechanisms for identifying and mastering social roles. These mechanisms are spontaneous, because the subject, being exposed to their action, is not fully aware of them and, in any case, does not consciously control them. They dominate in childhood until adolescence, although then they also continue to participate in personality development along with conscious forms of “self-construction.”
First of all, it must be said that all the named mechanisms, to the extent that they relate to the development of the individual, act in line with the general, general processobjectifying n need for communication .
This need has recently been given increasing importance in psychology. In its fundamentality, it is equated to organic needs. It is as vital as these latter, for its dissatisfaction leads to a deterioration in the physical condition of the baby, as well as the cubs of higher animals, and even to their death. Some authors consider this need to be innate. Others believe that it is formed in a child very early, since the satisfaction of all his organic needs occurs exclusively with the help of an adult, and the need for the latter becomes as urgent as the need for food, safety, bodily comfort, etc. Regardless from the position in this debatable issue, all authors admit that the need “for the other,” for contact with others like themselves, for communication turns out to be the main one driving force formation and development of personality.
Let's turn to the first of these mechanisms - shifting the motive to the goal- and let's trace its functioning at the most early stages development of the child's personality. In the first years, raising a child consists mainly of instilling in him norms of behavior.
How does this happen? Even before a year, the child learns what he can and should do and what he cannot; what brings a smile and mother’s approval, and what brings a stern face and the word “no”. And he “should,” for example, ask to go to the toilet, a hungry person should wait until food is prepared, use a spoon instead of grabbing food with his hands; He “cannot” take a breaking glass, grab a knife, reach for the fire, that is, satisfy natural impulses to explore new, bright, interesting objects.
It is obvious that already from these first steps the formation of what is called “mediated behavior” begins, i.e. actions that are directed not by direct impulses, but by rules, requirements and norms.
As the child grows, the range of norms and rules that he must learn and which must mediate his behavior expands more and more. The entire preschool childhood is filled with such upbringing, and it takes place every day and hourly.
Especially here it is necessary to highlight the norms of behavior in relation to other people. Take a closer look at the everyday life of raising a preschooler. They are filled with demands and explanations of this kind: “say hello”, “don’t reach out first”, “say thank you”, “where is the magic word “please”?”, “turn away when you sneeze”, “don’t take it away”, “share”, “give way”, “don’t offend the little one”...
And with the right tone of the teacher, quite friendly, but persistent, the child masters these norms and begins to behave in accordance with them. Of course, the range of educational outcomes is very wide. There are very ill-mannered children, and there are very well-mannered ones. But on average, a child growing up in our culture demonstrates a lot of learned norms of behavior, because... education gives its results.
The question arises: are these results limited to the framework of external behavior, its, so to speak, completed training, or does education also lead to internal changes, transformations in the motivational sphere of the child?
The answer to this is obvious: no, the results of education are not limited to external behavior; Yes, changes occur in the child’s motivational sphere. Otherwise, for example, the child in the example analyzed by A. N. Leontyev would not have cried, but calmly took the candy. IN Everyday life the same shifts are revealed in the fact that the child, at some point, begins to enjoy, when he does the “right thing”.
It should be noted that personality education bears fruit only if it takes place in positiveemotional tone if a parent or teacher manages to combine demandingness and kindness. This rule has long been intuitively found in pedagogical practice and realized by many outstanding teachers. Nothing can be achieved by demands and punishments; “fear of punishment” is a bad assistant in education. If we are talking about the education of the individual, then this is a path that completely discredits itself.
For example. At the end of the last century, Russian teacher and psychologist P.F. Lesgaft conducted a study of the characters of schoolchildren and identified six different types. He also examined the conditions for raising children in the family and discovered interesting correspondences between the type of character (personality) of the child and the style of upbringing in the family.
Thus, according to Lesgaft’s observations, the “normal” character of children (the author calls it "good-natured") is formed in families where there is an atmosphere of calm, love and attention, but where the child is not pampered or pampered.
