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Speculative psychology of the 17th century. Development of psychological thought in the 17th century Development of psychological knowledge in the 17th century

interdependence of such abilities as movement in space, desire. Movement as an initial ability was emphasized even in ancient anatomical psychology (Democritus and others). Desire like a train in motion has a similarly long history of research. Yavorsky proves the unity of the soul through the idea of functional interaction. One life function can promote or hinder another. The intense action of the intellect interferes with digestion, excessive sensation leads to a disorder of intellectual action - a sign that all these abilities come from one soul. Yavorsky carries out a critical understanding of Aristotle's theories on the basis of scientific achievements of the 17th century. New meaning is put into the traditional structure of psychology.
A more significant proof of the unity of the human soul, according to Yavorsky, is genetic grounds. Types of the soul - vegetative, sensual, intelligent - arise as organs of a single soul, are consistently improved, specializing in sending various actions. Some of them appear in childhood, others in youth or old age. In Yavorsky we are not talking about different souls, but about the unique tools and means of nature that the body uses in its life. Nature moves from less perfect to more perfect actions. The matter of which the human being consists gradually improves in its organization and first carries out vegetative impulses, then sensory ones, then reason. Having established the divisions of the soul on the basis of its specific abilities, Yavorsky raises the question of the ideal or material nature of these souls.
Having made a fundamental statement that the mental soul does not depend on matter, Yavorsky nevertheless recognizes the empirical facts of the dependence of spiritual actions on bodily ones, on the objective world, from which the soul takes forms (eidals) and on which, in turn, the process of understanding depends. The use of the mind depends on bodily dispositions (inclinations), although not directly, but through the actions of the imagination
Plant and animal souls are defined as material. These souls, dividing as parts of a whole, depend on material existence. They do not perceive anything immaterial, they do not form universal, abstract concepts. They perceive only what has color, taste, and other material qualities.
If the soul were divisible, one part of it would sin, the other would repent; one would hate the other. The soul is located throughout the body, and at the same time, it is independent of the body. There are no separated parts of the body of the soul. Yavorsky connects these thoughts with the idea of localization of mental functions. It is the brain that has the “disposition” (inclination) to be the substrate of the soul.
Reflecting the main trends in psychology of the 17th century. , Yavorsky not only connects all levels of the soul with bodily acts, but also focuses on the reflex mechanism of these acts.
Yavorsky calls reflex action a “necessary sensory action,” which is made possible by the integrity of the nervous system, the brain.

3. DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL THOUGHT IN THE 17TH CENTURY AND IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT (XVIII CENTURY)

With the approval of simple technical devices in social production, the principle of their operation increasingly attracted scientific thought to explain the functions of the body in their image and likeness. The first great achievement in this aspect was Harvey's discovery of the circulatory system, in which the heart was considered a kind of pump that pumps fluid, which does not require the participation of the soul.

A new draft of a psychological theory aimed at explaining the principles of Galileo and Newton's new mechanics belonged to the French naturalist Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650). He presented a theoretical model of the organism as a mechanically working automaton. With this understanding, the living body, which had previously been considered as controlled by the soul, was freed from its influence and interference; the functions of the “body machine,” which include “perception, imprinting ideas, retaining ideas in memory, internal aspirations... are performed in this machine like the movements of a clock.”

Later, Descartes introduced the concept of reflex, which became fundamental to psychology. If Harvey “removed” the soul from the category of regulators of internal organs, then Descartes “did away” with it at the level of the entire organism. The reflex scheme was as follows. An external impulse sets in motion light air-like particles, “animal spirits,” carried into the brain through “tubes” that make up the peripheral nervous system, from there the “animal spirits” are reflected to the muscles. Descartes' scheme, having explained the force driving the body, discovered the reflex nature of behavior.

One of Descartes' most important works for psychology is called "The Passions of the Soul." In it, the scientist not only “deprived” the soul of its royal role in the Universe, but also “elevated” it to the level of a substance equal to other substances of nature. There has been a revolution in the concept of the soul. The subject of psychology became consciousness. Believing that the machine of the body and the consciousness occupied with its own thoughts, ideas and desires are two entities (substances) independent of each other, Descartes was faced with the need to explain how they coexist in man. The explanation he proposed was called psychophysical interaction. It was as follows: the body influences the soul, awakening passions in it in the form of sensory perceptions, emotions, etc. The soul, possessing thinking and will, influences the body, forcing it to work and change its course. The organ where these two incompatible substances communicate is one of the endocrine glands - the “pineal gland” (epiphysis).

