The emergence and development of psychology as a science briefly. The emergence of psychology as a science. The history of the development of psychological knowledge

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

The great philosopher Aristotle in his treatise "On the Soul" singled out psychology as a kind of field of knowledge and for the first time put forward the idea of ​​the inseparability of the soul and the living body. The soul, the psyche is manifested in various abilities for activity: nourishing, feeling, moving, rational; higher abilities arise from lower ones and on their basis. The primary cognitive faculty of man is sensation; it takes the form of sensually perceived objects without their matter, just as "wax takes the impression of a seal without iron and gold." Sensations leave a trace in the form of 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.

Thus, stage I is psychology as the science of the soul. This definition of psychology was given more than two thousand years ago. The presence of the soul tried to explain all the incomprehensible phenomena in human life.

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

Stage III - psychology as a science of behavior. Arises in the 20th century: The task of psychology is to experiment and observe what can be directly seen, namely: behavior, actions, reactions of a person (motives that cause actions were not taken into account).

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

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

2. Branches of psychology

Modern psychology is a widely developed field of knowledge, including a number of separate disciplines and scientific directions. So, the features of the psyche of animals are studied by zoopsychology. The human psyche is studied by other branches of psychology: child psychology studies the development of consciousness, mental processes, activities, the entire personality of a growing person, the conditions for accelerating development. Social psychology studies the socio-psychological manifestations of a person's personality, his relationships with people, with a group, the psychological compatibility of people, socio-psychological manifestations in large groups(the effect of radio, press, fashion, rumors on various communities of people). Pedagogical psychology studies the patterns of personality development in the process of education and upbringing. There are a number of branches of psychology that study the psychological problems of specific types of human activity: labor psychology considers psychological features labor activity human, patterns of development of labor skills. Engineering psychology studies the regularities of the processes of human interaction and modern technology in order to use them in the practice of designing, creating and operating automated systems management, new types of technology. Aviation, space psychology analyzes the psychological characteristics of the activity of a pilot, astronaut. Medical psychology studies the psychological characteristics of the doctor's activity and the patient's behavior, develops psychological methods treatment and psychotherapy. Pathopsychology studies deviations in the development of the psyche, the disintegration of the psyche during various forms brain pathology. Legal psychology studies the psychological characteristics of the behavior of participants in a criminal process (psychology of testimonies, psychological requirements for interrogation, etc.), psychological problems of behavior and the formation of a criminal's personality. Military psychology studies human behavior in combat conditions.

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

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

The tasks of psychology are mainly reduced to the following:

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

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

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

A wide range of tasks that psychologists are engaged in solving determines, on the one hand, the need for the relationship of psychology with other sciences involved in solving complex problems, and on the other hand, the allocation within the psychological science itself of special branches engaged in solving psychological problems in a particular area of ​​society. .

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

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

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

Rice. one. Classification by A. Kedrov

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

4. Main historical stages in the development of psychological science

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

According to the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (427-347 BC), the human soul exists before it enters into union with the body. It is the image and outflow of the world soul. Mental phenomena are divided by Plato into reason, courage (in the modern sense - will) and desires (motivation). Intelligence resides in the head, courage in the chest, lust in the abdomen. The harmonious unity of the rational principle, noble aspirations and desires gives integrity to the spiritual life of a person.

Last update: 20/03/2015

Origin of psychology. Development of psychology over time

While modern psychology reflects a rich and eventful history of this discipline, the true history differs significantly from modern ideas about its origin.

In order to have full view about psychology, you will have to spend some time studying its history. How did psychology come about? When did she appear? Who were these people, thanks to whom psychology developed as an independent science?

Why do you need to know the history of psychology?

Modern psychology covers many areas of study, including human behavior and mental processes from the physiological level to the cultural level. Psychologists study human problems that begin to develop even before the birth of the person himself and haunt him until his death. Knowing the history of psychology will give you a much better idea of ​​how this study takes place and what psychologists know today.

Questions concerning psychology

Since its inception, psychology has been confronted with a number of different questions. The main question concerning the very definition of psychology helped lay the foundation for the development of psychology as an independent science, separating it from physiology and philosophy. There are other questions that psychologists have faced throughout history:

• What topics and problems should psychology deal with?
• What research methods should be used in the study of psychology?
• Should psychologists use their scientific research to influence public policy, education, and other aspects of human life?
• Is psychology really a science?
• Should psychologists focus more on external behavior, or on the internal mental processes that take place in a person?

Forerunners of psychology: philosophy and physiology

Philosophers such as René Descartes played important role in the history of psychology.

Until the late 1800s, psychology was not an independent discipline, its early history can be traced back to the time of the ancient Greeks. In the 17th century, the French philosopher René Descartes introduced the concept of dualism, stating that the mind and body are two separate entities that interact to form the human experience. Many other issues discussed by psychologists to this day, such as the relative contribution of nature to nurture, are based on these early philosophical traditions.

So what makes psychology different from philosophy? While early philosophers relied on methods such as observation and logic, modern psychologists use scientific methodologies to study the human mind and behavior.

Physiology also contributed to the development of psychology as a scientific discipline. Early physiological research on the brain and behavior had a huge impact on psychology, eventually facilitating the application of these scientific methodologies to psychological study. human thinking and behaviour.

The formation of psychology as an independent discipline

In the mid-1800s, the German physiologist Wilhelm Wundt used research methods to study reaction times. His book Principles of Physiological Psychology, published in 1874, described many of the major connections between the science of physiology and the study of the human mind and behavior. Later in 1879, Wundt opened the world's first psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig. This event, in general, is considered the official beginning of the formation of psychology as an independent and separate scientific discipline.

How did Wundt view psychology? He perceived it as the study of human consciousness and sought to apply experimental methods to the study of internal mental processes. Although the method used by Wundt, known as introspection, is regarded today as unreliable and unscientific, his early work in psychology helped pave the way for future experimental methods.

Approximately 17,000 students attended Wundt's lectures in psychology, and several hundred more pursued a degree in psychology and studied in his laboratory. Although the frequency of application of Wundt's methods has decreased over the years, his influence on psychology is still undeniable.

Structuralism - the first school of psychology

Edward B. Titchner, one of Wundt's most famous students, founded the first major school of psychology. According to structuralists, human consciousness can be broken down into smaller components.

Although structuralism was notable for its emphasis on scientific research, yet its methods were unreliable, limited and subjective. When Titchner died in 1927, structuralism essentially died with him.

Functionalism by William James

Psychology flourished in America from the mid to late 1800s. William James became one of the most important American psychologists during this period, and the publication of his classic textbook Fundamentals of Psychology established him as the father of American psychology. The text of his book soon became the standard in psychology, and his ideas eventually served as the basis for a new school of psychology known as functionalism.

The focus of functionalism was the question of how a person's behavior actually works to help him exist in his environment. The functionalists used the method of direct observation. While the structuralists sought to break down mental processes into small pieces, the functionalists believed that consciousness exists as a continuous and changing process.

Psychoanalysis. Psychology of Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud (front left) was asked to give a series of lectures on psychoanalytic theory at Clark University in 1909.