Among the “anomalous” he described, in particular, "maliciously downtrodden" a type whose features are anger, gloating, indifference to the demands or censures of others. As it turned out, such children grow up in conditions of excessive severity, pickiness, and injustice.
Thus, during education the role of reward and punishment turns out to be completely different, i.e. (in scientific terms) positive and negative reinforcement. This may seem strange, because from higher physiology nervous activity it is known that conditioned reflex can be developed with equal success on the basis of both positive (for example, food) and negative (for example, pain) reinforcement.
But personality education is not limited to the development of conditioned reflexes.
Let us turn to the analysis of the mechanism under discussion. What happens when a child is raised correctly? As noted above, the need for communication appears early in ontogenesis and has great motivating power. The child wants to be with his mother - to talk about her, play, be surprised with her, seek her protection and sympathy. But he has no immediate impulses to be polite, attentive to others, to restrain himself, to deny himself anything, etc. However, the mother kindly and persistently demands this. Its requirements are illuminated for the child personal meaning, for they are directly related to the object of his need - contact with his mother. This, of course, has a positive meaning, since communicating with her is a joy. Initially, he fulfills her requirements in order to continue to experience this joy.
In the language of formulas, we can say that the child initially performs the required action (target) for the sake of communication with mother (motive). Over time, everything is “projected” onto this action large quantity positive experiences, and along with their accumulation, the correct action acquires independent incentive silt (becomes a motive).
Thus, this process obeys the following general rule: that object (idea, goal), which has been saturated with positive emotions for a long time and persistently, turns into an independent motive. In such cases they say that it happened shift of motive to goal or, in other words, the goal has acquired the status of a motive .
If communication with an adult goes poorly, joylessly, and brings grief, then the whole mechanism does not work, the child does not develop new motives, proper education personality doesn't happen.
The mechanism considered operates at all stages of personality development. Only with age do those main motives of communication that “illuminate” the actions being mastered change and become more complicated. After all, as a child grows, the circle of his social contacts and connections becomes wider and wider. Parents, relatives and friends, kindergarten teachers and peers, teachers primary classes and schoolmates, members of the yard company, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, contemporaries and even descendants - here sample list ever expanding spheres of communication in real and ideal terms.
Special studies and everyday observations show that each stage of real expansion of contacts is preceded and then accompanied by a clearly expressed motive adoption others, atknowledge And statements in the appropriate social group.
It is worth remembering how a child dreams of putting on a school uniform and going to first grade, what importance a middle school student attaches to his place and position in the class, how a young man cares about his upcoming place in life.
Similar motives, as shown in his works D. B. Elkonin, encourage not only direct action: establishing contacts and relationships, taking a certain position, but also action, and then extensive activities that ensure the acquisition of the necessary skills, knowledge, abilities, mastery. This means that social motives (acceptance, recognition, affirmation) give rise to new motives - actually professional, and then ideal - aspirations for Truth, Beauty, Justice, etc.
Let's consider nextth mechanism.
Not everything is transmitted to the child in the form of targeted educational influences. A large role in the transfer of “personal” experience belongs to indirect influences - through personal example, “contagion”, imitation. The corresponding mechanism is called identification mechanism.
The first pronounced identifications occur between preschoolers and their parents. Children imitate their parents in everything: manners, speech, intonation, clothing, activities. Their activities are reproduced, of course, from a purely external side - they can sit at a desk, moving a pen over paper, “reading” a newspaper or “operating” some tools. But at the same time, they also internalize the internal traits of their parents - their tastes, attitudes, ways of behaving and feeling.
This is very clearly manifested in role-playing games of pre-school children, especially when playing “family”. Kindergarten teachers say that children unwittingly betray their parents. It is enough to listen to how a girl playing the role of a mother reprimands a boy who plays the role of a father to understand what kind of character her mother has and from what family environment this tone is derived.
At later age stages, the circle of persons from whom a sample is selected—the object of identification—extremely expands. He could be the leader of a company, a teacher, just a familiar adult, a literary hero, a hero of the Great Patriotic War, famous contemporary or a hero of the past.
