History of psychology - Textbook (Morozov A.V.)
Chapter 3. Psychological knowledge of the Renaissance
The transition period from feudal culture to bourgeois culture was called the “Renaissance era”. Its main feature was the revival of ancient values, without which both Arabic-speaking and Latin-speaking cultures would hardly have existed (in Western Europe, as is known, Latin was the language of education).
Renaissance thinkers believed that they were clearing the ancient picture of the world from “medieval barbarians.” The restoration of ancient cultural monuments in their original form truly became a sign of a new ideological climate, although their perception, of course, was consonant with the new way of life and the intellectual orientation determined by it.
The emergence of manufacturing production, the complication and improvement of tools, great geographical discoveries, the rise of the burghers (the middle layer of city dwellers), who defended their rights in a fierce political struggle - all these processes changed the position of man in the world and society, and, consequently, his ideas about the world and yourself.
New philosophers are again turning to Aristotle, who is now turning from an idol of scholasticism shackled by church dogmas into a symbol of free-thinking, salvation from these dogmas. In the main hearth of the Renaissance - Italy - disputes flared up between supporters of Ibn Rushd (Averroists) who had escaped from the Inquisition and even more radical Alexandrists - supporters of Alexander of Aphrodisias.
The problems that confronted psychology during the Renaissance, to some extent, repeated the old ones that arose during the period of the 7th -6th centuries. BC e. This era updated the values of the ancient world, drew and approved new, progressive ideas from the timeless teachings of the great Aristotle. Thus, this is the time of return (revival) of the most important principles of ancient science.
The Renaissance is often called the period of humanism, since it is associated with the awakening of a general interest in man and his life. This is the desire to return man from divine heights to earth, a rejection of religious scholastic constructions about the soul, a call for a truthful and experimental study of the spiritual world of people.
At the same time, medieval prejudices were not completely overcome in the psychological views of thinkers of this time.
At this time, a new subject of psychological science emerged, as the science of consciousness, which was finally formulated in modern times.
A characteristic feature of the psychology of this period is the contradictory interweaving of the old worldview with new emerging trends.
The earliest glimpses of a scientific worldview appear in Italy. Among the first major thinkers who tried to speak out against the traditions of medieval scholasticism, Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457) occupies a prominent place.
L. Balla outlined his main views in the treatise “On pleasure as a true good.” The very name of his work indicates the closeness of his views with the teachings of Epicurus and Lucretius. L. Valla argued that nature is the basis of everything, and man is part of it. Since man is a part of nature, his soul is a manifestation of nature.
Lorenzo Balla considered needs and aspirations to be the leading characteristics that distinguish all living nature. They are also characteristic of humans in the form of a tendency towards self-preservation and the associated desire for feelings of pleasure and physical pleasure. Aspirations and pleasures are the voice and demands of nature and therefore a person should not infringe on them, as the church taught, but satisfy them.
Another representative of Italian thought of the 15th century, Pietro Pomponazzi (1462-1525), affirmed the natural determination of the human soul. In his book “On the Immortality of the Soul,” Pomponazzi, criticizing scholasticism, pointed out that God does not take part in the affairs of nature. The immortality of God and the eternity of the soul cannot be established experimentally. The soul is an earthly, natural property associated with the vital activity of the organism. Mental phenomena are a product of the work of the nervous system and brain. With the destruction and death of the body, all the abilities of the soul disappear.
This equally applies to thinking. It, like other forces and properties of the soul, is a function of the brain, arises and dies along with the birth and death of a person. The psyche develops from sensations through memory and ideas to thinking. Thinking is intended for the knowledge of general truths, established on the basis of particular ones, which, in turn, are given in sensory forms of knowledge - sensations, perceptions and ideas.
Opposition against the church and theology was manifested not only in critical treatises, but also in the establishment of scientific and educational centers or academies, which were designed to radically change the approach to the study of man.
A new interpretation of emotions and the development of affects was given by the Italian scientist Bernardino Telesio (1509 - 1588). In an effort to explain the psyche from natural laws, he was the first to organize a society of naturalists in Naples, which aimed to study nature in all its parts, explaining it from itself.
B. Telesio developed his own system of views, focusing on the teachings of Parmenides and, especially, the Stoics. In his opinion, matter lies at the foundation of the world. Matter itself is passive. In order for it to manifest itself in the diversity of its qualities, in his doctrine of the driving forces that are the source of energy, he identified as the main ones heat and cold, light and darkness, the ability to expand and contract, etc. These forces are in mutual penetration, creating new formations associated with the concentration of certain forces. They are the source of all development.
B. Telesio also believed that the main goal of nature is to preserve the achieved state. Thus, we can say that the idea of homeostasis first appeared in his concept, although it was presented at the level of science of that time. In his opinion, the development of the psyche is also subject to the law of self-preservation, and reason and emotions regulate this process. At the same time, positive emotions reveal the strength of the soul, which preserves and lengthens life, while negative emotions reveal its weakness, which interferes with self-preservation. The mind evaluates situations from this point of view.
While pursuing generally advanced views for that time and asserting a natural-scientific and experimental approach to the study of man and his psyche, Telesio, nevertheless, made some concessions to idealism and theology. They still recognized the existence of God and the highest immortal soul.
Along with Italy, the revival of new humanistic views on individual mental life reached a high level in other countries where the foundations of previous socio-economic relations were being undermined. In Spain, teachings directed against scholasticism arose, aimed at searching for real knowledge about the psyche.
The principles of empiricism and sensationalism, outlined in general terms in the views of P. Pomponazzi and B. Telesio, appear most clearly in the concept of Juan Luis Vives (1492-1540). In his book “On the Soul and Life.” L. Vives believed that nature exists on its own and it is necessary to know it through experience and experiment. Knowledge of the soul should not be built on speculative reasoning about the soul as a special spiritual entity, it should follow the line of studying its specific manifestations and properties. The primary forms of the psyche are sensations and feelings (emotions), which, with the help of associations of similarity and contrast, are transformed into more complex mental structures. Thus, he proposed a new way of generalizing sensory data - induction. Although this method was developed in detail later by the English philosopher, Lord Chancellor under King James I, Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Vives is responsible for proving the possibility and validity of a logical transition from the particular to the general.
Similar changes are occurring in the area of incentive forces. The main way by which individual manifestations of his soul are revealed to a person is, according to L. Vives, internal experience or introspection. It was based on introspection that he identified some basic and most important characteristics of motives and emotional states:
1) varying degrees of intensity, that is, the strength or weakness of emotional experiences - light, medium and strong;
2) the duration of emotional states from short-term to longer;
3) the qualitative content of emotional reactions, dividing them according to this criterion into pleasant (positive) and unpleasant (negative).
L. Vives was one of the first to come to the conclusion that the most effective way to suppress a negative experience is not to restrain it or suppress it with the mind, but to repress it with another, stronger experience.
According to L. Vives, it is practice, based on theory, that allows you to raise a child correctly. Vives resolutely opposed scholasticism in defense of experimental knowledge. Vives's pedagogical ideas influenced Jan Amos Comenius (1592-1670), a Czech humanist thinker and teacher who developed a pedagogical system based on the principles of materialistic sensationalism; as well as the founder of the Jesuit order, Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), who developed the organizational and moral principles of the order.
Another Spanish doctor and psychologist Juan Huarte (1530-1592), also rejecting speculation and scholasticism, in his work “Study on the Abilities for the Sciences”, makes the characteristics of the soul dependent on the physical characteristics of a person, climatic conditions and food; required the use of the inductive method. This was the first work in the history of psychology in which the task was to study individual differences between people to determine their suitability for various professions for the purpose of professional selection.
In Huarte's book, which can be called the first study in differential psychology, four main questions were posed:
1. What qualities does that nature possess that makes a person capable of one science and incapable of another?
2. What types of talent are there in the human race?
3. What arts and sciences correspond to each talent in particular?
4. By what signs can you recognize the corresponding talent?
The analysis of abilities was compared with the mixture of four elements in the body (temperament) and with differences in areas of activity (medicine, law, military art, government, etc.) requiring corresponding talents.
The main abilities were recognized as imagination (fantasy), memory and intelligence. Each of them was explained by a certain temperament of the brain, that is, the proportion in which the main juices are mixed. Analyzing various sciences and arts, J. Huarte assessed them from the point of view of which of the three abilities they require. This directed Huarte’s thought to a psychological analysis of the activities of a commander, doctor, lawyer, theologian, etc. The dependence of talent on nature does not mean the uselessness of education and work. However, here too there are large individual and age differences. Physiological factors, in particular the nature of nutrition, play a significant role in the formation of abilities.
