Proponents of psychological concepts. Basic psychological concepts of the XX century. The main tasks of psychology are

09.12.2021Heading: Kinds

Depth psychology - (Depth psychology; Tiefenpsychologie) - the general name of psychological currents that put forward the idea of the independence of the psyche from consciousness and seek to substantiate and explore this independent mentality as such, in its dynamic status.

Distinguish between classical depth psychology and modern. Classical depth psychology includes the psychological concepts of Freud, Adler and Jung - psychoanalysis, individual psychology and analytical psychology.

Psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysis is a psychotherapeutic method developed by Freud (Freud S.). The fundamental concept that unites Freud's teachings with the views of Adler (Adler A.) and Jung (Jung C. G.), as well as neopsychoanalysts, is the idea of unconscious mental processes and the psychotherapeutic methods used to analyze them.

Psychoanalysis includes theories of the general mental development, the psychological origin of neuroses and psychoanalytic therapy, thus being a complete and integral system.

According to psychoanalytic theory, mental activity is of two types: conscious and unconscious. The first kind of activity is the "immediately given" which "cannot be more fully explained by any description." Preconscious refers to thoughts that are unconscious at a given point in time, but are not repressed and therefore capable of becoming conscious. The unconscious is that part of the soul in which mental processes are unconscious in operation, i.e. memories, fantasies, desires, etc., whose existence can only be implied or which become conscious only after overcoming resistance. In the 1920s Freud renamed the unconscious the Id, the conscious the Ego. The unconscious is a structure with specific properties: "Liberation from mutual contradiction, the primary process, timelessness and the replacement of external reality by psychic - all this specific traits, which we hope to find in the processes belonging to the System of the Unconscious".

Historically concept eid arises from the concept of the unconscious. In the course of development, the Id precedes the Ego, i.e., the mental apparatus begins its existence as an undifferentiated Id, a part of which then develops into a structured Ego. The id contains everything that is present from birth, mainly what is inherent in the constitution, and therefore the instincts that are generated by the somatic organization and which find their first psychic expression here in the id. According to Freud, "The Id is a dark, inaccessible part of our personality. We approach the understanding of the Id with the help of comparison, calling it chaos, a cauldron full of seething impulses. We imagine that at its limit, the Id is openly somatic, absorbing instinctive needs that find their psychic expression in it. Thanks to the drives, the id is filled with energy, but has no organization ... "

Ego- this is a structural and topographic concept related to the organized parts of the mental apparatus, opposed to the unorganized Id. "The ego is the part of the Id that has been modified under the direct influence of the external world... The ego represents what may be called reason or common sense as opposed to the Id, which contains passions. In its relation to the Id, the Ego is like a rider who must restrain the superior strength of the horse, with the difference that the rider tries to do this with his own strength, while the ego uses borrowed strength for this. The development of the ego implies the growth and acquisition of functions which enable the individual to increasingly dominate his impulses, act independently of parental figures, and control the environment.

super ego- this is that part of the Ego in which self-observation, self-criticism and other reflexive activities develop, where parental introjects are localized. The super-ego includes unconscious elements, and the prescriptions and inhibitions emanating from it originate in the past of the subject and may be in conflict with his real values. "The super-ego of a child is built, in fact, not according to the example of the parents, but according to the parental Super-Ego; it is filled with the same content, becomes the bearer of tradition, all those values preserved in time that continue to exist along this path through generations."

Freud concludes that "significant parts of the Ego and Super-Ego may remain unconscious, are usually unconscious. This means that the person knows nothing about their content and it takes effort to make them conscious for himself."

In the work "Ego and Id" Freud (Freud S.) wrote: "Psychoanalysis is a tool that enables the Ego to achieve victory over the Id." He believed that in psychoanalysis the main efforts are aimed at "strengthening the Ego, making it more independent of the Super-Ego, expanding the scope of perception and strengthening its organization ... Where there was an Id, there will be an Ego." Freud saw the goal of psychoanalysis in making the unconscious conscious; he argued that "the business of analysis is to provide, as far as possible, good conditions for the functioning of the ego."

The key, defining concepts of psychoanalysis are: free association, transference and interpretation.

Free associations.

When used as a technical term, "Free association" means the patient's way of thinking, encouraged by the analyst's injunction to obey the "ground rule", i.e., freely, without holding back, expressing his thoughts without trying to concentrate; starting either from some word, number, image of a dream, representation, or spontaneously (Rycroft Ch., Laplanche J., Pontalis J. B., 1996).

The rule of free association is the backbone of all psychoanalytic technique and is often defined in the literature as the "basic, fundamental" rule.

Transfer.

Transfer (transfer, transfer). The transfer by the patient to the psychoanalyst of the feelings he had for other people in early childhood, that is, the projection of early childhood relationships and desires onto another person. The primary sources of Transference reactions are significant people in the early years of a child's life. Usually these are parents, caregivers with whom love, comfort and punishment are associated, as well as brothers, sisters and rivals. Transference reactions may be conditioned by later relationships with people, and even contemporaries, but then the analysis will reveal that these later sources are secondary and themselves descended from significant persons of early childhood.

Interpretation.

Interpretation (lat. interpretatio). In a broad sense, interpretation means explaining the meaning of some aspects of his experiences and behavior that is unclear or hidden for the patient, and in psychodynamic psychotherapy it is a certain technique for interpreting the meaning of a symptom, an associative chain of representations, dreams, fantasies, resistance, transference, etc. At the same time, the psychotherapist makes unconscious phenomena consciously, using their own unconscious, empathy and intuition, as well as experience and theoretical knowledge. Interpretation is the most important psychoanalytic procedure. If free associations refer to the main method of obtaining the most important material from the patient, then I. is the main tool for analyzing this material and translating the unconscious into the conscious.

Individual psychology.

Created by Alfred Adler (Adler A.), I. p. was a major step forward in understanding a person, the uniqueness of his unique life path. It was Individual psychology that anticipated many provisions of humanistic psychology, existentialism, Gestalt therapy, etc.

Individual psychology includes such concepts as: life goals, lifestyle, apperception schema, sense of community (Gemeinschaftsgefuhl) and the associated need for social cooperation, self. Adler believed that life goals that motivate a person's behavior in the present, orienting him to development and achieving the fulfillment of desires in the future, are rooted in his past experience, and in the present are supported by the actualization of a sense of danger, insecurity. The life goal of each individual is made up of his personal experience, values, relationships, characteristics of the personality itself. Many life goals were formed in early childhood and remain unconscious for the time being. Adler himself believed that his choice of the profession of a doctor was influenced by frequent illnesses in childhood and the fear of death associated with them.

Life goals serve the individual as a defense against feelings of helplessness, a means of connecting a perfect and powerful future with an unsettling and uncertain present. With the expressiveness of the feeling of inferiority, which is so characteristic of patients with neuroses in the understanding of Adler, life goals can acquire an exaggerated, unrealistic character (the author discovered the mechanisms of compensation and hypercompensation). The patient with neurosis often has a very significant discrepancy between conscious and unconscious goals, as a result of which he ignores the possibility of real achievements and prefers fantasies of personal superiority.

Lifestyle is the unique way that a person chooses to achieve their life goals. It is an integrated style of adapting to life and interacting with it. A symptom of a disease or a personality trait can only be understood in the context of a lifestyle, as a peculiar expression of it. That is why Adler’s words are so relevant now: “The individual as a whole being cannot be withdrawn from his connections with life ... For this reason, experimental tests that deal at best with particular aspects of an individual’s life can tell us little about his character. ..."

As part of his lifestyle, each person creates a subjective idea of himself and the world, which Adler called the scheme of apperception and which determines his behavior. The schema of apperception, as a rule, has the ability of self-validation, or self-reinforcing. For example, the initial experience of fear by a person will lead him to the fact that the environment with which he comes into contact will be perceived by him as even more threatening.

Under the sense of social Adler understood "the feeling of human solidarity, the connection of man with man ... the expansion of the sense of camaraderie in human society." In a certain sense, all human behavior is social because, he said, we develop in a social environment and our personalities are formed socially. The sense of community includes a sense of kinship with all of humanity and connection with the whole of life.

Based on Darwin's theory of evolution, Adler believed that the ability and need to cooperate are one of the most important forms of people's adaptation to the environment. Only the cooperation of people, the consistency of their behavior, gives them a chance to overcome real inferiority or to feel it. The blocked need for social cooperation and the accompanying feeling of inadequacy underlie the inability to live and neurotic behavior.

The concept of self, like many categories of psychoanalysis, the author does not classify as operational. The self, in his understanding, is identical with the creative force, with the help of which a person directs his needs, gives them a form and a meaningful goal.

Analytical psychology.

The basic concepts and methods of Analytical Psychology were formulated by the author in the Tavistock Lectures (London, 1935). The structure of human mental being, according to Jung, includes two fundamental areas - consciousness and the mental unconscious. Psychology is first and foremost the science of consciousness. It is also the science of the content and mechanisms of the unconscious. Since it is not yet possible to directly study the unconscious, since its nature is unknown, it is expressed by consciousness and in terms of consciousness. Consciousness is largely a product of perception and orientation in the external world, but, according to Jung, it does not consist entirely of sense data, as psychologists of past centuries have claimed. The author also challenged Freud's position, which brings the unconscious out of consciousness. He posed the question in the opposite way: everything that arises in consciousness is obviously not realized at first, and awareness follows from an unconscious state. In consciousness, Jung distinguished between ectopsychic and endopsychic functions of orientation. The author referred to ectopsychic functions the system of orientation dealing with external factors obtained through the sense organs; to endopsychic - a system of connections between the content of consciousness and processes in the unconscious. Ectopsychic functions include:

Feel
thinking,
the senses,
intuition.

If sensation says that something is, then thinking determines what this thing is, i.e., introduces the concept; feeling informs about the value of this thing. However, information about a thing is not exhausted by this knowledge, since it does not take into account the category of time. A thing has its past and future. Orientation in relation to this category is carried out by intuition, premonition. Where concepts and evaluations are powerless, we are entirely dependent on the gift of intuition. The listed functions are presented in each individual with varying degrees of severity. The dominant function determines the psychological type. Jung deduced the pattern of subordination of ectopsychic functions: when the mental function dominates, the function of feeling is subordinate, when sensation dominates, intuition becomes subordinate, and vice versa. Dominant functions are always differentiated, we are "civilized" in them and presumably have freedom of choice. Subordinate functions, on the contrary, are associated with archaic personality, lack of control. Ectopsychic functions do not exhaust the conscious sphere of the mental; its endopsychic side includes:

memory,
subjective components of conscious functions,
affects,
invasion or invasion.

Memory allows you to reproduce the unconscious, to make connections with what has become subconscious - suppressed or discarded. Subjective components, affects, intrusions still more play the role assigned to endopsychic functions - they are the very means by which the unconscious content reaches the surface of consciousness. The center of consciousness, according to Jung, is the Ego-complex of mental factors, constructed from information about one's own body, existence, and from certain sets (series) of memory. The ego has a great attraction power - it attracts both the contents of the unconscious and impressions from the outside. Only that which enters into connection with the Ego is realized. The ego-complex manifests itself in volitional effort. If the ectopsychic functions of consciousness are controlled by the Ego-complex, then in the endopsychic system only memory, and then to a certain extent, is under the control of the will. The subjective components of conscious functions are even less controlled. Affects and intrusions are completely controlled by "force alone". The closer to the unconscious, the less the ego-complex exercises control over mental function, in other words, we can approach the unconscious only due to the property of endopsychic functions not controlled by the will. What has reached the endopsychic sphere becomes conscious, determines our idea of ourselves. But man is not a static structure, he is constantly changing. The part of our personality that is in the shadows, not yet realized, is in its infancy. Thus, the potentials inherent in the personality are contained in the shadow, unconscious side. The unconscious sphere of the mental, which is not amenable to direct observation, manifests itself in its products that cross the threshold of consciousness, which Jung divides into 2 classes. The first contains cognizable material of purely personal origin. This class of contents Jung called the subconscious mind, or personal unconscious, consisting of elements that organize the human personality as a whole. Another class of contents that do not have an individual origin, the author defined as the collective unconscious. These contents belong to a type that embodies the properties not of a separate mental being, but of the whole of humanity as a kind of common whole, and, thus, are collective in nature. These collective patterns, or types, or exemplars, Jung called archetypes. An archetype is a certain formation of an archaic nature, including, both in form and in content, mythological motifs. Mythological motifs express the psychological mechanism of the introversion of the conscious mind into the deep layers of the unconscious psyche. The sphere of the archetypal mind is the core of the unconscious. The contents of the collective unconscious are not controlled by the will; they are not only universal, but also autonomous. Jung suggests 3 methods for reaching the realm of the unconscious: the method of word association, the analysis of dreams, and the method of active imagination. The word association test that Jung is widely known for is to have the subject respond to the stimulus word as quickly as possible with the first word that comes to mind.