Analysis of subjective reports, observations and special studies show that acceptance of a personal standard, or sample, is extremely important psychological function. It facilitates the entry of a child, teenager, or young man into a new social position, the assimilation of new relationships, and the formation of new personal structures.
Thus, it was found that those children who played little role-playing games in preschool age and thereby reproduced little the behavior of adults adapt less well to social conditions.
For example. Excerpt from an essay by a tenth grader: “It is commonly said that youth does not recognize authorities. This is wrong. Yes, youth seeks independence, but this does not mean that for itNotthere are ideals. Youth not only recognizes, but also seeks authority.”
Let's remember the events described in the novel E. Voynich "Gadfly".
The hero of the novel, Arthur, spends his childhood and youth in close communication with his teacher and mentor, the priest Montanelli. This is an intelligent, educated, highly moral person. The boy reaches out to him, listens to his every word, worships him.
But then he unexpectedly finds out that the priest is his real father and that he himself is Montanelli’s illegitimate son. Thus, it is revealed that in the biography of this man, a priest who took a vow of celibacy, there is a black spot that calls into question the truth of his faith, his sermons, and his ideals. The idol in Arthur's mind collapses, and with it all of him collapses. happy world. Arthur fakes suicide, breaks family ties, personal attachments, goes into hiding, changes his name, and after a while we meet him again - but in fact with a different person.
In more “calm” cases, sooner or later a moment comes when the “sample” loses its attractiveness and subjective significance for the individual. This is quite natural: the developing personality has received something very important and necessary from the model, but she has her own path.
The phenomenon of sample deactualization similar to “shedding old skin.” It marks the completion of a certain stage in the development of personality, its rise to a new level. At the same time, it turns out that new relationships have developed, new motives have appeared, which force us to set new goals and look for new models and ideals. So, the process follows an ascending spiral.
It should be noted that no matter how completely our “model” has become obsolete, it is necessary to remain deeply grateful to it for what it gave us, and it is not so important whether it was actually as impeccable as it seemed.
The identification mechanism is clearly illustrated by cases of “remaking” gender. It has been established that this process includes a complete rebirth of the personality.
There are people with abnormal development of the reproductive system, which prevents them from becoming a full-fledged man or woman. Their childhood and adolescence are very dramatic. At first, the child is not aware of his anomaly. But somewhere at the age of 4-5 years, as a result of comments from others, his own observations and comparisons, he begins to understand that he is not like everyone else. In this first phase the child tries to hide or compensate for his deficiency. He actively participates in the games of children of his sex, emphasizes his gender external behavior, clothing, etc. And these efforts provide him with a more or less calm existence for some time.
However, during puberty , at 13--15 years old, a crisis is coming. The fact is that such adolescents do not experience normal hormonal shifts or there is a sharp release of hormones of the opposite sex. As a result, sexual appearance, sexual behavior and social adaptation generally.
If, for example, it was a boy, he begins to gain weight; his body accepts female forms; interest in girls is not awakened. As a result, he ceases to feel like a boy, and others may also reject him as a boy.
The loss of gender identity is experienced very hard and is accompanied by a number of common experiences: attachment to close people and native places disappears, there is a feeling of losing one’s place among people, the “inner self” is lost (transmitted as a feeling of depersonalization), the meaning of life is lost, sometimes thoughts arise about suicide.
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In all the works we have published so far, we have proceeded from the position that psychologically mature personality is a person who has reached a certain, fairly high level of mental development. As the main feature of this development, we noted in humans the ability to behave independently of the circumstances directly affecting him (and even in spite of them), while being guided by his own, consciously set goals. The emergence of such an ability determines the active, rather than reactive, nature of a person’s behavior and makes him not a slave of circumstances, but a master of both them and himself.