X. Huarte believed that it was especially important to establish external signs by which one could distinguish the qualities of the brain that determine the nature of talent. And although his own observations about the correspondence between bodily signs and abilities are very naive (for example, he singled out the coarseness of hair, the characteristics of laughter, etc. as such signs), the very idea of a correlation between internal and external was quite rational.
Huarte dreamed of organizing professional selection on a state scale, because he considered it important that no one make a mistake in choosing the profession that best suits his natural talent.
Another remarkable Spanish thinker of the 16th century was the physician Gomez Pereira (1500-1560). He devoted twenty years of his life to working on the book “Antoniana Margaret” (1554). Its main conclusion was the denial of the sentient soul in animals.
For the first time in the history of science, animals were presented as “apsychic” bodies, controlled not by the soul, but by direct influences of external objects and traces of these influences (in Pereira’s terminology, “phantasms”). G. Pereira's nominalist tradition moved from the field of cognition to the field of behavior.
If Occam and his followers taught that not only a concept, but also a sensory image is a sign of a thing, then, according to Pereira’s views, animals do not hear, see, or feel anything at all. It is not sensory images, but signs that drive their behavior.
Pereira's conclusion contradicted the Catholic Church's teaching about animals as inferior souls. What saved him from the Inquisition was the sharp opposition of animals to man as a god-like creature with an immortal soul.
A significant role in increasing experimental knowledge about the activities of the body was played by the anatomical experiments of the Belgian scientist Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), who in his book “On the Structure of the Human Body” put forward the doctrine of “animal spirits” as a real material substrate of mental phenomena.
The nature of the interpretation of the explanation of the bodily mechanisms of the psyche was significantly influenced by the general conditions for the development of productive forces. The growth of manufacturing production, the increasing role of technology, the creation and widespread dissemination of various mechanisms could not but entail changes in the explanatory principles of mental activity.
The tendency to describe the psyche in comparison with the work of mechanisms and machines is increasingly intensifying. The beginning of the mechanistic approach in psychology was laid by Arab scientists who proclaimed the so-called “optical determinism.” The scientific views of A. Vesalius contributed significantly to the transformation of optical determinism into mechanistic one.
In strengthening the mechanistic approach in the interpretation of the psyche and behavior of people and animals, a prominent role was played by the Italian scientist Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), the greatest representative of the Renaissance, who united in one person an unsurpassed artist, philosopher, natural scientist and inventor. He is also known as a brilliant anatomist, who has been dissecting animal and human corpses for a long time. When studying anatomy, he pursued scientific goals. In anatomical studies, he saw a way to penetrate the secrets of human passions, feelings and behavior. Leonardo da Vinci considered joy, sadness and physical effort to be among the universal human passions. Only in connection with these states, Leonardo believed, can the basic vital significance of various parts of the body (muscles, bones, tendons, etc.), the movements and changes of which are accompanied by human passions (sadness, fear, cruelty, etc.) be understood. ).
The highest value during this period of the development of science was not the divine mind, but, in the language of Leonardo da Vinci, the “divine science of painting.” At the same time, painting was understood not only as the art of reflecting the world in artistic images.
Changes in the real existence of a person radically changed her self-awareness. The subject recognized himself as the center of outwardly directed spiritual forces, which are embodied in real, sensual values; he wanted to imitate nature, actually transforming it with his creativity and practical actions.
A large place in Leonardo's anatomical experiments was occupied by questions of biomechanics, that is, the structure and operation of the motor systems of the body, and he sought to describe the activities of living beings in the categories of mechanics.
By focusing much attention on the work of various muscular systems, he was able to establish not only their subordination to the laws of mechanics, but also the dependence of motor systems on the activity of nerves, the spinal cord and the brain. In well-known experiments on frogs, they were shown that if the brain is removed, the frog retains some of its muscle movements, whereas if the spinal trunk is punctured or destroyed, these movements also disappear. The importance of this discovery lay in two points, namely, that muscle reactions are determined by the nervous system and that its different parts are responsible for different functions.
Of particular interest are Leonardo da Vinci's ideas regarding the eye, which he considered as the ruler over all other senses. Characterizing the activity of the eye, he shows that the work of the eye is not controlled by a special ability of the soul, but is a response to light influences. His description of the mechanism of vision essentially provided a diagram of the pupillary reflex, and thus Leonardo came quite close to the reflex principle.
Somewhat apart from the general trend in the development of psychology during the Renaissance are the works of the German thinkers Melanchthon and Goclenius. The originality of their views is manifested in two respects.
The first thing that distinguishes their ideas is their heavy dependence on theology and theology.
Secondly, their treatises are adaptations and commentaries on the teachings of Aristotle.
Melanchthon Philip (1497 - 1560) is famous for his book Commentaries on the Soul. In it, the German neo-scholastic tries, based on the level of contemporary knowledge, to modernize the teachings of Aristotle.
Like Aristotle, Melanchthon distinguished three types of abilities in the soul - plant, animal and rational.
The plant and animal abilities of the soul are passive forces in the sense that they depend on the structure and activity of parts of the body and the organism as a whole, as well as on the influence of external physical factors.
The bodily conditioning of the lower abilities of the soul was interpreted in the spirit of Galen's ideas. According to Melanchthon, the carriers of plant abilities are the liver and venous blood. Entering the heart area, venous blood is purified and, in the form of vapor formation, is sent through the arteries to the ventricles of the brain. He called this purified blood “animal spirits.” The movement of animal spirits in the nerves and to the brain serves as a material carrier of sensations and perceptions.
As for the higher processes - the activity of the soul in recognizing perceptions and establishing similarities and differences in them, these acts were attributed by F. Melanchthon to the level of rational abilities or the rational soul, which is only temporarily associated with animal abilities. The rational soul, since it is of divine nature, is eternal and immortal.
Another German scientist, Rodolphe Gocklenius (1547 - 1628), a representative of late Protestant neo-scholasticism, also commented on Aristotle's ideas. The appearance of the term “psychology” is associated with his name, which was the name of his main work “Psychology”, published in 1590.
In his psychological views, Goclenius distinguished between external causation (affectio externa), which is experienced by the subject due to an external cause, and internal causation (affectio interim), resulting from principles lying in the soul itself.
Earlier, it was already noted that the thinkers of the Renaissance failed to completely overcome the traditions of medieval scholasticism and theology. However, most scientists had one common idea. The essence of this idea was expressed in the requirement to turn to nature itself, to the real world, to their experimental study. This requirement also extended to the mental area.
Speaking against scholasticism and theology, thinkers of the era of Humanism tried to find out, first of all, the real bodily foundations of various manifestations of the soul. The humanistic movement sharply sharpened interest in the human personality as such. Despite the limited initial results, the general direction of this movement corresponded to the ideological position of the rising class - the bourgeoisie and contributed to the development of new social relations.
The Renaissance (Renaissance - the term was introduced in the 16th century by D. Vasari) is a transitional period from medieval culture to the culture of modern times. Characterized by the emergence of machine production, the improvement of tools, the continuing division of manufacturing labor, the spread of printing, and geographical discoveries. Cheerful free-thinking is affirmed in the humanistic worldview of people. In the sciences, interest in the fate and capabilities of man prevails; in ethical concepts, his right to happiness is substantiated. Man begins to realize that he was not created for God, that in his actions he is free and great, that there are no barriers to his mind.
Scientists of this period considered their main task to be the restoration of ancient values. However, only that and in a way that was consonant with the new way of life and the intellectual atmosphere determined by it were “reborn”. In this regard, the ideal of the “universal man” was affirmed, which was believed not only by thinkers, but also by many rulers of Europe, who gathered outstanding minds of the era under their banners (for example, in Florence, at the Medici court, the sculptor and painter Michelangelo and the architect Alberti worked).
Here are two more stories that convey the atmosphere of that time. So Emperor Charles Y summoned Titian (1476 - 1576) to his place, surrounded him with honor and respect and said more than once:
I can create a Duke, but where will I get a second Titian?
The next story also tells about Charles Y, the Spanish king and Titian, the Italian painter. One day the artist was working in his presence, and his brush fell.
The king picked her up and said:
Even an emperor would be honored to serve Titian.
The new worldview was reflected in the desire to take a fresh look at the soul - the central link of any scientific system about personality. At universities, at the first lectures, students asked teachers: “Tell me about the soul,” which was a kind of litmus test, a characteristic of the teacher’s ideological, scientific and pedagogical potential.
The new era has brought to life new ideas about the nature of personality and its mental world. Outstanding representatives of the Renaissance showed themselves in their affirmation. F. Engels rightly noted that the era, which needed titans, “gave birth to titans in the power of thought, passion and character.”
