Brief history of the development of psychological science. The origin of psychology. Development of psychology over time. Psychological knowledge in the ancient period

The chronology of psychology as an official science begins only from 1875-1879, when the first experimental psychological laboratory was organized by Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig. However, psychology as such existed long before this; its history goes back about 2.5 thousand years.
Man, as a being with a unique gift - consciousness, tends to ask questions and look for answers to them, try to understand and explain the world around him, himself in it, his difference from animals and from other people, etc. The so-called “pre-scientific psychology” developed in debate and reflection, psychological knowledge was accumulated and improved through the contributions of a variety of people - philosophers, physicians, geographers, mathematicians, etc., which made possible the birth of psychology as a science proper. The main stages of the development of psychology can be presented in the form of the following diagram (Fig. 7).
The first period is psychology as the science of the soul. Psychology, like many other modern sciences, has its origins in ancient philosophy. The name “ancient philosophy” refers to the ideas and teachings of ancient Greek and Roman thinkers from the 7th century. BC. to 6th century AD It was then that the first philosophical schools appeared, which tried to comprehend and present in a single concept the structure of the surrounding world and man in it. It was these ideas and teachings that became the first type of philosophizing and conceptual thinking in general in history. The teachings of Plato (idealistic) and Aristotle (materialistic) are the two most famous philosophical concepts of that time. An important problem for psychology, which for the first time then became the subject of debate and reflection, was the so-called “psychophysical problem” (the question of the place of the psyche in the material world, from the Greek psyche - soul, physis - nature), which was solved in three ways - monistically (from the Greek . monos - one), dualistically (from the Latin dualis - dual) and pluralistically (from the Latin pluralis - multiple).
The next major historical stage - the Middle Ages (traditionally dates back to the 5th-15th centuries) - is associated with the dominance of Christian doctrine and intolerance towards other points of view. Despite the fact that the education system was developing during this period, its content was censored; the works of the so-called “fathers” and “teachers of the church” were recognized. The ideas of ancient philosophy at this time developed specifically in Arabic-speaking countries. For psychology, this period is associated primarily with works on ethics, education and moral development of man (Aurelius Augustine the Blessed, Ibn Sina, Ibn Roshd, etc.).

This era, which lasted a whole millennium, ended with a transitional stage, which was called the “Renaissance” (or Renaissance, 14-16 centuries), associated with the names of such thinkers as Leonardo da Vinci, Niccolo Machiavelli, Francois Rabelais, Johannes Kepler, Martin Luther, etc. At this time, the first scientific revolution in the history of mankind took place, associated with the creation by the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus of the heliocentric system of the world, followed by the second, the beginning of which is associated with the name of Galileo Galilei, who confirmed the heliocentric concept and laid the foundations of a new mechanistic natural science . The main result of this period for science as a whole was the transition from a passive and contemplative - to an active attitude of the knowing mind, and for psychology - the transition to “humanism”, which brought to the fore the ideal of human activity as the creator of his earthly existence, capable of comprehending and turning into fortunately all the wealth of the surrounding world.
The second period is psychology as the science of consciousness. This period covers the so-called “modern era” (17-19 centuries). The work of Isaac Newton is considered the “crown” that completes the second scientific revolution, which covered such fields of knowledge as astronomy, mechanics, geography, geometry and many others.
In philosophy of the 17th century. Against the backdrop of the rapidly developing natural science, one of the most prominent figures was René Descartes, whose works predetermined the development, in particular, of psychology for the next three centuries. According to his teaching, the human body (organism) is subject to the same laws of physics as any other natural phenomena, while the mind (consciousness, thinking, mind) is what distinguishes man from everything else, including animals; it is a spiritual entity that acts independently of the body, although they are one. Only with the help of the mind can one obtain true knowledge, only reason can be trusted, only it should be guided. R. Descartes discovered a new field of research - consciousness (thinking) and developed a method of its analysis (introspection, reflection - from the Latin reflexio - turning back, i.e. the focus of human thinking on understanding and awareness of its own forms and prerequisites).
Subsequently, the works of many scientists and philosophers were devoted to the study of the work of consciousness, the influence of emotions on it, its connection with sensations, perception, memory, etc. (Benedict Spinoza, John Locke, Gottfried W. Leibniz, etc.).
Much work was devoted to human consciousness by the German scientist and philosopher Immanuel Kant, whose works in the mid-18th century. marked the beginning of the third scientific revolution, as he was able to create an evolving “picture of the world.” The ideas of evolution covered a wide variety of areas of knowledge and stimulated many studies and discoveries.
By the mid-19th century, when the evolutionary theory of Charles R. Darwin became famous, experimental studies Physiology has already contributed to such significant successes in the field of psychology that the latter was placed on a par with such sciences as physics, biology, etc. The dominant direction in psychology during the period under review was “associationism” (from the Latin associatio - association, connection). Association was considered as the basic principle and law of the organization of mental activity and human behavior. It was believed that complex mental phenomena are formed from elementary ones (sensations, thoughts, experiences) through mechanistic connection with each other (David Hartley, Johann F. Herbart, James Mill, etc.).
After the organization of the first experimental psychological laboratory, the so-called “physiological psychology” appeared (together with W. Wundt, its founder was Hermann L. F. Helmholtz, widely known as a physicist), which sought to rely on the natural sciences in the study of mental phenomena. Sensations and perceptions were the first to be studied experimentally.
By the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. in psychology, several relatively independent directions took shape, which began to develop rapidly: developmental psychology (study of the characteristics of the child’s psyche), differential psychology (study of individual differences between people using specially developed methods and tests), zoopsychology (comparison of stages psychological development in the evolutionary series) and others.
The third period is psychology as the science of behavior. At the beginning of the 20th century. Psychology as a science was experiencing a kind of crisis: with the increase in more and more accurate and effective research into mental phenomena complete picture the psyche did not work out. The reason for this was a large number of scientific directions and schools, each of which deeply studied only one mental phenomenon, but most importantly, in its explanation it proceeded from its own theoretical positions, which often contradicted the ideas of scientists of other schools.
The study of objectively observable behavior became a kind of reaction to this state of affairs. Psychology as a science of behavior can be roughly represented in the form of two different branches - Russian and American.
Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev, the author of the idea of ​​reflexivity of the psyche and reflex regulation of activity, in 1885 became the founder of the first experimental psychological laboratory in Russia, and in 1907 - the Psychoneurological Institute in St. Petersburg. Georgy Ivanovich Chelpanov founded and became director of the country's first Institute of Experimental Psychology in Moscow in 1912. Russian scientists were studying the properties of the nervous system. The teachings of Ivan Petrovich Pavlov on the types of the nervous system and the theory of “conditioned reflexes” (automatic reactions formed during life as a result of learning - in contrast to innate “unconditioned” reflexes, including instincts) radically changed the entire world psychology.
At the same time, John B. Watson in the USA became the founder of “behaviorism” (from the English behavior - behavior) - a direction in psychology, according to which the “stimulus-response” scheme is sufficient for studying the relationship between environmental influences and human reactions. Behaviorism has found many supporters, for a long time was dominant in America and is still popular today.
In a certain sense, the ideas of all these scientists were simplified - for some, the entire psyche was reduced to reflexes, for others - only to external manifestations. However, this period had a huge impact on the subsequent development of psychology: thus, thanks to the works of Russian scientists, the patterns of occurrence and physiological basis of many mental phenomena were subsequently studied, thanks to the contribution of American psychologists, “training” programs were developed (from the English train - to train, educate) , practical techniques on psychological correction, etc.
The fourth period is psychology as a science that studies facts, patterns and mechanisms of the psyche. Most 20th century psychology developed differently in the USSR and abroad (in Europe and the USA) due to political and ideological reasons. If at the beginning of the existence of the new system in Russia an exchange of opinions between scientists different countries was quite intense, then since 1936, by government decree, work in psychology that did not correspond to the ideology of “Marxism-Leninism” was prohibited.
The fundamentals of the theory of reflection, which is discussed in the above diagram, developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, are that all matter has a property essentially related to sensation - the property of reflection. In the USSR there were three large psychological centers, differing in areas of research - in Moscow, Leningrad and Tbilisi. Despite ideological restrictions, and in many ways thanks to them, the research and discoveries of Soviet scientists were carefully theoretically substantiated and based on experimental data, which distinguished them favorably from many beautiful, but unprovable concepts of their foreign colleagues.
The international psychological community has recognized the merits of a number of Soviet psychologists, but the most famous are the works of such outstanding scientists as Lev Semenovich Vygotsky, Sergei Leonidovich Rubinstein and Alexei Nikolaevich Leontiev.
Only in the late 50s - early 60s. 20th century In the USSR, previous bans began to be lifted and contacts with foreign colleagues were resumed. Up to the 80s. in Russia they “assimilated” (from the Latin assimilatio - assimilation, assimilation, adaptation) the experience accumulated in the psychology of other countries.
In foreign psychology during the period under review, four main major psychological directions:
. behaviorism and neobehaviorism (John B. Watson, Edward C. Tolman, Clark L. Hull, Burres F. Skinner, Albert Bandura, etc.);
. psychoanalysis and neo-psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud, Carl G. Jung, Alfred Adler, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, Erik Erikson, etc.);
. humanistic psychology (Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Gordon Allport, etc.);
. cognitive psychology (Fritz Heider, Leon Festinger, Julian Rotter, George Kelly, etc.).
Currently, psychology is becoming increasingly synthetic in nature, i.e. modern psychologists do not isolate themselves within the framework of a separate scientific school (as was done before), but, in accordance with the problems being studied, use mutually complementary knowledge obtained by representatives of different schools. Widespread systems approach to the human psyche.
In various classification schemes of modern psychology, about 40 of its branches are distinguished, some of which have acquired a relatively independent status: developmental, social, educational, medical psychology, personality psychology, occupational psychology, professional (including military, naval, etc.) psychology, etc. .d. Modern means Communications, including the Internet, make it possible to almost instantly exchange experiences and learn about new discoveries, which makes the development of psychology more uniform and accessible to all.

