In psychological teachings of different eras were raised. A Brief History of the Development of Psychology

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

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

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

History of the formation and development of psychology

Mythological ideas about the soul

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

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

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

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

Psychological knowledge in the ancient period

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Psychology in the Middle Ages

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Psychological thought of the Renaissance and Modern times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The origins of psychology as a science

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Western psychology in the 20th century

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Formation and development of domestic psychology

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Currently, there are several orientations in Russian psychology.

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

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

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

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After studying Chapter 3, the bachelor should:

know

Patterns of physiological and mental development and features of their manifestation in the educational process at different age periods;

be able to

• take into account the peculiarities of individual development of students in pedagogical interaction;
• design the educational process using modern technologies that correspond to general and specific patterns and characteristics of age-related personal development;

own

Methods of providing psychological and pedagogical support and support.

Patterns of human mental development and age periodization

The emergence of developmental and developmental psychology. Factors and driving forces of development. The problem of age periodization.

The emergence of developmental and developmental psychology

In many teachings of past eras (in Antiquity, in the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance), the most important questions of the mental development of children have already been raised.

In the works of the ancient Greek scientists Heraclitus, Democritus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, issues and factors in the formation of the behavior and personality of children, the development of their thinking and abilities were discussed. It was in their works that the idea of ​​harmonious human development was first formulated.

During the Middle Ages, from the 3rd to the 14th centuries, more attention was paid to the formation of a socially adapted personality, the education of the required personality qualities, the study of cognitive processes and methods of influencing the child.

During the Renaissance (E. Rotterdamsky, J. A. Comenius), the issues of organizing education, teaching based on humanistic principles, taking into account the individual characteristics of children and their interests came to the fore.

In the studies of historians and philosophers of the Enlightenment era R. Descartes, B. Spinoza, J. Locke, J.-J. Rousseau discussed the problem of hereditary and environmental factors and their influence on the development of the child. It was during this period that two extreme positions emerged in understanding the driving forces of human development. These ideas, of course, in a significantly transformed form, can be found in the works of psychologists in subsequent years and even in the works of modern authors. This nativism – understanding of child development as determined by nature, heredity and internal forces, presented in the works of J.-J. Rousseau - and empiricism , where the decisive importance of training, experience, and external factors in the development of a child was proclaimed. The founder of this direction is J. Locke.

Over time, knowledge accumulated, but in most works the child was described as a kind of being devoid of activity and his own opinion, which, with proper and skillful guidance, can be largely shaped at the request of an adult.

Only in the second half of the 19th century. The prerequisites for the emergence of childhood psychology as a separate science are gradually beginning to take shape. The period of the emergence of developmental psychology (the end of the 19th - the beginning of the 20th century) is a most interesting, in many ways a turning point in the history of mankind: industry is actively developing, all social life is changing, serious transformations are taking place in various sciences. By and large, it was during this period that new directions were laid in the development of many sciences, especially the human sciences.

The prerequisites for the emergence of developmental psychology were the following.

• 1. The development of society and production, which required a new organization of education. A transition is gradually taking place from individual training to universal mass training, without which industrial production cannot develop, which means there is an urgent need to develop new methods of working with groups of children.
• 2. Scientific ideas and discoveries that during this period changed the view of man as a whole, as well as the tasks of childhood as a life stage. One of the central scientific discoveries in this regard can be called the discovery of Charles Darwin, whose evolutionary biological theory introduced the idea of ​​development, the genesis of the psyche, the idea of ​​the psyche passing through a number of regular stages.
• 3. New objective methods of research and experimentation in psychology are emerging. The method of introspection (self-observation), used previously, could not be used to study the psyche of children. Therefore, the emergence of objective methods in psychology was such an important stage in its development.

Many researchers consider the starting point for the development of developmental psychology as a science to be the book of the German biologist W. Preyer, “The Soul of a Child,” published in 1882. In his work, he describes the results of observations of his own child from 1 to 3 years old, paying attention to the development of his senses, will, reason, and language. Despite the fact that observations of the development of children were carried out even before the appearance of V. Preyer’s book, his main merit was the introduction into psychology of the method of objective observation of a child; a similar method was previously used only in the natural sciences. It is from this moment that childhood research becomes systematic.

Developmental psychology and developmental psychology are historically two closely interrelated sciences. Developmental psychology can be called the “successor” of genetic psychology. Genetic psychology, or developmental psychology, is primarily interested in the emergence and development of mental processes. This science analyzes the formation of mental processes, based on the results of various studies, including those conducted with the participation of children, but children themselves are not the subject of the study of developmental psychology.