An outstanding figure of the era is Nicholas of Cusa (1401 – 1464). Nikolai Kuzansky left behind an extensive literary heritage, among his works there are such as: “On learned ignorance”, “The Simpleton”, “On the hunt for wisdom”, “On the squaring of the circle”. The Catalan Raymond Lull had a great, simply enormous influence on Nicholas. To make extracts from the works of Lulius, Nicholas made a special trip to Paris in 1248, where he had access to the original works of the philosopher. Nicholas's works contain many references to Plato, Socrates, Augustine, and talk about Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, Democritus, Aristotle, Plotinus, Aprocles, Thomas Aquinas, and others. Nicholas of Cusa made a brilliant theological career. By order of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, the first map of Germany was made on copper.
Nicholas's views were revealed in full splendor only after the German researcher Scharpf published his main works in German translation and retelling in 1862. In subsequent decades, numerous reprints of the works of Nicholas of Cusa appeared in the original and translations. In 1960, the interethnic and inter-confessional “Cusanian Society” was founded in Germany.
“Any study that seeks to consider the philosophy of the Renaissance as a systematic unity must take as its starting point the teachings of Nicholas of Cusa,” wrote the German philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1874 – 1945), the author of numerous studies on the history of philosophy.
Nicholas of Cusa, a hundred years before Copernicus, expressed thoughts about a geometric - mechanistic picture of the world, which predetermined his worldview. An outstanding preacher becomes one of the first in the Renaissance to defend a mechanistic understanding of nature and its phenomena.
The process of cognition means for Nicholas of Cusa the endless improvement of human knowledge. It distinguishes four stages: sensory knowledge, rational knowledge, synthetic knowledge of the intellect-mind, intuitive (mystical) knowledge. The scientist’s new word is the definition of the presence of reason as the highest level of cognition in sensation-feeling (as the activity of attention and discrimination). Nikolai Kuzansky recognized reason as a higher cognitive ability in relation to reason. Due to the fact that “all things consist of opposites in varying degrees,” the mind thinks of them in accordance with the law of contradiction. The mind is capable of thinking endlessly.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519), one of the titans of the Renaissance, represented a new science that originated not within the walls of universities, where ancient texts were still commented on, but in the workshops of artists and inventors. Their experiences radically changed the culture and style of scientific thinking. In their scientific and creative practice they were “transformers of the world.” The highest value was attached not to the divine mind, but, in Leonardo’s language, to the “divine science of painting.” At the same time, painting was understood not only as the art of depicting the world in artistic images. “Painting,” wrote the great sculptor, “extends to the philosophy of nature.”
The scientist saw the meaning of scientific activity in practical benefits to humanity. “Those sciences are empty and full of errors,” said Leonardo da Vinci, “that are not generated by experience.” At the same time, he substantiated the deep idea of the need to combine practical experience and its scientific understanding as the main way to discover truths. “He who is in love with practical science,” he wrote, “is like a helmsman stepping onto a ship without a rudder or compass; he is never sure where he is sailing... Science is the commander, and practice is the soldiers.” He considered mathematics the most reliable science necessary for understanding and generalizing experience.
As a scientist, Leonardo is amazed at the “wisdom” of the laws of nature, and as an artist, he admires its beauty, perfection and uniqueness of the human body and his soul. He depicts the proportions of the human body as a magnificent anatomist, and the uniqueness of the human soul as an unsurpassed psychologist and painter.
Pietro Pomponazzi (1462 – 1525) - Italian scientist, the largest representative of Aristotelianism of the Renaissance. In the treatise “On the Immortality of the Soul,” based on the theory of dual truth, he rejected the possibility of a rational explanation of the immortality of the soul. “The human soul, the highest and most perfect of material forms, begins and ceases to exist with the body; it cannot in any way act or exist without the body.” In his essay “On the Causes of Natural Phenomena, or on Magic,” the thinker proposed to explain all phenomena not by faith in the mysteries of nature, but by natural causes.
The works and psychological views of Pietro Pomponazzi gave rise to the Alexandrian movement in Europe. This trend was associated with the name of the Greek peripatetic of the late 2nd - early 3rd centuries, Alexander of Aphrodius, who in his comments on Aristotle interpreted his teaching in the sense of the annihilation, along with the body, of not only the animal - sentient, but also the rational soul.
Juan Luis Vives (1492 – 1540) - famous Spanish humanist and teacher. Speaking against scholasticism and seeing the basis of knowledge in direct observation and experiment, he largely anticipated the experimental method of Francis Bacon. Vives paved new paths in psychology and pedagogy, considering the main task not to determine the essence of the soul (“what is the soul?”), but to inductively study its manifestations. Thus, in the book “On the Soul and Life” (1538), famous during the Renaissance, the thinker argued that human nature is learned not from books, but through observation and experience, which allows one to correctly organize the process of education. It is not the abstract “essence” of the soul, but its real manifestations that should be the main subject of scientific analysis.
His psychological and pedagogical concept is based on the principle of sensationalism and the view of association as a factor in the gradual formation of personality. Vives emphasizes that knowledge is only meaningful when it is applied. Accordingly, they outline ways to improve memory, reproduction techniques, and mnemonics rules. The descriptive-empirical approach (instead of the traditional, scholastic-speculative) is also characteristic of his interpretation of emotional and mental processes. One cannot dwell on what the ancient thinkers asserted; one must have one’s own observations and empirical study of the facts of mental life - this is the position of Vives as a “pioneer of empirical psychology.”
Another thinker of medieval Spain, a follower of X.L. Vives, the doctor Juan Huarte (1530 - 1592) also, rejecting scholasticism, demanded the use of the inductive method in knowledge, which he outlined in the book “Research on the Abilities for the Sciences.” This was the first work in the history of psychology that set out to study individual differences between people in order to determine their suitability for specific professions. Therefore, X. Huarte can be considered the founder of the direction later called differential psychology. In his study, he posed four questions: “What qualities does that nature possess that makes a person capable of one science and not capable of another... what types of talent are there in the human race... what arts and sciences correspond to each talent, in particular ... by what signs can one recognize the appropriate talent.”
The Spanish doctor Gomez Pereira (1500 - 1560), anticipating the views of Rene Descartes for a whole century, in his book “Antoniana Margarita” proposed to consider the animal’s body as an “apsychic” body - a kind of machine controlled by external influences and not requiring participation for its work souls.
Bernardino Telesio (1509 – 1588) famous thinker of the Renaissance. He gained popularity by publishing the work “On the Nature of Things in accordance with Its Principles.” These “beginnings” formed the basis for the activities of the natural science society he created near Naples. Unbridled fantasy (“variations on a theme of Empedocles”), characteristic of all science of this period, manifested itself in the concept of the soul of B. Telesio. The whole world, according to his views, is filled with passive-passive matter - a “battlefield” of opposite principles, “heat” and “cold”. In these two principles, people’s perceptions are realized - incorporeal and animate “primary elements”. Therefore, mental phenomena are considered by scientists as functions of heat and cold. The human soul itself is recognized in two coexisting varieties - bodily-mortal and spiritual-immortal.
Based on materialist traditions, B. Telesio develops a theory of affects. Following the universal natural expediency of preserving the achieved state, positive affects manifest the strength striving to preserve the soul, and negative affects (fear, fear, sadness, etc.) show its weakness. Cognition, according to his views, is based on the imprinting and reproduction of external influences by the subtle matter of the soul. The mind is made up of comparison and connection of sensory impressions.
Giordano Bruno (1550 - 1600) in his teaching develops the materialistic - pantheistic views of Nicholas of Cusa and Nicolaus Copernicus. Among his works, the most significant for psychological knowledge were the treatises: “On the Infinite”, “On the Combination of Images and Ideas”, “The Expulsion of the Triumphant Animal”, “On the Monad, Number and Figure”. In them, J. Bruno talks about the Universe as a huge animal. God in his system finally “relocates” into creative nature, which itself is “God in things.” The scientist is convinced of the universal animation of nature. D. Bruno writes: “The world is animated along with its members.”
“Matter,” the scientist emphasizes, “is a beginning, necessary, eternal and divine... In the very body of nature, one should distinguish matter from the soul, and in the latter, distinguish... the mind from its species.” Emphasizing the active nature of the spiritual principle, G. Bruno nowhere speaks of its incorporeal existence, separate from the body. Man, in his opinion, is a microcosm, a reflection of the world. People have many means of understanding reality. Among them, sensory perception is an unreliable source of knowledge, since its horizon is very limited. Reason is opposed to the sensual principle.