The question of the interaction of soul and body has absorbed the intellectual energy of many minds for centuries. Having freed the body from the soul, Descartes “liberated” the soul (psyche) from the body; the body can only move, the soul can only think; the principle of operation of the body is a reflex (i.e. the brain reflects external influences); the principle of the soul’s work is reflection (from Latin - “turning back”, i.e. consciousness reflects its own thoughts, ideas, sensations).

Descartes created a new form of dualism in the form of the relationship between soul and body, and divided feelings into two categories: those rooted in the life of the organism and purely intellectual. In his last work - a letter to the Swedish Queen Christina - he explained the essence of love as a feeling that has two forms - bodily passion without love and intellectual love without passion. In his opinion, only the first is amenable to causal explanation, since it depends on the organism and biological mechanics; the second can only be understood and described. Descartes believed that science as knowledge of the causes of phenomena is powerless in the face of the highest and most significant manifestations of the mental life of an individual. The result of his similar reasoning was the concept of “two psychologies” - explanatory, appealing to reasons associated with the functions of the body, and descriptive, consisting in the fact that we explain only the body, while we understand the soul.

Attempts to refute the dualism of Descartes, to affirm the unity of the universe, to end the gap between the physical and the spiritual, nature and consciousness, were made by a number of great thinkers of the 17th century. One of them was the Dutch philosopher Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza (1632-1677). He taught that there is one eternal substance - God, or Nature - with an infinite number of attributes (inherent properties). Of these, the philosopher believed, only two are open to our limited understanding - extension and thinking; From this it is clear that it is pointless to imagine a person as a meeting place of two substances: a person is an integral physical-spiritual being.

An attempt to build a psychological doctrine about man as an integral being is captured in his main work - “Ethics”. It sets the task of explaining the whole variety of feelings (affects) as motivating forces of human behavior with the accuracy and rigor of geometric evidence. It was argued that there are three motivating forces: attraction, joy and sadness. It has been proven that the whole variety of emotional states is derived from these fundamental affects; at the same time, joy increases the body’s ability to act, while sadness reduces it.

Spinoza adopted from the German philosopher and mathematician Leibniz (1646-1716), who discovered differential and integral calculus, the following idea of the unity of the physical and mental. The basis of this unity is the spiritual principle. The world consists of countless spiritual entities - monads (from the gr. monos - one). Each of them is “psychic”, i.e. not material (like an atom), but endowed with the ability to perceive everything that happens in the Universe. The imperceptible activity of “small perceptions”—unconscious perceptions—continuously occurs in the soul. In those cases when they are realized, this becomes possible due to the fact that a special act - apperception - is added to simple perception. It includes attention and memory. So, Leibniz introduced the concept of the unconscious psyche.

To the question of how spiritual and physical phenomena relate to each other, Leibniz answered with a formula known as psychophysical parallelism. In his opinion, they cannot influence one another. The dependence of the psyche on bodily influences is an illusion. The soul and body perform their operations independently and automatically. However, divine wisdom is reflected in the fact that there is a pre-established harmony between them. they are like a pair of clocks that always show the same time, because they are run with the greatest precision.

When completing this section of psychology, it is necessary to mention the name

English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). Before him, rationalism reigned in psychological teachings (from the Latin racio - reason). Hobbes proposed taking experience as the basis of knowledge. They contrasted rationalism with empiricism (from the Latin empirio - experience). This is how empirical psychology arose.

In the 18th century in Europe, when the process of strengthening capitalist relations continued, a new movement, the Enlightenment, expanded and strengthened. Its representatives considered ignorance to be the main cause of all human ills. It was assumed that in the fight against it, society would get rid of social disasters and vices and that goodness and justice would reign everywhere. These ideas acquired different tones in different countries due to the uniqueness of their socio-historical development. Thus, in England, I. Newton (1643-1727) created a new mechanics, perceived as a model and ideal of exact knowledge, as the triumph of reason.