According to this understanding, we were looking for patterns in the emergence of this ability (and therefore, as we thought, psychological nature personality) in the development of that functional system, which in psychology is usually called will. To do this, we examined the formation of motivating, i.e., affectively saturated goals and, most importantly, the formation of an “internal action plan” that allows a person to organize his motivational sphere in such a way as to ensure the victory of consciously set goals over motives, although undesirable to the person in a given situation , but directly stronger. In other words, we studied the action of the functional system that ensures a person’s conscious control of his behavior (Bozhovich L.I. et al., 1974).
We considered this line of development to be central to the psychological characteristics of the individual. However, already in the above-mentioned studies it became clear that the implementation of consciously set goals does not always occur in the way described above, i.e., through a person’s appeal to internal plan actions for the purpose of conscious reconstruction of the motivational sphere. Under still insufficiently studied conditions, goals themselves can acquire such a directly motivating force that is capable of inducing a person to appropriate behavior, bypassing the experience of internal conflict, struggle of motives, reflection, choice, formation of intention, in a word, bypassing an act of will in the proper sense of the word Such behavior is only phenotypically similar to that which is usually called volitional, but it is subject to the influence of “secondary” motivation, which has become direct in the process of the child’s social development. Analysis shows that such (as if “post-voluntary”) motivation is ensured by the connection between the goals set by a person and his higher feelings, which impart direct motivating force to the goals. The absence of appropriate feelings (or their weakness) forces a person to resort to self-coercion by an act of will.
Research shows that every systemic neoplasm that arises during a person’s life and is a necessary condition his existence as social individual, includes certain affective components and thus has a direct motivating force. A person is directly motivated by both his beliefs and moral feelings, and his inherent personality qualities. But since any action is simultaneously influenced by many needs and motives, a struggle occurs between them, which, in the case of irreconcilability of equivalent but differently directed motives, is reflected in a person’s experience in the form of a conflict with himself. If stronger, but rationally rejected, motives directly win in this conflict, the person experiences difficult experiences. If immediate
desires overcome moral aspirations, then these experiences are expressed in feelings of shame, remorse, etc., which a person seeks to soften with the help of various kinds of defense mechanisms, repression, or with the help of “techniques of neutralizing conscience,” which some American criminologists point out. A person constantly faced with internal conflicts is characterized by indecision, instability of behavior, and inability to achieve consciously set goals; he lacks precisely those traits that are fundamental to the characteristics of a psychologically mature personality.
So, there is reason to believe that the formation of personality cannot be characterized by the independent development of any one of its aspects - rational, volitional or emotional. Personality - this is truly a higher integration system, a kind of indissoluble integrity. And we can assume that there are some sequentially emerging new formations that characterize the stages center line its ontogenetic development.
Unfortunately, there has not yet been a systematic study of this problem, but almost all psychologists involved in the study of personality recognize the emergence of a “core” in it, which they denote either by the term “I-system”, or “system-I”, or simply “I” " We use these concepts as explanatory ones when considering the mental life of a person and his behavior. However, the psychological content and structure of this “core” do not reveal, much less establish, the patterns of its development in ontogenesis. Apparently, this means that each person, in one way or another, understands what we are talking about, based on the empirically captured experience of his own “I”.
Already from the first days of birth, a child is not just a “reacting apparatus,” as reflexologically minded psychologists argued, but a being possessing, albeit a very diffuse, but still its own individual mental life. He has primary needs(for food, warmth, movement), needs associated with the functional development of the brain (for example, the need for new experiences), and, finally, social needs that appear and develop during the first year of life: the need for another person, for communication with him , in his attention and support. These needs subsequently become the most important for the moral formation of the child. Recognition of these needs requires recognition in the infant and corresponding affective experiences. Dissatisfaction with any of them causes negative experiences in the child, expressed in anxiety, screaming, and their satisfaction is joy, an increase in overall vitality, increased cognitive and motor activity (for example, the so-called “revitalization complex”), etc.