The scientist’s thoughts about the reason for the separation of man from the animal world deserve close attention. “The nature of the soul,” argues J. Bruno at Oxford University, “is the same in all organized beings, and the difference in its manifestations is determined by the greater or lesser perfection of the tools that it has in each case. (...) Think, in fact, what would happen to a person if he had at least twice as much intelligence, if his hands (Bruno calls them “the organ of all organs” - author’s note) turned into a pair of legs.” He names “comprehension” and memory as other distinctive features of personality.
In his teaching, J. Bruno affirms the idea of universal development, to which all mental manifestations of man are subordinated. His idea about developing infinite monads, from which the natural world and the soul as its component are formed through connection and separation, was later developed by G. Leibniz.
Tommaso Campanella (1568 – 1639), an outstanding thinker of the era, in his psychological views, is a supporter of the sensualist teaching of B. Telesio. T. Campanella's theory is directed against ideas about “forms,” abilities and potential entities. All knowledge, the scientist claims, has its source from experience and feelings.
The thinker in his works describes a system of psychological concepts, including memory, understanding, inference, desire, attraction, etc. All definitions are derived from sensations, which “are a feeling of excitement, accompanied by an inference regarding an actually existing object, and not the idea of pure potency.” Therefore, it is impossible to dwell on sensory knowledge; it needs to be supplemented by reason: “Sensation is not only excitement, but also consciousness of excitement and judgment about the object that causes excitement.” Reason, based on concept and imagination, unites sensory perceptions and experience. General concepts are inherent in our thinking and are reliable principles of science.
Along with knowledge, scientists affirm the existence of faith. There are no contradictions between faith and knowledge: the world is the second Bible, a living code of nature, a reflection of God. Following Augustine, T. Campanella establishes the thesis as a starting point: the only thing known with certainty is that I exist. All knowledge comes down to knowing oneself.
The outstanding galaxy of thinkers of the Renaissance also include: the creator of a new theory about the nature of the human body and methods of treating diseases - Philip von Hohenheim - Paracelsus (1493 - 1541); the author of the brilliant work “On the Structure of the Human Body” - Andreas Vesalius (1514 - 1564); the founder of the doctrine of the pulmonary circulation - Miguel Servetus (1509/1511 - 1553) and many others. others.
Psychological theories of the Renaissance established the dependence - determination of the human psyche on his body and environment, forming the so-called “psychology of life”. Thus, they prepared an intellectual breakthrough in the psychological teachings of the New Age, which are the general scientific basis of modern psychological science.
Important features of the psychological views of the Renaissance were the affirmation of the ideas of humanism and the desire to practically use the results of scientific research in the interests of man.
Psychology has come a long way in development, the understanding of the object, subject and goals of psychology has changed. Let us note the main stages in the development of psychology as a science.
Stage I - psychology as the science of the soul. This definition of psychology was given more than two thousand years ago. They tried to explain all the incomprehensible phenomena in human life by the presence of a soul. Stage II - psychology as the science of consciousness. It appears in the 17th century in connection with the development of natural sciences. The ability to think, feel, desire was called consciousness. The main method of study was a person's observation of himself and the description of facts. Stage III - psychology as a science of behavior. Appears in the 20th century. The task of psychology is to set up experiments and observe what can be directly seen, namely, human behavior, actions, reactions (the motives causing the actions were not taken into account).
Psychology is a science that studies objective patterns, manifestations and mechanisms of the psyche.
To more clearly imagine the path of development of psychology as a science, let us briefly consider its main stages and directions.
1. The first ideas about the psyche were associated with animism(from Latin anima - spirit, soul) - the most ancient views, according to which everything that exists in the world has a soul. The soul was understood as an entity independent of the body that controls all living and inanimate objects.
2. Later, in the philosophical teachings of antiquity, psychological aspects were touched upon, which were resolved in terms of idealism or in terms of materialism. Thus, the materialist philosophers of antiquity Democritus, Lucretius, Epicurus understood the human soul as a type of matter, as a bodily formation consisting of spherical, small and most mobile atoms.
3. According to the ancient Greek idealist philosopher Plato(427-347 BC), who was a student and follower of Socrates, the soul is something divine, different from the body, and a person’s soul exists before it comes into contact with the body. She is the image and outflow of the world soul. The soul is an invisible, sublime, divine, eternal principle. The soul and body are in a complex relationship with each other. By its divine origin, the soul is called upon to control the body and direct human life. However, sometimes the body takes the soul into its bonds. The body is torn apart by various desires and passions, it cares about food, is subject to illness, fears, and temptations. Mental phenomena are divided by Plato into reason, courage (in the modern sense - will) and desires (motivation).
Reason is located in the head, courage in the chest, lust in the abdominal cavity. The harmonious unity of reason, noble aspirations and lust gives integrity to a person’s mental life. The soul inhabits the human body and guides it throughout his life, and after death leaves it and enters the divine “world of ideas.” Since the soul is the highest thing in a person, he must care about its health more than the health of the body. Depending on what kind of life a person led, after his death a different fate awaits his soul: it will either wander near the earth, burdened with bodily elements, or fly away from the earth into the ideal world, into the world of ideas, which exists outside of matter and outside of the individual. consciousness. “Isn’t it a shame for people to care about money, about fame and honors, but not to care about reason, about truth and about their soul and not think about making it better?” - Socrates and Plato ask.
4. Great philosopher Aristotle in the treatise “On the Soul” he singled out psychology as a unique field of knowledge and for the first time put forward the idea of the inseparability of the soul and the living body. Aristotle rejected the view of the soul as a substance. At the same time, he did not consider it possible to consider the soul in isolation from matter (living bodies). The soul, according to Aristotle, is incorporeal; it is the form of a living body, the cause and goal of all its vital functions. Aristotle put forward the concept of the soul as a function of the body, and not as some phenomenon external to it. The soul, or “psyche,” is the engine that allows a living being to realize itself. If the eye were a living being, then its soul would be vision. Likewise, the soul of a person is the essence of a living body, it is the realization of its existence, Aristotle believed. The main function of the soul, according to Aristotle, is the realization of the biological existence of the organism. The center, the “psyche,” is located in the heart, where impressions from the senses are received. These impressions form a source of ideas, which, combined with each other as a result of rational thinking, subordinate behavior. The driving force of human behavior is aspiration (internal activity of the body), associated with a feeling of pleasure or displeasure. Sense perceptions constitute the beginning of knowledge. Preserving and reproducing sensations provides memory. Thinking is characterized by the formation of general concepts, judgments and conclusions. A special form of intellectual activity is mind (reason), brought from outside in the form of divine reason. Thus, the soul manifests itself in various abilities for activity: nourishing, feeling, rational. Higher abilities arise from and on the basis of lower ones. The primary cognitive ability of a person is sensation; it takes the forms of sensory objects without their matter, just as “wax takes the impression of a seal without iron.” Sensations leave a trace in the form of ideas - images of those objects that previously acted on the senses. Aristotle showed that these images are connected in three directions: by similarity, by contiguity and contrast, thereby indicating the main types of connections - associations of mental phenomena. Aristotle believed that knowledge of man is possible only through knowledge of the Universe and the order existing in it. Thus, at the first stage, psychology acted as a science of the soul.
5. In the era middle ages The idea was established that the soul is a divine, supernatural principle, and therefore the study of mental life should be subordinated to the tasks of theology.
Only the outer side of the soul, which is turned towards the material world, can be subject to human judgment. The greatest mysteries of the soul are accessible only in religious (mystical) experience.
6. C XVII century a new era begins in the development of psychological knowledge. In connection with the development of natural sciences, the laws of human consciousness began to be studied using experimental methods. The ability to think and feel is called consciousness. Psychology began to develop as a science of consciousness. It is characterized by attempts to comprehend the spiritual world of a person mainly from general philosophical, speculative positions, without the necessary experimental basis. R. Descartes (1596-1650) comes to the conclusion about the difference between the human soul and his body: “The body by its nature is always divisible, while the spirit is indivisible.” However, the soul is capable of producing movements in the body. This contradictory dualistic teaching gave rise to a problem called psychophysical: how are bodily (physiological) and mental (spiritual) processes in a person related to each other? Descartes created a theory that explained behavior based on a mechanistic model. According to this model, information delivered by the sensory organs is sent along sensory nerves to openings in the brain, which these nerves widen, allowing the "animal souls" in the brain to flow out through tiny tubes - motor nerves - into the muscles, which inflate, which leads to withdrawal of the irritated limb or forces one to perform one or another action. Thus, there was no longer any need to resort to the soul to explain how simple behavioral acts arise. Descartes laid the foundations for the deterministic (causal) concept of behavior with its central idea of reflex as a natural motor response of the body to external physical stimulation. This is Cartesian dualism - a body that acts mechanically, and a “rational soul” that controls it, localized in the brain. Thus, the concept of “Soul” began to turn into the concept of “Mind”, and later into the concept of “Consciousness”. The famous Cartesian phrase “I think, therefore I exist” became the basis of the postulate that stated that the first thing a person discovers in himself is his own consciousness. The existence of consciousness is the main and unconditional fact, and the main task of psychology is to analyze the state and content of consciousness. On the basis of this postulate, psychology began to develop - it made consciousness its subject.