Psychology has a relatively long and rather controversial history. Many psychological ideas formed the basis of applied technologies, especially in conditions of such types practical activities, such as production and consumption, politics and people management, training and medicine, operation of technical equipment, IT management, business, marketing, advertising, etc.

One of the first who tried to analyze the psyche as a specific phenomenon was the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. He outlined his thoughts in the famous treatise “On the Soul”, and this allows many historians to claim that psychology arose more than 2000 years ago. However, Aristotle did not master the basic method modern science- experimental method; him in the 17th century. introduced Galileo Galilei into research activities. Aristotle was engaged in observations, introspection and philosophical reflections on the nature of the psyche. That is why, from the point of view of modern methodology, the ideas he expressed can hardly be considered scientific, even if historically he turned out to be right in some ways. Philosophy and science are different types of intellectual activity.

Today it is generally accepted that experimental psychology arose in 1879 thanks to the German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt (Fig. 1.2), who in Germany at the University of Leipzig was the first in the world to create a laboratory for the experimental study of mental phenomena. However, many psychological studies using experimental methods were done long before this date. For example, the studies of E. Weber, G. Fechner, G. Helmholtz, G. Ebbinghaus, I. Müller, E. Mach and others were also carried out on the basis of experiments that were quite complex for those times. W. Wundt's system of theoretical views is called structuralism G the main task, which his followers set themselves, was to describe the structure of the psyche, its components, determine the connections between components (processes), and the influence of some components on others.

The so-called functionalism. The creator of this trend is considered to be the American psychologist, professor of psychology at Harvard University William James. He believed that psychology should

study not the structural components or elements of the psyche, but consciousness as biological function, which arose in the process of evolution, like other body functions, say, digestion, because it was biologically “useful” for the evolving species. Although W. James was a religious person, he belonged to supporters of the philosophy of pragmatism, due to which the concept of “useful” was very important for him. That is why, judging by many of James's works, he viewed religion as one of the most powerful forms of social psychotherapy. It should be noted that in many respects structuralism and functionalism were similar, since they were based on methods experiment And introspection.

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IN different eras Throughout the history of mankind, views on the nature of the psyche have varied significantly. For example, modern philosophers, in particular Francis Bacon, laid the foundations for empirical study consciousness. It was Bacon who proposed abandoning the study of Aristotle’s “soul” as a subject of research, which before him seemed obvious and therefore no one doubted. In turn, the philosopher Rene Descartes proposed to separate mental phenomena from physiological ones. He reduced the mental to the concept of consciousness, rejected unconscious mental phenomena and defined the foundations of the concept dualism, in which the mental and physiological were considered as parallel entities. Descartes formulated psychophysical problem and thereby laid the foundations for the idea that the “spirit” exists separately from the “body.” Descartes' ideas were considered quite obvious until the end of the 19th century.

Psychology reached its greatest flourishing at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. At this time, a number of different psychological teachings appeared, describing the nature of the psyche in different ways and using different approaches to the empirical study of mental phenomena. According to the definition of science scientist Thomas Kuhn, psychology is multi-paradigm science, and therefore in modern psychology there are three global “world concepts”: psychoanalysis, behaviorism and cognitive psychology. These directions developed in parallel and in many ways but differently solved the problems of studying the psyche, its nature and structure, but they always had absolutely the same tasks, the main one of which was the knowledge of the psyche as a natural phenomenon. But if cognitive psychology was formed to study primarily consciousness, then psychoanalysis arose under the influence of ideas about the existence of the subconscious ( unconscious And unconscious) as the main component of the psyche, and behaviorism concentrated on the analysis of the behavior of humans and other living organisms as an external manifestation of the psyche.