Age-related psychology – this is the doctrine of the periods of child development, their changes and transitions from one age to another , as well as general patterns and trends of these transitions. That is, children and child development at various age stages are the subject of developmental psychology. In the same time they have one object of study – This is the mental development of a person.

In many ways, the distinction between developmental and developmental psychology suggests that the very subject of child psychology has changed over time.

Developmental psychology is closely related to many branches of psychology. Thus, it is united with general psychology by basic ideas about the psyche, methods used in research, as well as a system of basic concepts.

Developmental psychology has a lot in common with educational psychology; we can find a particularly close interweaving of these two sciences in Russian history, reflected in the works of P. P. Blonsky, P. F. Kapterev, A. P. Nechaev, later L. S. Vygotsky and other thinkers of the early 20th century. These are ideas for organizing a scientific approach to teaching and upbringing that takes into account the characteristics of child development. The close connection of these sciences is explained by the common object of research, while the subject of educational psychology is the training and education of the subject in the process of the purposeful influence of the teacher.

The mental development of a person occurs within various social communities - families, peer groups, organized groups, etc. As a subject of communication and interaction, the developing individual is of interest to social psychology.

Developmental psychology has common areas for consideration with such branches of psychology as clinical psychology and pathopsychology. In these sciences there is also a developing individual, but his development is considered from the point of view of emerging disorders.

The goal of developmental psychology is to study the development of a healthy person in the process of ontogenesis.

Developmental psychology has many points of intersection with various sciences: medicine, pedagogy, ethnography, cultural studies, etc.

• Martsinkovskaya T. D. History of child psychology. M., 1998. P. 3-59.

1. THE EMERGENCE OF AGE PSYCHOLOGY AS AN INDEPENDENT FIELD OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE (electronic material, Textbooks)

2. AGE AS AN OBJECT OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH. PSYCHOLOGICAL AGE, THE PROBLEM OF PERIODIZATION OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT (electronic material - attached)

3. FACTORS OF PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT. (Personality development factors. http://www.gumer.info/bibliotek_Buks/Psihol/muhina/)

4. THEORIES OF BIOGENETIC DIRECTION (electronic material, Textbooks)

THE EMERGENCE OF AGE PSYCHOLOGY AS AN INDEPENDENT FIELD OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE

The formation of developmental (children's) psychology as an independent field of psychological science

In the psychological teachings of past eras (in antiquity, in the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance), many of the most important questions of the mental development of children have already been raised. In the works of the ancient Greek scientists Heraclitus, Democritus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the conditions and factors for the formation of the behavior and personality of children, the development of their thinking, creativity and abilities were considered, and the idea of ​​a harmonious

human mental development. During the Middle Ages, from the 3rd to the 14th centuries, more attention was paid to the formation of a socially adapted personality, the education of the required personality qualities, the study of cognitive processes and methods of influencing the psyche. During the Renaissance (E. Rotterdamsky, R. Bacon, J. Comenius), the issues of organizing education and teaching based on humanistic principles, taking into account the individual characteristics of children and their interests, came to the fore. In the studies of philosophers and psychologists of the New Age R. Descartes, B. Spinoza, J. Locke, D. Hartley, J.J. Rousseau discussed the problem of interaction between hereditary and environmental factors and their influence on mental development. Two extreme positions have emerged in the understanding of the determination of human development, which are also found (in one form or another) in the works of modern psychologists:

Nativism (conditioned by nature, heredity, internal forces), represented by the ideas of Rousseau;

Empiricism (the decisive influence of learning, life experience, external factors), originating in the works of Locke.

Gradually, knowledge about the stages of development of the child’s psyche and age characteristics expanded, but the child was still viewed as a rather passive being, pliable material, which with skillful guidance and training

the adult could be transformed in any desired direction.

In the second half of the 19th century. Objective prerequisites have emerged for the identification of child psychology as an independent branch of psychological science. Among the most important factors are the needs of society for a new organization of the education system; progress of the idea of ​​development in evolutionary biology; development of objective research methods in psychology.