7. An attempt to reunite the body and soul of man, separated by the teachings of Descartes, was made by the Dutch philosopher Spinoza(1632-1677). There is no special spiritual principle; it is always one of the manifestations of extended substance (matter).
Soul and body are determined by the same material causes. Spinoza believed that this approach makes it possible to consider mental phenomena with the same accuracy and objectivity as lines and surfaces are considered in geometry.
Thinking is an eternal property of substance (matter, nature), therefore, to a certain extent, thinking is inherent in both stone and animals, and to a large extent is inherent in man, manifesting itself in the form of intellect and will at the human level.
8. German philosopher G. Leibniz(1646-1716), rejecting the equality of psyche and consciousness established by Descartes, introduced the concept of the unconscious psyche. In the human soul there is a continuous hidden work of psychic forces - countless “small perceptions” (perceptions). From them arise conscious desires and passions.
9. Term " empirical psychology"introduced by the German philosopher of the 18th century X. Wolf to designate a direction in psychological science, the main principle of which is the observation of specific mental phenomena, their classification and the establishment of a logical connection between them verifiable by experience. The English philosopher J. Locke (1632-1704) considers the human soul as a passive, but capable of perception environment, comparing it with a blank slate on which nothing is written. Under the influence of sensory impressions, the human soul, awakening, is filled with simple ideas, begins to think, that is, to form complex ideas. In the language of psychology Locke introduced the concept of "association" - a connection between mental phenomena, in which the actualization of one of them entails the appearance of another. Thus, psychology began to study how, through the association of ideas, a person becomes aware of the world around him. The study of the relationship between the soul and the body is finally inferior to the study of the mental activity and consciousness.
Locke believed that there are two sources of all human knowledge: the first source is the objects of the external world, the second is the activity of a person’s own mind. The activity of the mind and thinking is cognized with the help of a special internal feeling - reflection. Reflection, according to Locke, is “the observation to which the mind subjects its activity”; it is the directing of a person’s attention to the activity of his own soul. Mental activity can proceed, as it were, at two levels: processes of the first level - perceptions, thoughts, desires (every person and child has them); processes of the second level - observation or “contemplation” of these perceptions, thoughts, desires (only mature people who reflect on themselves, know their mental experiences and states have this). This method of introspection is becoming an important means of studying the mental activity and consciousness of people.
10. Selection Psychology became an independent science in the 60s. XIX century. It was associated with the creation of special research institutions - psychological laboratories and institutes, departments in higher educational institutions, as well as with the introduction of experiments to study mental phenomena. The first version of experimental psychology as an independent scientific discipline was the physiological psychology of the German scientist W. Wundt (1832-1920). In 1879, he opened the world's first experimental psychological laboratory in Leipzig.
22. Significant contribution to the development of psychology of the 20th century. contributed our domestic scientists L.S. (1896-1934), A.N. (1903-1979), A.R. Luria (1902-1977) and P.Ya. (1902-1988). L.S. Vygotsky introduced the concept of higher mental functions (thinking in concepts, rational speech, logical memory, voluntary attention) as a specifically human, socially determined form of the psyche, and also laid the foundations for the cultural and historical concept of human mental development. The named functions initially exist as forms of external activity, and only later - as a completely internal (intrapsychic) process. They come from forms of verbal communication between people and are mediated by language signs. The system of signs determines behavior to a greater extent than the surrounding nature, since a sign or symbol contains a program of behavior in a compressed form. Higher mental functions develop in the process of learning, i.e. joint activities of a child and an adult.
A.N. Leontyev conducted a series of experimental studies revealing the mechanism of formation of higher mental functions as a process of “growing” (interiorization) of higher forms of instrumental-sign actions into the subjective structures of the human psyche.
A.R. Luria paid special attention to the problems of cerebral localization of higher mental functions and their disorders. He was one of the founders of a new field of psychological science - neuropsychology.
P.Ya. Halperin considered mental processes (from perception to thinking inclusive) as the orienting activity of the subject in problem situations. The psyche itself, in historical terms, arises only in a situation of mobile life for orientation on the basis of an image and is carried out with the help of actions in terms of this image. P.Ya. Galperin is the author of the concept of the gradual formation of mental actions (images, concepts). The practical implementation of this concept can significantly increase the effectiveness of training.
Like, it originates back thousands of years. The term "psychology" (from the Greek. psyche- soul, logos- doctrine, science) means “teaching about the soul.” Psychological knowledge has developed historically - some ideas were replaced by others.
Studying the history of psychology, of course, cannot be reduced to a simple listing of the problems, ideas and ideas of various psychological schools. In order to understand them, you need to understand their internal connection, the unified logic of the formation of psychology as a science.
Psychology as a doctrine about the human soul is always conditioned by anthropology, the doctrine of man in his integrity. Research, hypotheses, and conclusions of psychology, no matter how abstract and particular they may seem, imply a certain understanding of the essence of a person and are guided by one or another image of him. In turn, the doctrine of man fits into the general picture of the world, formed on the basis of a synthesis of knowledge and ideological attitudes of the historical era. Therefore, the history of the formation and development of psychological knowledge is seen as a completely logical process associated with a change in the understanding of the essence of man and with the formation on this basis of new approaches to explaining his psyche.
History of the formation and development of psychology
Mythological ideas about the soul
Humanity began with mythological picture of the world. Psychology owes its name and first definition to Greek mythology, according to which Eros, the immortal god of love, fell in love with a beautiful mortal woman, Psyche. The love of Eros and Psyche was so strong that Eros managed to convince Zeus to turn Psyche into a goddess, making her immortal. Thus, the lovers were united forever. For the Greeks, this myth was a classic image of true love as the highest realization of the human soul. Therefore, Psycho - a mortal who has gained immortality - has become a symbol of a soul searching for its ideal. At the same time, in this beautiful legend about the difficult path of Eros and Psyche towards each other, a deep thought is discerned about the difficulty of a person mastering his spiritual nature, his mind and feelings.
The ancient Greeks initially understood the close connection of the soul with its physical basis. The same understanding of this connection can be seen in the Russian words: “soul”, “spirit” and “breathe”, “air”. Already in ancient times, the concept of the soul united into a single complex those inherent in external nature (air), the body (breath) and an entity independent of the body that controls life processes (the spirit of life).
In early ideas, the soul was endowed with the ability to leave the body while a person sleeps and live its own life in his dreams. It was believed that at the moment of death a person leaves the body forever, flying out through the mouth. The doctrine of transmigration of souls is one of the most ancient. It was represented not only in Ancient India, but also in Ancient Greece, especially in the philosophy of Pythagoras and Plato.
The mythological picture of the world, where bodies are inhabited by souls (their “doubles” or ghosts), and life depends on the arbitrariness of the gods, has reigned in the public consciousness for centuries.
Psychological knowledge in the ancient period
Psychology how rational knowledge of the human soul originated in antiquity in the depths on the basis of the geocentric picture of the world, placing man at the center of the universe.
Ancient philosophy adopted the concept of the soul from previous mythology. Almost all ancient philosophers tried to express with the help of the concept of soul the most important essential principle of living nature, considering it as the cause of life and knowledge.
For the first time, man, his inner spiritual world, becomes the center of philosophical reflection in Socrates (469-399 BC). Unlike his predecessors, who dealt primarily with problems of nature, Socrates focused on the inner world of man, his beliefs and values, and the ability to act as a rational being. Socrates assigned the main role in the human psyche to mental activity, which was studied in the process of dialogic communication. After his research, the understanding of the soul was filled with ideas such as “good”, “justice”, “beautiful”, etc., which physical nature does not know.
The world of these ideas became the core of the doctrine of the soul of the brilliant student of Socrates - Plato (427-347 BC).
Plato developed the doctrine of immortal soul, inhabiting the mortal body, leaving it after death and returning to the eternal supersensible world of ideas. The main thing for Plato is not in the doctrine of immortality and transmigration of the soul, but in studying the content of its activities(in modern terminology in the study of mental activity). He showed that the internal activity of souls gives knowledge about reality of supersensible existence, the eternal world of ideas. How does a soul located in mortal flesh join the eternal world of ideas? All knowledge, according to Plato, is memory. With appropriate effort and preparation, the soul can remember what it happened to contemplate before its earthly birth. He taught that man is “not an earthly plant, but a heavenly plant.”