It should be noted that to date, many areas of psychology have already fulfilled their historical mission and experienced a stage of global transformation. Today they are either not as widespread in the world as psychoanalysis, behaviorism and cognitive psychology, or they put forward other tasks, such as, for example, humanistic And positive psychology.

• The term “structuralism” was introduced into psychology by a student and follower of V. Wuidt by the Anglo-American scientist Edward Bradford Titchener, who created the first experimental psychological laboratory in the United States.

The specific range of phenomena that psychology studies are sensations, perceptions, thoughts, feelings. Those. everything that makes up the inner world of a person.

The problem of psychology - correlation inner world man and the phenomena of the material world. Philosophers also dealt with these issues. Understanding the subject of psychology in science did not develop immediately. The process of its formation took place in four stages.

Stage 1 (5th century BC) – the subject of study was the soul. Ideas about the soul were both idiomatic and materialistic.

Idealism considers consciousness, the psyche, as a primary substance that exists independently of the material world. Representative this direction is Plato. From the point of view of materialism, mental phenomena are the result of the vital activity of brain matter. Representatives of this direction are Heraclitus, Democritus, Aristotle. The duality of the soul is dualism. It was presented in its most developed form in the teachings of Rene Descartes.

The 2nd stage (17th century) was marked by the rapid development of the natural sciences and consciousness became the subject of psychology. It was understood as the ability to feel, desire, think. The material world was not studied. The method of studying consciousness became introspection, that is, introspection, self-awareness, and the scientific direction began to be called introspective psychology. The representative of this direction was the English scientist John Locke. Within the framework of introspective psychology in 1879. The first experimental psychological laboratory was created in Leipzig by Wilhelm Wundt. This event marked the emergence of the experimental method in psychology, and 1879 became the year of the birth of scientific psychology. The onset of criticism of introspection (the inability to simultaneously perform an action and analyze it; ignoring the unconscious, etc.) prepared the transition to the next stage.

3rd stage (19th century) - in connection with advances in medicine and experiments on animals, behavior became the subject of psychology. The main psychology scientist in this area is John Watson. A powerful scientific direction has emerged in American psychology which was called behaviorism. Behavior was explained by the nature of the stimulus that causes the response (behavior). At this time, a number of attempts appear to explain behavior not by stimuli, but by other factors. This is how the basic psychological concepts emerge:

Gestalt psychology - Wolfgang Köhler, Max Wertheimer. The subject of study is the features of perception.

Psychoanalysis and neo-Freudianism – Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Alfred Adler. The subject of study is the unconscious.

Cognitive psychology - Ulrich Naiser, Jerome Simon Bruner. The subject of study was cognitive processes.

Genetic psychology – Jean Piaget. The subject of psychology is the development of thinking.

The Gestalt psychology movement took shape after its publication in 1910. M. Wertheimer's research results on “illusory movement. Having started with the study of perception processes, Gestalt psychology quickly expanded its topics to include problems of mental development, analysis of the intellectual behavior of great apes, consideration of memory, creative thinking, the dynamics of personality needs, etc. Representatives of Gestalt psychology suggested that all various manifestations of the psyche obey the laws of Gestalt . Since in the early years the main object of their research was the processes of perception, they extrapolated the principles of the organization of perception to the psyche in general: the attraction of parts to form a symmetrical whole, the grouping of parts in the direction of maximum simplicity, proximity, balance, the tendency of each mental phenomenon to take a certain, complete form.

Within the framework of Gestalt psychology, much experimental data has been obtained that remains relevant to this day. The most important law is the law of constancy of perception, which records the fact that complete image does not change when its sensory elements change. The principle of holistic analysis of the psyche made it possible scientific knowledge the most complex problems of mental life, which were previously considered inaccessible to experimental research.

In the teachings of S. Freud, the phenomenon of the unconscious became the main subject of psychological research. Freud created a dynamic concept of the human psyche, the formation of which was greatly influenced by the physical picture of the world that dominated at that time.

The psychoanalytic approach as a whole had a huge influence on the worldview of the twentieth century. It can be noted that psychoanalysis has become the worldview of our time and has penetrated into all spheres of life. For psychological science, despite all the mythological nature of psychoanalytic constructs, the reorientation of research on problems of motivation, emotions and personality turned out to be valuable.

Cognitive psychologists work to create models of various functions of the human psyche (sensations, perception, imagination, memory, thinking, speech). Models of cognitive processes allow us to take a new look at the essence of human mental life. Cognitive activity is activity associated with the acquisition, organization and use of knowledge. This activity is characteristic of all living beings, and especially of humans. For this reason, the study of cognitive activity is part of psychology. Research by cognitive psychologists covers both conscious and unconscious processes of the psyche, and both are interpreted as different ways of processing information.

Currently, cognitive psychology is still in its infancy, but has already become one of the most influential areas of world psychological thought.

Behaviorism. The origins of behaviorism should be sought in studies of the psyche of animals. Behaviorism as an independent scientific movement is based on the work of E. Thorndike, who, based on the study of cat behavior, formulated two main “laws of learning.” The law of exercise states that the more often actions are repeated, the more firmly they are consolidated. The Law of Effect refers to the role of rewards and punishments in building or destroying various forms of behavior. At the same time, Thorndike believed that rewards were more effective regulators of behavior than punishments. However, J. Watson is considered the real father of the behaviorist. He saw the task of psychology in the study of the behavior of living beings adapting to the physical and social environment. The goal of psychology is to create means to control behavior. Pedagogy has become the center of interest for psychologists in this area. Proper upbringing can direct the formation of a child along any strictly directed path.

The foundations of domestic scientific psychology were also laid in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The formation of “reflexology” is taking place - Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev, Boris Gerasimovich Ananyev.

The 4th stage (20th century) is marked by the emergence in domestic psychology of a dialectical-materialist concept, which is based on philosophical theory reflections. The subject of study was the psyche. At that time huge contribution Pavel Petrovich Blonsky and Konstantin Nikolaevich Kornilov contributed to the development of science. One of the most important directions that emerged in the 20-30s was the “cultural-historical theory” developed by Lev Semenovich Vygotsky, then the psychological theory of activity associated with the name of Alexei Nikolaevich Leontiev. The subject of the study was mental activity.

Cultural-historical approach in psychology. L.S. Vygotsky suggested the existence of two lines of development of the psyche: natural and culturally mediated. In accordance with these two lines of development, “lower” and “higher” mental functions are distinguished.