Section III

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PEDAGOGICAL

BASICS OF PROFESSIONAL

EDUCATION

Chapter 1

Problem field of psychology of vocational education

Education as a sociocultural phenomenon

Education is traditionally defined as the creation of a person in the image and likeness of the culture existing at a given historical time. At the same time, culture is understood as a system of patterns of behavior, consciousness of people, as well as objects and phenomena in the life of society, which is reproduced during the change of generations.

The development of education is determined by the socio-political, economic and cultural conditions of society. The closest is the relationship between education and culture.

The development of an industrial society has significantly enriched culture and expanded its boundaries. The production of wealth has become part of the culture. The Industrial Revolution led to the emergence of practice-oriented education. Two types of education are gradually developing: general, aimed at mastering socio-cultural technologies and educating the individual, and functional, focused on mastering industrial technologies and becoming an employee. These two types of education took shape at the beginning of the 20th century. both general and industrial education. Industrial education gradually transformed into vocational education.

At the end of the 20th century, there is a transition to a post-industrial society. The development of information technologies, the emergence of multimedia means of reflecting real and unreal reality, the widespread use of psychotechnologies will lead to a serious change in culture, the establishment of a new civilization. Education as a socio-cultural phenomenon becomes a decisive factor in productive interaction with a new reality for a person. It can be assumed that general and vocational education will be replaced by a holistic, total personality-oriented education. The basis for this assumption is the following development trends modern education:

1. Each level of education is recognized as an organic component of the lifelong education system. This trend is gradually being realized through the creation of integrative, cumulative educational institutions that combine a gymnasium, college, university or lyceum, college, university (other variants of successive levels of general and vocational education are also possible).

2. Information technologies are widely introduced into education, including multimedia and virtual technologies. The application of these technologies significantly changes traditional cognitively oriented learning. Computerization and technologization of education significantly expand the intellectual activity of students.

3. There is a trend of transition from a strictly regulated organization of education to variable, block-modular, contextual learning. These forms of education are high level development of educational independence, ability to self-realization and self-education.
4. The interaction between the teacher and the student is gradually changing, acquiring the character of cooperation. Both the teacher and the student become equal subjects of the educational process.

5. A gradual transition from the continuity of all levels of education to a holistic, cumulatively integrated education implies joint responsibility for the process and result of education, provides for the ability to self-determination - an effective competence in the field of decision-making in continuously changing social, cultural, educational and professional situations.

These trends characterize the current state of education in developed countries and determine the principles of its reform at the end of the 20th century.

Basic principles of education development:

The development of the student's personality, which becomes a system-forming factor in the design of education, the orientation of education towards the formation of the personality determines fundamentally new organization, content of education and learning technologies;

The formation of effective competence (social, intellectual, moral) of the student as a person capable of self-determination, self-education, self-regulation and self-actualization, proclaimed by the goal of education;

Differentiation of the content and organization of the educational process, taking place on the basis of taking into account the individual psychological characteristics of students, their needs for self-realization and self-realization;

Continuity of all levels of education (general, primary, secondary specialized and higher) with a focus on holistic education. The core of the implementation of this principle is proclaimed the developing personality of the student, which will become
a factor of interdisciplinary integration of the content and technology of education;

The adequacy of the levels of education and culture, provided by the personality-oriented nature of the content and learning technologies.

Education as a system, process and result

Education is unbalanced system, within which, depending on various factors: the level of education, the age of the trainees, attitudes towards church and state, sociocultural orientation, different subsystems can be distinguished.

The system-forming factor of education is its goal - the development of a person as a person in the process of his education. Education as a process is carried out throughout the entire conscious life of a person, changing in terms of goals, content and technology of education.

Education as a system can be analyzed in three dimensions, which are:

Social scale of consideration: education in the world, a certain country, region, as well as the system of state, private, public, secular, clerical and other forms of education;

Level of education: preschool, school, vocational (primary, secondary specialized, higher), postgraduate (postgraduate, doctoral) education, advanced training and retraining;

Profile of education: general, special (humanitarian, technical, natural science, medical, etc.).

All three of these dimensions are represented in various institutions: international organizations, ministries, departments of education, universities, colleges, lyceums, gymnasiums, schools, kindergartens.

Education as a process is carried out in learning and teaching, which form a unity. Training is a purposeful, consistent transmission of sociocultural experience to another person in specially organized conditions of a family, school (general education, secondary special and higher), advanced training institutions, etc. Training is implemented in the pedagogical activity of a teacher, lecturer, master of industrial training, instructor.

The ability of a student to acquire sociocultural experience is called learning ability, and the result of the learning process is called learning.

Describing developmental education, V.V. Davydov formulated the following main provisions:

Training is carried out on the basis of mastering the content of the system of educational subjects;

Each academic subject is a kind of projection of one or another form of social consciousness: science, art, morality, law;

The core of the subject is its program: systematic and hierarchical description knowledge and skills to be acquired;

The program determines the learning technology, the nature of educational (didactic) aids, and also projects the type of thinking that is formed in students when mastering educational material.

Teaching is the purposeful appropriation by the trainee of the socio-cultural experience transmitted to him and the individual experience formed on this basis: knowledge, skills, generalized ways of performing actions, social, educational and professional qualities and abilities.

An analysis of the concepts of learning, carried out by I. I. Ilyasov, shows that some authors interpreted learning as the assimilation of knowledge, skills and abilities (J. A. Komensky, A. Diesterweg, L. S. Vygotsky, S. L. Rubinshtein, A. N. Leontiev), others considered learning as the assimilation of knowledge, skills and the development of cognitive processes (I. Herbart, K. D. Ushinsky), still others - as the acquisition of experience and the restructuring of previous structures of experience (J. Piaget, K. Koffka) 2 .

I. Lingart considers teaching as a type of activity in which the subject in a given situation changes under the influence of external conditions depending on the results of his own activity, builds his behavior and his mental processes, i.e., teaching is interpreted as a factor in mental development.

V.V. Davydov considers teaching as a specific type of educational activity, the content of which includes not only process and effectiveness, but also structural organization. At the same time, much attention is paid to the formation of educational activity and its subject.

All the above definitions of teaching allow us to state the multidimensional nature of this phenomenon. The results of the study are changes in consciousness, the acquisition of skills in the form of experience and multifaceted activities and behavior, as well as the development of abilities and qualities of the individual.

Education as a result is presented in two forms. First of all, the result of education is fixed in the form of a standard. Modern education standards determine the content and scope of knowledge and skills, include requirements for human qualities that must be formed in the study of this academic subject. In general, the standard of education reflects the optimal level of sociocultural experience that a student should acquire upon graduation.

The second component of the result of education is a person's education: his level of preparedness, the totality of knowledge, skills, social, intellectual, behavioral qualities and sociocultural experience. Education can be both general and socio-professional.

A full-fledged systemic education obtained in the process of learning creates conditions for a person to realize himself as a person, gives him social and professional mobility, and lays the foundation for competitiveness in changing conditions of life.

Leading education paradigms

An analysis of the psychological and pedagogical literature has shown that at present three paradigms of professional education are presented in theory and practice: cognitive, activity-oriented and personality-oriented. Consider their opportunities in vocational education.

In accordance with cognitive paradigm education is considered by analogy with cognition, and its process: setting goals, selecting content, choosing forms, methods and means of education - will be carried out as a quasi-research activity. The personal aspects of learning are reduced to the formation of cognitive motivation and cognitive abilities, as well as to the accumulation of experience in semantic, value and emotional assessments of the behavior of other people and one's own.

The purpose of training reflects the social order for the quality of knowledge, skills and abilities. The academic subject is considered as a kind of "projection" of science and practice, educational material - as didactically "prepared" scientific and technological knowledge.

The main thing is the information support of the individual, and not its development, which turns out to be a “by-product” of the ongoing educational activity, the purpose of which is the assimilation of certain knowledge and methods of activity.

Activity-Oriented Paradigm education has a distinct functionalist orientation. The orienting role in this paradigm is played by the social order of society for education. Being a part of social practice, education, especially professional education, must “remember” its place in the political, sociocultural and economic development of society. The target setting of education within the framework of the activity-oriented paradigm is formulated unequivocally: education in its function is a socio-cultural technology for the formation of knowledge, skills, as well as generalized methods of mental and practical actions that ensure the success of social, labor and artistic and applied activities. The activity-oriented paradigm is reflected in the concept of the development of primary vocational education.

The use of an activity-oriented model of education is justified in the study of professional, special disciplines and, of course, in the process of industrial training and industrial practices. This paradigm is most focused on the preparation of students of primary vocational education.

central link student-centered education is the professional development of the personality of the trainees.

It is based on the following fundamental principles:

The priority of the individuality, self-worth of the student, who is initially the subject of the professional process, is recognized;

The technologies of vocational education at all its stages are correlated with the laws of the professional development of the individual;

Vocational education has a leading character, which is ensured by the formation of social and professional competence and the development of extrafunctional qualities of a future specialist in the process of educational, professional, quasi-professional, production and cooperative activities;

The effectiveness of the professional educational process is determined by the organization of the educational and spatial environment;

Personally oriented vocational education is maximally addressed to the individual experience of the student, his need for self-organization, self-determination and self-development.

All the indicated paradigms of education are currently in demand by the professional school. Their choice is determined by the educational profession and specialty, the content of the academic discipline, subjective professionally conditioned experience of the teacher.

The innovative components of the considered educational paradigms are key competencies, key competencies and key qualifications. The implementation of these key components will require a new content of vocational education and new state standards focused not on the original program materials, but on the results of education, including key competencies, key competencies and key qualifications. The development of these multidimensional socio-psychological and professional-pedagogical formations will also require new technologies and means of training, education and development, as well as a new organization of the educational and professional space.

A mechanism for stimulating innovative searches for ways to implement a new education strategy can be a technology for evaluating the activities of an educational institution during its attestation and accreditation.

The introduction of innovative approaches into the practice of a professional school will significantly improve the quality of education, increase its economic efficiency, and ensure the social and professional security of the individual.

Obviously, each of the educational paradigms has its own advantages and disadvantages. Based on the study of the relationship between educational activities and professional development of the individual, we will consider the feasibility of using these models of education at different stages of the professional training of students,

First stage. The conditions of education in a vocational school, to a greater extent than in a general education one, require students to be able to independently organize educational activities, to learn. It is important to form in students a holistic structure of learning activity in the interrelation of all its components.

The ability to learn can be defined as the degree of mastering the methods of educational and cognitive activity in the process of mastering knowledge, skills and abilities.

The success of education in an educational institution depends on the first stage, so it can be considered a sensitive period for the formation of educational skills.

The initial stage roughly covers the 1st year of study. Its goal is the adaptation of school graduates to new learning conditions. This requires the formation of such training skills as planning and organizing one's time; analysis of educational material; analysis and correction of their educational activities, setting goals and choosing ways to achieve them; formation of relationships with students in the group, with teachers; memorization and reproduction of educational material, solving problems that arise in the learning process, etc.

The optimal model of education for this stage of professional training is cognitively oriented.

The initial stage is the base for the subsequent main stage.

Main stage. It is characterized by the performance of mainly educational and production activities, the most important feature of which is the solution of educational problems of a production nature. Tentatively, the main stage includes the 2nd-3rd years of study,

The purpose of this stage is to teach students how to solve educational and production problems. These include typical production tasks, assignments, and exercises. The main thing is the formation of skills and generalized methods of action, the so-called key competencies.

The final stage. The professional development of the student's personality and the formation of his activity at the final stage are built on the basis of the educational and professional skills and personal qualities already formed at the previous stages of training. The specificity of this stage, which is dominated by educational and professional activities, is as follows: educational tasks are predominantly in the nature of professional activities, forms of training are close to the types of future activities, neoplasms acquired at this stage are professionalized.

Approximately the final stage covers the 3rd-4th years of study.

The purpose of this stage is to teach students to solve educational and professional problems. It is necessary to provide for the formation of such educational and professional skills as planning and organizing one's professional activity, its analysis and correction, solving professional problems, identifying problems in one's professional activity and ways to solve them, the ability to build relationships in professional groups, analysis of production and technological situations.

As has been shown above, at each stage one of the considered paradigms of education is justified: at the first stage - cognitively oriented, at the second - activity-oriented, and at the final stage - personality-oriented. The dynamics of the process of professional development of the individual at each stage depends on the correspondence between the student's actual educational and professional activities and the normative activities built according to the logic of development. If they match, an effective transformation of the structural components of the personality (progressive development) takes place. Otherwise, the development curve is transformed into a “plateau”, asymptotically approaching a new quality, but not reaching it. We emphasize that the transition to a higher level is possible only with the development of activities of a lower level.