Consequently, the content of the mental life of children in the first year of life is characterized first by affectively colored sensations, and then by globally affectively experienced impressions. In other words, in the baby’s consciousness, the emotional components associated with the influences directly perceived by him are primarily represented. However, over the course of a year, the baby’s consciousness develops: individual mental functions are identified in it, the first sensory generalizations appear, and it begins to use elements of words to designate objects. In this regard, the baby's needs are becoming more and more
to be embodied (“crystallize”) in the objects of the surrounding reality. As a result, the objects themselves acquire motivating power. Therefore, when they enter the child’s field of perception, they actualize his needs, which were previously in a potential state, and thereby stimulate the child’s activity in a direction appropriate to the given situation. This determines the situational nature of children in the first year of life, whose behavior is completely controlled by the stimuli that fall into their field of perception. Thus, and this must be especially emphasized, children of the first year of life do not have an indifferent attitude towards surrounding objects. They perceive only those that make sense to them and meet their needs.
The baby's helplessness and his lack of extra-situational (internal, but not organic) motivations also determine the behavior of adults towards children of this age. They impose their will on them, following the prescribed schedule of sleep, nutrition, and walking. As a rule, one-year-old children are not asked if they want to walk, sleep, or eat.
But at the beginning of the second year of life, a moment comes when the child ceases to obediently obey the adult, and the adult can no longer control his behavior by organizing external influences. Observations reveal that at the same time, children become capable of acting not only under the influence of directly perceived impressions, but also under the influence of images and ideas that emerge in their memory.
Apparently, this is natural, since during this period memory begins to play mental development baby everything big role, occupies a dominant position and thereby rebuilds the structure of the child’s consciousness and his behavior.
Thus, the central, i.e. personal, new formation of the first year of life is the emergence of effectively charged ideas that stimulate the child’s behavior despite the influences of the external environment. We will call them "motivating ideas".
The appearance of motivating ideas fundamentally changes the child’s behavior and all his relationships with the surrounding reality. Their presence frees the child from the constraint of a given specific situation, the dictates of external influences (including those coming from an adult); in short, they turn him into a subject, although the child himself is not yet aware of this. However, adults can no longer ignore this. The intensity of new needs is so great that failure to take them into account, much less direct suppression, causes the child’s frustration, which often determines his future relationships with adults, and, consequently, the further formation of his personality.
During this period, the child transitions from a being who has already become a subject (i.e., who has taken the first step towards the formation of a personality) to a being who recognizes itself as a subject, in other words, to the emergence of that systemic new formation that is usually associated with the appearance of the word “ I",
This entire transition takes place under conditions that are largely different from those that determined the life and activities of the infant. First of all, thanks to the successes of previous development in infancy, young children begin to occupy a completely different place in the world of people and objects around them. These are no longer helpless, not unresponsive creatures, they themselves move in space, can act on their own, satisfy many of their needs, become capable of primary forms verbal communication, in other words, they can already carry out activities that are not mediated by adults.
During this period, the child’s cognitive activity turns not only to the outside world, but also to himself.
The process of self-knowledge, apparently, begins with knowledge of oneself as a subject of action. You can often observe how a child of this age likes to repeat the same movement many times, carefully
tracking and controlling the changes that it (more precisely, he, with its help) makes (for example, opens and closes a door, moves objects, pushes them so that they fall, etc.). This is what helps the child feel like something different, unlike the surrounding objects, and thus distinguish himself as a special object (subject of action).
However, self-knowledge in the second and even third year of life continues to be for the child himself (subjectively) knowledge of an “object” that is, as it were, external to him.
It is difficult without special research to understand the psychological “mechanism” of the transition from one’s own name to the pronoun “I”, that is, the mechanism of the transition from self-knowledge to self-awareness. But it seems to us beyond doubt that in the so-called "system-I" includes both rational and affective components, and, above all, the attitude towards oneself.
After the emergence of the “I-system”, other new formations arise in the child’s psyche. The most significant of them are self-esteem and the associated desire to meet the requirements of adults, to be “good.”
Apparently, primary self-esteem almost completely lacks a rational component; it arises from the child’s desire to receive the approval of an adult and thus maintain emotional well-being.