Examples of lower, natural, mental functions include involuntary memory or involuntary attention of a child. The child cannot control them: he pays attention to what is bright, unexpected, and remembers what was accidentally remembered. Lower mental functions are a kind of rudiments from which higher mental functions grow in the process of education. The transformation of lower mental functions into higher ones occurs through the mastery of special tools of the psyche - signs and symbols. cultural character. The cultural-historical approach in psychology continues to develop fruitfully today, both in our country and abroad. This approach turned out to be especially effective in solving problems of pedagogy and defectology.

Activity approach in psychology. In the activity approach, the question of the origin of the psyche in the animal world was first raised. To explain how and why the psyche arose in phylogenesis, A.N. Leontiev put forward the principle of the unity of the psyche and activity. Activities are described as consisting of three structural units: activities - actions - operations. Activity is determined by motive, action by purpose, and operation by specific conditions.

Activity shapes the human psyche and manifests itself in activity.

The humanistic psychology of Carl Rogers appears in the West, Abraham Maslow. The subject of study is personality traits.

Humanistic psychology. Representatives of this direction are A. Maslow, K. Rogers, V. Frankl. the main postulates of this direction are: 1. The holistic nature of human nature; 2. The importance of the role of conscious experience; 3. Recognition of human free will, spontaneity, responsibility and creative power. Humanistic psychologists denied the existence of an initial conflict between man and society and argued that it is social success that characterizes the fullness of human life.

Merit humanistic psychology lies in the fact that it brought to the fore the study of the most important problems of personality, existence and development, and gave psychological science new worthy images of both the person himself and the essence of human life.

In the 60s, a new direction attracted attention - transpersonal psychology of Stanislav Grof, which studies the ultimate capabilities of the human psyche.

Currently, integration of different directions is taking place. Psychologists use concepts and methods of one direction or another, depending on the characteristics of the problems and tasks being solved. There is no single idea about the subject of psychology.

Since ancient times, people have been interested in problems of the soul, consciousness, unconscious phenomena, spiritual and mental phenomena and processes. According to G. Ebbinghaus, psychology has a long past, but a short history. There are two main periods in the history of psychology: in the first period psychological knowledge developed in the depths of philosophy, as well as other sciences (medicine, physics, biology, etc.), primarily natural sciences, in the second period psychology became an independent science.

Duration first period- from the 6th century BC until the middle of the 19th century; second period- from the mid-19th century to the present. Let us take a closer look at these periods of development of psychology.

1st period. Stage 1 (6th century BC – 5th century AD) – At this time, the first scientific ideas, hypotheses, concepts about the psyche and human behavior took shape and developed.

In ancient times, it was believed that the soul was present in nature wherever there was movement and warmth. This is the first doctrine about the soul known to science, “ animism"[lat. “anima” - spirit, soul], the doctrine of the universal spirituality of the world. The soul was understood as an independent entity, separate from the body and capable of controlling all living and inanimate objects.

Ancient thinkers tried to explain the microcosm of the individual human soul, the genesis and structure of the soul. Three philosophical directions can be distinguished.

First direction became an explanation of the psyche based on the laws of motion and development of the material world. The main idea was the decisive dependence of mental manifestations on the general structure of things, their physical nature. Natural philosophical interpretation of the soul was based on a picture of the world that contained three main principles: water, air and fire. In accordance with it, everything existing on Earth seemed to consist of these material principles, and the fiery principle was considered the carrier of the soul. The soul itself was assigned the function of movement.

Second direction ancient psychology, created by Aristotle, was focused primarily on wildlife; the starting point for him was the difference between the properties of organic bodies and inorganic ones. Aristotle's atomic theory was described in the treatise “On the Soul,” one of the first scientific and psychological works (4th century BC). According to this teaching, the world seems to consist of many tiny, indivisible particles - atoms, which have different sizes and mobility. The smallest and most mobile of them are the atoms of the soul. From that time on, the soul began to be considered as a material organ that animates the body and is controlled by the same material principle - the spirit (mind). Aristotle put forward the idea of ​​the inseparability of the soul and the living body. Being the principle of life or development, the soul cannot be divided into parts, but manifests itself in the form of several functions (abilities) or activities that form a special genetic series. To define the nature of the soul, he used the complex philosophical category “entelechy,” which means the realization of something. The soul is the essence of the living body, the realization of its existence. Three types of soul: plant, animal and rational (human) represent three stages of life that have continuity.

Aristotle's system, including his views on the nature and origin of the soul, was controversial. She tried to combine materialistic and idealistic ideas about the soul.

Third direction placed the mental activity of the individual depending on the forms that are created not by physical or organic nature, but by human culture, namely, on concepts, ideas, and ethical values. These forms were, however, beginning with the Pythagoreans and Plato, alienated from the material world, from real story culture and society, and are presented in the form of special spiritual entities that are alien to sensually perceived bodies.

Plato- ancestor objective dualism in psychology, the doctrine of the material and spiritual, body and psyche as two antagonistic principles. The soul is an invisible, sublime, divine, eternal principle. The body is a visible, base, transitory, perishable principle. By its divine origin, the soul is called upon to control the body and direct human life. However, the body, torn apart by various desires, needs and passions, sometimes dominates the soul.

He proposed as parts of the soul: reason; courage (in the modern understanding - will) and lust (in the current interpretation - motivation). And he placed them respectively in different parts of the body: head, chest and abdominal cavity. The parts of the soul, according to Plato, are distributed unevenly among people, and the predominance of one of them over the others determines the individual’s membership in one or another social group. The idea, as the immaterial essence of the soul, was explained as the eternal and unchanging root cause of everything that exists, and things began to be considered as its embodiment.

Scientists and doctors made a great contribution to the development of psychology. For example, the doctrine of temperament was created by Hippocrates and Galen. Hippocrates formulated the idea that the brain is the organ of thinking and sensation. He developed a doctrine of temperaments, which presupposes different role four body fluids: blood, mucus, yellow bile and black bile. Depending on which fluid predominates in the body, a person’s temperament depends: sanguine people have predominant blood, phlegmatic people have mucus, choleric people have yellow bile, melancholic people have black bile. Hippocrates was the first to propose a typology of temperaments based on body features. Roman doctor Claudius Galen continued this scientific direction and identified the sensory and motor functions of the spinal cord.

In the development of psychology, antiquity is glorified by great scientific successes. Ancient scientists posed problems that have guided the development of human sciences for centuries; they were the first to try to answer the questions of how the physical and spiritual, the rational and the irrational, the personal and the sociocultural, the motivational and the intellectual, and many other things inherent in human existence are correlated in a person.