Chapter 2

Activities and personalities

Basic concepts

The initial conceptual concept of vocational science is the concept "profession". There are many interpretations of this concept in professional literature. First of all, it is an occupation requiring special training, which a person practices regularly and which serves as a source of livelihood for him. Further, the profession unites a group of people engaged in the same type of activity, within which certain connections and norms of behavior are established. The profession acts as a special form of social organization of able-bodied members of society, united by a common type of activity and professional consciousness. By B. Shaw's definition, a profession is a conspiracy of specialists against the uninitiated. Several definitions are given in his works by E.A. Klimov. The most complete is the following: “A profession is necessary for society, socially valuable and limited due to the division of labor, the area of application of the physical and spiritual forces of a person, giving him the opportunity to receive the necessary means of his existence and development in return for the labor expended.” Clarifying this voluminous definition, E. A. Klimov characterizes the profession as a community, activity, area of personality manifestation and as a historically developing system. Here is another definition of it: "From the point of view of society, a profession is a system of professional tasks, forms and types of professional activity, professional characteristics of an individual that can ensure the satisfaction of society's needs in achieving a significant result or product that society needs." A narrower definition of the profession, from the point of view of a particular person, is given by V. G. Makushin: a profession is an activity through which a given person participates in the life of society and which serves as his main source of material livelihood.

A generalization of the available interpretations allows us to give the following definition. Profession(lat. professional) - These are historical forms of labor activity, for the performance of which a person must have certain knowledge and skills, have special abilities and developed professionally important qualities.

In the English-speaking environment, the concepts of "profession" are distinguished (professional) and "occupation" (ossyratiop). The term "profession" is applied only to a small circle of high-status types of professional activity. All other activities are related to specialties or types of work, occupations.

In domestic professional studies, the concepts of "profession" and "specialty" are bred. A profession is a broader concept than a specialty, its distinctive features, in addition to professional competence, are also social and professional competence, professional autonomy, self-control, group norms and values. A profession, as a rule, unites a group of related specialties. For example, a profession is a doctor, specialties are a therapist, pediatrician, oculist, urologist, etc.; profession - engineer, specialties - designer, technologist, metallurgist; profession - locksmith, specialties - plumber, electrician, toolmaker, etc.

Speciality- is a complex acquired through vocational education, training and in the process of work of special knowledge, skills and abilities necessary to perform a certain type of activity within a particular profession. Thus, a specialty is one of the types of professional activity within a profession, aimed at achieving more particular or intermediate results, or at achieving general results by specific means.

In the history of the development of civilization, the division of labor into professional activities has been observed already before our era in Egypt, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire and other developed countries. A significant differentiation of labor occurred during the era of the industrial revolution. Subsequent scientific and technological progress has led to a significant renewal and increase in the range of professions. In the official directory of the United States in 1965, the characteristics of 21,741 professions and about 40,000 specialties were listed in alphabetical order. In the International Standard for the Classification of Occupations in 1988, 9,333 occupations were listed. The Unified Tariff and Qualification Directory unites about 7,000 professions and specialties. These special documents reflect the professional situation at the time of their compilation. Published reference books at the time of their publication already need to be corrected, since the world of professions is very dynamic. New professions are constantly emerging, the content of the labor of existing professions is being updated, low-skilled professions are dying off, and combined and integrated professions and specialties are emerging.

For many professions and specialties, training is carried out at enterprises and institutions for training, retraining and advanced training. There is a system of primary, secondary and higher vocational education for training in the most popular professions that require a high specific qualification. For this system, the concept of "educational profession" is basic.

Teaching profession- this is the level of qualification, reflecting the volume and quality of knowledge, skills and abilities necessary for further development and performance of activities in this particular professional field.

The concept of "professiography" includes the process of studying, psychological characteristics and design of the profession. When professionalizing, the signs of objects that are the central components of any labor process are always studied: the subject of labor, subject, tasks, tools and working conditions.

One of the fundamental principles of professiography has become the principle of a differentiated approach to the study of professional activity. The essence of this principle is the subordination of professiography to the solution of specific practical problems. For example, for the purposes of professional consultation and professional selection, it is necessary to single out those professionally important features that allow the differentiation of the subjects according to their professional suitability. To determine the level of qualification, the characteristics of labor functions, professional knowledge, skills and abilities are of great importance. For vocational education, the characteristics of the types of activities, the composition of typical production tasks, the list of necessary knowledge, skills, qualities and properties of a specialist are important.

It is obvious that vocational education cannot be conducted in all professions, and the conditions, means, content, and levels of complexity of various types of professional activity are very different. We need a scientifically based selection of educational professions according to certain characteristics, criteria, their classification and the establishment of qualification levels. The result should be a list of educational professions, on the basis of which the forms of training specialists are determined. This may be short-term training at enterprises, training in vocational schools or universities.

The list of educational professions is also affected by the prevalence of professions, contraindications for work with difficult and harmful working conditions, as well as age restrictions.

Drawing up a list of training professions for vocational education will always be relevant. And of course, this list should have scientifically substantiated grouping and be not numerous.

educationally oriented

Chapter 4

Key qualifications

In domestic professional pedagogy, the concepts of key qualifications and competencies are not discussed. In foreign pedagogy, they are widely implemented in professional schools. Let's consider this problem in relation to personality-oriented education.

The concept of "key qualifications" was theoretically substantiated by D. Mertens in the mid-1970s. in Germany. He saw the need to revise the traditional understanding of qualification in the changes that took place in production technologies. The widespread use of information and communication technology, the fuzzy labor market, the development of dynamic production technologies, in his opinion, determined new qualification requirements for a specialist. The main idea was to prepare a new generation of specialists capable of adapting to modern production technologies, easily moving from one type of work to another, possessing the knowledge, skills and abilities necessary for a wide range of professions.

Similar requirements for the training of general workers are formulated at the same time in domestic pedagogy. (P. R. Atutov, S. Ya. Batyshev, A. P. Belyaeva, V. A. Polyakov, S. A. Shaporinsky and etc.). The main attention was paid to the training of workers capable of carrying out professional activities in a broad aspect, the basis of which is the integration of working professions.

The fundamental difference between these two approaches was to change the interpretation of qualifications. In foreign pedagogy, an additional concept of “key qualification” is introduced, which takes on an independent meaning and is not associated with a specific profession. In domestic professional pedagogy, the traditional understanding of qualifications is significantly enriched. It is defined as a set of social and professional qualification requirements for the social and professional abilities of a person.

Both approaches were aimed at the formation of general professional (polytechnical) knowledge and skills, the development of creative abilities, the expansion of the professional profile, the provision of professional mobility and competitiveness.

In the next ten years, the concept of key qualifications did not develop in Germany. In the USSR, the provision on the training of general workers, a new interpretation of qualifications, began to be successfully developed in professional pedagogy and implemented in practice.

In the mid 1980s. in Germany there is a renewed interest in the concept of developing key qualifications. This time, the initiative comes from scientists and educators who are closely associated with training centers for the training of specialists from large industrial enterprises and firms: Mercedes, Ore1, and others. Innovative projects are being developed that are focused on the development of key qualifications.

German teachers and psychologists took part in the development of these projects. R. Vader, K. Boretty, U. Klein, and others. Surveys of managers and entrepreneurs conducted in the early 1990s showed that the most popular and relevant characteristics of specialists are independence, adaptability, special knowledge, communication skills, efficiency, punctuality, and creativity. These studies became the basis for compiling catalogs of key qualifications. A. Schelten compiled the following expanded catalog of key qualifications:

1. General educational knowledge, abilities and skills of a wide profile: culture of speech, knowledge of foreign languages, general technological and economic education.

2. General professional knowledge and skills in the field of measuring equipment, technical and technological diagnostics, reading and development of technical documentation, labor protection, necessary for a wide range of activities.

3. Cognitive abilities - the ability to transfer knowledge and skills from one type of professional activity to another, to solve problems, independence and critical thinking.

4. Psychomotor abilities - general psychomotor skills: coordination of actions, endurance, speed of reactions, manual dexterity, concentration of attention, etc.

5. Personal qualities: reliability, responsibility, independence, optimism, achievement motivation, striving for quality in work.

6. Social abilities: cooperation, willingness to cooperate, communication, tolerance, corporatism, justice.

The formation of these key qualifications, according to the proponents of the approach, should help overcome the uncertainty of the labor market, form a long-term basis for professional activity, and take into account the trends of the third technological revolution as much as possible.

A comparative analysis of the systems of vocational education in Russia and Germany shows that our country is oriented towards the training of generalists who are able to carry out professional activities in a broad aspect, the basis of which is the integration of several (most often related) professions. In Germany, much attention is paid to the qualitative formation of professional and special knowledge, skills and abilities (actions). Another important innovative block is added to this traditional training - key qualifications that have a wide range of action, go beyond the limits of one group of professions, professionally and psychologically prepare a specialist for changing and mastering new specialties and professions, and ensure readiness for innovation in professional activities.

It is hardly possible to unequivocally assess the advantages and disadvantages of these two approaches, but consideration of the productivity of the concept of key qualifications in professional education in Russia seems justified.

So, changes in the field of production technologies necessitate the formation of special superprofessional, more precisely, extrafunctional knowledge, skills, properties, qualities and abilities of a specialist, ensuring his professional mobility, competitiveness and social security.

To determine the composition and structure of key qualifications in the traditions of domestic professional education, we turn to the works in the field of professiography by E. I. Garber, E. A. Klimov, V. V. Kozach, E. M. Ivanova, A. K. Markova and others. The conceptual concept is a profession as a historically emerged form of labor activity, for the performance of which a person must have certain knowledge, skills and abilities, have professionally important qualities and special psychophysiological properties. The scientific description of the profession is carried out by various methods of professiography: technical and economic, sociological, psychological, physiological.

Depending on the purpose of professiography, different models of professiograms are designed: informational, diagnostic, prognostic, methodological, etc. Educationally oriented professiography is of the greatest interest for the subject of our analysis. Its development is based on the idea of the subjectivity of the profession. The trainee becomes the subject of the profession, subject to the development of professionally conditioned personality substructures.

Chapter 2 Psychological Concepts

1. A brief excursion into the history of psychology

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

The first ideas about the psyche were associated with animism (from the 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, controlling all living and inanimate objects.
Later in philosophical teachings ancient times, psychological aspects were touched upon, which were solved in terms of idealism or in terms of materialism. So, the materialist philosophers of antiquity Democritus, Lucretius, Epicurus understood the human soul as a kind of matter, as a bodily formation, consisting of spherical, small and most mobile atoms.
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 the human soul exists before it enters in connection with the body. It is the image and outflow of the world soul. The soul is an invisible, sublime, divine, eternal principle. Soul and body are in complex relationship with each other. According to its divine origin, the soul is called upon to control the body, to direct the life of a person. However, sometimes the body takes the soul into its fetters. The body is torn apart by various desires and passions, it takes care of food, is subject to illnesses, fears, 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 the rational principle, noble aspirations and desires gives integrity to the spiritual life of a person. The soul lives in the human body and guides him throughout his life, and after death leaves him and enters the divine “world of ideas”. Since the soul is the highest thing in a person, he should take care of its health more than the health of the body. Depending on what kind of lifestyle 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 off the earth into an ideal world, into a world of ideas that exists outside of matter and outside of the individual. consciousness. “Aren’t people ashamed to take care of money, fame and honors, but not to take care of their mind, truth and their soul and not think that it should be better?” - ask Socrates and Plato.
The great philosopher Aristotle in his treatise "On the Soul" singled out psychology as a kind of 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 purpose of all its vital functions. Aristotle put forward the concept of the soul as a function of the body, and not some external phenomenon in relation 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 sight. So the human soul is the essence of a living body, it is the realization of its being, - 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 the impressions from the senses come. These impressions form a source of ideas, which, combined with each other as a result of rational thinking, subordinate behavior to themselves. The driving force of human behavior is the desire (internal activity of the body), associated with a feeling of pleasure or displeasure. Sense perceptions constitute the beginning of knowledge. the preservation and reproduction of sensations gives memory. Thinking is characterized by the compilation of general concepts, judgments and conclusions. A special form of intellectual activity is nous (reason), brought in from outside in the form of divine mind. Thus, the soul manifests itself in various abilities for activity: nourishing, feeling, rational. Higher abilities arise from the lower ones and on their basis. The primary cognitive ability of a person is sensation, it takes the form of sensually perceived objects without their matter, just as "wax takes the impression of a seal without iron." Sensations leave a trace in the form of representations - 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 the science of the soul.
In the era of the Middle Ages, the idea was established that the soul is a divine, supernatural principle, and therefore the study of mental life should be subordinated to the tasks of theology.
Only the outer side of the soul, which faces the material world, can yield to human judgment. The greatest mysteries of the soul are accessible only in religious (mystical) experience.
From the 17th century a new era begins in the development of psychological knowledge. In connection with the development of the natural sciences, with the help of experimental methods, they began to study the laws of human consciousness. 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 base. R. Descartes (1596-1650) comes to the conclusion about the difference between the soul of a person 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 doctrine gave rise to a problem called psychophysical: how are bodily (physiological) and mental (mental) processes in a person related? Descartes created a theory to explain behavior based on a mechanistic model. According to this model, the information delivered by the senses is sent along the sensory nerves to the holes in the brain, which these nerves expand, which allows the "animal souls" located in the brain to flow through the thinnest tubes - the motor nerves - into the muscles, which inflate, which leads to withdrawal of the irritated limb, or causes one or another action to be performed. Thus, there was no 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 a reflex as a natural motor response of the body to external physical stimulation. This Cartesian dualism is a body that acts mechanically, and a “reasonable 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 am" became the basis of the postulate 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.
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 an extended substance (matter).
Soul and body are determined by the same material causes. Spinoza believed that such an approach makes it possible to consider the phenomena of the psyche 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 inherent in man, manifesting itself in the form of intellect and will at the human level.
The German philosopher G. Leibniz (1646-1716), rejecting the equality of the psyche and consciousness established by Descartes, introduced the concept of the unconscious psyche. The hidden work of psychic forces - countless "small perceptions" (perceptions) - is continuously going on in the human soul. Conscious desires and passions arise from them.
The term " empirical psychology”introduced by the German philosopher of the 18th century X. Wolf to designate a direction in psychological science, the basic principle of which is to observe specific mental phenomena, classify them and establish a regular connection between them that can be verified by experience. The English philosopher J. Locke (1632-1704) considers the human soul as a passive, but capable of perceiving 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, i.e. generate 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. So psychology began to study how, by association of ideas, a person is aware of the world around him. The study of the relationship between the soul and the body is finally inferior to the study of 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, thinking is known with the help of a special inner feeling - reflection. Reflection - according to Locke - is "observation to which the mind exposes its activity", this is the focus of a person's attention on the activity of his own soul. Mental activity can proceed, as it were, at two levels: processes of the first level - perception, thoughts, desires (every person and child has them); processes of the second level - observation or "contemplation" of these perceptions, thoughts, desires (this is only for mature people who reflect on themselves, cognize their spiritual experiences and states). This method of introspection becomes an important means of studying the mental activity and consciousness of people.
The separation of psychology into an independent science occurred in the 60s of the 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 an experiment 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 In Leipzig, Wundt opened the world's first experimental psychological laboratory.
Soon, in 1885, V.M. Bekhterev organized a similar laboratory in Russia.