The presence of simultaneously existing strong but oppositely directed affective tendencies (to do according to one’s own desire and meet the demands of adults) creates an inevitable internal conflict in the child and thereby complicates his internal mental life. Already at this stage of development, the contradiction between “I want” and “need” confronts the child with the need to choose, causes opposing emotional experiences, and creates ambivalent attitude to adults and determines the inconsistency of his behavior. However, in the early periods of development (up to 6-7 years), children are not yet aware of the place they occupy in life, and they do not have a conscious desire to change it. If they have new opportunities that are not realized within the framework of the lifestyle they lead, then they experience dissatisfaction, causing them unconscious protest and resistance, which is expressed in the crises of 1 year and 3 years.
In contrast, in children of 6-7 years of age, in connection with their progress in general mental development (which we will discuss in detail below), a clearly expressed desire appears to take a new, more “adult” position in life and fulfill a new, important activity not only for themselves, but also for the people around them. In conditions of general schooling this, as a rule, is realized in the desire for the social position of the student and for learning as a new socially significant activity. Of course, sometimes this desire has another concrete expression: for example, the desire to carry out certain instructions from adults, take on some of their responsibilities, become helpers in the family, etc. But psychological essence These aspirations remain the same - older preschoolers begin to strive for a new position in the system of social relations available to them and for new socially significant activities. The appearance of such aspiration is prepared by the entire course of the child’s mental development and arises at the level when he becomes aware of himself not only as a subject of action (which was characteristic of the previous stage of development), but also as a subject in the system human relations. In other words, the child appears awareness of one's social self.
A new level of self-awareness emerging on the threshold school life child, is most adequately expressed in his “internal position”, which is formed as a result of the fact that external influences, refracted through the structure of the child’s previously developed psychological characteristics, are somehow generalized by him and formed into a special central personal new formation that characterizes the child’s personality as a whole. The appearance of such a neoplasm becomes a turning point throughout the entire ontogenetic development of the child.
In the future, during the transition from one age stage to another, the psychological content of this new formation will be different, since those internal mental processes, on the basis of which the child experiences his objective position. But in all cases, it will reflect the child’s degree of satisfaction with the position he occupies, the presence or absence of his experience of emotional well-being, and also give rise to corresponding needs and aspirations.
Availability internal position characterizes not only the process of personality formation in ontogenesis. Once it has arisen, this position becomes inherent to a person at all stages of his life. life path and also determines his attitude towards himself and his position in life.
What processes of mental development in preschool age lead to this neoplasm? How is it prepared and what age-specific characteristics are it characterized by?
In everyday behavior and communication with adults, as well as in practice role playing game A preschool child develops some generalized knowledge of many social norms, but this knowledge is not yet fully realized by the child himself and is directly linked to his positive or negative emotional experiences. In other words, the first ethical authorities are still relatively simple systemic formations, which are nevertheless the embryos of those moral feelings, on the basis of which fully mature moral feelings and moral beliefs are subsequently formed.
Moral authorities give rise to moral motives of behavior in preschoolers, which, according to experimental data, can be stronger in their impact than many other immediate, including elementary needs.
In children preschool age What emerges is not just a subordination of motives, but a relatively stable, non-situational subordination of them. At the same time, specifically human, i.e., mediated in their structure, motives become at the head of the emerging hierarchy.
In some cases, preschoolers can already overcome their other desires and act on moral motive"necessary". But this is possible not because at this age children already know how to consciously manage their behavior, but because their moral feelings have greater motivating power than other motives. This allows them to defeat competing motives in a spontaneous battle not controlled by the child himself. In other words, children of senior preschool age are characterized by a kind of “involuntary randomness,” which ensures the stability of their behavior and creates the unity of their personality.
When we say that a child first realizes himself as a subject of action, and then as social subject(the subject of the relationship), then in this case it should be borne in mind that this is “awareness”
In children, it is not so much rational as it is sensual (intuitive) in nature. Therefore, the “worldview” of a preschooler should more accurately be called not so much a “worldview”, but, using the expression of I.M. Sechenov, a “holistic worldview.”