1st period. Stage 2 (6-7 centuries) – The doctrine of the soul is developing within the framework of philosophy and medicine.

From the 5th century the Middle Ages began. The worldview and ideology of the Middle Ages were predominantly theological. The soul was interpreted in two ways, as an essence in the body and the Divine, and only the second mode of existence was recognized as true. Feudal ideology excluded the possibility of an individual maintaining an independent position. Any manifestation of free thought was persecuted and punished Catholic Church. Basic method scientific research during this period – introspection (introspection).

From 5th to 14th centuries. in the works of Boethius, Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus, an idea of ​​personality emerges. 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 Plato.

The Middle Ages saw significant development of Arab tribes and peoples. In the 7th century, the Arab tribes united and the Caliphate emerged. It spread from Indonesia to Atlantic Ocean. Scientists of this state conducted important natural science research, including studying the functioning of the senses and the brain.

1st period. Stage 3 (8th-16th centuries) – The doctrine of the soul is developing on the basis of anatomical and physiological discoveries. From 8th to 12th centuries. a large number of psychological studies were carried out in the East. The ideas and discoveries of Greek and Roman scientists became the property of Arabic-speaking peoples. The greatest preference was given to Aristotle. His ideas about the Divine origin of the world were consistent with the Koran. According to Arabic-speaking scientists, the study of the psyche should be based not only on philosophical concepts about the soul, but also on data from the natural sciences, especially medicine. The most famous of the scientists who lived in the 9th-13th centuries were Avicenna (Ibn Sina), Alhazen (Ibn Al-Haytham) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd).

Avicenna(980 – 1037) - Tajik philosopher and doctor, created the doctrine of psychophysiological functions. The main scientific work is “The Canon of Medical Science”. This work describes, as it were, two psychologies - natural science and metaphysical. He differentiates them by talking about two points of view on the soul - medical and philosophical. Avicenna was one of the first researchers in the field of developmental psychophysiology. He studied the connection between the physical development of the body and its psychological characteristics at different age periods, attaching decisive importance to education. Avicenna was one of the founders of the experimental psychophysiology of affective states and developmental psychophysiology.

Arab physicist and physiologist Al Ghazen(Ibn al-Haytham) created the doctrine of “unconscious inferences”. The scientist took as a basis visual perception constructing an image of an external object in the eyes according to the laws of optics. What later came to be called the projection of this image, he considered the result of additional mental activity of a higher order. In each visual act, he distinguished, on the one hand, the direct effect of capturing an external influence, and on the other, the work of the mind added to this effect, thanks to which the similarities and differences of visible objects are established.

He separated the direct effect of light rays on the eye and additional mental processes through which the perception of the shape of an object, its volume, etc. arises. Al-Ghazen studied phenomena such as binocular vision, color mixing, contrast, etc. He pointed out that for complete perception of objects, eye movement is necessary - movement of the visual axes. Thus, thanks to this scientist, the sensory structure of visual perception began to be considered as a derivative of the laws of optics, as well as from the properties of the nervous system.

Renaissance liberated all sciences and arts from religious dogmas and restrictions, natural, biological and medical sciences began to actively develop, were revived and transformed different kinds arts and culture. A significant incentive for this was the new philosophical views English, French, Dutch and other European materialists of the 16th and 17th centuries, supplemented by the mechanical picture of the world that had prevailed by that time in the natural sciences.

The main philosophical direction psychological ideas Italian Renaissance(13th-16th centuries) became pantheism. The idea of ​​the unity of man and nature took the form of a teaching in which the cosmos merged with the Divine, and man with the cosmos. The universe was thought of as an animate organism, the living particle of which is the human body with its inherent mental properties. Outstanding thinkers of this direction: P. Pomponazzi, B. Telesio, Leonardo da Vinci.

Pietro Pomponazzi(1462-1525) in his treatise “On the Immortality of the Soul” wrote that the individual soul, including the intellect, is destroyed along with the body. The higher mental abilities of a person, like the lower ones, presuppose real bodily processes and are impossible without them.

Famous artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci embodied in his work a new type of relationship to reality, which is characterized by a synthesis of sensory contemplation, theoretical generalization and practical action. He studied visual analyzers in detail and strived for a detailed description of the phenomena of human visual perception. The scientist formulated the dependence of the perception of the size of an object on distance, illumination, and density of the environment. He described visual contrast, irradiation and many other scientific principles.

1st period. Stage 4 (17th century – mid-19th century) – modern era , empirical introspective and associationist psychology is being formed . Consciousness is highlighted as a subject of psychology research. Formation takes place theoretical foundations psychology.

The mechanical principle as applied to living systems was first realized in the 17th century thanks to the introduction of the concept reflex as a mechanical motor response of a complex biological “machine” to external influence. Under the influence of mechanics, a new view of human behavior was established in psychology, without reference to its internal, mental phenomena, and biomechanics arose. Human body was considered as a kind of automatic machine operating according to the laws of physics. At the beginning of the modern era, it was more common rationalistic approach, which was developed by such scientists as R. Descartes, B. Spinoza, G.V. Leibniz.

The concept of the soul changed radically after René Descartes (1596-1650) introduced the concept of “consciousness.” It was considered as a criterion distinguishing between soul and body. Introspection, according to Descartes, is so obvious that it was used by him to indisputably prove the very existence of the subject. According to the criterion of introspection, only man has a soul, and animals do not have a soul and act like mechanical devices. He introduced the idea of ​​a reflex, in which the principle of mechanical determinism was implemented. The essence of the body consists in extension, while the essence of the soul, which is an independent substance, is that it consists of non-extended phenomena - thoughts. The soul is destined to have the most direct and reliable knowledge of its own acts and states, invisible to anyone; it is determined by a single sign - the immediate awareness of one’s own manifestations.

Christian Wolf(1679-1754) systematized and popularized the ideas of G. Leibniz. The scientist adhered to parallelism in solving the psychophysical problem, endowed the soul with spontaneous activity and deprived knowledge of the body of any explanatory value. H. Wolf's system was a compromise between empirical and rationalistic ideas in psychology. He identified two sciences in psychology: empirical (“Empirical Psychology,” 1732) and rational (“Rational Psychology,” 1734). It was after these books that the term “psychology” became widespread in relation to the study of human mental life.

According to a German scientist G. Leibniz(1646-1716), the unity of the physical and mental is based on the spiritual principle. The world consists of many monads. Each of them is “psychic” and endowed with the ability to perceive everything that happens in the Universe. He identified in the soul a region of clear knowledge, a region of vague knowledge and a region of the unconscious. He was the first to put forward the concept of the unconscious, phenomena in the psyche that are inaccessible to introspection, and distinguished between perception (unconscious perception) and apperception (conscious perception).