In the field of consciousness, Wundt believed, there is a special mental causality that is subject to scientific objective research. consciousness was divided into mental structures, the simplest elements: sensations, images and feelings. The role of psychology, according to Wundt, is to give as detailed a description of these elements as possible. "Psychology is the science of the structures of consciousness" - this direction was called the structuralist approach. We used the method of introspection, self-observation.

One psychologist compared the picture of consciousness with a flowering meadow: visual images, auditory impressions, emotional states and thoughts, memories, desires - all this can be in the mind at the same time. A particularly clear and distinct area stands out in the field of consciousness - “field of attention”, “focus of consciousness”; outside it there is an area whose contents are indistinct, vague, undivided - this is the "periphery of consciousness". The contents of consciousness filling both described areas of consciousness are in continuous motion. Wundt's experiments with the metronome showed that the monotonous clicks of the metronome in the perception of a person involuntarily rhythmize, i.e. consciousness is rhythmic in nature, and the organization of rhythm can be both arbitrary and involuntary. Wundt tried to study such a characteristic of consciousness as its volume. The experiment showed that a series of eight double beats of a metronome (or of 16 separate sounds) is a measure of the volume of consciousness. Wundt believed that psychology should find the elements of consciousness, decompose the complex dynamic picture of consciousness into simple, further indivisible parts. Wundt declared individual impressions, or sensations, to be the simplest elements of consciousness. Sensations are objective elements of consciousness. There are also subjective elements of consciousness, or feelings. Wundt proposed 3 pairs of subjective elements: pleasure - displeasure, excitement - calm, tension - discharge. All human feelings are formed from a combination of subjective elements, for example, joy is pleasure and excitement, Hope is pleasure and tension, fear is displeasure and tension.

But the idea of decomposing the psyche into the simplest elements turned out to be false; it was impossible to assemble complex states of consciousness from simple elements. Therefore, by the 20s of the XX century. this psychology of consciousness has practically ceased to exist.
functionalist approach. The American psychologist W. James proposed to study the functions of consciousness and its role in human survival. He hypothesized that the role of consciousness is to enable a person to adapt to different situations, either repeating already developed forms of behavior, or changing them depending on the circumstances, or mastering new actions if the situation requires it. "Psychology is the science of the functions of consciousness," according to functionalists. They used the methods of introspection, self-observation, fixing the time for solving problems.
James reflected in the concept of "stream of consciousness" - the process of movement of consciousness, the continuous change of its contents and states. The processes of consciousness are divided into two large classes: some of them occur as if by themselves, others are organized and directed by man. The first processes are called involuntary, the second - arbitrary.
The founder of Russian scientific psychology is I.M. Sechenov (1829-1905). In his book Reflexes of the Brain (1863), the basic psychological processes receive a physiological interpretation. Their scheme is the same as that of reflexes: they originate in an external influence, continue with central nervous activity and end with a response activity - movement, deed, speech. With this interpretation, Sechenov made an attempt to “pull out” psychology from the circle of the inner world of man. However, the specificity of psychic reality was underestimated in comparison with its physiological basis, the role of cultural and historical factors in the formation and development of the human psyche was not taken into account.
An important place in the history of Russian psychology belongs to G.I. Chelpanov (1862-1936). His main merit is the creation of a psychological institute in Russia (1912). The experimental direction in psychology with the use of objective research methods was developed by V.M. Bekhterev (1857-1927). The efforts of I.P. Pavlov (1849-1936) were aimed at studying conditioned reflex connections in the activity of the organism. His works fruitfully influenced the understanding of the physiological foundations of mental activity.
Behavioral approach.
The American psychologist Watson proclaimed in 1913 that psychology would gain the right to be called a science when it applied objective experimental methods of study. Objectively, one can study only the behavior of a person that occurs in a given situation. Each situation corresponds to a specific behavior that should be objectively recorded. “Psychology is the science of behavior,” and all concepts related to consciousness should be banished from scientific psychology. “The expression “a child is afraid of a dog” scientifically means nothing, objective descriptions are needed: “tears and trembling in a child increase when a dog approaches him.” New forms of behavior appear as a result of the formation of conditioned reflexes (conditioning) (Watson). Any behavior is determined by its consequences (Skinner).Human actions are formed under the influence of the social environment, a person is completely dependent on it.A person also tends to imitate the behavior of other people, taking into account how favorable the results of such imitation can be for himself (Bandura). Behavioral ideas will be explored in the following sections.

Important merits of behaviorism are: the introduction of objective methods of registration and analysis of externally observed reactions, human actions, processes, events; discovery of the patterns of learning, the formation of skills, behavioral reactions.

The main disadvantage of behaviorism is the underestimation of the complexity of human mental activity, the convergence of the psyche of animals and humans, ignoring the processes of consciousness, creativity, and self-determination of the individual.
« Gestalt psychology” arose in Germany thanks to the efforts of T. Wertheimer, W. Koehler and K. Levin, who put forward a program for studying the psyche from the point of view of integral structures (gestalts). Gestalt psychology opposed the associative psychology of W. Wundt and E. Titchener, who interpreted complex mental phenomena as built from simple associations according to the laws.
The concept of gestalt (from German “form”) originated in the study of sensory formations, when the “primacy” of their structure in relation to the components (sensations) included in these formations was discovered. For example, although a melody, when performed in different keys, evokes different sensations, it is recognized as one and the same. Thinking is interpreted similarly: it consists in discretion, awareness of the structural requirements of the elements of a problem situation and in actions that meet these requirements (W. Köhler). The construction of a complex mental image occurs in insight - a special mental act of instantaneous grasping of relationships (structures) in the perceived field. Gestalt psychology also opposed its positions to behaviorism, which explained the behavior of an organism in a problem situation by enumeration of "blind" motor tests, only occasionally leading to success. The merits of Gestalt psychology lie in the development of the concept of a psychological image, in the approval of a systematic approach to mental phenomena.
At the beginning of the XX century. in psychology, a direction of psychoanalysis, or Freudianism, arose. 3. Freud introduced a number of important topics into psychology: unconscious motivation, defense mechanisms of the psyche, the role of sexuality in it, the impact of childhood mental trauma on behavior in adulthood, etc. However, his closest students came to the conclusion that it was not sexual drives, mainly , and the feeling of inferiority and the need to compensate for this defect (A. Adler), or the collective unconscious (archetypes), which has absorbed the universal experience (K. Jung), determine the mental development of the individual.
We will consider the main provisions of Freudianism in the following sections.

The psychoanalytic direction paid increased attention to the study of unconscious mental processes. Unconscious processes can be divided into 2 large classes: 1 - unconscious mechanisms of conscious actions (unconscious automatic actions and automated skills, phenomena of an unconscious attitude); 2 - unconscious stimuli of conscious actions (this is what Freud intensively investigated, - the impulses of the unconscious area of \u200b\u200bthe psyche (drives, repressed desires, experiences) have a strong influence on the actions and states of a person, although a person does not suspect this and often does not know why he does that or other action. Unconscious ideas hardly pass into consciousness, practically remaining unconscious due to the work of two mechanisms - the mechanisms of repression and resistance. Consciousness resists them, i.e. a person does not let the whole truth about himself into consciousness. Therefore, unconscious ideas, having a large energy charge, break into the conscious life of a person, taking a distorted or symbolic form (three forms of manifestation of the unconscious - Dreams, erroneous actions - slips of the tongue, slips of the tongue, forgetting things, neurotic symptoms).
K. Horney, G. Sullivan and E. Fromm, the reformers of Freud's psychoanalysis (neo-Freudians), tried to connect the nature of the unconscious core of the human psyche with the social conditions of his life. A person is driven not only by biological predetermined unconscious urges, but also by acquired aspirations for security and self-realization (Horney), images of oneself and others that developed in early childhood (Sullivan), and the influence of the socio-economic structure of society (Fromm).
Representatives of cognitive psychology W. Niceser, A. Paivio and others assign a decisive role in the behavior of the subject to knowledge (from the Latin cognito - knowledge). For them, the central issue is the organization of knowledge in the memory of the subject, the correlation of verbal (verbal) and figurative components in the processes of memorization and thinking.
Humanistic psychology - its most prominent representatives G. Allport, G.A. Murray, G. Murphy, K. Rogers, A. Maslow consider the healthy creative personality of a person to be the subject of psychological research.
The goal of such a personality is not the need for homeostasis, as psychoanalysis believes, but self-fulfillment, Self-actualization, the growth of the constructive beginning of the human "I". A person is open to the world, endowed with the potential for continuous development and self-realization. Love, creativity, growth, higher values, meaning - these and similar concepts characterize the basic needs of a person. As noted by V. Frankl, the author of the concept of logotherapy, in the absence or loss of interest in life, a person experiences boredom, indulges in vice, he is struck by severe failures.
Spiritual (Christian) psychology can also be considered a peculiar branch of humanistic psychology. Considering it unlawful to limit the subject of psychology to the phenomena of mental life, she turns to the realm of the spirit. Spirit is the power of self-determination for the better, the gift to strengthen and overcome what is rejected. Spirituality gives a person access to love, conscience and a sense of duty. It helps a person overcome the crisis of groundlessness, the illusory nature of his existence.
Transpersonal psychology considers a person as a spiritual cosmic being, inextricably linked with the entire Universe, cosmos, humanity, having the ability to access the global information cosmic field. Through the unconscious psyche, a person is connected with the unconscious psyche of other people, with the "collective unconscious of mankind", with cosmic information, with the "world mind".
Interactive psychology considers a person as a being, main characteristic which is communication, interaction between people. The purpose of psychology is to study the laws of interaction, communication, relationships, conflicts (E. Berne).
A significant contribution to the development of psychology of the XX century. introduced by our domestic scientists L.S. Vygotsky (1896-1934), A.N. Leontiev (1903-1979), A.R. Luria (1902-1977) and P.Ya. Halperin (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 conditioned form of the psyche, and also laid the foundations for the cultural and historical concept of human mental development. These 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 the signs of the language. The system of signs determines behavior to a greater extent than the surrounding nature, since a sign, a symbol contains a program of behavior in a collapsed form. Higher mental functions develop in the process of learning, i.e. joint activities of a child and an adult.
A.N. Leontiev 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 tool-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. Galperin considered mental processes (from perception to thinking inclusive) as an orienting activity of the subject in problem situations. The psyche itself historically 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 phased formation of mental actions (images, concepts). The practical implementation of this concept can significantly increase the effectiveness of training.

Having briefly reviewed the history of the formation of psychology, we will analyze in more detail the main directions, basic concepts and theories of psychology:

psychoanalysis,
cognitive psychology ,
humanistic psychology,

and also get acquainted with such particular applied psychological concepts as Assagio-li's psychosynthesis, Grof's research, Toych's concept of victimology, which can be combined under the ideas of transpersonal psychology.