The Austrian physician Sigmund Freud changed the face of psychology in a dramatic way by proposing a theory of personality that emphasized the importance of the subconscious. Freud's clinical work with patients suffering from hysteria and other illnesses led him to believe that early childhood experiences and unconscious impulses can influence the development of a person's personality and behavior.

In his book The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Freud detailed how these unconscious impulses are often expressed through slips of the tongue (known as "Freudian slips") and daydreams. According to Freud, mental disorders are the result of these unconscious conflicts becoming unbalanced. The psychoanalytic theory proposed by Sigmund Freud had a huge impact on the psychology of the 20th century.

The rise of behaviorism. Psychology of Pavlov, Watson and Skinner

Physiologist Ivan Pavlov discovered classical conditioning.

Psychology changed dramatically in the early 20th century with the emergence of the behavioral school. Behaviorism was very different from previous theories because it did not focus on the study of the conscious and the unconscious. Instead, behaviorism sought to make psychology more of a scientific discipline by focusing solely on the study of outward behavior.

Behaviorism got its start through the work of the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov. His research on the digestive system of dogs led to his discovery of the well-known classical conditioning, which demonstrated the possibility of studying behavior with the help of conditional connections. Pavlov showed that this method can be used to create a connection between external and internal stimuli.

Got something to say? Leave a comment!.

Abstract of the student of the 1st course of distance learning

Novosibirsk Pedagogical College No. 3

Since ancient times, due to social needs, a person had to distinguish and take into account the individual mental characteristics of people. Even then, people began to think about the existence of a certain spiritual principle that guided their behavior. The first theories that tried to explain human behavior involved external factors, such as a certain "Shadow" that lives in the body and leaves it after death, or Gods, who were considered responsible for all the actions of people. In more recent times, Greek philosophers, especially Aristotle, put forward the idea of ​​the existence of the soul. They believed that the soul is one with the body and controls thoughts and feelings, and those, in turn, are based on the experience of a lifetime. Aristotle in his treatise "On the Soul" laid the foundations of psychology as an independent field of knowledge. So initially psychology acted as the science of the soul.

Psychology (from the Greek psyche - soul and logos - teaching, science) is the science of the laws of development and functioning of the psyche as a special form of life. Psychology for several centuries designated its studied phenomena by the general term "soul" and dealt with this within the framework of philosophy. Information about these phenomena was also accumulated in many other areas of research, as well as in various fields practice (especially medical and pedagogical). From the middle of the 16th century Thanks to the widespread experimental work, psychology began to separate itself from both philosophy and physiology.

Psychology, as a special scientific discipline, originated in the depths of philosophy, and therefore is related to it. The psychological "dimension" of a personality is very difficult to single out and study without focusing on the philosophical doctrine of a person, the specifics of his being (individual and social), the nature of human consciousness and activity.

The formation of psychology as a science has a long period, but a fairly short history. Since ancient Greece, attempts have been made to explain psychic phenomena. The psyche and soul were considered as an indispensable attribute of nature: everything has a soul, and it, in turn, is a source of movement and development. The soul is a substance independent of the physical body, which influences the fate of a person, his health, success. This approach is called animism (from Latin anima - soul, spirit). In the future, ideas about the nature of the psyche were developed by Democritus and Plato. Democritus is the founder of materialistic views on the psyche. He believed that the soul is made up of atoms. He gave an explanation for the phenomenon of causality and showed that there are no causeless phenomena. Plato, on the contrary, spoke of the primacy of ideas and the secondary nature of the material world. He believed that any knowledge is a process of remembering the soul. The philosophy of idealism originates from Plato. The great minds of antiquity assumed that there is a connection between the psyche and the brain. They believed that the psyche depends on environment, and distinguished stable individual signs of the human psyche.

In the Middle Ages, under the conditions of the total domination of religion, there was a ban on the study of man. And yet, beginning in the 15th century, the development of psychological thought continued, and it was connected with the flourishing mechanics. Descartes was the first to apply the laws of mechanics to the psyche. He compared the work of the organism with technical devices. He also believed that the animal is soulless, and its behavior is a reaction to external influences. Descartes introduced the concepts of reflex and consciousness, but "broke" them. Spinoza made an attempt to overcome the dualism of Descartes. He wanted to create a doctrine of man as an integral being. He singled out 3 main motives for human activity: attraction, joy, sadness. Based on these motives, various emotional states are manifested. Locke developed the ideas of sensory sources of knowledge of the world. His teaching is called sensationalism, because he argued that there is nothing in the mind that would not pass through the senses.

In the 18th century French philosophers Diderot, Holbach, Helvetius, Condillac first put forward ideas about the social determination of the human psyche. These ideas formed the basis of part of the provisions of modern psychology.

At the beginning of the 19th century new approaches to the psyche emerged. There was a message for the formation of psychology as a science. Among the prerequisites can be identified the development of anatomy and physiology nervous system. In the second half of the 19th century knowledge from the field of biology, physiology, medicine became the basis for the creation of scientific psychology.

From the point of view of the methodology of science, the history of psychology can be described as a sequence of stages in the formation of ideas about the subject, method and explanatory principles within the framework of scientific paradigms, in the sequence of their emergence, coexistence, competition and change to different stages formation of psychology as a single independent scientific discipline.

There is a period in the history of psychology when it was formed in the depths of other scientific disciplines, and a period when it was becoming an independent scientific discipline.

For the period of formation of psychology within the framework of other scientific disciplines, it is characteristic:

1. lack of independence of psychological knowledge. This knowledge was presented as one of the parts of philosophical and medical teachings. At first it was in the form of a doctrine of the soul, then a philosophical theory of knowledge, doctrines of experience and consciousness;

2. the absence of communities that would share common views on the subject and method of study;

3. speculative nature of research. During this period, the experimental approach to research was completely absent.

This period was preceded by the emergence and development of ideas about the soul within the framework of religious systems and rituals that ensured the unity and existence of primitive societies. Ideas about the soul provided explanations for such phenomena as sleep, dreams, trance states, actions of prohibitions (taboos), mastery of magical skills, death, etc. A common feature of the primary views on mental phenomena was the invariable giving them a mysterious, sacral quality. Another important characteristic of these views is animism - the belief that every object, not only of living, but also of inanimate nature, certainly has a soul and, in addition, souls can exist independently of objects and are special beings.

The doctrine of the soul has its basis in the framework of ancient Greek philosophy and medicine. Science in ancient Greece was born in connection with two circumstances:

1. Science is a special area of ​​human activity. It was formed independently of religion and existed separately from it;

2. The orderliness of the cosmos (all things) was considered based not on the power of a superbeing, but on the law. The Greeks greatly revered the law, and even the supreme gods were subject to it.

New ideas about the soul were not religious, were not based on traditions. These views were entirely secular, open to all and open to rational criticism. The purpose of constructing the doctrine of the soul was to identify the properties and patterns of its existence, i.e. the doctrine of the soul had a distinct nomothetic character.