In accordance with Newton's understanding of nature, the English physician Hartley (1705-1757) explained the human mental world. He presented it as a product of the body's work - a "vibrator machine." The following was assumed. The vibration of the external ether through the vibrations of the nerves causes vibrations of the brain matter, which turn into vibrations of the muscles. In parallel with this, mental “companions” of vibrations arise, combine and replace each other in the brain - from feeling to abstract thinking and voluntary actions. All this happens on the basis of the law of associations. Hartley counted. that the human mental world develops gradually as a result of the complication of primary sensory elements through associations of the contiguity of elements in time. For example, a child’s behavior is regulated by two motivational forces - pleasure and suffering.

The task of education, in his opinion, comes down to strengthening in people such connections that would turn them away from immoral deeds and bring pleasure from moral ones. and the stronger these connections are, the greater the chances for a person to become a morally virtuous person, and for the whole society - more perfect.

Other outstanding thinkers of the Enlightenment were C. Helvetius

(1715-1771), P. Holbach (1723-1789) and D. Diderot (1713-1784). Defending the idea of the emergence of the spiritual world from the physical world, they presented the “man-machine” endowed with a psyche as a product of external influences and natural history. In the final period of the Enlightenment, the physician-philosopher P. Cabanis (1757-1808) put forward the position that thinking is a function of the brain.

At the same time, he proceeded from observations of the bloody experience of the revolution, the leaders of which instructed him to find out the awareness of the convict, whose head was cut off at the guillotine, of his suffering, evidence of which could be convulsions. Cabanis answered this question in the negative. Only a person with a brain is capable of thinking. The movements of a headless body are reflexive in nature and are not conscious. Consciousness is a function of the brain. P. Cabanis considered the expression of thoughts in words and gestures to be external products of brain activity. The external products of brain activity include the expression of thoughts in words and gestures. Behind the thought itself, in his opinion, is hidden an unknown nervous process, the inseparability of mental phenomena and the nervous substrate. By arguing for the need to move from the speculative to the empirical study of this inseparability, he prepared the way for the movement of scientific thought in the next century.

The Italian thinker D. Vico (1668-1744) in his treatise “Foundations of a new science of the general nature of things” (1725) put forward the idea that every society passes successively through three eras: gods, heroes and people. As for the mental properties of a person, they, according to D. Vico, arise in the course of the history of society. In particular, he associated the emergence of abstract thinking with the development of trade and political life. The name of D. Vico is associated with the idea of supra-individual spiritual power, characteristic of the people as a whole and constituting the fundamental basis of culture and history.

In Russia, the spiritual atmosphere of the Enlightenment era determined the philosophical and psychological views of A.N. Radishchev (1749-1802). A.N. Radishchev was looking for the key to the psychology of people in the conditions of their social life (“Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”), for which he was sentenced to death, replaced by exile to Siberia.

So, in the Age of Enlightenment, two directions arose in the development of problems of psychological knowledge: the interpretation of the psyche as a function of highly organized matter - the brain, which contributed to the experimental study of those phenomena that were considered the product of a disembodied soul; the doctrine according to which the individual psyche is determined by social conditions, mores, customs, and the spiritual world of people who are driven by their own energy of cultural creativity.

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Descartes' second achievement was the discovery of the reflex. He introduced the concept of reflex, which became fundamental to physiology and psychology. Descartes saw the nervous system in the form of “tubes” through which light air-like particles rush (he called them “animal spirits”). He believed that an external impulse sets these “spirits” in motion, carrying them into the brain, from where they are automatically reflected to the muscles. The term “reflex”, which appeared after Descartes, meant “reflection”.

Muscle response is an integral component of behavior. Therefore, the Cartesian scheme belongs to the category of great discoveries. She discovered the reflexive nature of behavior; not an effort of spirit, but a restructuring of the body on the basis of strictly causal laws of its mechanics will provide a person with power over his own nature.

Starting with Descartes, psychology ceased to exist as a science of the soul, and began to act as a science of consciousness. Descartes' recognition of the existence of two different independent substances determined the difference in the methods of knowing them: the experimental method for analyzing the mechanics of the body, introspection for knowing the soul.

Materialist theory of T. Hobbes One of Hobbes' merits was to establish the unity of empirical and rational knowledge. Hobbes argued that there can only be one truth, and it is the one that is achieved and acquired on the basis of experience and reason. Cognition must begin with sensibility as the initial stage on the path to generalizations. The universal properties of things are established using induction, which is the path from knowledge of actions to knowledge of causes.

After determining the universal causes, a return path, or deduction, is necessary, which ensures the transition from known causes to the knowledge of new, diverse actions and phenomena. In Hobbes' methodology, induction and deduction, sensory and rational knowledge are mutually proposed and interdependent stages of a single cognitive process.