1.3. Basic psychological theories

Associative psychology(associationism) is one of the main directions of world psychological thought, explaining the dynamics of mental processes by the principle of association. For the first time, the postulates of associationism were formulated by Aristotle (384-322 BC), who put forward the idea that images that arise without an apparent external cause are the product of association. In the 17th century this idea was strengthened by the mechano-deterministic doctrine of the psyche, whose representatives were the French philosopher R. Descartes (1596–1650), the English philosophers T. Hobbes (1588–1679) and J. Locke (1632–1704), the Dutch philosopher B. Spinoza ( 1632–1677) and others. Proponents of this doctrine compared the body with a machine that imprints traces of external influences, as a result of which the renewal of one of the traces automatically entails the appearance of another. In the XVIII century. the principle of the association of ideas was extended to the entire field of the mental, but received a fundamentally different interpretation: the English and Irish philosopher J. Berkeley (1685–1753) and the English philosopher D. Hume (1711–1776) considered it as a connection of phenomena in the mind of the subject, and the English physician and philosopher D. Hartley (1705–1757) created a system of materialistic associationism. He extended the principle of association to the explanation of all mental processes without exception, considering the latter as a shadow of brain processes (vibrations), i.e., solving the psychophysical problem in the spirit of parallelism. In accordance with his natural-scientific attitude, Gartley built a model of consciousness by analogy with the physical models of I. Newton, based on the principle of elementarism.

At the beginning of the XIX century. In associationism, the view was established, according to which:

The psyche (identified with the introspectively understood consciousness) is built from elements - sensations, the simplest feelings;

Elements are primary, complex mental formations (representations, thoughts, feelings) are secondary and arise through associations;

The condition for the formation of associations is the contiguity of two mental processes;

The consolidation of associations is due to the vivacity of the associated elements and the frequency of repetition of associations in the experiment.

In the 80-90s. 19th century Numerous studies of the conditions for the formation and actualization of associations were undertaken (German psychologist G. Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) and physiologist I. Müller (1801–1858), etc.). At the same time, the limitations of the mechanistic interpretation of association were shown. The deterministic elements of associationism were perceived in a transformed form by the teachings of I.P. Pavlov about conditioned reflexes, as well as - on other methodological grounds - American behaviorism. The study of associations in order to identify the characteristics of various mental processes is also used in modern psychology.

Behaviorism(from the English behavior - behavior) - a direction in American psychology of the twentieth century, denying consciousness as an object scientific research and reducing the psyche to various forms of behavior, understood as a set of reactions of the body to environmental stimuli. The founder of behaviorism, D. Watson, formulated the credo of this direction as follows: "The subject of psychology is behavior." At the turn of the XIX - XX centuries. the inconsistency of the previously dominant introspective "psychology of consciousness" was revealed, especially in solving the problems of thinking and motivation. It was experimentally proved that there are mental processes that are not realized by a person, inaccessible to introspection. E. Thorndike, studying the reactions of animals in the experiment, found that the solution to the problem is achieved by trial and error, interpreted as a "blind" selection of movements made at random. This conclusion was extended to the process of learning in man, and the qualitative difference between his behavior and the behavior of animals was denied. The activity of the organism and the role of its mental organization in the transformation of the environment, as well as the social nature of man, were ignored.

In the same period in Russia, I.P. Pavlov and V.M. Bekhterev, developing the ideas of I.M. Sechenov, developed experimental methods for an objective study of the behavior of animals and humans. Their work had a significant influence on behaviorists, but was interpreted in the spirit of extreme mechanism. The unit of behavior is the relationship between stimulus and response. The laws of behavior, according to the concept of behaviorism, fix the relationship between what happens at the "input" (stimulus) and "output" (motor response). According to behaviorists, the processes within this system (both mental and physiological) are not amenable to scientific analysis, since they are inaccessible to direct observation.

The main method of behaviorism is the observation and experimental study of the reactions of the body in response to environmental influences in order to identify correlations between these variables that are accessible to mathematical description.

The ideas of behaviorism influenced linguistics, anthropology, sociology, semiotics and served as one of the origins of cybernetics. Behaviorists have made a significant contribution to the development of empirical and mathematical methods for studying behavior, to the formulation of a number of psychological problems, especially those related to learning - the acquisition of new forms of behavior by the body.

Due to methodological flaws in the original concept of behaviorism, already in the 1920s. its disintegration into a number of directions began, combining the main doctrine with elements of other theories. The evolution of behaviorism has shown that its initial principles cannot stimulate the progress of scientific knowledge about behavior. Even psychologists brought up on these principles (for example, E. Tolman) came to the conclusion that they are insufficient, that it is necessary to include in the main explanatory concepts of psychology the concepts of an image, an internal (mental) plan of behavior, and others, and also to turn to the physiological mechanisms of behavior .

At present, only a few American psychologists continue to defend the postulates of orthodox behaviorism. The most consistently and uncompromisingly defended the behaviorism of B.F. Skinner. His operant behaviorism represents a separate line in the development of this direction. Skinner formulated a position on three types of behavior: unconditioned reflex, conditioned reflex and operant. The latter is the specificity of his teaching. Operant behavior assumes that the organism actively influences the environment and, depending on the results of these active actions, skills are either fixed or rejected. Skinner believed that it was these reactions that dominated animal adaptation and were a form of voluntary behavior.

From the point of view of B.F. Skinner, the main means of forming a new type of behavior is reinforcement. The whole procedure of learning in animals is called "successive guidance on the desired reaction." There are a) primary reinforcements - water, food, sex, etc.; b) secondary (conditional) - attachment, money, praise, etc.; 3) positive and negative reinforcement and punishment. The scientist believed that conditioned reinforcing stimuli are very important in controlling human behavior, and aversive (painful or unpleasant) stimuli, punishments are the most common method of such control.

Skinner transferred the data obtained from the study of animal behavior to human behavior, which led to a biologization interpretation: he considered a person as a reactive being exposed to external circumstances, and described his thinking, memory, behavioral motives in terms of reaction and reinforcement.

To solve the social problems of modern society, Skinner put forward the task of creating behavior technology, which is designed to exercise control of some people over others. One of the means is the control over the regime of reinforcements, which allows manipulating people.

B.F. Skinner formulated the law of operant conditioning and the law of subjective assessment of the probability of consequences, the essence of which is that a person is able to foresee the possible consequences of his behavior and avoid those actions and situations that will lead to negative consequences. He subjectively assessed the likelihood of their occurrence and believed that the greater the possibility of negative consequences, the more it affects human behavior.

Gestalt psychology(from German Gestalt - image, form) - a direction in Western psychology that arose in Germany in the first third of the 20th century. and put forward a program for studying the psyche from the point of view of integral structures (gestalts), primary in relation to their components. Gestalt psychology opposed the proposal put forward by W. Wundt and E.B. Titchener of the principle of dividing consciousness into elements and constructing from them according to the laws of association or creative synthesis of complex mental phenomena. The idea that the internal, systemic organization of the whole determines the properties and functions of its constituent parts was originally applied to the experimental study of perception (mainly visual). This made it possible to study a number of its important features: constancy, structure, dependence of the image of an object (“figure”) on its environment (“background”), etc. In the analysis of intellectual behavior, the role of a sensory image in the organization of motor reactions was traced. The construction of this image was explained by a special mental act of comprehension, an instantaneous grasp of relations in the perceived field. Gestalt psychology opposed these provisions to behaviorism, which explained the behavior of an organism in a problem situation by enumeration of "blind" motor samples, randomly leading to a successful solution. In the study of processes and human thinking, the main emphasis was placed on the transformation (“reorganization”, new “centering”) of cognitive structures, due to which these processes acquire a productive character that distinguishes them from formal logical operations and algorithms.

Although the ideas of Gestalt psychology and the facts obtained by it contributed to the development of knowledge about mental processes, its idealistic methodology prevented a deterministic analysis of these processes. Mental "gestalts" and their transformations were interpreted as properties of individual consciousness, the dependence of which on the objective world and the activity of the nervous system was represented by the type of isomorphism (structural similarity), which is a variant of psychophysical parallelism.

The main representatives of Gestalt psychology are German psychologists M. Wertheimer, W. Koehler, K. Koffka. General scientific positions close to it were occupied by K. Levin and his school, who extended the principle of consistency and the idea of the priority of the whole in the dynamics of mental formations to the motivation of human behavior.

Depth psychology- a number of areas of Western psychology that attach decisive importance in the organization of human behavior to irrational motives, attitudes hidden behind the "surface" of consciousness, in the "depths" of the individual. The most famous areas of depth psychology are Freudianism and neo-Freudianism, individual psychology, and analytical psychology.

Freudianism- a direction named after the Austrian psychologist and psychiatrist Z. Freud (1856-1939), explaining the development and structure of the personality by irrational, antagonistic mental factors and using the technique of psychotherapy based on these ideas.

Having arisen as a concept of explaining and treating neuroses, Freudianism later elevated its provisions to the rank of a general doctrine of man, society and culture. The core of Freudianism forms the idea of the eternal secret war between the unconscious mental forces hidden in the depths of the individual (the main of which is sexual desire - libido) and the need to survive in a social environment hostile to this individual. Prohibitions on the part of the latter (creating "censorship" of consciousness), causing mental trauma, suppress the energy of unconscious drives, which breaks through on detours in the form of neurotic symptoms, dreams, erroneous actions (slips of the tongue, slips of the tongue), forgetting the unpleasant, etc.

Mental processes and phenomena were considered in Freudianism from three main points of view: topical, dynamic and economic.

topical consideration meant a schematic "spatial" representation of the structure of mental life in the form of various instances, which have their own special location, functions and patterns of development. Initially, the topical system of mental life was represented in Freud by three instances: the unconscious, preconscious and consciousness, the relationship between which was regulated by internal censorship. From the beginning of the 1920s. Freud distinguishes other instances: I (Ego), It (Id) and Super-I (Super-Ego). The last two systems were localized in the "unconscious" layer. The dynamic consideration of mental processes involved their study as forms of manifestations of certain (usually hidden from consciousness) purposeful drives, tendencies, etc., as well as from the standpoint of transitions from one subsystem of the mental structure to another. Economic consideration meant an analysis of mental processes from the point of view of their energy supply (in particular, libido energy).

According to Freud, the energy source is It (Id). The id is the center of blind instincts, either sexual or aggressive, seeking immediate gratification, regardless of the subject's relationship to external reality. Adaptation to this reality is served by the Ego, which perceives information about the surrounding world and the state of the body, stores it in memory and regulates the response actions of the individual in the interests of his self-preservation.

The super-ego includes moral standards, prohibitions and encouragements, acquired by the personality mostly unconsciously in the process of upbringing, primarily from parents. Arising through the mechanism of identifying a child with an adult (father), the Super-Ego manifests itself in the form of conscience and can cause feelings of fear and guilt. Since the demands on the ego from the id, superego and external reality (to which the individual is forced to adapt) are incompatible, he is inevitably in a situation of conflict. This creates an unbearable tension, from which the individual is saved with the help of "defense mechanisms" - repression, rationalization, sublimation, regression.

Freudianism assigns an important role in the formation of motivation to childhood, which allegedly unambiguously determines the character and attitudes of an adult personality. The task of psychotherapy is seen as identifying traumatic experiences and freeing a person from them through catharsis, awareness of repressed drives, understanding the causes of neurotic symptoms. For this, the analysis of dreams, the method of “free associations”, etc. are used. In the process of psychotherapy, the doctor encounters the patient’s resistance, which is replaced by an emotionally positive attitude towards the doctor, a transfer, due to which the “I” of the patient increases, who is aware of the source of his conflicts and outlives them in a "neutralized" form.

Freudianism introduced a number of important problems into psychology: unconscious motivation, the correlation of normal and pathological phenomena of the psyche, its defense mechanisms, the role of the sexual factor, the influence of childhood traumas on adult behavior, the complex structure of personality, contradictions and conflicts in the mental organization of the subject. In interpreting these problems, he defended the positions that met with criticism from many psychological schools about the subordination of the inner world and human behavior to antisocial drives, the omnipotence of the libido (pan-sexualism), the antagonism of consciousness and the unconscious.

Neo-Freudianism- a direction in psychology, whose supporters are trying to overcome the biologism of classical Freudianism and introduce its main provisions into the social context. Among the most famous representatives of neo-Freudianism are the American psychologists C. Horney (1885–1952), E. Fromm (1900–1980), G. Sullivan (1892–1949).

According to K. Horney, the cause of neurosis is anxiety that occurs in a child when confronted with an initially hostile world and intensifies with a lack of love and attention from parents and people around them. E. Fromm connects neuroses with the impossibility for an individual to achieve harmony with the social structure of modern society, which forms a person's feeling of loneliness, isolation from others, causing neurotic ways to get rid of this feeling. G.S. Sullivan sees the origins of neurosis in the anxiety that occurs in interpersonal relationships of people. With visible attention to the factors of social life, neo-Freudianism considers the individual with his unconscious drives initially independent of society and opposed to it; at the same time, society is regarded as a source of "universal alienation" and is recognized as hostile to the fundamental tendencies in the development of the individual.