Plato was the first to identify such a form of mental activity as inner speech: the soul reflects, asks itself, answers, affirms and denies. He was the first to try to reveal the internal structure of the soul, isolating its threefold composition: the highest part - the rational principle, the middle - the volitional principle and the lower part of the soul - the sensual principle. The rational part of the soul is called upon to harmonize the lower and higher motives and impulses coming from different parts of the soul. Such problems as the conflict of motives were introduced into the field of study of the soul, and the role of reason in resolving it was considered.
Disciple - (384-322 BC), arguing with his teacher, returned the soul from the supersensible to the sensory world. He put forward the concept of the soul as functions of a living organism,, and not some independent entity. The soul, according to Aristotle, is a form, a way of organizing a living body: “The soul is the essence of being and the form not of a body like an ax, but of a natural body that in itself has the beginning of movement and rest.”
Aristotle identified different levels of activity abilities in the body. These levels of abilities constitute a hierarchy of levels of soul development.
Aristotle distinguishes three types of soul: vegetable, animal And reasonable. Two of them belong to physical psychology, since they cannot exist without matter, the third is metaphysical, i.e. the mind exists separately and independently of the physical body as the divine mind.
Aristotle was the first to introduce into psychology the idea of development from the lower levels of the soul to its highest forms. Moreover, each person, in the process of transforming from a baby into an adult being, goes through the stages from plant to animal, and from there to the rational soul. According to Aristotle, the soul, or "psyche", is engine allowing the body to realize itself. The psyche center is located in the heart, where impressions transmitted from the senses are received.
When characterizing a person, Aristotle put first place knowledge, thinking and wisdom. This attitude towards man, inherent not only to Aristotle, but also to antiquity as a whole, was largely revised within the framework of medieval psychology.
Psychology in the Middle Ages
When studying the development of psychological knowledge in the Middle Ages, a number of circumstances must be taken into account.
Psychology did not exist as an independent field of research during the Middle Ages. Psychological knowledge was included in religious anthropology (the study of man).
Psychological knowledge of the Middle Ages was based on religious anthropology, which was especially deeply developed by Christianity, especially by such “church fathers” as John Chrysostom (347-407), Augustine Aurelius (354-430), Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), etc.
Christian anthropology comes from theocentric picture world and the basic principle of Christian dogma - the principle of creationism, i.e. creation of the world by the Divine mind.
It is very difficult for modern scientifically oriented thinking to understand the teachings of the Holy Fathers, which are predominantly symbolic character.
Man in the teachings of the Holy Fathers appears as central being in the universe, the highest level in the hierarchical ladder of technology, those. created by God peace.
Man is the center of the Universe. This idea was also known to ancient philosophy, which viewed man as a “microcosm,” a small world that embraces the entire universe.
Christian anthropology did not abandon the idea of the “microcosm,” but the Holy Fathers significantly changed its meaning and content.
The “Church Fathers” believed that human nature is connected with all the main spheres of existence. With his body, man is connected to the earth: “And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul,” says the Bible. Through feelings, a person is connected with the material world, with his soul - with the spiritual world, the rational part of which is capable of ascending to the Creator himself.
Man, the holy fathers teach, is dual in nature: one of his components is external, bodily, and the other is internal, spiritual. The soul of a person, feeding the body with which it was created together, is located everywhere in the body, and is not concentrated in one place. The Holy Fathers introduce a distinction between “internal” and “external” man: “God created inner man and blinded external; The flesh was molded, but the soul was created.”* In modern language, the outer man is a natural phenomenon, and the inner man is a supernatural phenomenon, something mysterious, unknowable, divine.
In contrast to the intuitive-symbolic, spiritual-experiential way of understanding man in Eastern Christianity, Western Christianity followed the path rational comprehension of God, the world and man, having developed such a specific type of thinking as scholasticism(of course, along with scholasticism, irrationalistic mystical teachings also existed in Western Christianity, but they did not determine the spiritual climate of the era). The appeal to rationality ultimately led to the transition of Western civilization in modern times from a theocentric to an anthropocentric picture of the world.
Psychological thought of the Renaissance and Modern times
Humanistic movement that originated in Italy in the 15th century. and spread in Europe in the 16th century, it was called “Renaissance”. Reviving ancient humanistic culture, this era contributed to the liberation of all sciences and arts from dogmas and restrictions imposed on them by medieval religious ideas. As a result, the natural, biological and medical sciences began to develop quite actively and made a significant step forward. Movement began in the direction of forming psychological knowledge into an independent science.
Enormous influence on psychological thought of the 17th-18th centuries. provided by mechanics, who became the leader of the natural sciences. Mechanical picture of nature determined a new era in the development of European psychology.
The beginning of the mechanical approach to explaining mental phenomena and reducing them to physiology was laid by the French philosopher, mathematician and natural scientist R. Descartes (1596-1650), who was the first to develop a model of the body as an automaton or system that works like artificial mechanisms in accordance with the laws of mechanics. Thus, a living organism, which was previously considered as animate, i.e. gifted and controlled by the soul, he was freed from its determining influence and interference.
R. Descartes introduced the concept reflex, which later became fundamental for physiology and psychology. In accordance with the Cartesian reflex scheme, an external impulse was transmitted to the brain, from where a response occurred that set the muscles in motion. They were given an explanation of behavior as a purely reflexive phenomenon without reference to the soul as the force driving the body. Descartes hoped that over time, not only simple movements - such as the protective reaction of the pupil to light or the hand to fire - but also the most complex behavioral acts could be explained by the physiological mechanics he discovered.
Before Descartes, it was believed for centuries that all activity in the perception and processing of mental material is carried out by the soul. He also proved that the bodily structure is capable of successfully coping with this task even without it. What are the functions of the soul?
R. Descartes considered the soul as a substance, i.e. an entity that does not depend on anything else. The soul was defined by him according to a single sign - the direct awareness of its phenomena. Its purpose was the subject’s knowledge of his own acts and states, invisible to anyone else. Thus, there was a turn in the concept of “soul”, which became the basis for the next stage in the history of constructing the subject of psychology. From now on this subject becomes consciousness.
Descartes, based on a mechanistic approach, posed a theoretical question about the interaction of “soul and body,” which later became the subject of discussion for many scientists.
Another attempt to build a psychological doctrine of man as an integral being was made by one of the first opponents of R. Descartes - the Dutch thinker B. Spinoza (1632-1677), who considered the whole variety of human feelings (affects) as motivating forces of human behavior. He substantiated the general scientific principle of determinism, which is important for understanding mental phenomena—universal causality and natural scientific explainability of any phenomena. It entered science in the form of the following statement: “The order and connection of ideas are the same as the order and connection of things.”
Nevertheless, Spinoza’s contemporary, the German philosopher and mathematician G.V. Leibniz (1646-1716) considered the relationship between spiritual and physical phenomena based on psychophysiological parallelism, i.e. their independent and parallel coexistence. He considered the dependence of mental phenomena on physical phenomena to be an illusion. The soul and body act independently, but there is a pre-established harmony between them based on the Divine mind. The doctrine of psychophysiological parallelism found many supporters in the formative years of psychology as a science, but currently belongs to history.
Another idea by G.V. Leibniz that each of the countless number of monads (from the Greek. monos- unified), of which the world consists, is “psychic” and endowed with the ability to perceive everything that happens in the Universe, has found unexpected empirical confirmation in some modern concepts of consciousness.
It should also be noted that G.V. Leibniz introduced the concept "unconscious" into the psychological thought of modern times, designating unconscious perceptions as “small perceptions.” Awareness of perceptions becomes possible due to the fact that a special mental act is added to simple perception (perception) - apperception, which includes memory and attention. Leibniz's ideas significantly changed and expanded the idea of the psyche. His concepts of the unconscious psyche, small perceptions and apperception have become firmly established in scientific psychological knowledge.
Another direction in the development of modern European psychology is associated with the English thinker T. Hobbes (1588-1679), who completely rejected the soul as a special entity and believed that there is nothing in the world except material bodies moving according to the laws of mechanics. He brought mental phenomena under the influence of mechanical laws. T. Hobbes believed that sensations are a direct result of the influence of material objects on the body. According to the law of inertia, discovered by G. Galileo, ideas appear from sensations in the form of their weakened trace. They form a sequence of thoughts in the same order in which sensations change. This connection was later called associations. T. Hobbes proclaimed reason to be a product of association, which has its source in the direct influence of the material world on the senses.