Another event that influenced the development of the doctrine of the soul was the transition from spontaneous and irrational animism, according to which all events occur under the influence of the souls of natural objects, to hylozoism, a philosophical doctrine based on the idea of ​​the inseparability of life from matter, about life as a general property of matter. This doctrine introduced the initial position about the integrity of the observed world. Although this point of view, shared, in particular, by Descartes, leads to panpsychism (the notion of the animation of objects of both living and inanimate nature), hylozoism includes the soul in the scope of natural laws and makes its study accessible. These were the initial conditions for the formation of the doctrine of the soul and its initial provisions. The development of precisely these provisions determined the history of the formation of psychological knowledge for a long time.

The most important directions in the development of ideas about the soul are associated with the teachings of Plato (427 - 347 BC) and Aristotle (384 - 322 BC). Plato divided the material mortal body and the immaterial immortal soul. Individual souls are imperfect images of a single universal world soul. Each of the souls has a part of the universal spiritual experience, which she recalls, and this is the essence of individual knowledge. This doctrine laid the foundations of the philosophical theory of knowledge and determined the orientation of psychological knowledge towards the solution of philosophical, ethical, pedagogical and religious problems proper.

A fundamentally different idea of ​​the soul was given by Aristotle in his psychological treatise On the Soul. According to Aristotle, the soul is nothing but the form of a living organic body. The soul provides purpose. It is the basis of all life manifestations and is inseparable from the body. This position completely contradicts Plato's teaching about the infusion of souls at birth and their expiration at death. But both philosophers agree that the soul determines the purpose of the activity of the living body. The concept of purpose, the ultimate cause, was introduced by Aristotle to explain the determinism of the behavior of living organisms. Such an explanation was teleological, led to a paradox of the influence of the future on the past, but allowed us to introduce the activity of living organisms into the circle of explainable phenomena. Aristotle gave one of the earliest formulations of the explanatory principles of psychology - development, determinism, integrity, activity.

A student of Plato, a follower of Aristotle Theophrastus (372 - 287 BC) in the treatise "Characters" gave a description of 30 different characters, developing the Aristotelian idea of ​​this property of a person. His work marked the beginning of a separate line in popular psychology, which was continued in the Renaissance by Montaigne, in the Enlightenment by La Bruyère, La Rochefoucauld, then von Knighe, and in our time by Carnegie.

Achievements ancient philosophers and physicians in the development of the doctrine of the soul served as the foundation of all further developments psychological knowledge, which at this stage were mainly reduced to expanding the range of phenomena under consideration. In the 3rd - 4th centuries. AD in the works of Plotinus (205 - 270), Aurelius Augustine (354 - 430) and early Christian philosophers and theologians, the inner world of man, the possibilities of self-knowledge are singled out as the subject of research, descriptions of the phenomena of consciousness appear for the first time, for example, its focus on the subject, highlighted by Thomas Aquinas (1226 – 1274).

From the 5th to the 14th century in the works of Boethius (480 - 524), Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus (1256 - 1308), an idea of ​​\u200b\u200bpersonality is formed. It is important to note that the powerful influence of Christian theology, the foundations of which included the philosophy of Neoplatonism, gave these works an ethical-theological character, bringing it closer to the line laid down by the teachings of Plato.

Francis Bacon's system of views (1561-1626) became the pinnacle and completion of the stage of development of psychological knowledge within the framework of the doctrine of the soul. The study of the soul was part of the unified science of man, the construction of which was planned by Bacon. The novelty of Bacon's approach consisted in the rejection of the speculative solution of questions about the nature of the soul and the transition to an empirical study of its features. However, this intention could not be realized, because at that time no ideas about general scientific method, nor about the subject of research. Bacon, in accordance with tradition, separated the science of the body from the science of the soul, and in the doctrine of the soul he singled out the science of the rational divine soul and the irrational, sentient, corporeal soul, common to man and animals. Bacon's teaching revived the idea of ​​hylozoism: both living and dead bodies (for example, a magnet) have the ability to choose. Important new components of the doctrine of the soul, introduced by Bacon, are the idea of ​​the role of society and tools in the processes of cognition. .

Ideas about the soul changed radically after Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650) introduced the concept of "consciousness". It was considered as a criterion that distinguishes between the soul and the body. Introspection, according to Descartes, is so obvious that it was used by him for indisputable proof of the very existence of the subject, formulated in the form of the aphorism "I think, therefore I am." According to the criterion of introspection, only man has a soul, while animals do not have a soul and act like mechanical devices. To explain the actual bodily actions in animals and humans, Descartes introduced the concept of a reflex, in which the principle of mechanistic determinism was implemented. The essence of the reflex, according to Descartes, is that external influences, through the movement of animal spirits along the nerves, lead to the movement of certain muscles, which is the action of the body. The teachings of Descartes formed the basis of new psychological knowledge, since it introduced the notions of:

On the accessibility of the inner world through introspection;

On the reflex as a mechanism of behavior;

About the lead role outside world in the determination of behavior, as well as its mechanistic interpretation;

On the psychophysical problem and its dualistic solution.

These innovations determined the course of development of the philosophical doctrine of cognition for a long time, and then served as an important factor in the formation and development of scientific paradigms in psychology.

By the middle of the 17th century. experience was accepted as the subject of a philosophical theory of knowledge. The concept of experience included ideas, sensations, feelings, and the results of introspection. At that time, the idea was formed and began to dominate that knowledge is based on experience, and ideas, which constitute the content of consciousness, appear on the basis of experience. This point of view goes back to sensationalism, a doctrine that was established in antiquity, according to which there is nothing in the mind that was not previously in the feeling. It is the most important role of the concept of experience that determined the name of a whole area of ​​research within the framework of the philosophy of knowledge - empirical psychology. This term, introduced by Christian Wolff (1679-1754), emphasized the task of studying the concrete phenomena of mental life using self-observation, in contrast to rational psychology, which was concerned with the eternal, unchanging, immortal soul. The doctrine of consciousness was formed within the framework of philosophy, and even using the results of natural science works, it did not have an experimental character in the modern sense of the word.

The basis for the study of consciousness both among the predecessors of Wolf - Hobbes (1588 - 1679) and Locke (1632 - 1704), and among the thinkers who developed this doctrine until the second half of the 19th century. - Condillac (1715 - 1780), Herbart (1776 - 1841), Lotze (1817 - 1881), was precisely the technique of introspection, they were united by the idea of ​​a special essence of the studied phenomena, comprehended exclusively by self-observation. Both external and internal experience are accessible only to self-observation.

Leibniz (1646 - 1716) introduced in addition to the concept of "perception" the term "apperception", interpreting it as a mental force that determines the purposefulness of actions, their active, conscious, arbitrary nature. Thus, if the Cartesian and Lockean ideas about consciousness exhausted the entire phenomenology of the states of the spirit, then Leibniz was the first to single out a circle of unconscious phenomena inaccessible to self-observation.

Associative and empirical psychology in this period acted as branches of the philosophical theory of knowledge and, therefore, could not be in conflict.

It is with the development of empiricism in the philosophical doctrine of knowledge that the emergence of the name of a new discipline, psychology, is connected. The appearance of the term "psychology" is usually associated either with the theological works of the Reformation figure Philip Melanchthon (1497 - 1560), or with the designation of a special section of literature introduced in the 16th century. philosophers Goclenius and Kassman. Leibniz proposed the term "pneumatology" to designate knowledge about the soul, but his student Wolf introduced the term "psychology" into wide use.