Revealing the nature of ideas, Hobbes puts forward a conjecture about the associative mechanism, although Hobbes has not yet introduced the term “association” itself. Concatenations of images of consciousness can be random and active in nature. The passive flow of associations is characteristic of dreams. The highest level of associations is characterized by the fact that here the flow of images and ideas is controlled by the person himself. Purposeful manipulation of images and ideas is the essence of thinking.

The mechanism of mental activity was interpreted by Hobbes on the model of arithmetic operations. The two main mental operations were “addition” and “subtraction”. The operation of addition corresponded to the connection of representations, and the operation of subtraction corresponded to the dismemberment and separation of representations and images.

According to Hobbes, speech plays an important role in the cognitive process, acting in two functions - as an instrument of thought and as a means of communication. Hobbes was the first to most clearly distinguish the denoting and expressive functions of speech. In relation to the subject, speech acts as a mental process in which words act as a label, a label of some thing or phenomenon. They become instruments of thought, a means of preserving and reproducing experience.

B. Spinoza's teaching on the psyche The criticism of Hobbes's Cartesian dualism was supported by the great Dutch thinker Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza. However, unlike Hobbes, Spinoza followed the path of a materialist interpretation of rationalism. Spinoza took Euclid's deductive-geometric scheme as an ideal and model for constructing and presenting his teaching.

With the intention of overcoming Descartes' dualism, Spinoza puts forward the doctrine of a single substance, its attributes and modes, which is the core of his entire philosophical and psychological system. It is based on the desire to explain nature from itself. He argues that the first cause of everything that exists and of itself is a substance that exists objectively, independent of any external stimulus and creator.

Sensualism of D. Locke Traditions opposite to rationalism in the study of human cognitive abilities were laid down by the largest English thinker of the 17th century. D. Locke (1632–1704). Locke's main idea was that knowledge cannot arise by itself. There are no innate ideas or principles. All ideas and concepts come from experience.

According to Locke, reflection and external experience are interconnected. Reflection is a derivative formation arising on the basis of external experience. Reflection is, as it were, an experience about experience. But since reflective activity generates its own ideas, it was considered by Locke as another relatively independent source of knowledge.

Locke's doctrine of external and internal experience resulted in two important points. By affirming the connection between external and internal experience, he tried to restore the unity of various forms of knowledge. The products of reflection are general concepts and complex ideas, and the latter can only be the result of mental activity.

An important section of Locke's empirical concept is associated with the doctrine of simple and complex ideas. He called the indecomposable elements of consciousness simple ideas. They can be obtained both from external experience and from reflection, and simultaneously from both sources. Once the soul has acquired simple ideas, it moves from passive contemplation to active transformation and processing of simple ideas into complex ones.

Locke represented the formation of complex ideas as a simple mechanical combination of the initial elements of experience. Combining simple ideas is done in various ways. They are association, connection, relation and separation.

Locke assigned a special role to speech in the formation of ideas of external and internal experience, and in the transformation of simple ideas into complex ones. The philosopher attributes two functions to speech: the function of expression and the function of designation. But words and speech are not only tools of thinking, but also a means of exchanging ideas and thoughts. The main goal of any message is to be understood.

In the 17th century, a new era began in the development of psychological knowledge. It is characterized by attempts to comprehend the human spiritual world primarily from general philosophical, speculative positions, without the necessary experimental basis. R. Descartes (1596-1650) comes to the conclusion about the complete difference that exists between the soul of a person and his body: the body by its nature is always divisible, while the spirit is indivisible. However, the soul is capable of producing movements in the body. This contradictory dualistic teaching gave rise to a problem called psychophysical: how are bodily (physiological) and mental (spiritual) processes in a person related to each other? Descartes laid the foundations for the deterministic (causal) concept of behavior with its central idea of reflex as a natural motor response of the body to external physical stimulation.