Before Hobbes, rationalism reigned in psychological teachings (from lat. pationalis- reasonable). Beginning with him, experience was taken as the basis of knowledge. T. Hobbes contrasted rationalism with empiricism (from the Greek. empeiria- experience) from which it arose empirical psychology.
In the development of this direction, a prominent role belonged to T. Hobbes’ compatriot, J. Locke (1632-1704), who identified two sources in the experience itself: feeling And reflection, by which I meant the internal perception of the activity of our mind. Concept reflections firmly established in psychology. The name of Locke is also associated with such a method of psychological knowledge as introspection, i.e. internal introspection of ideas, images, perceptions, feelings as they appear to the “inner gaze” of the subject observing him.
Beginning with J. Locke, phenomena become the subject of psychology consciousness, which give rise to two experiences - external emanating from the senses, and interior, accumulated by the individual's own mind. Under the sign of this picture of consciousness, the psychological concepts of subsequent decades took shape.
The origins of psychology as a science
At the beginning of the 19th century. new approaches to the psyche began to be developed, based not on mechanics, but on physiology, which turned the organism into an object experimental study. Physiology translated the speculative views of the previous era into the language of experience and studied the dependence of mental functions on the structure of the sense organs and the brain.
The discovery of differences between the sensory (sensory) and motor (motor) nerve pathways leading to the spinal cord made it possible to explain the mechanism of nerve communication as "reflex arc" the excitation of one shoulder of which naturally and irreversibly activates the other shoulder, generating a muscle reaction. This discovery proved the dependence of the body’s functions regarding its behavior in the external environment on the bodily substrate, which was perceived as refutation of the doctrine of the soul as a special incorporeal entity.
Studying the effect of stimuli on the nerve endings of the sensory organs, the German physiologist G.E. Müller (1850-1934) formulated the position that nervous tissue does not possess any other energy than that known to physics. This provision was elevated to the rank of law, as a result of which mental processes moved into the same row as the nervous tissue that gives rise to them, visible under a microscope and dissected with a scalpel. However, the main thing remained unclear - how the miracle of generating psychic phenomena was accomplished.
German physiologist E.G. Weber (1795-1878) determined the relationship between the continuum of sensations and the continuum of physical stimuli that cause them. During the experiments, it was discovered that there is a very definite (different for different sense organs) relationship between the initial stimulus and the subsequent one, at which the subject begins to notice that the sensation has become different.
The foundations of psychophysics as a scientific discipline were laid by the German scientist G. Fechner (1801 - 1887). Psychophysics, without touching on the issue of the causes of mental phenomena and their material substrate, identified empirical dependencies based on the introduction of experiment and quantitative research methods.
The work of physiologists on the study of sensory organs and movements prepared a new psychology, different from traditional psychology, which is closely related to philosophy. The ground was created for the separation of psychology from both physiology and philosophy as a separate scientific discipline.
At the end of the 19th century. Almost simultaneously, several programs for building psychology as an independent discipline emerged.
The greatest success fell to the lot of W. Wundt (1832-1920), a German scientist who came to psychology from physiology and was the first to begin collecting and combining into a new discipline what had been created by various researchers. Calling this discipline physiological psychology, Wundt began studying problems borrowed from physiologists - the study of sensations, reaction times, associations, psychophysics.
Having organized the first psychological institute in Leipzig in 1875, V. Wundt decided to study the content and structure of consciousness on a scientific basis by isolating the simplest structures in internal experience, laying the foundation structuralist approach to consciousness. Consciousness was divided into psychic elements(sensations, images), which became the subject of study.
“Direct experience” was recognized as a unique subject of psychology, not studied by any other discipline. The main method is introspection, the essence of which was the subject’s observation of the processes in his consciousness.
The method of experimental introspection has significant drawbacks, which very quickly led to the abandonment of the program for the study of consciousness proposed by W. Wundt. The disadvantage of the introspection method for building scientific psychology is its subjectivity: each subject describes his experiences and sensations that do not coincide with the feelings of another subject. The main thing is that consciousness is not composed of some frozen elements, but is in the process of development and constant change.
By the end of the 19th century. The enthusiasm that Wundt's program once aroused has dried up, and the understanding of the subject of psychology inherent in it has forever lost credibility. Many of Wundt's students broke with him and took a different path. Currently, W. Wundt’s contribution is seen in the fact that he showed which path psychology should not take, since scientific knowledge develops not only by confirming hypotheses and facts, but also by refuting them.
Realizing the failure of the first attempts to build a scientific psychology, the German philosopher V. Dilypey (1833-1911) put forward the idea of “two hesychologies”: experimental, related in its method to the natural sciences, and another psychology, which, instead of the experimental study of the psyche, deals with the interpretation of the manifestation of the human spirit. He separated the study of connections between mental phenomena and the physical life of the organism from their connections with the history of cultural values. He called the first psychology explanatory, second - understanding.
Western psychology in the 20th century
In Western psychology of the 20th century. It is customary to distinguish three main schools, or, using the terminology of the American psychologist L. Maslow (1908-1970), three forces: behaviorism, psychoanalysis And humanistic psychology. In recent decades, the fourth direction of Western psychology has been very intensively developed - transpersonal psychology.
Historically the first was behaviorism, which got its name from his proclaimed understanding of the subject of psychology - behavior (from the English. behavior - behavior).
The founder of behaviorism in Western psychology is considered to be the American animal psychologist J. Watson (1878-1958), since it was he who, in the article “Psychology as the Behaviorist Sees It,” published in 1913, called for the creation of a new psychology, stating the fact that After half a century of its existence as an experimental discipline, psychology failed to take its rightful place among the natural sciences. Watson saw the reason for this in a false understanding of the subject and methods of psychological research. The subject of psychology, according to J. Watson, should not be consciousness, but behavior.
The subjective method of internal self-observation should accordingly be replaced objective methods external observation of behavior.
Ten years after Watson's seminal article, behaviorism began to dominate almost all of American psychology. The fact is that the pragmatic focus of research on mental activity in the United States was determined by demands from the economy, and later from the means of mass communications.
Behaviorism included the teachings of I.P. Pavlov (1849-1936) about the conditioned reflex and began to consider human behavior from the point of view of conditioned reflexes formed under the influence of the social environment.
J. Watson's original scheme, explaining behavioral acts as a reaction to presented stimuli, was further improved by E. Tolman (1886-1959) by introducing an intermediary link between a stimulus from the environment and the individual's reaction in the form of the individual's goals, his expectations, hypotheses, and cognitive map peace, etc. The introduction of an intermediate link somewhat complicated the scheme, but did not change its essence. The general approach of behaviorism to man as animal,distinguished by verbal behavior, remained unchanged.
In the work of the American behaviorist B. Skinner (1904-1990) “Beyond Freedom and Dignity,” the concepts of freedom, dignity, responsibility, and morality are considered from the perspective of behaviorism as derivatives of the “system of incentives,” “reinforcement programs” and are assessed as a “useless shadow in human life."
Psychoanalysis, developed by Z. Freud (1856-1939), had the strongest influence on Western culture. Psychoanalysis introduced into Western European and American culture the general concepts of “psychology of the unconscious”, ideas about the irrational aspects of human activity, conflict and fragmentation of the inner world of the individual, the “repressiveness” of culture and society, etc. and so on. Unlike behaviorists, psychoanalysts began to study consciousness, build hypotheses about the inner world of the individual, and introduce new terms that pretend to be scientific, but cannot be empirically verified.
In psychological literature, including educational literature, the merit of 3. Freud is seen in his appeal to the deep structures of the psyche, to the unconscious. Pre-Freudian psychology took a normal, physically and mentally healthy person as an object of study and paid main attention to the phenomenon of consciousness. Freud, having begun to explore as a psychiatrist the inner mental world of neurotic individuals, developed a very simplified a model of the psyche consisting of three parts - conscious, unconscious and superconscious. In this model 3. Freud did not discover the unconscious, since the phenomenon of the unconscious has been known since antiquity, but swapped consciousness and the unconscious: the unconscious is a central component of the psyche, upon which consciousness is built. He interpreted the unconscious itself as a sphere of instincts and drives, the main of which is the sexual instinct.
The theoretical model of the psyche, developed in relation to the psyche of sick individuals with neurotic reactions, was given the status of a general theoretical model that explains the functioning of the psyche in general.
Despite the obvious difference and, it would seem, even the opposition of approaches, behaviorism and psychoanalysis are similar to each other - both of these directions built psychological ideas without resorting to spiritual realities. It is not for nothing that representatives of humanistic psychology came to the conclusion that both main schools - behaviorism and psychoanalysis - did not see the specifically human in man, ignored the real problems of human life - problems of goodness, love, justice, as well as the role of morality, philosophy, religion and were nothing else, as “slander of a person.” All these real problems are seen as deriving from basic instincts or social relations and communications.