At the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries. psychological knowledge begins to go beyond philosophy - into linguistics, ethnography, biology and medicine. Spencer formulated the principle of adaptation of organisms to the environment, Darwin outlined a non-teleological explanation of the purposefulness of behavior, studied instinctive behavior and emotions, showed the evolutionary origin of some forms of human behavior, Galton raised the question of the heredity of psychological characteristics, the English neurologist Jackson successfully studied the patterns of localization and distribution of the provision of mental functions by various brain structures. A fruitful contact with physiology and anatomy was developed in the development of Descartes' ideas on the reflex. The original speculative idea acquired a specific anatomical and physiological expression in the works of Prochazka, Bell and Magendie as a reflex arc along which nervous excitation spread from the receptor to the effector so that the sensory stimulus evoked a motor response. Sechenov, on the basis of the idea of ​​a reflex, formulated one of the main programs for the transformation of psychology into a scientific discipline.

During this period, the most important problem was the development of the attitude of psychology to such general scientific values ​​that had been formed by that time in the natural sciences, such as the methods of experimental research, the requirements for its generalization, objectivity, and the quantitative nature of knowledge.

Thus, in the period when psychological knowledge was formed in the depths of other sciences, there was a rejection of the pre-scientific idea of ​​the soul as an intangible incorporeal substance. Human consciousness and experience began to be studied on the basis of self-observation. There was a need to move from philosophical research of the epistemological type to concrete scientific methods. This period can be called pre-paradigm. It is characterized by the following phenomena:

1. accumulated a lot of observations that were easily accessible to the researcher (through self-observation);

2. it was difficult to assess the logical contradictions and the degree of importance of the observations. As a consequence, any results obtained were considered equally valuable and relevant;

3. scientific paradigms were set by schools in which the authority of the leader (founder) interrupted the need for strict compliance of the results with the basic requirements for scientific knowledge;

4. In the pre-paradigm period, dominant views changed very rarely. Even considering the fact that they were already not viable enough.

During the period of development of psychological knowledge in the depths of other sciences, the formation of the necessary components of the structure of scientific knowledge - its own subject and method, such institutions as specialized laboratories, scientific periodicals that ensure communication of the scientific community, did not exist, and the community of professional psychologists itself did not exist.

In the 60s. The 19th century begins a new period in the development of psychological science. It is characterized by the following features:

1. new scientific paradigms, institutions and psychological professional communities are emerging;

2. ideas about the subject and method of research are formed within the paradigms;

3. the subject and method of psychology are coordinated with general scientific norms and values;

4. contacts with other sciences develop, as a result of which new paradigms and branches of psychology arise;

5. There is a great variety and competition of paradigms.

The formation of psychology as an independent scientific discipline is associated with the appearance of the first scientific programs created by Wundt and Sechenov. Wundt's program was oriented towards the general scientific experimental method. But Wundt called self-observation the only direct method of psychology, since the subject of psychology is the direct experience of the person himself. The role of the experiment is limited only to imparting accuracy and reliability to the results of research. The most important role of Wundt in the development of psychology as an independent scientific discipline was that it was he who organized the first specialized institutes of psychological science. In 1879, Wundt founded a scientific laboratory in Leipzig, and in 1881, the scientific journal Philosophical Investigations. Wundt also established a fixed membership in the scientific psychological community, thanks to the holding in Paris in 1889 of the First International Psychological Congress. Introspection, proposed by Wundt as a method of psychology, was further developed in the paradigm of structural psychology, which was founded by Titchener (1867 - 1927), the successor of Wundt's ideas in the USA.

By the end of the 19th century there was an awareness that introspection does not reveal the main aspects of the psyche. And initially because the range of phenomena studied in psychology is not limited to the phenomena of consciousness. And also introspection can be applied only to a small number of objects corresponding to the subject of psychology.

Significant changes in the ideas about the subject and method of psychology were introduced by Z. Freud (1856 - 1939), who founded the paradigm of psychoanalysis. Before psychoanalysis turned into a version of popular psychology, it was aimed at studying the personality and was built in accordance with such principles as the principle of determinism, the principle of development, the principle of activity, the source of which, according to Freud, lies within the subject. Psychoanalysis abandoned introspection as a research method.

Watson (1878 - 1958) made a major revolution in the ideas about the subject and method of psychology. The date of birth of behaviorism is considered to be the publication in 1913 of the article "Psychology from the point of view of a behaviorist." According to this direction, psychology is an objective experimental branch of the natural sciences. The subject of psychology is behavior, which is understood as a set of observable muscular, glandular reactions to external stimuli. Research method - behavioral experiment.

In the period from 1910 to the 1930s. in psychology, many competing incompatible and even incomparable paradigms have formed. This was a unique situation in the history of science. No other discipline has seen so many such different paradigms clash. Here is an incomplete list of the psychological paradigms proper formed during open crisis: behaviorism; Tolman's cognitive behaviorism; psychoanalysis; the teachings of Freud, Jung, Adler; Gestalt psychology; dynamic psychology Levin; descriptive psychology of Dilthey and Spranger; Piaget's genetic psychology; cultural-historical theory of Vygotsky; different versions of the theory of activity: Basov, Rubinshtein; reactology in the versions of Kornilov and Bekhterev; psychology of Uznadze's installation. The State of Psychology in the 1910s - 1930s was in the midst of an open crisis. This period continues up to the present time, it is characterized by diversity and competition of paradigms. Thanks to the many competing paradigms, we have the most complete understanding of the subject and method in psychology. In order to get out of the crisis productively, it is necessary for the psychological community to develop a common opinion about the basic scientific values, principles, subject and method of psychology.

The structure of modern psychology represents all the stages of its formation. The strict requirements of research practice, as well as intra- and inter-paradigm criticism, lead to the transformation of borrowed principles and concepts. Competition and interconnections of paradigms in psychology lead to its intensive development. We can single out some main directions in the development of psychological science:

1. development of already existing paradigms. For example, psychosemantics appeared on the basis of Leontiev's theory of activity. The subject of her research is the genesis, structure and functioning of the system of meanings in individual consciousness. It uses modern techniques and does not need the method of introspection;

2. emergence of new paradigms. For example, in the 1950s - 1960s. humanistic psychology emerged. The subject of its study is the integral personality of a person;

3. formation of different versions of explanatory principles, ideas about the subject and method of psychology. In the 1960s - 1980s. on the basis of the principle of integrity, the principle of consistency was formulated. Different paradigms work on different aspects of this principle;

4. emergence of new explanatory principles. For example, the principle of subjectivity most fully outlines the subject and method of psychology, and now it is undergoing a stage of intensive development;

5. expansion of the most developed paradigms to other branches of psychology. For example, the scope of research in cognitive psychology has expanded significantly. This direction began to develop in the 1950s. as opposed to the dominance of behaviorism;

6. development of links between psychology and other sciences. This process leads to the emergence of new branches of psychology. So, in the contact of psychology with linguistics, psycholinguistics was formed, with neurology, neurophysiology and psychophysiology - neuropsychology, with population genetics - genetic psychophysiology.