An attempt to reunite the body and soul of man, separated by the teachings of Descartes, was made by the Dutch philosopher B. Spinoza (1632-1677). There is no special spiritual principle; it is always one of the manifestations of extended substance (matter). Soul and body are determined by the same material causes. Spinoza believed that this approach makes it possible to consider mental phenomena with the same accuracy and objectivity as lines and surfaces are considered in geometry. The German philosopher G. Leibniz (1646-1716), rejecting the equality of the psyche and consciousness established by Descartes, introduced the concept of the unconscious psyche. In the human soul there is a continuous hidden work of psychic forces - countless small perceptions (perceptions). From them arise conscious desires and passions. Psychology during this period, as well as in the first stages of the development of ancient science, strengthened its connection with philosophy. This was explained by the fact that, while remaining within the framework of the science of the soul (its own subject), it was more difficult for psychology to get rid of scholastic dogmas and separate from theology. However, the focus on philosophy at that time narrowed the subject of psychology, which considered mainly the general patterns of development of the human psyche, and not the living world as a whole. The development of natural science at that time did not yet make it possible to build a full-fledged concept of the psyche (especially the human psyche) on its basis. However, a close connection with philosophy did not mean that psychology at that time was not looking for its own subject of research, a specific definition of its field of activity. This area was understood, first of all, as a study of the ways in which a person develops a picture of the world around him and himself. Moreover, this picture, as it seemed, should have been conscious. Following the psychologists of the Middle Ages, scientists saw the difference between man and other living beings in the awareness of the soul, in the mind. This is how the subject of psychology was clarified, which became the science of consciousness. At the same time, from several questions,

studied by the psychology of antiquity - about cognition, about driving forces and

the laws of the psyche, the mechanisms of behavior regulation - it was precisely the problems of cognition that came to the fore.

This was due to several reasons. The first, which was mentioned above, is the desire to prove a person’s capabilities in comprehending the truth on the basis of knowledge, not faith. Communication was considered by ancient psychologists as one of the components of mental life. Thus, the problems of driving forces and regulation of external activity dropped out of the study for some time. At the same time, questions about the content and features of consciousness led scientists to study its role in human life, and therefore in human behavior. So again, psychology faced the need to analyze the difference between reasonable and unreasonable (affective) behavior, the boundaries of human freedom. Thus, an analysis of the formation of the subject of psychology during this period gives a contradictory picture. On the one hand, methodologically, psychology was limited to questions of consciousness and ways of its formation, stages of development of the image of the world and oneself. On the other hand, the study of the content and functions of consciousness led to the actual inclusion of behavior, driving forces and regulation of not only internal, but also external activity in the circle of research of leading psychologists of that time. Moreover, if at the end of the 16th century. problems of the subject of psychology, the objectivity of methods for studying the psyche, and the analysis of the data obtained, which were central to the theory of F. Bacon, came to the fore; then, starting with R. Descartes, the problems of the functions of the soul, its role in cognition and behavior became no less significant.

At the beginning of the New Age, despite the efforts of F. Bacon, the rationalistic approach was more widespread, which was developed by such famous scientists as R. Descartes, G.W. Leibniz. This was largely due to the need for psychology and philosophy to overcome the consequences of scholasticism.

However, by the middle of the century, the rapid development of science and industry made it obvious that it was necessary to take into account new requirements in psychology, and therefore sensationalism, represented at that time in the concepts of D. Locke and T. Hobbes, began to become increasingly widespread.

The term "empirical psychology" was introduced by the German philosopher of the 18th century. X. Wolf to denote a direction in psychological science, the main principle of which is the observation of specific mental phenomena, their classification and the establishment of an experimentally verifiable, natural connection between them. The English philosopher J. Locke (1632-1704) views the human soul as a passive but perceptive medium, comparing it to a blank slate on which nothing is written. Under the influence of sensory impressions, the human soul, awakening, is filled with simple ideas and begins to think, i.e. form complex ideas. Locke introduced into the language of psychology the concept of association - a connection between mental phenomena, in which the actualization of one of them entails the appearance of another.

The emergence of strictly objective research methods and changes in the subject of psychology also affected the understanding of the concept of “soul” by a new generation of psychologists. Since it no longer played the same role in explaining the facts of mental life, then, according to Occam’s principle, psychology at that time did not feel the need to use this concept in its research. However, in this case it was necessary to find a different approach to explain the activity of the body, to identify a new source of energy for internal and external activity. This was helped by the laws of mechanics, discovered by modern physics of that time, the laws of I. Newton. It was they who were used by Descartes to substantiate the first theory of reflex in the history of psychology, which over time received increasing justification in discoveries in fields of science adjacent to psychology and became one of the postulates of modern psychology.