In the seventeenth century. psychological thought is revealed in the development of such teachings :

a) about the living body (including the human) as a mechanical system that does not need any hidden qualities and souls for its explanation; b) about consciousness as the ability inherent in an individual, through internal observation, to have the most reliable knowledge possible about one’s own mental states and acts; c) about passions (affects) as regulators of behavior embedded in the body by virtue of its own nature, directing a person to what is useful for him and turning him away from what is harmful; d) about the relationship between the physical (physiological) and mental.

However, in the middle of the century, the rapid development of exact sciences and industry led to the fact that sensationalism, presented in the concepts of D. Locke and T. Hobbes. Sensualism is the doctrine that the basis of mental life is made up of sensory impressions. T. Hobbes reduces the entire psyche to images. The beginning of all ideas is sensation. For example, memory is an idea and sensations that have “gone” into the past. The concept of “personality” has no psychological content.

At the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries. psychological knowledge begins to go beyond the boundaries of philosophy - into linguistics (for example, in the work of I. Herder “On the Origin of Language”), into ethnography (T. Waitz conducted a study of the mental life of primitive peoples, M. Lazarus and G. Steinthal laid the foundations of the psychology of peoples) , in biology and medicine.

2nd period (mid-19th century – present)– Psychology has become an independent science. Let's take a closer look at this period.

2nd period. Stage 1 (mid 19th century – 60s 19th century)– experimental methods for studying the activity of the nervous system and sensory organs are being developed. Psychophysics, psychometry, theories of sensations and perception are developing. Anatomical study nervous system created the prerequisites for the development and strengthening reflex concept. The transition of a nerve impulse along afferent nerves through the spinal cord to afferent nerves is called Bell - Magendie law. The doctrine of reflex was developed in most detail by M. Hall and I. Muller at the end of 30-40. XIX century

The English philosopher and psychologist G. Spencer was one of the founders of the philosophy of positivism. His theory intertwines the evolutionary approach and associationism. The scientist believed that psychology studies the relationship between external forms and internal ones, the associations between them. G. Spencer wrote in his scientific works that the psyche is a mechanism of adaptation to the environment; it arises naturally at a certain stage of evolution, when the living conditions of living beings become so complicated that it is impossible to adapt to them without adequately reflecting them.

The doctrine of evolution was most fully developed by the English naturalist C. Darwin(1809-1882). The fact that he established the variability of species, the discovery of the struggle of organic beings for existence on the basis of the laws of variability and the principle of heredity, gave a materialistic interpretation of the expediency and adaptability of organisms in nature.

2nd period. Stage 2 (late 60s of the 19th century – end of the 19th century)- psychology becomes an independent experimental field of scientific knowledge.

Main characteristic features of this period are:

· the emergence of the first scientific paradigms, institutions and psychological professional community;

· formation of ideas about the subject and methods of psychology;

· interaction of psychology with other disciplines, etc.

The emergence of psychology as an independent scientific discipline is associated with the emergence of the first scientific programs created by V. Wundt and I.M. Sechenov.

Wilhelm Wundt put forward a plan for the development of physiological psychology as a special science using the method of laboratory experiment. He opened the world's first psychological laboratory in 1879, on the basis of which two years later the Institute of Experimental Psychology was created, which became international center training of psychologists. The first scientific psychological journal “Philosophical Research” began to be published there. W. Wundt organized the First International Psychological Congress in Paris in 1889.

W. Wundt's research program included two directions:

· analysis of individual consciousness using experimental controlled observation of the subject’s own sensations, feelings, ideas;

· study of the “psychology of peoples”, i.e. psychological aspects of culture - language, myths, morals.

V.M. Bekhterev, N.N. Lange were trained in Leipzig, and when they returned home, they organized scientific laboratories and an institute in Russia.

The independent existence of psychological science began through the use of the experimental method. Laboratories that emerged, following Germany, in Russia, Great Britain, the USA, Italy, France, etc. became centers of psychological research.

Progressive program THEM. Sechenov(1829 -1905) had a great influence on the development of psychological paradigms in Russia (N.N. Lange, V.M. Bekhterev, I.P. Pavlov, A.A. Ukhtomsky). Russian physiologist I.M. Sechenov, in his book “Reflexes of the Brain” (1863), first expressed the idea that basic psychological processes and phenomena have a reflex cause and conditioning. All acts of conscious and unconscious human life are reflexes according to their method of origin, sources, structure and functioning. The main mental elements, according to Sechenov, are feeling and action, and the principle of constructing behavior is the coordination of action with feeling, which plays a signaling role.

I.P. Pavlov(1849-1936) created the doctrine about the higher nervous activity of living beings. He proceeded from the principle of an evolutionary biological explanation of the functions of the body as an integral system, the main regulator of which is the nervous system. Through experiments, he proved that the main act of behavior is conditioned reflex, implemented by higher nerve centers. He put forward the doctrine of two signaling systems: 1) sensory(in psychological terms, it corresponds to sensory images - sensations, ideas); 2) verbal(words, oral and written signs of speech correspond to it). I. Pavlov identified three main properties of the nervous system: strength, balance and mobility, which characterized temperament. The scientist created an international psychophysiological scientific school.

V.M. Bekhterev(1857-1927), based on the reflex concept of mental activity by I.M. Sechenov, developed a natural science theory of behavior, made a great contribution to reflexology. Developing his objective psychology as a psychology of behavior based on an experimental study of the reflex nature of the human psyche, the scientist included consciousness in the subject of psychology.

V.M. Bekhterev believed personality problem one of the most important in psychology and was one of the few psychologists of the 20th century who viewed personality as an integrative whole. He actually introduced the concepts of the individual, individuality and personality into psychology, believing that the individual is the biological basis on which the social sphere of the individual is built. In 1921, he published his fundamental work “Collective Reflexology,” which can be considered as the first textbook on social psychology in Russia.

V.M. Bekhterev founded Russia's first experimental psychological laboratory in 1885, and then the Psychoneurological Institute (1908), the world's first center for the comprehensive study of man.

Psychology in the twentieth century. At the beginning of the 20th century, a crisis situation arose in psychology. There were several reasons: the separation of psychology from practice, the inability to explain a number of fundamental problems of psychology, in particular the connection of mental phenomena with physiological phenomena and human behavior, the limitations of the introspection method, the collapse of ideas about consciousness as a subject of psychology, etc. The crisis led to the collapse of the established main directions of psychology . New main scientific directions have emerged: behaviorism, gestalt psychology and psychoanalysis ( Freudianism).