1. Big psychological dictionary / Comp. and general ed. B. Meshcheryakov, V. Zinchenko. - St. Petersburg: prime-EVROZNAK, 2003. - 672 p. (Project "Psychological Encyclopedia").

2. Clinical psychology: textbook / Ed. B. D. Karvasarsky. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2002. - 960 p. (Series "National Medical Library").

3. Psychology. Textbook for economic universities / Under the general. ed. V. N. Druzhinina. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2002. - 672 p.: ill. - (Series "Textbook of the new century").

4. Psychology. Textbook for liberal arts universities / Ed. ed. V. N. Druzhinina. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2001. - 656 p.: ill. - (Series "Textbook of the new century").

5. Stolyarenko L. D. Fundamentals of psychology. 6th ed., revised. and additional (Series "Textbooks, teaching aids.") - Rostov n / D: Phoenix, 2003. - 672 p.

Psychology as a science originated in ancient Greece and is still a relevant industry. On the basis of treatises and works of scientists, mechanisms, models and systems have been developed to study the behavior, perception, awareness and adaptability of a person in society. Let's learn a brief history of psychology, as well as get acquainted with famous figures who have made a huge contribution to the development of this humanitarian science.

A Brief History of Psychology

How did it all start? How did psychology as a science originate? In fact, this branch is closely connected with philosophy, history, and sociology. Today, psychology actively interacts with biology and neuropsychology, despite the fact that initially scientists in this field tried to find evidence for the existence of the soul in the human body. The name itself comes from two derivatives: logos ("teaching") and psycho ("soul"). It wasn't until after the 18th century that scientists made the subtlest connection between the very definition of science and human character. And so a new concept of psychology appeared - researchers began to build psychoanalysis, study the behavior of each person, identify categories and pathologies that affect interests, adaptability, mood and life choices.

Many great psychologists, such as S. Rubinstein and R. Goklenius, noted that this science is important in the knowledge of man. From time immemorial, researchers have been studying the connection of reason with religion, faith with spirituality, consciousness with behavior.

What it is

Psychology as an independent science studies mental processes, human interaction with the outside world and behavior in it. The main object in the teachings is the psyche, which in ancient Greek means "mental". In other words, the psyche is the realized actions of a person, which are based on primary knowledge about reality.

Brief theses defining psychology:

• This is a way of knowing yourself, your inner and, of course, the world around you.
• This is a "spiritual" science, because it makes us constantly develop, asking eternal questions: who am I, why am I in this world. That is why the subtlest connection between psychology and sciences, such as philosophy and sociology, can be traced.
• This is a science that studies the interaction of the external world with the psyche and its influence on others. Thanks to numerous studies, a new branch was created - psychiatry, where scientists began to identify pathologies and psychological disorders, as well as stop them, treat or completely destroy them.
• This is the beginning spiritual path, where the great psychologists, together with philosophers, sought to study the connection between the spiritual and material world. Despite the fact that today the awareness of spiritual unity is only a myth that came from the depths of time, psychology reflects a certain meaning of being - ordered, cultivated, organized after thousands of years.

What does psychology study

Let's answer the main question - what does the science of psychology study? First of all, all mental processes and their components. The researchers found that these processes can be divided into three types: will, feelings, cognition. These include human thinking, memory, emotions, purpose, and decision making. From here comes the second phenomenon that science studies - mental states. What does psychology study?

• Processes. Attention, speech, sensitivity, affects and stress, feelings and motives, imagination and curiosity.
• states. Fatigue and emotional outbursts, contentment and apathy, depression and happiness.
• Properties. Abilities, unique character traits, types of temperament.
• Education. Habits, skills, areas of knowledge, skills, adaptability, personal traits.

Let's now begin to formulate the answer to the main question - how did psychology as a science arise? Initially, researchers focused on simple phenomena psyches, for which they began to observe. It was noticed that any mental process can last just a few seconds or more, sometimes reaching 30-60 minutes. This caused and subsequently all the mental activity of people was attributed to complex brain processes.

Today, science studies each individual separately, revealing ever new mental phenomena, although earlier everything was divided into several types. Feelings of depression, causes of irritation, absent-mindedness, mood swings, character and temperament formation, self-development and evolution are just a small part of what influenced the development of psychology as a science.

The main tasks of science

How did psychology as a science originate? It all started with the fact that thinkers and philosophers began to pay attention to mental processes. This became the main task of the teaching. The researchers analyzed the features of all processes directly related to the psyche. They believed that this direction reflects reality, that is, all events affect the psycho-emotional state of a person, which prompts him to take one action or another.

The analysis of all phenomena connected with the psyche and their development is the second task of science. Then came the third, important step in psychology - the study of all the physiological mechanisms that are controlled by mental phenomena.

If we talk about the tasks briefly, we can divide them into several points:

1. Psychology should teach to understand all psychological processes.
2. After that, we learn to control them, and then completely manage them.
3. All knowledge is directed to the development of psychology, which is closely connected with many humanities and natural sciences.

Due to the main tasks, fundamental psychology (that is, science for the sake of science) was divided into several branches, which include the study of children's characters, behavior in the work environment, temperament and traits of creative, technical and sports personalities.

Methods used by science

All stages of the development of psychology as a science are associated with great minds, thinkers and philosophers, who developed an absolutely unique field that studies the behavior, character and skills of people. History confirms that the founders of the doctrine were Hippocrates, Plato and Aristotle - the authors and researchers of antiquity. It was they who suggested (of course, at different times) that there are several types of temperament that are reflected in behavior and goals.

Psychology, before becoming a full-fledged science, has come a long way and has affected almost everyone. famous philosopher, doctor and biologist. One of these representatives are Thomas Aquinas and Avicenna. Later, at the end of the 16th century, Rene Descartes participated in the development of psychology. According to him, the soul is a substance within a substance. It was Descartes who first introduced the word "dualism", which means the presence of spiritual energy inside the physical body, which very closely cooperate with each other. The mind, as the philosopher established, is the manifestation of our soul. Despite the fact that many of the scientist's theories were ridiculed and refuted several centuries later, he became the main founder of psychology as a science.

Immediately after the works of Rene Descartes, new treatises and teachings began to appear, written by Otto Kasman, Rudolf Goklenius, Sergei Rubinshein, William James. They went further and began to publish new theories. So, for example, W. James at the end of the 19th century proved the existence of a stream of consciousness with the help of clinical studies. The main task of the philosopher and psychologist was to discover not only the soul, but also its structure. James suggested that we are a dual being in which both subject and object "dwell". Let's look at the contributions of other equally important scientists such as Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt and Carl Gustav Jung and others.

S. Rubinstein

Sergei Leonidovich Rubinshtein is one of the founders of a new school in psychology. He worked at the beginning of the 20th century at Moscow State University, was a teacher and conducted research at the same time. The main contribution of Sergei Leonidovich Rubinstein was made to educational psychology, logic and history. He studied in detail the types of personalities, their temperament and emotions. It was Rubinstein who created the well-known principle of determinism, which meant that all actions and deeds of a person are directly related to the external (surrounding) world. Thanks to his research, he was awarded numerous medals, orders and prizes.