At the beginning of the 19th century, new approaches to the psyche began to take shape. From now on, it was not mechanics, but physiology that stimulated the growth of psychological knowledge. Having as its subject a special natural body, physiology turned it into an object of experimental study. At first, the guiding principle of physiology was the “anatomical principle.” Functions (including mental ones) were studied from the point of view of their dependence on the structure of the organ and its anatomy. Physiology translated the speculative, sometimes fantastic views of the previous era into the language of experience.

Psychology became an independent science in the 60s of the 19th century. It was associated with the creation of special research institutions - psychological laboratories and institutes, departments in higher educational institutions, as well as with the introduction of experiments to study mental phenomena. The first version of experimental psychology as an independent scientific discipline was the physiological psychology of the German scientist W. Wundt (1832-1920), the creator of the world's first psychological laboratory. In the field of consciousness, he believed, a special mental causality operates, subject to scientific objective research.

Conclusion

A historical examination of specific facts, the most important events and trends in the development of psychological science allows us to state that until now there has not been a unified approach, a common understanding of what psychology studies. The differences in points of view on the most central issues of psychology, starting with the main one - the question of the subject of psychology, as well as different approaches to understanding personality, the essence of mental development, intelligence, etc. are so significant that, as G. Allport wrote, “sometimes it seems that Apart from devotion to their profession, psychologists have little in common... their opinions differ regarding the subject of research. In different psychological approaches, the following appear as such: experience, behavior, psychophysical connections, conscious thought processes, the unconscious, human nature and even the “totality of human mental existence "Isn't history (and maybe the current state of our science) a series of misconceptions and errors? P.Ya. Galperin, considering the historical-psychological process in the context of current problems, among which "the question of the subject of study is not only the first and today, perhaps, the most difficult of the great theoretical questions of psychology, but at the same time a question of urgent practical importance,” gave such an answer to this question. Analyzing historical facts, he identified the understanding of the subject of psychology contained in them (explicitly or latently). According to Halperin, throughout the history of psychology, three definitions of its subject have been put forward: soul, consciousness, behavior. He assessed all of them as “insufficient”, “insolvent”, “erroneous”. Is it possible, based on such an assessment of the results of the work of predecessors, to discard the material of their research and start all over again? Apparently, this position contradicts one of the most important principles of scientific knowledge - the principle of historicism.

Due to the exceptional complexity of the reality studied in psychology, no matter what it is called - psyche, consciousness, etc. - it has not received a completely adequate definition in any of the approaches that have developed in the history of science: each of them contains only a moment of truth about it . But there is such a moment, and it must be revealed! The human psyche is both conscious and unconscious, it is social and has biological prerequisites, it mediates our life and is itself a product of this life, it is determined by external influences and is free from them, it has knowledge and experience, it is holistic, but and consists of many components, it is both a phenomenon and a process. It is wrong to consider any one of these provisions as absolute truth or another as absolutely false. The views of predecessors appeared with historical necessity; they were determined by the conditions of their time and together form the logic of the development of scientific psychological thought as a process of successive transformations of the subject area of psychology in the context of its objective causes and conditions.

Psychology began with the idea of the soul, and, as L.S. astutely noted. Vygotsky, “psychology as a science had to begin with the idea of the soul.” He further explains this position, assessing this idea as “the first scientific hypothesis of ancient man, a huge conquest of thought.” For more than 20 centuries, it has been used to explain all the vital processes of the body. The concept of the soul in its content was not only psychological, but broader, rather biological, explaining all life processes using a similar interpretation. “We see in this just as little ignorance and error as we do not consider slavery the result of bad character,” wrote L.S. Vygotsky. The reason for this view of the nature of the soul was insufficient knowledge about the structure and work of the body (back in the 17th century, the wise Spinoza noted: “what the body is capable of, no one has yet determined, that is, experience has not yet taught anyone , what actions the body is capable of by virtue of the laws of nature alone, considered exclusively as a body, and what it is incapable of, unless it is determined by the soul"). It was precisely due to the lack of knowledge about the functioning of the living body that the concept of the soul became the explanatory principle that acted as the source and determination of all manifestations of a living organism, replacing specific knowledge about the mechanisms of its bodily functions (breathing, blood circulation, nutrition, etc.). Great discoveries of the XVII - XVII centuries. in various sciences and, especially in the field of human anatomy and physiology, had a truly revolutionary impact on ideas about the soul and contributed to a radical change in views on its functions. In 1623 F. Bacon summed up these studies. “Observing the sentient body and trying to find out why there is such a great action ... food is digested and expelled, phlegm and juices move up and down throughout the body, the heart and blood vessels pulsate, the internal organs, like workshops, each perform their work,” he came to the conclusion that the functions of the soul should be limited to psychic abilities. He called the reason for the wide understanding of the functions of the soul, including purely bodily processes, the ignorance of ancient philosophers.