The requirements of pedagogical practice were realized in connection with the development of universal education, which became a need for social development in the new conditions of industrial production. Practical teachers needed well-founded recommendations regarding the content and pace of teaching large groups of children; they found that they needed methods of teaching in a group. Questions were raised about the stages of mental development, its driving forces and mechanisms, i.e. about those patterns that need to be taken into account when organizing the pedagogical process. Introduction of the development idea. The evolutionary biological theory of Charles Darwin introduced new postulates into the field of psychology - about adaptation as the main determinant of mental development, about the genesis of the psyche, about the passage of certain, natural stages in its development. Physiologist and psychologist I.M. Sechenov developed the idea of ​​the transition of external actions to the internal plane, where they, in a transformed form, become mental qualities and abilities of a person - the idea of ​​interiorization of mental processes. Sechenov wrote that for general psychology, an important, even the only, method of objective research is the method of genetic observation. The emergence of new objective and experimental research methods in psychology. The method of introspection (self-observation) was not applicable for studying the psyche of young children.

The German scientist, Darwinist W. Preyer, in his book “The Soul of a Child” (1882), presented the results of his daily systematic observations of the development of his daughter from birth to three years; he tried to carefully trace and describe the moments of the emergence of cognitive abilities, motor skills, will, emotions and speech.

Preyer outlined the sequence of stages in the development of certain aspects of the psyche and concluded about the significance of the hereditary factor. They were offered an approximate example of keeping an observation diary, research plans were outlined, and new problems were identified (for example, the problem of the relationship between various aspects of mental development).

The merit of Preyer, who is considered the founder of child psychology, is the introduction of the method of objective scientific observation into the scientific practice of studying the earliest stages of child development.

The experimental method developed by W. Wundt to study sensations and simple feelings turned out to be extremely important for child psychology. Soon other, much more complex areas of the psyche, such as thinking, will, and speech, became available for experimental research. The ideas of studying the “psychology of peoples” through the analysis of the products of creative activity (the study of fairy tales, myths, religion, language), put forward by Wundt later, also enriched the main fund of methods of developmental psychology and opened up previously inaccessible possibilities for studying the child’s psyche.

In the psychological teachings of past eras (in antiquity, in the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance), many of the most important questions of the mental development of children have already been raised.

In the works of ancient Greek scientists Heraclitus, Democritus.

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle examined the conditions and factors in the development of children’s behavior and personality, the development of their thinking, creativity and abilities, and formulated the idea of ​​harmonious mental development of a person.

During the Middle Ages, from the 3rd to the 14th centuries...

Among the psychologists who were actively involved in the problems of child development in the first decades of the 20th century, the most famous are A. Binet, E. Maiman, D. Selly, E. Claparède, W. Stern, A. Gesell and some others.

The English scientist J. Selley considered the formation of the human psyche from the standpoint of an associative approach.

He identified mind, feelings and will as the main components of the psyche. The significance of his works for the practice of child upbringing consisted in determining the content of the child’s first associations and...

Don’t cut off your child’s emotions, but help them survive them!

Child psychologist Irina Mlodik calls for careful treatment of children's feelings (in particular, children's fear). The situation has developed that adults, as a rule, interrupt almost all the child’s feelings - especially fear, anger, anger, resentment, etc. Irina Mlodik says that this, of course, is an easier path for a parent - but it has a bad effect on the child’s psyche.

It is more important to allow the child to experience these feelings, to share them with him...

At first, the newborn is perceived by the older child as a new toy: it is interesting to touch, it can be enjoyed. But after a while you will notice that everything has changed. It became clear to your firstborn that the baby had settled on his territory forever. At the same time, he sleeps a lot or spends time in his mother’s arms.

The younger the older child, the more overt his manifestations of jealousy will be. Some children become aggressive towards the baby, but even more often...

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Hence the formula that Grosz put forward at one time: we do not play because we are children, but childhood was given to us so that we could play. The function of childhood, according to this formula, is to allow the development...

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Natalya, his mother, is delighted: “My son studies without any reminders!” But recently he demanded not to tell his friends about his hobby. “When I asked why,” says Natalya, “he replied that the violin...

Situation. Your eldest was already over four years old when your youngest just started crawling. There is no need to explain that you love both of them as much as a mother can love her children. And yet, it is clear that the youngest today needs much more attention due to his complete helplessness.

As a decent mother, you tried to do everything so that the elder does not feel deprived of attention, and he, it seems to you, loves his younger brother (sister). But suddenly something changed, the “adult” became...

The psychology of envy originates as the emotion of envy during the period of conception and develops during the first month of life, and then is formed into the “Envy” program, which begins an independent path from a person’s subconscious, building his algorithms and behavior patterns for the rest of his life.

A child’s envy program is fully formed by the age of 3.

For some this program starts earlier, for others later, but almost all people alive today have experienced...