Sergei Leonidovich described his theories in detail in books that subsequently went into circulation. These include the "Principle of creative amateur activity", and "Problems of psychology in the writings of Karl Marx". In the second work, Rubinstein considered society as a single entity that follows a single path. To do this, the scientist had to conduct a deep analysis of the Soviet people and compare with foreign psychology.

Sergey Leonidovich also became the founder of the study of personalities, but, to everyone's regret, he could not finish the work. However, his contribution markedly advanced the development of domestic psychology and strengthened its status as a science.

O. Kasman

Otto Kasmann played a significant role in psychology, despite the fact that for a long period he was the main pastor and theologian in the German city of Stade. It was this public religious figure who called all mental phenomena scientific objects. There is practically no information about this founder, since quite a lot of events have happened over four centuries. However, Otto Kasman left us valuable works called Psychologia anthropologica and Angelographia.

The theologian and activist made adjustments to the term "anthropology" and explained that the biological nature of man is directly related to the abstract world. Despite the fact that Kasman made an invaluable contribution to psychology, the pastor himself carefully studied anthropology and tried to draw a parallel between this teaching and philosophy.

R. Goklenius

Rudolf Goklenius in psychology is an important link, despite the fact that he was a doctor of physical, mathematical and medical sciences. The scientist lived in the 16-17 centuries and during his long life he created many important works. Like Otto Kasman, Goclenius began to use the word "psychology" in everyday life.

An interesting fact, but Goklenius was Kasman's personal teacher. After receiving his doctorate, Rudolf began to study philosophy and psychology in detail. That is why today we are familiar with the name of Goclenius, because he was a representative of neo-scholasticism, which combined both religion and philosophical teachings. Well, since the scientist lived and worked in Europe, he spoke from catholic church, which created a new direction of scholasticism - neoscholasticism.

W. Wundt

The name of Wundt is as well known in psychology as that of Jung and Rubinstein. Wilhelm Maximilian lived in the 19th century and actively practiced experimental psychology. This trend included non-standard and unique practices that made it possible to study all psychological phenomena.

Like Rubinstein, Wundt studied determinism, objectivity, and the fine line between human activity and consciousness. main feature scientist in that he was an experienced physiologist who understood all the physical processes of living organisms. To some extent, it was much easier for Wilhelm Maximilian to devote his life to such a science as psychology. Throughout his life, he trained dozens of figures, including Bekhterev and Serebrennikov.

Wundt sought to understand how our mind works, so he often conducted experiments that allowed him to figure out the chemical reactions in the body. It was the work of this scientist that laid the foundation for the creation and promotion of such a science as neuropsychology. Wilhelm Maximilian loved to observe the behavior of people in different situations, so he developed a unique technique - introspection. Since Wundt himself was also an inventor, many experiments were worked out by the scientist himself. However, introspection did not include the use of devices or instruments, but only observation, as a rule, of one's own mental phenomena and processes.

K. Jung

Jung is perhaps one of the most popular and ambitious scientists who has devoted his life to psychology and psychiatry. Moreover, the figure did not just try to understand psychological phenomena, he also opened a new direction - analytical psychology.

Jung carefully worked out the archetypes or structures (behavior patterns) that come into being with a person. The scientist carefully studied each character and temperament, connected them with one link and supplemented with new information, observing his patients. Jung also proved that several people, being in a single team, can unconsciously perform similar actions. And it was thanks to these works that the scientist began to analyze the individuality of each person, to study whether it exists at all.

It was this figure who suggested that all archetypes are innate, but their main feature is that they develop for hundreds of years and are passed down from generation to generation. Subsequently, all types directly affect our choices, actions, feelings and emotions.

Who is a psychologist today

Today, a psychologist, unlike a philosopher, must obtain at least a bachelor's degree from a university in order to practice and research. He is a representative of his science and is called upon not only to provide psychological help but also to contribute to the development of their activities. What does a professional psychologist do?

• Reveals archetypes and establishes the character, temperament of the individual.
• Analyzes the behavior of his patient, identifies the root cause and eradicates it if necessary. This allows you to change your lifestyle, get rid of negative thoughts and help you find motivation and purpose in yourself.
• It helps to get out of a depressive state, get rid of apathy, to know the meaning of life and start looking for it.
• Struggling with psychological trauma that happened either in childhood or throughout life.
• Analyzes the patient's behavior in society and also finds the root cause. As a rule, in many cases an important role is played by the situation in the family, relationships with peers, relatives and just strangers.

Do not confuse a psychologist with a psychiatrist. The second is a scientist who has received a medical degree and has the right to engage in diagnosis, treatment. He identifies, analyzes and examines mental disorders from the most minor and subtle to the most aggressive. The task of a psychiatrist is to find out whether a person is ill or not. If a deviation is detected, the doctor develops a unique technique that allows you to help the patient, stop his symptoms or completely cure him. Despite the general disagreement, it was concluded that the psychiatrist is not a medical specialist, although he works directly with patients and various drugs.

Psychology is relevant and important in the life of each of us. This science is a vivid example of human evolution, when, asking ourselves countless questions, we developed and stepped each time to a new step. She studies the type of people, the phenomena when in different situations they unite in teams, disperse and lead a lonely lifestyle, show aggression or, conversely, experience emotional overexcitation and happiness. Motivation, goals, depression and apathy, values ​​and feelings - this is just a small fraction that is studied by such a unique science as psychology.

Like, originates in the depths of millennia. The term "psychology" (from the Greek. psyche- soul, logos- doctrine, science) means "the doctrine of the soul." Psychological knowledge has historically developed - some ideas were replaced by others.

The study of the history of psychology, of course, cannot be reduced to a simple enumeration of problems, ideas and ideas of various psychological schools. In order to understand them, it is necessary to understand their internal connection, the single logic of the formation of psychology as a science.

Psychology as the doctrine of the human soul is always conditioned by anthropology, the doctrine of man in its entirety. Studies, hypotheses, conclusions of psychology, no matter how abstract and private they may seem, imply a certain understanding of the essence of a person, they are guided by one or another of his image. In turn, the doctrine of man fits into the general picture of the world, formed on the basis of the synthesis of knowledge, worldview 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.

The history of the formation and development of psychology

Mythological ideas about the soul

Humanity started 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 the 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 are united forever. For the Greeks, this myth was a classic image of true love as the highest realization. human soul. Therefore, Psycho - a mortal who has gained immortality - has become a symbol of the soul, looking 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 guessed about the difficulty of a person mastering his spiritual beginning, 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 traced in Russian words: “soul”, “spirit” and “breathe”, “air”. Already in ancient times, in the concept of the soul, it was united in single complex inherent 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 go free from the body while a person is sleeping, and live own life in his dreams. It was believed that at the moment of death of a person, the soul leaves the body forever, flying out through the mouth. The doctrine of the transmigration of souls is one of the most ancient. It was presented 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 as 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 the most important essential principle of living nature using the concept of the soul, considering it as the cause of life and knowledge.