Founder behaviorism is an American scientist D.Watson(1878-1958), whose article “Psychology from the Point of View of Behaviorism,” published in 1913, marked the beginning of a new direction. The philosophical basis of behaviorism is a synthesis of positivism and pragmatism. This is a direction in American psychology of the twentieth century, which denies consciousness as a subject of scientific research and reduces the psyche to various forms behavior. Communication is taken as a unit of behavior stimulus and response. Behavior is a reaction (R) in response to an external stimulus (S) through which the individual adapts. Behavior includes any reaction, including muscular, vascular, etc. All unobservable physiological mechanisms and mental processes are excluded from the analysis. The main research methods in behaviorism are observation and experiment. Skill and learning are main problem behaviorism. A supporter of classical behaviorism is B. Skinner(1904-1990). He proceeded from the fact that development is learning, which is determined by external stimuli. Based on the idea that not only skills, but also knowledge are variations in behavior, the scientist develops its special type - operant behavior. Skinner in the 50s. 20th century developed programmed learning method, which made it possible to optimize educational process. The principle of dividing the process of solving a learning task into operations that are controlled by reinforcement, serving as a feedback signal, was introduced.

In the 30s of the twentieth century, a new direction emerged in American psychology - neobehaviorism. Using the ideas of Gestalt psychology and Freudianism, as well as Pavlov’s doctrine of higher nervous activity, neobehaviorism sought to overcome the limitations of the original behaviorist doctrine, preserving its main focus on the biologization of the human psyche. Neobehaviorism supplemented the basic postulate of behaviorism with the concept of “intermediate variables” (needs, a system of value motives and a behavioral field, a situation) as factors that serve as a mediating link between the influencing stimulus and the response muscle reactions. The main representatives are American psychologists E. Tolman (1886-1959) and K. Hull (1884-1953).

Gestalt psychology- a direction in Western psychology that arose in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century and put forward a program for studying the psyche from the point of view of holistic structures (gestalts - [German Gestalt - form, structure]), primary in relation to their components. The main representatives of this direction are German psychologists M. Wertheimer, W. Köhler, K. Koffka, K. Levin. The position that the internal, systemic organization of the whole determines the properties and functions of the parts that form them was initially applied to the experimental study of perception. This made it possible to study a number important features visual perception: constancy, structure, dependence of the image of an object (“figure”) on its environment (“background”).

M. Wertheimer(1880-1943) believed that the primary data of psychology are holistic structures (gestalts). Gestalts are inherent own characteristics and laws. The properties of parts are determined by the structure into which they belong.

V. Koehler(1887-1967) conducted scientific experiments and introduced the concept " insight" [English] Insight - discretion] - sudden grasp of relationships when solving intellectual problems. This concept has become key in Gestalt psychology. It has a universal character. It became the basis of the Gestalt interpretation of adaptive forms of behavior, which behaviorists explained by the principle of “trial, error and random success.”

K. Koffka (1886-1941) studied the problems of development and education of children. The process of mental development itself is divided into two independent and parallel processes - maturation and learning. The scientist believed that in the process of development, learning can advance or lag behind maturation; most often they run parallel to each other. A study of the development of perception in children in the laboratory of K. Koffka showed that the combination of figure and background on which a given object is demonstrated plays an important role in the development of perception. The basic properties of perception appear gradually, with the maturation of gestalts. This is how constancy and correctness of perception, its meaningfulness appear.

K. Levin (1890-1947) developed psychological field theory. He proceeded from the fact that a person lives and develops in the psychological field of objects surrounding him, each of which has a certain charge (valence). The experiments of this scientist proved that for every person this valence has its own sign, although at the same time there are objects that have the same attractive or repulsive force for everyone. I influence a person, objects evoke needs in him, which the scientist considered as a kind of energy charges that cause human tension. In this state, a person strives for relaxation and satisfaction of needs.

Freudianism. The direction is named after the Austrian psychologist S. Freud and explains the development and structure of personality. It is based method psychological analysis . S. Freud began his scientific research with an analysis and generalization of psychotherapeutic practice, and only then turned the accumulated experience into a psychological theory. For psychoanalysis key concepts“conscious”, “unconscious” and “preconscious”. Since the beginning of the 20s, Freud has distinguished I (Ego), It (Id) and Super-I (Super-Ego). Two latest systems are localized in the “unconscious” layer. It (Id) is the focus of blind instincts, either sexual or aggressive, seeking immediate gratification regardless of the subject’s relationship to external reality. The “ego” perceives information about the surrounding world and the state of the body, stores it in memory and regulates the individual’s response in the interests of his self-preservation. The “superego” includes moral standards, prohibitions on encouragement, unconsciously acquired by a person in the process of upbringing, primarily from parents. Freud introduced a number of important problems into psychology - unconscious motivation, the relationship between normal and pathological phenomena of the psyche, its defense mechanisms, the role of the sexual factor, the influence of childhood trauma on the behavior of an adult, the complex structure of personality, contradictions and conflicts in the mental organization of the subject. He defended the principles of the subordination of the inner world and human behavior to asocial drives, the predominance of libido in the motivational-need sphere, and the antagonism of consciousness and the unconscious. At the same time, he inadequately interpreted the mental factor and considered it decisive for both physical and social life.

Supporters neo-Freudianism strive to overcome the biologism of classical Freudianism and introduce its main provisions into the social context. K. Horney, E. Fromm, G.S. Sullivan, A. Adler, K. Jung are the most famous representatives of neo-Freudianism.

Humanistic psychology- a direction in Western psychology that recognizes as its main subject the personality as a unique integral system, which represents an “open possibility” of self-actualization, inherent only to man. The main point in it is a person’s aspiration to the future, to the free realization of his potentials (G. Allport), especially creative ones (A. Maslow), to strengthening self-confidence and the possibility of achieving the “ideal self” (K. Rogers). Client-centered supportive psychotherapy is emerging. Humanistic psychology was built on the basis of the philosophical school existentialism.

G. Allport (1897-1967) created his theory of personality. One of the main postulates of his theory was the position that personality is an open and self-developing system. A person is, first of all, a social being who cannot develop without contacts with people around him, with society. Society stimulates the development of some personality traits and inhibits the development of others.

A. Maslow (1908-1970) believed that the most valuable thing in the psyche is selfhood, the desire for self-development. He created a hierarchy of human needs, the highest being the need for self-actualization. Society, on the one hand, is necessary for a person, since he can self-actualize and express himself only in society. On the other hand, society cannot but hinder self-actualization, since any society strives to make a person a stereotyped representative of the environment.