“Western psychology of the 20th century,” as S. Grof writes, “created a very negative image of man - some kind of biological machine with instinctive impulses of an animal nature.”
Humanistic psychology represented by L. Maslow (1908-1970), K. Rogers (1902-1987). V. Frankl (b. 1905) and others set themselves the task of introducing real problems into the field of psychological research. Representatives of humanistic psychology considered a healthy creative personality to be the subject of psychological research. The humanistic orientation was expressed in the fact that love, creative growth, higher values, and meaning were considered as basic human needs.
The humanistic approach moves further away from scientific psychology than any other, assigning the main role to a person’s personal experience. According to humanists, the individual is capable of self-esteem and can independently find the path to the flourishing of his personality.
Along with the humanistic trend in psychology, dissatisfaction with attempts to build psychology on the ideological basis of natural scientific materialism is expressed by transpersonal psychology, which proclaims the need for a transition to a new paradigm of thinking.
The first representative of transpersonal orientation in psychology is considered to be the Swiss psychologist K.G. Jung (1875-1961), although Jung himself called his psychology not transpersonal, but analytical. Attribution of K.G. Jung to the forerunners of transpersonal psychology is carried out on the basis that he considered it possible for a person to overcome the narrow boundaries of his “I” and personal unconscious, and connect with the higher “I”, the higher mind, commensurate with all of humanity and the cosmos.
Jung shared the views of Z. Freud until 1913, when he published a programmatic article in which he showed that Freud completely wrongfully reduced all human activity to the biologically inherited sexual instinct, while human instincts are not biological, but entirely symbolic in nature. K.G. Jung did not ignore the unconscious, but, paying great attention to its dynamics, gave a new interpretation, the essence of which is that the unconscious is not a psychobiological dump of rejected instinctive tendencies, repressed memories and subconscious prohibitions, but a creative, reasonable principle that connects a person with all of humanity, with nature and space. Along with the individual unconscious, there is also a collective unconscious, which, being superpersonal and transpersonal in nature, forms the universal basis of the mental life of every person. It was this idea of Jung that was developed in transpersonal psychology.
American psychologist, founder of transpersonal psychology S. Grof states that a worldview based on natural scientific materialism, which has long been outdated and has become an anachronism for theoretical physics of the 20th century, still continues to be considered scientific in psychology, to the detriment of its future development. “Scientific” psychology cannot explain the spiritual practice of healing, clairvoyance, the presence of paranormal abilities in individuals and entire social groups, conscious control of internal states, etc.
An atheistic, mechanistic and materialistic approach to the world and existence, S. Grof believes, reflects a deep alienation from the core of existence, a lack of true understanding of oneself and psychological suppression of the transpersonal spheres of one’s own psyche. This means, according to the views of supporters of transpersonal psychology, that a person identifies himself with only one partial aspect of his nature - with the bodily “I” and hylotropic (i.e., associated with the material structure of the brain) consciousness.
Such a truncated attitude towards oneself and one’s own existence is ultimately fraught with a feeling of the futility of life, alienation from the cosmic process, as well as insatiable needs, competitiveness, vanity, which no achievement can satisfy. On a collective scale, such a human condition leads to alienation from nature, to an orientation towards “limitless growth” and a fixation on the objective and quantitative parameters of existence. As experience shows, this way of being in the world is extremely destructive both on a personal and collective level.
Transpersonal psychology views a person as a cosmic and spiritual being, inextricably linked with all of humanity and the Universe, with the ability to access the global information field.
In the last decade, many works on transpersonal psychology have been published, and in textbooks and teaching aids this direction is presented as the latest achievement in the development of psychological thought without any analysis of the consequences of the methods used in the study of the psyche. The methods of transpersonal psychology, which claims to understand the cosmic dimension of man, however, are not related to the concepts of morality. These methods are aimed at the formation and transformation of special, altered human states through the dosed use of drugs, various types of hypnosis, hyperventilation, etc.
There is no doubt that the research and practice of transpersonal psychology have discovered the connection between man and the cosmos, the emergence of human consciousness beyond ordinary barriers, overcoming the limitations of space and time during transpersonal experiences, proved the very existence of the spiritual sphere, and much more.
But in general, this way of studying the human psyche seems very disastrous and dangerous. The methods of transpersonal psychology are designed to break down the natural defenses and penetrate into the spiritual space of the individual. Transpersonal experiences occur when a person is intoxicated by a drug, hypnosis, or increased breathing and do not lead to spiritual purification and spiritual growth.
Formation and development of domestic psychology
The pioneer of psychology as a science, the subject of which is not the soul or even consciousness, but mentally regulated behavior, can rightfully be considered I.M. Sechenov (1829-1905), and not the American J. Watson, since the first, back in 1863, in his treatise “Reflexes of the Brain” came to the conclusion that self-regulation of behavior the body through signals is the subject of psychological research. Later I.M. Sechenov began to define psychology as the science of the origin of mental activity, which included perception, memory, and thinking. He believed that mental activity is built according to the type of reflex and includes, following the perception of the environment and its processing in the brain, the response of the motor apparatus. In the works of Sechenov, for the first time in the history of psychology, the subject of this science began to cover not only the phenomena and processes of consciousness and the unconscious psyche, but also the entire cycle of interaction of the organism with the world, including its external bodily actions. Therefore, for psychology, according to I.M. Sechenov, the only reliable method is the objective, and not the subjective (introspective) method.
Sechenov's ideas influenced world science, but they were mainly developed in Russia in the teachings I.P. Pavlova(1849-1936) and V.M. Bekhterev(1857-1927), whose works approved the priority of the reflexological approach.
During the Soviet period of Russian history, in the first 15-20 years of Soviet power, an inexplicable, at first glance, phenomenon emerged - an unprecedented rise in a number of scientific fields - physics, mathematics, biology, linguistics, including psychology. For example, in 1929 alone, about 600 book titles on psychology were published in the country. New directions are emerging: in the field of educational psychology - pedology, in the field of psychology of work activity - psychotechnics, brilliant work has been carried out in defectology, forensic psychology, and zoopsychology.
In the 30s Psychology was dealt a crushing blow by the resolutions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and almost all basic psychological concepts and psychological research outside the framework of Marxist principles were prohibited. Historically, psychology itself has fostered this attitude toward psychic research. Psychologists - first in theoretical studies and within the walls of laboratories - seemed to relegate to the background, and then completely denied a person’s right to an immortal soul and spiritual life. Then the theorists were replaced by practitioners and began to treat people as soulless objects. This arrival was not accidental, but prepared by previous development, in which psychology also played a role.
By the end of the 50s - early 60s. A situation arose when psychology was assigned the role of a section in the physiology of higher nervous activity and a complex of psychological knowledge in Marxist-Leninist philosophy. Psychology was understood as a science that studies the psyche, the patterns of its appearance and development. The understanding of the psyche was based on Lenin's theory of reflection. The psyche was defined as the property of highly organized matter - the brain - to reflect reality in the form of mental images. Mental reflection was considered as an ideal form of material existence. The only possible ideological basis for psychology was dialectical materialism. The reality of the spiritual as an independent entity was not recognized.
Even under these conditions, Soviet psychologists such as S.L. Rubinstein (1889-1960), L.S. Vygotsky (1896-1934), L.N. Leontyev (1903-1979), DN. Uznadze (1886-1950), A.R. Luria (1902-1977), made a significant contribution to world psychology.
In the post-Soviet era, new opportunities opened up for Russian psychology and new problems arose. The development of domestic psychology in modern conditions no longer corresponded to the rigid dogmas of dialectical-materialist philosophy, which, of course, provides freedom of creative search.
Currently, there are several orientations in Russian psychology.
Marxist-oriented psychology. Although this orientation has ceased to be dominant, unique and obligatory, for many years it has formed the paradigms of thinking that determine psychological research.
Western-oriented psychology represents assimilation, adaptation, imitation of Western trends in psychology, which were rejected by the previous regime. Usually, productive ideas do not arise along the paths of imitation. In addition, the main currents of Western psychology reflect the psyche of a Western European person, and not a Russian, Chinese, Indian, etc. Since there is no universal psyche, the theoretical schemes and models of Western psychology do not have universality.
Spiritually oriented psychology, aimed at restoring the “vertical of the human soul”, is represented by the names of psychologists B.S. Bratusya, B. Nichiporova, F.E. Vasilyuk, V.I. Slobodchikova, V.P. Zinchenko and V.D. Shadrikova. Spiritually oriented psychology is based on traditional spiritual values and recognition of the reality of spiritual existence.