For the first time a man, his inner spiritual world becomes the center of philosophical reflection in Socrates (469-399 BC). Unlike his predecessors, who dealt mainly with the problems of nature, Socrates focused on the inner world of man, his beliefs and values, 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 such ideas 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 a mortal body, leaving it after death and returning to the eternal supersensible world of ideas. The main thing with Plato is not in the doctrine of immortality and the transmigration of the soul, but in the study of the content of its activities(in modern terminology in the study of mental activity). He showed that internal activities shower and gives knowledge about realities of supersensible being, the eternal world of ideas. How, then, does the soul, which is in mortal flesh, join the eternal world of ideas? All knowledge, according to Plato, is memory. With appropriate efforts and preparation, the soul can remember what she had a chance to contemplate before her earthly birth. He taught that man is "not an earthly planting, but a heavenly planting."

Plato first identified 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 inner structure of the soul, isolating its triple composition: higher part- the rational beginning, the middle - the volitional beginning and the lower part of the soul - the sensual beginning. The rational part of the soul is called upon to coordinate 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 sphere of the study of the soul, and the role of the mind in its resolution was considered.

Disciple - (384-322 BC), arguing with his teacher, returned the soul from the supersensible to the sensible world. He introduced the concept of the soul as functions of a living organism rather than 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 is not of such a body as an ax, but of such a natural body, which in itself has the beginning of movement and rest.”

Aristotle singled out different levels of activity abilities in the body. These levels of ability 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 from 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 the highest forms. At the same time, each person, in the process of turning from an infant into an adult being, passes through the steps from the plant to the animal, and from it to the rational soul. According to Aristotle, the soul or "psyche" is engine allowing the organism to realize itself. The center of the "psyche" is in the heart, where the impressions transmitted from the senses come.

When characterizing a person, Aristotle put forward in the first place knowledge, thinking and wisdom. This setting in the views of 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 as an independent field of research did not exist during the Middle Ages. Psychological knowledge was included in religious anthropology (the doctrine of man).

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

Christian anthropology comes from theocentric picture world and the main 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 creature in the universe the highest step in the hierarchical ladder of the theater, those. created by God peace.

Man is the center of the universe. This idea was known ancient philosophy, which considered a person as a "microcosm", a small world, embracing the entire universe.

Christian anthropology has not abandoned the idea of ​​a "microcosm", but the holy fathers have significantly changed its meaning and content.

The "Church Fathers" believed that human nature is connected with all the main spheres of being. Man is connected with the earth with his body: “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,” the Bible says. Through feelings, a person is connected with the material world, the 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 human soul, nourishing the body with which it was created together, is everywhere in the body, and is not concentrated in one place. The Holy Fathers introduce a distinction between "inner" and "outer" man: "God created inner man and blinded external; the flesh is molded, but the soul is created. talking modern language, outer man is a natural phenomenon, and the inner man is a supernatural phenomenon, something mysterious, unknowable, divine.

Unlike the intuitive-symbolic, spiritual-experimental way of knowing a person 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 in Western Christianity, there were also irrational mystical teachings, 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

Humanist movement that originated in Italy in the 15th century. and spread in Europe in the 16th century, was called "Renaissance". Reviving the ancient humanistic culture, this era contributed to the liberation of all sciences and arts from the 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. A movement began in the direction of forming psychological knowledge into an independent science.

A huge influence on the psychological thought of the XVII-XVIII centuries. provided by mechanics, which became the leader of the natural sciences. Mechanical picture of nature led to a new era in the development of European psychology.

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

R. Descartes introduced the concept reflex which later became fundamental for physiology and psychology. In accordance with the Cartesian scheme of the reflex, an external impulse was transmitted to the brain, from where a response occurred, setting the muscles in motion. They gave an explanation of behavior as a purely reflex phenomenon without referring to the soul as the force that moves the body. Descartes hoped that over time, not only simple movements - such as the defensive reaction of the pupil to light or hands to fire - but also the most complex behavioral acts could be explained by the physiological mechanics he had 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 argued that the bodily device and without it is able to successfully cope with this task. What are the functions of the soul?

R. Descartes considered the soul as a substance, i.e. an entity independent of anything else. The soul was defined by him according to a single sign - the direct awareness of its phenomena. Its purpose was to knowledge of the subject about his own acts and states, invisible to anyone else. Thus, there was a turn in the concept of "soul", which became the reference for the next stage in the history of the construction of the subject of psychology. From now on, this subject becomes consciousness.

Descartes, on the basis of a mechanistic approach, raised 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 the understanding of psychic phenomena—universal causation and natural scientific explainability of any phenomena. He 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, a contemporary of Spinoza, the German philosopher and mathematician G.V. Leibniz (1646-1716) considered the correlation of spiritual and bodily phenomena on the basis of psychophysiological parallelism, i.e. their independent and parallel coexistence. He considered the dependence of mental phenomena on bodily phenomena an illusion. The soul and body act independently, but between them there is a pre-established harmony based on the Divine mind. The doctrine of psychophysiological parallelism found many supporters during the formative years of psychology as a science, but at the present time belongs to history.

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

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

Another direction in the formation of new 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 but material bodies moving according to the laws of mechanics. Psychic phenomena were brought under the action of mechanical laws. T. Hobbes believed that sensations are a direct result of the impact of material objects on the body. According to the law of inertia, discovered by G. Galileo, representations appear from sensations in the form of their weakened trace. They form a sequence of thoughts in the same order in which the sensations were replaced. This connection was later called associations. T. Hobbes proclaimed reason to be the product of association, which has as its source the direct influence of the material world on the sense organs.

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

In the development of this direction, a prominent role belonged to the compatriot of T. Hobbes - J. Locke (1632-1704), who in the experiment itself identified two sources: sensation and reflection, by which he understood the internal perception of the activity of our mind. concept reflections firmly established in psychology. The name of Locke is associated with such a method of psychological knowledge as introspection, i.e. internal self-observation of ideas, images, representations, feelings, as they are to the “internal gaze” of the subject observing him.

Starting with J. Locke, phenomena become the subject of psychology consciousness, which generate two experiences - external emanating from the sense organs, and interior accumulated by the individual's own mind. Under the sign of this picture of consciousness formed psychological concepts subsequent decades.

The birth of psychology as a science

AT early XIX in. 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 investigated the dependence of mental functions on the structure of the sense organs and the brain.

The discovery of differences between 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 muscular reaction. This discovery proved the dependence of the functions of the organism, concerning 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 sense organs, the German physiologist G.E. Müller (1850-1934) formulated the position that the nervous tissue does not possess any other energy than the known physics. This position was elevated to the rank of law, as a result of which mental processes moved in the same row as the nervous tissue visible under a microscope and dissected with a scalpel, which generates them. True, the main thing remained unclear - how the miracle of the generation of psychic phenomena is accomplished.

German physiologist E.G. Weber (1795-1878) identified the relationship between a continuum of sensations and a continuum of physical stimuli that elicited them. In the course of experiments, it was found that there is a quite definite (different for different sense organs) relationship between the initial stimulus and the subsequent one, in 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 upon the issue of the causes of mental phenomena and their material substratum, revealed empirical dependencies on the basis of the introduction of experiment and quantitative research methods.

The work of physiologists on the study of the sense organs and movements prepared a new psychology, different from traditional psychology, which is closely connected with 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 XIX century. Almost simultaneously, several programs for the construction of psychology as an independent discipline took shape.