Transactional Analysis- a direction of psychology developed in the 50s of the 20th century by the American psychologist and psychiatrist E. Bern, including: 1) structural analysis(ego state theory); 2) the actual transactional analysis of activity and communication, based on the concept of “transaction” as the interaction of the ego states of two individuals entering into communication; 3) analysis of psychological “games”; 4) script analysis (life script analysis). Psychotherapy, developed by Berne on the basis of transactional analysis, is designed to free a person from the scripts that program his life, through their awareness, through contrasting them with spontaneity, spontaneity, intimacy and sincerity in interpersonal relationships, through the development of reasonable and independent behavior.

Cognitive Psychology – a direction of psychology that arose in connection with the development of cybernetics, computer science, and mathematical computer programming and was a reaction to psychological concepts that ignore consciousness and thinking. In this scientific direction, the main attention is paid to how a person perceives, processes and stores various information about the world and about himself, how he uses it when making decisions and in everyday behavior. A significant stimulus to the development of cognitive psychology was the development of high-level computer languages ​​and programming technology.

Cognitive psychology studies how a person’s consciousness and his knowledge system works. A person’s cognition of the surrounding world is considered as an active process, a necessary component of which is the psychological means that are formed in the learning processes.

A new significant contribution to experimental psychology was made by R. Cattell. He developed a system of tests aimed at studying personal qualities. At the beginning of the 20th century, the number of tests used in psychology began to increase rapidly.

N.N. Lange is known as one of the founders of experimental psychology in Russia. He studied sensations, perception, attention. G.I. Chelpanov founded the first psychological institute in our country in 1912.

S.L. Rubinstein, L.S. Vygotsky, A.R. Luria and others were engaged in the development of psychology, raising a new generation of scientists: A.N. Leontiev, B.G. Ananyev, A.V. Zaporozhets, D.B. Elkonin, P.Ya. Galperin and others.

L.S. Vygotsky (1896-1934) is an outstanding Russian psychologist, teacher, and defectologist. He developed the doctrine of the development of mental functions in the process of communication-mediated acquisition by an individual of cultural values . The scientist identified the mechanism of environmental influence on the development of higher mental functions of a person. The scientist considered such a mechanism interiorization, first of all, the internalization of sounds - stimuli-means artificially created by humanity, designed to control one’s own and others’ behavior. All internal processes are a product of interiorization. In the article “Consciousness as a Problem of Behavior” (1925), he outlines a plan for the study of mental functions based on their role as indispensable regulators of behavior, which in humans includes speech components. Perceiving the word as an action (a speech component, then a speech reaction), Vygotsky considers it as a special sociocultural mediator between the individual and the world.

S.L. Rubinstein (1899-1960) - an outstanding Russian psychologist and philosopher. The scientist was engaged in the development of methodological problems in psychology. Nominated principle of unity of consciousness and activity. In the article “The Principle of Creative Amateur Performance” (1922), he puts forward the principle of the subject and his activity. A person and his psyche are formed and manifested in practical activity, therefore they must be studied through their manifestations in the main types of activity (in play, learning, cognition, work, etc.). S.L. Rubinstein in the late 40s. developed a general philosophical the principle of determinism. The scientist believed that external causes influence an object through internal conditions (“Being and Consciousness”, 1957). S.L. Rubinstein and his students created the theory of thinking as an activity and as a process. Personality acts as complete system internal conditions through which all external influences are refracted. S.L. Rubinstein carried out a methodological concretization of the philosophical concept subject which carries out and in which the connection between consciousness and activity is realized. Such a subject is a person. The scientist considered personality as the basis for the connection of all mental processes owned and managed by it. In addition, he understands the personality in the totality of his relationships with the surrounding world, realized through activity, cognition and communication.

Questions for self-control.

1. Which ones are the first? scientific theories, do you know the concepts about the human psyche?

2. Characterize the ideas of scientists of the ancient world about psychology.

3. How did psychology develop in the Middle Ages?

4. How did objective psychology develop in modern times?

5. How did experimental research take place in psychology?

6. What is behaviorism, neobehaviorism?

7. What scientific aspects of Gestalt psychology do you know?

8. What are the features of Freudianism and neo-Freudianism?

9. Which representatives of humanistic psychology do you remember?

10. Which Russian scientist contributed to the development of psychological science?

The origins of psychological knowledge lie in ancient philosophy.

Stages of development of psychology as a science:

1) until the beginning of the 18th century, psychology developed as a science of the soul within the framework of ancient philosophy. (Democritus, Plato, Aristotle)

2) psychology as a science of consciousness belongs to the “era of the New Age” (mid-XVII - mid-XIX centuries).

At this time, the formation of Western psychological thought was greatly influenced by the works of Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650)

3) the formation of psychology as an independent experimental science dates back to the 60-70s of the 19th century.

The founder of experimental psychology is Wilhelm Wundt (1832 – 1920).

2. Subject and tasks of general psychology. Principles and structure.

Psychology is a science that studies objective patterns, manifestations and mechanisms of the psyche.

Tasks of psychology:

Qualitative study of mental phenomena;

Analysis of the formation and development of mental phenomena;

Study of physiological mechanisms of mental phenomena;

Promoting the systematic introduction of psychic knowledge into people’s lives and activities.

Principles:

Determinism;

Unity of consciousness and activity;

Development of the psyche.

Structure:

Social psychological;

Age-related psychology;

Psychology of management;

Engineering psychology (man and technology);

Labor Psychology;

Conflictology.

3. The concept of the psyche and consciousness. Structure of consciousness.

Psyche, a special quality of highly organized matter, is a form of reflection by the subject of objective reality.

Only inherent in man highest form mental reflection is consciousness.

Main functions:

Reflection;

Management and regulation of behavior and activities.

Mental phenomena are divided into: 1) mental state and 2) mental properties (temperament, character, abilities).

Mental processes are divided into: 1) emotional; 2) cognitive (memory, thinking, imagination); 3) strong-willed.

4. Research methods in modern psychology.

There are four groups of methods for cognition of psychological phenomena:

Organizational methods: 1) comparative method (division into groups by age, form of activity, etc.); 2) longitudinal method (examination of the same individuals over a long period of time); 3) complex method (representatives of different sciences participate in the study of the object).

Empirical methods: 1) observation and introspection; 2) experimental methods; 3) psychodiagnostic methods (tests, questionnaires, questionnaires, sociometry, interviews, conversations); 4) analysis of activity products; 5) biographical methods.

Data processing methods: 1) quantitative (statistical); 2) qualitative (analysis).

Interpretive methods: 1) genetic method (analysis of development highlighting individual phases, stages, critical moments); 2) structural method (establishing structural connections between all personality characteristics).

Basic methods of psychology. Observation. The method scientifically explains the causes of a psychological phenomenon, and is carried out in a natural situation according to a program that lists the expected actions and reactions of those observed, recording the frequency of their occurrence.

An experiment is the intervention of a researcher in the activities of a subject in order to create conditions in which this or that psychological fact is revealed.