Individual psychology- one of the areas of psychoanalysis, branched off from Freudianism and developed by the Austrian psychologist A. Adler (1870-1937). Individual psychology proceeds from the fact that the structure of the child's personality (individuality) is laid in early childhood (up to 5 years) in the form of a special "lifestyle" that predetermines all subsequent mental development. The child, due to the underdevelopment of his bodily organs, experiences a feeling of inferiority, in an attempt to overcome which and to assert himself, his goals are formed. When these goals are realistic, the personality develops normally, and when they are fictitious, it becomes neurotic and asocial. At an early age, a conflict arises between the innate social feeling and the feeling of inferiority, which sets in motion the mechanisms compensation and overcompensation. This gives rise to the desire for personal power, superiority over others and deviation from socially valuable norms of behavior. The task of psychotherapy is to help the neurotic subject realize that his motives and goals are inadequate to reality, so that his desire to compensate for his inferiority can be expressed in creative acts.

The ideas of individual psychology have become widespread in the West not only in personality psychology, but also in social psychology, where they have been used in group therapy methods.

Analytical psychology- the system of views of the Swiss psychologist K.G. Jung (1875-1961), who gave her this name in order to distinguish her from a related direction - the psychoanalysis of Z. Freud. Giving, like Freud, the decisive role in the regulation of behavior to the unconscious, Jung singled out, along with its individual (personal) form, the collective one, which can never become the content of consciousness. collective unconscious forms an autonomous mental fund, in which the experience of previous generations is transmitted by inheritance (through the structure of the brain). The primary formations included in this fund - archetypes (universal prototypes) - underlie the symbolism of creativity, various rituals, dreams and complexes. As a method for analyzing ulterior motives, Jung proposed a word association test: an inadequate response (or delay in response) to a stimulus word indicates the presence of a complex.

Analytical psychology considers the goal of human mental development to be individuation- a special integration of the contents of the collective unconscious, thanks to which the individual realizes himself as a unique indivisible whole. Although analytical psychology rejected a number of postulates of Freudianism (in particular, libido was understood not as sexual, but as any unconscious mental energy), the methodological orientations of this direction have the same features as other branches of psychoanalysis, since the socio-historical essence of the motivating forces of human behavior is denied. and the predominant role of consciousness in its regulation.

Analytical psychology inadequately presented the data of history, mythology, art, religion, interpreting them as the offspring of some eternal psychic principle. Suggested by Jung character typology, according to which there are two main categories of people - extroverts(directed to the outside world) and introverts(aimed at the inner world), received, regardless of analytical psychology, development in specific psychological studies of personality.

According to hormic concept According to the Anglo-American psychologist W. McDougall (1871–1938), the driving force of individual and social behavior is a special innate (instinctive) energy (“gorme”) that determines the nature of the perception of objects, creates emotional excitement and directs the mental and bodily actions of the body to the goal.

In Social Psychology (1908) and Group Mind (1920), McDougall tried to explain social and mental processes by the striving for a goal that was originally embedded in the depths of the psychophysical organization of the individual, thereby rejecting their scientific causal explanation.

Existential Analysis(from Lat. ex(s)istentia - existence) is a method proposed by the Swiss psychiatrist L. Binswanger (1881-1966) for analyzing the personality in its entirety and uniqueness of its existence (existence). According to this method, the true being of a person is revealed by deepening it into oneself in order to choose a “life plan” independent of anything external. In those cases when the individual's openness to the future disappears, he begins to feel abandoned, his inner world narrows, the possibilities of development remain beyond the horizon of vision, and neurosis arises.

The meaning of existential analysis is seen in helping the neurotic to realize himself as a free being, capable of self-determination. Existential analysis proceeds from a false philosophical premise that the truly personal in a person is revealed only when he is freed from causal connections with the material world, the social environment.

Humanistic psychology- a direction in Western (mainly American) psychology, recognizing as its main subject the personality as a unique integral system, which is not something given in advance, but an "open possibility" of self-actualization, inherent only to man.

The main provisions of humanistic psychology are as follows: 1) a person must be studied in his integrity; 2) each person is unique, so the analysis of individual cases is no less justified than statistical generalizations; 3) a person is open to the world, a person's experiences of the world and himself in the world are the main psychological reality; 4) human life should

be considered as a single process of its formation and existence; 5) a person is endowed with the potential for continuous development and self-realization, which are part of his nature; 6) a person has a certain degree of freedom from external determination due to the meanings and values that guide him in his choice; 7) Man is an active, creative being.

Humanistic psychology has opposed itself as a "third force" to behaviorism and Freudianism, which focuses on the dependence of the individual on her past, while the main thing in it is the aspiration to the future, to the free realization of one's potentials (American psychologist G. Allport (1897-1967) ), especially creative ones (American psychologist A. Maslow (1908–1970)), to strengthening faith in oneself and the possibility of achieving an “ideal Self” (American psychologist K. R. Rogers (1902–1987)). In this case, the central role is given to motives that ensure not adaptation to the environment, not conformal behavior, but the growth of the constructive beginning of the human self, the integrity and strength of the experience of which a special form of psychotherapy is designed to support. Rogers called this form "client-centered therapy", which meant treating the individual who seeks help from a psychotherapist not as a patient, but as a "client" who takes responsibility for solving life problems that disturb him. The psychotherapist, on the other hand, performs only the function of a consultant, creating a warm emotional atmosphere in which it is easier for the client to organize his inner (“phenomenal”) world and achieve the integrity of his own personality, to understand the meaning of its existence. Protesting against concepts that ignore the specifically human in personality, humanistic psychology presents the latter inadequately and one-sidedly, since it does not recognize its conditionality by socio-historical factors.

cognitive psychology- one of the leading directions of modern foreign psychology. It emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s. as a reaction to the denial of the role of the internal organization of mental processes, characteristic of the behaviorism dominant in the USA. Initially, the main task of cognitive psychology was to study the transformations of sensory information from the moment a stimulus hits the receptor surfaces until a response is received (American psychologist S. Sternberg). At the same time, the researchers proceeded from the analogy between the processes of information processing in humans and in a computing device. Numerous structural components (blocks) of cognitive and executive processes were identified, including short-term and long-term memory. This line of research, faced with serious difficulties due to the increase in the number of structural models of particular mental processes, led to an understanding of cognitive psychology as a direction whose task is to prove the decisive role of knowledge in the behavior of the subject.

As an attempt to overcome the crisis of behaviorism, Gestalt psychology and other areas, cognitive psychology did not justify the hopes placed on it, since its representatives failed to combine disparate lines of research on a single conceptual basis. From the point of view of Russian psychology, the analysis of the formation and actual functioning of knowledge as a mental reflection of reality necessarily involves the study of the practical and theoretical activity of the subject, including its higher socialized forms.

Cultural-historical theory is a concept of mental development developed in the 1920s and 1930s. Soviet psychologist L.S. Vygotsky with the participation of his students A.N. Leontiev and A.R. Luria. When forming this theory, they critically comprehended the experience of Gestalt psychology, the French psychological school (primarily J. Piaget), as well as the structural-semiotic trend in linguistics and literary criticism (M.M. Bakhtin, E. Sapir, etc.). Of paramount importance was the orientation towards Marxist philosophy.

According to the cultural-historical theory, the main regularity of the ontogenesis of the psyche consists in the internalization (see 2.4) by the child of the structure of his external, socio-symbolic (that is, joint with an adult and mediated by signs) activity. As a result, the former structure of mental functions as "natural" changes - is mediated by internalized signs, and mental functions become

"cultural". Outwardly, this is manifested in the fact that they acquire awareness and arbitrariness. Thus, internalization also acts as socialization. In the course of internalization, the structure of external activity is transformed and "collapses" in order to transform again and "unfold" in the process exteriorization, when “external” social activity is built on the basis of mental function. A linguistic sign acts as a universal tool that changes mental functions - word. Here, the possibility of explaining the verbal and symbolic nature of cognitive processes in humans is outlined.

To test the main provisions of the cultural-historical theory of L.S. Vygotsky developed the "method of double stimulation", with the help of which the process of sign mediation was modeled, the mechanism of "growing" signs into the structure of mental functions - attention, memory, thinking - was traced.

A particular consequence of the cultural-historical theory is an important provision for the theory of learning about zone of proximal development- the period of time in which the restructuring of the child's mental function occurs under the influence of the internalization of the structure of sign-mediated activity jointly with the adult.

The cultural-historical theory was criticized, including by the students of L.S. Vygotsky, for unjustified opposition of "natural" and "cultural" mental functions, understanding of the mechanism of socialization as connected mainly with the level of sign-symbolic (linguistic) forms, underestimation of the role of subject-practical human activity. The last argument became one of the initial ones in the development by the students of L.S. Vygotsky's concept of the structure of activity in psychology.

At present, the appeal to cultural-historical theory is associated with the analysis of communication processes, the study of the dialogic nature of a number of cognitive processes.

Transactional Analysis is a theory of personality and a system of psychotherapy proposed by the American psychologist and psychiatrist E. Burn.

Developing the ideas of psychoanalysis, Burne focused on the interpersonal relationships that underlie the types of human "transactions" (three states of the ego state: "adult", "parent", "child"). At every moment of the relationship with other people, the individual is in one of these states. For example, the ego-state "parent" reveals itself in such manifestations as control, prohibitions, demands, dogmas, sanctions, care, power. In addition, the "parent" state contains automated forms of behavior that have developed in vivo, eliminating the need to consciously calculate each step.

A certain place in Bern's theory is given to the concept of "game", which is used to refer to all varieties of hypocrisy, insincerity, and other negative methods that take place in relationships between people. The main goal of transactional analysis as a method of psychotherapy is to free the person from these games, the skills of which are learned in early childhood, and to teach him more honest, open and psychologically beneficial forms of transactions; so that the client develops an adaptive, mature and realistic attitude (attitude) towards life, i.e., in Berne's terms, so that "the adult ego gains hegemony over the impulsive child."

From the book Workshop on Conflictology author Emelyanov Stanislav Mikhailovich

Basic provisions of the theory of transactional analysis The concept of "transactional analysis" means the analysis of interactions. The central category of this theory is "transaction". A transaction is a unit of interaction between communication partners, accompanied by a task for them

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62. BASIC PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES OF WILL The understanding of will as a real factor in behavior has its own history. At the same time, two aspects can be distinguished in the views on the nature of this mental phenomenon: philosophical and ethical and natural scientific. Ancient philosophers considered

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Basic concepts and principles of the theory of personality types The essence of Eysenck's theory is that personality elements can be arranged hierarchically. In his schema (Figure 6-4) there are certain super-traits or types, such as extraversion, that have a powerful

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From the book Memory and Thinking author Blonsky Pavel Petrovich

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From the book Selected Works author Natorp Paul

Paradigm of psychologism The organic concept of society, which sought to explain a number of important social phenomena on the basis of purely biological analogies, greatly simplified the understanding of the structure of social life, the specifics of its development and functioning. Excessive naturalization of social phenomena did not allow taking into account the most important factor of social life - the role of the human psyche and consciousness. It is not surprising, therefore, that purely biological models of the structure of society and the ways of its development are gradually losing their popularity, giving way to more complex theoretical systems that focus on the psychoconscious factors of human behavior. In sociology, a whole trend of psychologism is taking shape, whose representatives, considering the essence of psychological phenomena from different angles, tried to determine with their help the essential characteristics of man and society, the laws of their functioning and development.

Despite the fact that in almost all the most important parameters (definition of the subject, method, main research procedures, categorical and conceptual apparatus, goals and objectives of the study, methods and methods of describing, interpreting the results, focusing on analyzing the development and functioning of society, etc. ) various psychological trends in Western sociology of the classical period differed significantly from each other, nevertheless, they also have common features. All of them were based on the positions of psychological reductionism, that is, they allowed for the possibility of a complete or partial reduction of social phenomena to the action of certain mental factors.

Within the framework of the psychological approach, three relatively independent currents were formed almost simultaneously - individualistic, group and societal. Representatives of the first believed that social phenomena and processes are determined by the action of individual mental factors and therefore should be explained through the analysis of the individual's psyche and the corresponding categorical-conceptual apparatus. According to supporters of the second direction, similar actions should be carried out from the standpoint of the psychology of troupes (clan, tribe, collective, etc.). Representatives of the third approach considered the psyche of the individual as a product of society and offered to approach the same actions from the standpoint of social psychology and sociology.

An analysis of these approaches and the nature of their interaction allows us to more deeply and comprehensively reveal the essence of the paradigm of psychologism in sociology.

Psychological evolutionism. Lester Ward (1841-1913), American explorer, geologist and paleontologist, first president of the American Sociological Association. One of the first to use Spencer's idea of general evolution and the development of society as the highest stage of this evolution, he tried to fill it with human content, i.e. to present this stage of cosmic evolution as the realization of a consciously set goal, as a "directed development", within which mental (conscious), rather than purely biological factors play a role.

In Dynamic Sociology, or an Applied Social Science based on Static Sociology and the Less Complicated Sciences (1891), Ward argued that the fundamental social demands were to increase pleasure and decrease pain. At the same time, he argued that the desire to be happy is the main stimulus of all social movements and this desire supported all past moral and religious systems.

An essential part of Ward's sociology was his doctrine of the essence of universal social forces. He referred to “essential social forces” as “protective forces” - “positive” (taste and desire for pleasure) and “negative” (desire to avoid suffering), as well as “reproducing forces” - “direct” (sexual and love desires) and "indirect" (parental and related feelings).