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

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

A unique subject of psychology, not studied by any other discipline, was recognized as "direct experience". The main method is introspection, the essence of which was to observe the subject of the processes in his mind.

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

To late XIX in. The enthusiasm that Wundt's program once awakened has dried up, and the understanding of the subject of psychology inherent in it has lost credibility forever. Many of Wundt's students broke with him and took a different path. At present, the contribution of W. Wundt is seen in the fact that he showed which way psychology should not go, 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 W. Dilypey (1833-1911) put forward the idea of ​​"two hesychologies": an experimental one, related in its method to the natural sciences, and another psychology, which, instead of an experimental study of the psyche, deals with the interpretation of the manifestation of the human spirit. He separated the study of the connections of mental phenomena with the bodily life of an organism from their connections with the history of cultural values. He called the first psychology explanatory, second - understanding.

Western psychology in the 20th century

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 developed very intensively - transpersonal psychology.

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

The American zoopsychologist J. Watson (1878-1958) is considered the founder of behaviorism in Western psychology, 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 for half a century of its existence as an experimental discipline of psychology has 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 be not consciousness, but behavior.

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

Ten years after Watson's keynote article, behaviorism came to dominate almost all of American psychology. The fact is that the pragmatic orientation of research into mental activity in the United States was due to requests from the economy, and later from the mass media.

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

The original scheme of J. Watson, explaining behavioral acts as a reaction to presented stimuli, was further improved by E. Tolman (1886-1959) by introducing an intermediate link between the stimulus from the environment and the individual's response in the form of the individual's goals, his expectations, hypotheses, 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,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, morality are considered from the standpoint of behaviorism as derivatives of the “system of incentives”, “reinforcement programs” and are evaluated as “a useless shadow in human life."

The most powerful influence on Western culture was psychoanalysis, developed by Z. Freud (1856-1939). Psychoanalysis contributed to Western European and American culture general concepts"psychology of the unconscious", ideas about the irrational moments of human activity, conflict and splitting of the inner world of the individual, "repressiveness" of culture and society, etc. etc. Unlike behaviorists, psychoanalysts began to study consciousness, build hypotheses about the inner world of the individual, introduce new terms that claim to be scientific, but not amenable to empirical verification.

In psychological literature, including educational literature, Z. Freud's merit is seen in his appeal to the deep structures of the psyche, to the unconscious. Pre-Freudian psychology took as an object of study the normal, physically and mentally healthy person and paid the main attention to the phenomenon of consciousness. Freud, having begun to explore, as a psychiatrist, the inner mental world of neurotic personalities, 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, on which the consciousness is built up. The unconscious itself was interpreted by him 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 explaining the functioning of the psyche in general.

Despite the obvious difference and, it would seem, even the opposite of approaches, behaviorism and psychoanalysis are similar to each other - both of these areas built psychological ideas without resorting to spiritual realities. Not without reason, representatives of humanistic psychology came to the conclusion that both main schools - behaviorism and psychoanalysis - did not see a person as specifically human, ignored the real problems of human life - the problems of goodness, love, justice, as well as the role of morality, philosophy, religion, and were nothing else, as "slandering a person." All of these real problems are seen as derived from basic instincts or social relationships and communications.

“Western psychology of the 20th century,” as S. Grof writes, “created a very negative image of a person - 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 made it their task to introduce real problems into the field of psychological research. The subject of psychological research representatives of humanistic psychology considered a healthy creative personality. The humanistic orientation was expressed in the fact that love, creative growth, higher values, meaning were considered as basic human needs.

The humanistic approach departs furthest from scientific psychology, diverting leading role person's personal experience. According to humanists, the individual is capable of self-esteem and can independently find a way to the flowering of his personality.

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

The first representative of the transpersonal orientation in psychology is the Swiss psychologist K.G. Jung (1875-1961), although Jung himself called his psychology not transpersonal, but analytical. Attribution to K.G. Jung to the forerunners of transpersonal psychology is held 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 keynote article in which he showed that Freud quite wrongly reduced all human activity to a 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, he 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, rational principle that connects a person with all of humanity, with nature and space. Along with the individual unconscious, there is also the collective unconscious, which, being supra-personal, transpersonal in nature, forms the universal basis of the spiritual 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 the 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 whole social groups, conscious control of internal states, etc.

The atheistic, mechanistic and materialistic approach to the world and existence, S. Grof believes, reflects a deep alienation from the core of being, the lack of a true understanding of oneself and the 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 chilotropic (ie, 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 sense 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 obsession with 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 considers 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.

AT last decade many works on transpersonal psychology have been published, and in textbooks and manuals 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 cognize the cosmic dimension of man, meanwhile are not connected with the concepts of morality. These methods are aimed at the formation and transformation of special, altered states of a person with the help of dosed use of drugs, various types of hypnosis, hyperventilation of the lungs, etc.

There is no doubt that the research and practice of transpersonal psychology discovered the connection of a person with the cosmos, the exit of human consciousness beyond the usual barriers, overcoming the limitations of space and time during transpersonal experiences, proved the very existence of a spiritual sphere, and much more.

But in general, this way of studying the human psyche seems to be very pernicious 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 with a drug, hypnosis or increased breathing and does not lead to spiritual purification and spiritual growth.

Formation and development of domestic psychology

I.M. Sechenov (1829-1905), and not the American J. Watson, since the first in 1863 in the treatise "Reflexes of the Brain" came to the conclusion that self-regulation of behavior organism 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, after the perception of the environment and its processing in the brain, the response work 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, not the subjective (introspective) method.

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

During the Soviet period Russian history in the first 15-20 years Soviet power a seemingly inexplicable phenomenon was discovered - an unprecedented rise in a number of scientific fields— physics, mathematics, biology, linguistics, including psychology. For example, in 1929 alone, about 600 titles of books on psychology were published in the country. New directions are emerging: in the field of the psychology of education - pedology, in the field of the psychology of labor activity - psychotechnics, brilliant work was carried out on defectology, forensic psychology, zoopsychology.

In the 30s. psychology was dealt crushing blows by the decisions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and almost all the basic psychological concepts and psychological research outside the framework of Marxist attitudes were prohibited. Historically, psychology itself has contributed to this attitude towards research in the field of the psyche. Psychologists - at first in theoretical studies and within the walls of laboratories - as if relegated to the background, and then completely denied a person's right to an immortal soul and spiritual life. Then theoreticians were replaced by practitioners and began to treat people as soulless objects. This arrival was not accidental, but prepared by a previous development in which psychology also played its part.

By the end of the 50s - the beginning of the 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 emergence and development. The understanding of the psyche was based on the Leninist theory of reflection. The psyche was defined as a 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. Dialectical materialism was the only possible ideological basis for psychology. 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. Leontiev (1903-1979), D.N. 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 for creative search.

Currently, there are several orientations in Russian psychology.

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

Westernized psychology represents assimilation, adaptation, imitation Western currents in psychology, which were rejected by the previous regime. Usually, productive ideas do not arise on 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, Hindu, etc. Since there is no universal psyche, the theoretical schemes and models of Western psychology do not possess 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. Shadrikov. Spiritually oriented psychology relies on traditional spiritual values ​​and the recognition of the reality of spiritual being.