All theories of adolescence that try to explain the psychology of a teenager based on any factors external to mental development are also untenable. After all, factors of both biological and social order do not directly determine development; they are included in the development process itself, becoming internal components of the resulting psychological formations.
Based on the data available in the literature and our own research, we believe that the crisis of adolescence is associated with the emergence during this period of a new level of self-awareness, a characteristic feature of which is the appearance in the teenager the ability and need to know oneself as a person who possesses her, in contrast to all other people, inherent qualities. This gives rise to a teenager’s desire for self-affirmation, self-expression (i.e., the desire to express himself in those personality traits that he considers valuable) and self-education. Deprivation of the above needs is the basis of the crisis of adolescence.
Let's try to trace those changes in the psyche of children of primary school age that lead to the emergence of the above-mentioned systemic neoplasm during the transition period.
Educational activity and, most importantly, the process of assimilation of knowledge itself, which places new demands on the thinking of a preschooler, in a word, educational activity as a whole becomes leading at primary school age, i.e., the one in which the main psychological new formations of this period are formed: theoretical forms of thinking, cognitive interests, ability to control one’s behavior, sense of responsibility and many other qualities of the mind and character of a schoolchild that distinguish him from preschool children. In this case, the main role is played the development of thinking that occurs during the assimilation of scientific knowledge.
Of course, it is not only the development of thinking that determines the emergence of a form of self-awareness specific to adolescents. This is also facilitated by the new circumstances that distinguish the lifestyle of a teenager from the lifestyle of children of primary school age. First of all, these are increased demands on a teenager from adults, comrades, public opinion which are no longer determined
as much by the student’s success in learning as by many other traits of his personality, views, abilities, character, and ability to comply with the “code of morality” accepted among adolescents. All this gives rise to motives that encourage a teenager to turn to analyzing himself and comparing himself with others. Thus, he gradually develops value orientations, develops relatively stable patterns of behavior, which, unlike the samples of children of primary school age, are no longer presented so much in the form of an image specific person, how much in the certain demands that teenagers place on people and on themselves.
The research materials showed that common to all adolescents, regardless of differences in their socialization, are those psychological characteristics that are based on the development of reflection, generating the need to understand oneself and be at the level of one’s own requirements for oneself, i.e., to achieve the chosen model. And the inability to satisfy these needs determines a whole “bouquet” of psychological characteristics specific to the teenage crisis.
In connection with learning, maturation, accumulation of life experience and, consequently, progress in general mental development, schoolchildren at the beginning of adolescence form new, broader interests, various hobbies arise and a desire appears to take a different, more independent, more “adult” position, which is associated with such behavior and such personality qualities that, as it seems to them, cannot find their realization in “ordinary” school life.
A crisis transition period It proceeds much easier if already at this age the student has relatively constant personal interests or any other stable motives of behavior.
Personal interests, in contrast to episodic (situational) interests, are characterized by their “unsatiability”: the more they are satisfied, the more stable and intense they become. These are, for example, cognitive interests, aesthetic needs, etc. Satisfaction of such interests is associated with active search(or creation) of an object of their satisfaction: This pushes adolescents to set more and more new goals, often going beyond the limits of the current situation and even beyond the limits of today.
Thus, the presence of stable personal interests in a teenager makes him goal-oriented, and, consequently, internally more collected and organized. It’s as if he is gaining freedom.
The transitional critical period ends with the emergence of a special personal neoplasm, which can be designated by the term "self-determination". From the point of view of the subject’s self-awareness, it is characterized by awareness of oneself as a member of society and is concretized in a new, socially significant position.
Self-determination is formed in the second phase of adolescence (16-17 years); in the context of imminent graduation from school, associated with the need to somehow solve the problem of their future.
Self-determination differs from the dreams of a teenager related to the future in that it is based on the already firmly established interests and aspirations of the subject; the fact that it involves taking into account one’s capabilities and external circumstances; is based on the adolescent’s emerging worldview and is associated with the choice of profession.