Proceeding from the fact that social forces are psychic forces, and therefore sociology must have a psychic basis, Ward explained the motives of group behavior by the action of the poison of "psychic forces", which belonged to him to the sphere of motivating individual behavior and could not cover the totality of social factors influencing to develop this motivation.

Ward emphasized in particular that the "psychic forces", the "great psychic factor", had simply been overlooked by earlier students of social problems, and that this omission was being overcome in his sociology.

In the context of this thesis, Ward paid special attention to personal issues. The basis of all actions of the individual, a kind of "original social force" Ward considered "desires", expressing the natural impulses of man. The variety of human desires is grouped, from his point of view, around two main ones - the satisfaction of hunger and thirst and the satisfaction of sexual needs, reflecting the desire to procreate. These complex desires, according to Ward's concept, determine the active behavior of a person aimed at transforming the natural environment.

Emphasizing the exceptional role of the human intellect as the main driving force of historical development, Ward at the same time noted the inconsistency of human existence. In particular, he repeatedly emphasized that the innate interests of a person act, as a rule, in opposite directions, due to which the interests of individual individuals collide, "throw at each other" and that in the public sphere there is a constant struggle for existence. As a result, according to Ward, the only basis for the formation of all social institutions only a primary, homogeneous, undifferentiated social plasm could appear - a group sense of security.

According to Ward's concept, human desires associated with the satisfaction of hunger and thirst gave rise to labor and deceit, which are constant companions of human civilization. At the same time, in Ward's doctrine, deception acted as a specific kind of labor. According to him, at the first stages of evolution, a person deceived an animal in order to kill and eat it, and now he deceives people to acquire wealth and satisfy his desires.

In addition to "desire", the behavior of a person, as Ward argued, is also determined by "reproductive forces", to which he attributed, in particular, sexual, romantic, conjugal, maternal and blood love (with their corresponding various types hate). In the nature of these forces, Ward also saw a source of inequality, the essential element of which - the inequality between a man and a woman - is determined, in his opinion, by the totality of all other inequalities.

Having identified the incentives for individual behavior, Ward then describes the mental factors of civilization. In his opinion, the latter are divided into three main groups: subjective, objective and socially synthesized factors. He attributed the phenomena embraced by feeling to "subjective psychology", and those embraced by the intellect - to "objective psychology".

To subjective factors, among other things, he attributed various manifestations of the soul: feelings, emotions, volitional acts, etc., to objective factors - intuition, the ability to invent, the manifestation of the creative spirit, intellectual inclinations, and to the social synthesis of factors - the economy of nature , economy of the mind, social aspects of the manifestation of will and intellect, sociocracy.

Significantly psychologizing sociological theory, Ward spent a lot of effort on developing the concept of "sociogenesis", which, he believed, represents the highest qualitative stage in the evolution of everything that exists. So, as a result of considering the main stages of cosmo-, bio- and anthropogenesis, Ward concluded that the main goals of evolution (the biological level) and society (the sociological level) coincide: this is “effort”. Thus, according to Ward, sociogeny synthesizes all natural and social forces, possessing, moreover, a certain feeling and a reasonable purpose.

The social progress of society and civilization, according to Ward, is determined and ensured by special "sociogenetic forces", which he subdivided into forces of an intellectual and moral order. Of all the "sociogenetic forces", according to Ward, leading role“intellectual forces” play, which are the source of ideas and are subordinated to the three desires for knowledge: obtaining knowledge, revealing the truth and establishing a mutual exchange of information.

Ward paid considerable attention to the development of a utopian doctrine of an "ideal society" - "sococracy", the hallmark of which, in his opinion, will be the scientific control of social forces "through the collective mind of society."

Outlining the main ideas of his sociological doctrine, Ward emphasized that the essence of his concept and "the crown of the whole system" is "recognition and proof of the need for an equal and universal distribution of knowledge."

Believing that in contemporary society there is a struggle for organization, Ward proclaimed this struggle to be a fundamental law of social development. Based on the content of this law, he deduced the thesis about the need for universal education as a regulatory factor in the organizational structure of capitalist society. Education, wrote Ward, was the only reliable form of social change, with undoubted benefits. Constantly emphasizing that the common goal of all public bodies and institutions should be the general welfare, Ward proposed "the reduction of social friction" as a means to achieve this goal.

The psychological evolutionism of Ward's sociological teaching, which reduced the essence of social processes to the collision of the invariable features of the biological and mental nature of the individual with social conditions, was ultimately the rationale for the idea of the peaceful elimination of social inequality and the enlightening transformation of capitalism into a socially just and prosperous society.

Franklin Giddings (1855-1931) - American sociologist, founder of the first US Department of Sociology (1894) at Columbia University, like Ward, also focused on creating an all-encompassing sociological system based on psychological grounds.

Describing sociology as a "concrete, descriptive, historical, explanatory" science, Giddings noted that, unlike psychology, which studies the manifestations of the individual mind, sociology concerns more complex and specialized phenomena of the mind, observed in the association of individuals with each other.

According to Giddings, sociology is a science that studies mental phenomena in their higher complexity and counteraction, which is why it is necessary to develop a “constructive” method of psychological synthesis in sociology based on a thorough study of the mental probabilities of the “great world of human struggle”.

The central theoretical idea of Giddings was most fully expressed in the concept of "self-like consciousness" ("kind consciousness", "kind consciousness"), which meant a sense of identity experienced by some people in relation to others. “The primary elementary subjective fact in society is the consciousness of the genus,” Giddings argued, “... by these words I mean such a state of consciousness in which every being, no matter what place it occupies in nature, recognizes another conscious being belonging to the same genus with you."

It is the “kind consciousness”, according to Giddings, that makes possible a meaningful multidimensional interaction of intelligent beings and at the same time preserves the individual characteristics of each of them, since only the consciousness of the kind, in his opinion, distinguishes social behavior from purely economic, political or purely religious behavior.

Interpreting society as a series of interconnected differentiated groups and associations, in which there is a constant complex process of production and reproduction of social relations and complex organizations, Giddings considered it necessary to consider society as a union, an organization, the sum of external relations that bind individuals together.

As the starting point of the social organism, Giddings accepted exclusively the psychic principle. “Society in the original sense of the word,” Giddings noted, “means partnership, common life, association, and all ... social facts are mental in nature,” due to which society is “a mental phenomenon due to a physical process.”

Analyzing the nature and character of the social association of individuals, Giddings argued that “true association begins at the birth of the consciousness of the genus”, and “association implies that intercourse has convinced the colliding individuals that they are too similar to each other to try to conquer each other ... » .

From the point of view of Giddings, two main types of forces operate in society, which he calls "volitional process" and the forces of "artificial selection as a conscious choice." In particular, these are socializing forces (a condition, according to Giddings, external to the social structure, generating association and promoting socialization) - the passions and aspirations of individuals, climate, soil, etc., on the one hand, and social forces - on the other. In the structure of "social forces" Giddings included the influence of a group or society on an individual. This influence directs the behavior of individuals towards the achievement of group goals of any kind. Examples of "social forces", the sociologist believed, could be public opinion or legislation.

In general, the social process appears in Giddings as the interaction of conscious motives, volitional association and physical forces.

Among the positive aspects of Giddings's sociological doctrine is his conclusion that there is a certain relationship between social structure, social process, social forces, and various kinds of subjective aspects of social phenomena.

In general, adhering to the idea of mental evolutionism in the first period of his creative development, he believed that two forces act in social development: conscious and unconscious, therefore, the main factors of evolution for him are, on the one hand, objective natural, and on the other, subjective. -psychological. Moreover, the latter acquire not so much a personal as a collective character as a “kind consciousness”, which predetermines the behavior of individuals.

instinctism. In the second half of the 19th century, rationalistic tendencies in the interpretation of human existence weakened somewhat, giving way to the paradigm of irrationalism. Within the framework of a new philosophical orientation (F. Nietzsche, M. Stirner and others), a new methodological setting is being formed, in which social phenomena begin to be comprehended in terms of unconscious "instincts", "aspirations" and "impulses". In sociology, this aspiration was embodied in the theory of instinctivism.

Umlyam McDougal (1871-1938) - sociologist and psychologist, a native of England, since 1920 a professor at the American University at Harvard, and then at Duke.

Having proclaimed psychology the "basic basis" on which all social sciences - ethics, economics, the science of the state, philosophy, history, sociology - should be built, McDougall sought to create a psychosocial system of social disciplines.

The main place in McDougall's teaching is occupied by the socio-psychological theory of personality and the differentiated classification of social instincts, impulses, and emotions. In his opinion, instincts are the main driving force of human behavior, and as a result, the "psychology of instinct" should become the theoretical basis of all social disciplines.

Replacing the actual sociological approach with psychological instinctivism, McDougall understood instinct as “an innate, or natural, psychophysical predisposition that causes an individual to perceive certain objects or pay attention to them and experience a specific emotional arousal that acts

act in relation to these objects in a certain way, or at least feel an impulse to such an action.

According to McDougall, "instincts" are hereditarily determined channels for the discharge of nervous energy. They consist of lffe; k; n; nnom (perceiving, receptive) part, responsible for how objects and phenomena are perceived, the central part, due to which we experience specific emotional excitement when perceiving these objects, and the effective (motor) part, which determines the nature of our reaction to these objects.

McDougall singled out about 20 basic instincts that determine human behavior. Among them are the instincts of curiosity, pugnacity, reproduction of one's own kind, self-abasement, etc. MacDougall considered the herd instinct to be the dominant instinct.

Primitivizing various kinds of social processes and phenomena, McDougall arbitrarily reduced any social changes to the action of one or more instincts. So, in accordance with his own hypothesis about the causes of armed violence, he characterized wars as eternal and inevitable manifestations of the instinct of pugnacity, while religion, according to McDougall, is based on a complex of instincts, among which he paid special attention to complexes of curiosity, self-abasement and emotional arousal.

In total, McDougall identified seven pairs of basic instincts and emotions. In his opinion, each primary instinct corresponds to a certain emotion, which, like instinct, is simple and indecomposable and manifests itself as a subjective correlate of instinct. For example, the instinct of flight corresponds to the emotion of fear, the instinct of pugnacity corresponds to the emotion of anger, the instinct of reproduction corresponds to the emotion of sexual jealousy, etc.

From the point of view of McDougall, in the course of the development of the emotional sphere of a person, various emotions are combined into more complex groups and acquire a hierarchical structure. At the same time, it was emphasized that if the complex of emotions of an individual is organized around a stable object, then feelings develop. Of all human feelings, McDougall singled out the "egoic feeling" as the dominant one in the existing structure of a person's character. This feeling, according to McDougall, determines the formation of the content and form of the human "I", which generally corresponds to the general social background.

Noteworthy in McDougall's teaching was his interpretation of social processes as processes that were originally directed towards some biologically significant goal. The main sign of the living is "gorme" - a certain driving teleological force of an intuitive nature.

Considering the desire for a goal as a basic feature of the behavior of animals and humans, McDougall wanted to create a target "hormic psychology" in which this behavior could receive an appropriate explanation. Ultimately, however, these attempts were unsuccessful.

Psychological instinctivism made a certain contribution to the development of sociology, primarily by its appeal to the study of the unconscious components of the human psyche and their role in social life. However, the own theoretical basis of this sociological trend turned out to be very vulnerable. Not only the content, but even the number of "basic instincts" varied greatly among representatives of instinctivism. So, McDougall brought their number up to 18, W. James - up to 38, and L. Bernard, in the course of analyzing the meaning of this term in the relevant literature, already counted 15,789 individual instincts, which "aggregated to 6131 instincts of an independent" essence ".

In general, recognizing the validity of P. Sorokin’s remark that instinctivist concepts were a kind of refined animism, since “they place a certain number of spirits behind a person and his activity, calling them instincts, and interpret all phenomena as manifestations of these instinct-spirits” , it should be noted that these concepts acted as a kind of theoretical beam, which, highlighting some important moments of the human psyche, made it possible to understand some acts of human behavior. Although, of course, this beam turned out to be extremely narrow and could not cover the entire richness of the human psyche and explain many of the secret aspects of human existence.

Theory of imitation. Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904), French criminologist and sociologist, professor of new philosophy at the College de France, had a great influence on the formation and development of psychological trends in Western sociology of the classical period.

According to Tarde, society is a product of the interaction of individuals, which is why the basis of social development and all social processes is inter-individual or “inter-individual” relations of people, the knowledge of which is the main task of sociology.

Calling for particular scrutiny of personal characteristics that alone are real, alone true, and which constantly roam within every society, Tarde insisted that "sociology must proceed from the relationship between two minds, from the reflection of one by another, as astronomy proceeds from the relationship between two mutually attracted masses.

Such an interpretation of the foundations of sociology inevitably led to the assertion of its status as an "interpsychological" discipline. And in Tarde's theory, sociology was indeed almost identified with "interpsychology". Moreover, considering psychology as

basis of sociology, Tarde was convinced that the progressive development of sociology would be conditioned and determined by its increasing psychologization.

Psychologizing sociology, Tarde focused mainly on the search for scientifically significant facts in the sphere of the individual psyche and especially the interindividual interaction of people. In his opinion, “basic social facts must be demanded not only from intracerebral psychology, but mainly from intercerebral psychology, that is, that which studies the origin of conscious relations between several, primarily two individuals. Various groupings and combinations of these basic social facts then form the so-called simple social phenomena...”; constituting the necessary basis of all social relations.

Tarde paid special attention to the study of various social processes that determine the formation, development and functioning of society. According to Tarde's theory, the three main social processes are: repetition (imitation), opposition (opposition), adaptation (adaptation).

Based on the fact that the laws of sociology should apply to all past, present and future states of society, Tarde tried to find universal and timeless social patterns that could be reduced to a few "universal" sociological and psychological laws. These became the "laws of imitation", which formed the conceptual core of his general sociological theory.

The general position of this theory was the idea that the main driving force behind the historical process, as well as any human community, is the irresistible mental desire of people to imitate. “The primary social fact,” Tarde emphasized, “consists in imitation, in a phenomenon that precedes any mutual assistance, division of labor and contract.”

Insisting that all the most important acts of social life are performed under the rule of example, Tarde argued that the "laws of imitation" discovered by him are inherent in human society at all stages of its existence, since "every social phenomenon has a constantly imitative character, characteristic exclusively of social phenomena" .

These statements are essentially a formulation of precisely what Tarde himself called the "laws of imitation."

In direct connection with the "laws of imitation" and in their context, Tarde studied and explained the problem of social progress, paying special attention to its source and mechanism of action.

According to Tarde's theory, the only source of social progress are discoveries and inventions arising from

initiative and originality of individuals. These creative individuals, according to Tarde, develop fundamentally new knowledge, as well as knowledge based on a new combination of already existing ideas. And this kind of knowledge ensures progressive social development.

Along with the presentation of these considerations, Tarde especially emphasized that the deepest cause of social progress is imitation, since, on the one hand, any invention, the need for it, “can be reduced ... to primary psychological elements that arise under the influence of an example,” on the other hand, because thanks to imitation (which also exists in the form of traditions, customs, fashion, etc.) is used to select and introduce discoveries and inventions into society.

The essence of the concept and laws of imitation in the "ideological dimension" was quite definitely expressed by Tarde himself, who proclaimed as the basic law the law of imitation of the lower strata of society by the higher. Giving this "law" a basic status, Tarde justified by the fact that, according to his observations, "any, the most insignificant innovation tends to spread throughout the entire sphere of social relations, while in the direction from the upper classes to the lower" . Although in history, as you know, quite often the opposite happened.

In general, the teachings of Tarde are characterized by the reduction of a significant variety of social relations to only one of their varieties - the relationship of "teacher - student)) in a number of situations. This elementary scheme and the Tardean typology of imitation are still used by many modern Western sociologists, who argue that three main types of imitation are realized in society: mutual imitation, imitation of customs and models, and imitation of the ideal.

According to the teachings of Tarde, the mechanism of action of the "laws of imitation" is determined mainly by beliefs and desires, which are a kind of substance of social interaction between people. According to him, it is through agreement and disagreement of mutually reinforcing and mutually limiting beliefs and desires that human society is organized. At the same time, Tarde argued that society has more legal than economic foundations, since it is based on the mutual distribution of obligations or permissions, rights and obligations.

Tarde's idealistic interpretation of society and the "laws of imitation" significantly distorted the picture of social reality. But at the same time, it should be noted that, unlike many of his predecessors, Tarde managed to come closer to understanding that one of the main tasks of sociology should be the study of social interaction. Tarde paid a lot of attention to this issue. To a large extent, it was reflected in the development of the concept of opposition (“opposition”) as the second (after imitation) main social process.

Considering "opposition" as a kind of private form of social conflict, Tarde sought to prove that the existence of social contradictions is due to the interaction of supporters of opposing social inventions, acting as competing models of imitation. Overcoming such situations, as Tarde believed, is largely due to the action of the third main social process - adaptation (adaptation).

Assuming that "the element of social adaptation lies, in essence, in the mutual adaptation of two people, of whom one answers aloud in word or deed to the spoken or silent question of the other, since the satisfaction of a need, like the solution of a problem, is only the answer to a question" . Tarde considered "adaptation" to be the dominant moment of social interaction. In particular, it was precisely this understanding of adaptation that was characteristic of Tarde's judgments on the problem of classes and the class struggle. Tarde was one of the first among Western sociologists to use the concept of "class" willingly. At the same time, he attributed the content of this concept only to mental components and declared that the class struggle is a deviation from the rules of “normal life”.

Emphasizing that the main point of interclass relations is not struggle, but cooperation, Tarde recommended that the "lower class" climb the social hierarchy by absolute imitation of the "upper class". In his opinion, the role of an important factor that destroys the distance between social classes can be played, for example, by "polite treatment." In the future, similar social recipes for overcoming class contradictions - the unification of "lifestyle" and behavior - were expressed by many Western sociologists and political scientists.

Among the research interests of Tarde, a prominent place was occupied by the problem of "crowd psychology" and the mechanisms of formation of public opinion. Understanding the crowd as a collection of heterogeneous, unfamiliar elements, Tarde argued that the formation of the crowd occurs as a result of the dual action of the imitation mechanism. The crowd, according to Tarde, is "a collection of creatures, because they are ready to imitate each other, or because they, not imitating each other now, are like each other, since their common features are old copies from the same sample" .

In general, the "imitation theory" had a very significant impact on the further development of Western sociology, since its critical reflection in a number of cases turned out to be no less fruitful than the promotion of its own ideas.

Theories of the psychology of peoples and group behavior. The sociological writings of the French social psychologist, anthropologist and archaeologist Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931) gained great popularity at the beginning of the 20th century.

Le Bon believed that the main tool for understanding social processes and history should be a modified psychology. In his opinion, this psychology focuses not so much on the knowledge of the conscious actions of people, but on the unconscious moments of mental life, since the “hidden, elusive motives” of behavior are formed due to “hereditary influence” in the “unconscious substratum” of the psyche.

The main direction of Le Bon's sociology and psychology can be considered his research in the field of the psychology of peoples and masses.

Analyzing the mental components of the historical process, Lebon came to the conclusion about the teleological nature of history and the mechanical action of its laws (“with the blind correctness of the mechanism”), a collision with which leads to the inevitable defeat of man.

To a large extent, by the action of precisely these laws and patterns, Le Bon explained the fact that, in his opinion, every nation has a mental structure as stable as its anatomical features, and from it come its feelings, its thoughts, its institutions. , his beliefs and his art. At the same time, Le Bon believed that the moral and intellectual signs, the association of which forms the soul of the people, represent a synthesis of past experience.

An important place in the sociological work of Lebon was occupied by the problems of "crowd" and "race". According to the researcher, in the life of European society at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, a qualitatively new stage of development began - the "era of the crowd", the hallmark of which is "the replacement of the conscious activity of individuals by the unconscious activity of the crowd".

Interpreting the crowd as a group of people covered by common moods, aspirations and feelings, Lebon singled out the characteristic features of the crowd: infection with a common idea, consciousness of the insurmountability of one’s own strength, loss of a sense of responsibility, intolerance, dogmatism, susceptibility to suggestion, readiness for impulsive actions and thoughtless following of leaders .

Considering the onset of the "era of the crowd" as the beginning of the decline of civilization, Le Bon especially emphasized the depersonalization and deindividualization of people in the crowd. According to Le Bon, no matter what the individuals that make up the crowd, no matter how similar or dissimilar they may be to each other in their way of life, occupations, character or intelligence, the mere fact of belonging to the crowd is sufficient for the formation of a kind of collective soul in them, thanks to which they feel, think and act in a completely different way than each of them would feel, think and act separately.

Noting the unconscious and excessively emotional nature of the behavior of people in the crowd, Le Bon argued that this behavior is determined by the operation of the unconscious law of the "spiritual unity of the crowd." The same law, in his opinion, largely determines the transformation of an individual in a crowd into a kind of weak-willed automaton with suppressed rational principles inherent in an individual human personality. The loss of the personal properties of the individual and individual personality traits leads to the transformation of a person into an irrational being, striving for an immediate uncritical implementation of the ideas inspired by him.

According to Le Bon's conception, the various types of "crowd" can ultimately be reduced to two main types: "heterogeneous crowd" (street groups, parliamentary meetings, etc.) and "homogeneous crowd" (sects, castes and classes). In this regard, it should be noted that even in the sociology of Le Bon himself, this classification was not of fundamental importance, since the author was mainly interested in those general signs and characteristics that are inherent in any crowd.

The problem of races in Le Bon's sociology was given much less attention than the problem of the crowd (masses). In general terms, Le Bon's research in this area was focused on finding evidence of the fundamental inequality of different races. In the absence of such evidence, Le Bon was forced to limit himself to formulating unfounded judgments that "the various human races differ from each other not only in very large anatomical differences, but also in equally significant psychological differences" . Because of this, in his opinion, even in the long term, the merging of races is impossible. Le Bon's racist views were also expressed in his interpretation of the religious and dynastic wars as essentially racial wars.

Lebon paid special attention to the anti-socialist polemics. This system was interpreted by him as a society consisting of crowds of people not adapted to life and degenerates. At the same time, Lebon promoted his own concepts of the crowd as the “last resort” available in the hands of a statesman, not in order to control the masses, since this is impossible, but in order to “not give them too much will over themselves.”

Of particular interest in the book The Psychology of Socialism (1908) is the last chapter of her The Future of Socialism, the main provisions of which are curious now precisely because they were formulated before the building of socialism in one single country and the creation of a socialist camp.

Speaking from an openly anti-socialist position and striving to "preserve minds from the fatal infatuation" of socialism and revolutionism, Le Bon argued that "the majority of socialist theories are in clear contradiction with the laws that govern the modern world, and that the implementation of these theories would lead us back to the lower, long passed stages of civilization.

But at the same time, noting the attractiveness of socialist ideas for the broad masses of the people, Le Bon clearly stated that "the absurdity of most socialist theories will not be able to prevent their triumph." In his opinion, the socialist system in the form of "state socialism", apparently, will inevitably be established in some European country (most likely in Italy), either through an evolutionary "peaceful introduction by legal measures", or through an indispensable apex social upheaval, under which, in the event of an undermining of the spirit of the army, it will be possible to direct it to the violent solution of domestic political problems. But, as Le Bon believed, regardless of the method of coming to power, socialism can only reign as a "collective tragedy", and, consequently, it will pass the traditional revolutionary path: from touching humanitarianism, idylls and speeches of philosophers to the guillotine.

The seizure of power by the socialists, according to Lebon, will give rise to an era of destruction, anarchy and terror, which will be replaced by the era of the Caesars of the times of decline, and then by the era of severe despotism. “The social decay generated by the triumph of socialism,” Le Bon wrote, “would be followed by terrible anarchy and general ruin. And then Marius, Sulla, Napoleon, some general would soon appear who would establish peace through the iron regime established after the mass extermination people, which would not prevent him ... from being joyfully proclaimed a deliverer.

With the triumph of socialism, as Le Bon believed, as a result of the inevitable expansion of the rights of the state, the destruction of free competition and the equalization of earnings will occur, which will entail the ruin of the country and, accordingly, the surrender of its positions in comparison with other states. Since the seizure by the state of all branches of production will lead to a drop in the competitiveness of goods in relation to the goods of the private industry of other countries, to the extent, according to Le Bon, it will certainly be necessary "to condemn part of the nation to forced labor with a minimum wage, in a word, to restore slavery" . Insisting that all socialist paths lead to the abyss of slavery, poverty and Caesarism, Le Bon nevertheless insisted with a kind of eerie determination on the expediency of carrying out a socialist experiment. “And yet,” Le Bon wrote, “it seems that this terrible regime cannot be avoided. It is necessary that at least one country experience it for itself as a warning to the whole world. This will be one of those experimental schools that alone can sober up peoples infected with a morbid delirium about happiness at the mercy of the false suggestions of the priests of the new faith. Let us wish that this trial first of all falls to the lot of our enemies. True, while insisting on the speedy conduct of this monstrous experiment, Le Bon nevertheless assumed that socialism would not be able to exist for a long time. And as a result, “experience will soon show the adherents of socialist illusions all the futility of their dreams, and then they will smash with fury the idol that they revered before knowing. Unfortunately, such an experiment can only be made on condition of the preliminary destruction of society.

In general, the sociological concept developed by Le Bon reflected both the achievements and miscalculations of conservative versions of Western sociological theorizing. Having had a significant impact on the self-determination of the subjects of Western sociology and social psychology, the "psychology of peoples and crowds", whose adherents, in addition to Le Bon, are also commonly referred to as Moritz Lazarus (1824-1903) and Heimann Steinthal (1823-1899), could not conceptualize and begin a concrete study of the interaction of culture and individual consciousness. The last problem remained fundamentally unresolved in it, which was also supplemented by the almost complete absence of explanatory models in the structure of specific material (ethnographic, psychological, linguistic, etc.).