The idea of the soul, with historical necessity, was replaced by the concept of the psyche as a subject of psychology. The criterion of mental processes, in contrast to bodily processes, was introduced in the 17th century. R. Descartes. He called this criterion consciousness. Thus, psychology began to develop within the framework of philosophical teachings about consciousness. In this context, fundamental problems arose. The first of them was the problem of the place of consciousness in being, its relationship with the world of material bodies - a psychophysical problem. From Descartes comes their sharp opposition, which in his system took the form of the doctrine of two opposite substances: one spiritual, thinking, immaterial - to designate it Descartes retains the concept of soul, and the other corporeal, extended - Descartes calls it body. Their absolute heterogeneity constitutes the essence of Cartesian dualism, which for centuries determined the direction of development of psychological problems. The most important of them was the problem of the method of studying consciousness - introspection was proclaimed by him. J. Locke formulated the problem of studying the origin of consciousness and set the empirical direction for its solution: consciousness has no innate contents, it develops in experience. He splits experience itself into two forms: external - its source is sensations, and internal - its source is “the internal actions of our mind, which we ourselves perceive and about which we ourselves reflect... calling the first source sensation, I call the second reflection, because it delivers only such ideas as are acquired by the mind by reflecting on its own activities within itself.” In contrast to the sensualistic empirical ideas of Locke, G. Leibniz develops a rationalistic view of the nature of consciousness, attributing to it some innate truths, as well as inclinations, predispositions, etc. He also points to the active nature of consciousness, which he designates by the concept of apperception. To explain the most important fact of mental life and consciousness - its coherence - Locke introduces the concept of association of ideas. On its basis, associative psychology emerges, variants of which formed the main content of the development of psychology in the 19th century. Having arisen on the basis of the mechanistic natural science of the 17th century, it revealed its inconsistency under the influence of the successes of biology, and above all the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin and the evolutionary ideas of G. Spencer. The introduction of the idea of the adaptive role of the psyche in behavior posed the tasks of its study in a new way and led first to the emergence of functionalism with its requirement to study the psyche in its useful function, and then to the refusal to study the psyche - in behaviorism. Behaviorism and behavior emerge as a subject of research, which replaced consciousness. Less radical, but very significant were such turns in the development of the doctrine of consciousness as the refusal to identify the psyche with consciousness and an indication of the deep structure of the psyche with its unconscious area - this idea was developed by various authors, starting from Leibniz, but received its fundamental development in psychoanalysis of S. Freud and directions close to him. Also productive was the attempt not to limit the study of consciousness to the context of its relations primarily only with the natural world, and to understand it as a product of socio-historical development. The problem of social conditioning of the human psyche arose, which received powerful development in the psychology of the twentieth century.

Some of the most important turns in the development of scientific psychological thought, briefly outlined, were objectively determined by historical reasons. Important discoveries are associated with each of them; they retain their significance - they have historical meaning, they are, according to L.S. Vygotsky, a step towards the truth. Not a single one of the attempts of the past can be discarded, including because psychology has not yet come close to a unified understanding of its science, and if this is its goal, then, as G. Allport astutely noted, “it is still far from achieving it.” . We admit with this author: “It is good that there are followers of Locke and Leibniz, positivists and personalists, Freudians and neo-Freudians, objectivists and phenomenologists. Neither those who prefer models (mathematical, animal, mechanical, psychiatric), nor those who reject them "cannot be right in every detail, but what is important is that everyone is free to choose their own way of working. The only person to be blamed is the one who would want to lock all the doors except one."

History tells how psychology masters the subject of its study.

Bibliography:

1. Petrovsky A.V. Yaroshevsky M.G. History and theory

psychology in 2 volumes. T-1 1996;

2. Petrovsky A.V. Questions of history and theory of psychology.

3. Zhdan A.N. History of psychology: from antiquity to

of our time: A textbook for students of the Faculty of Psychology. M.: Pedagogical

Society of Russia 1999. – 512 p.;

4. Martsinkovskaya T.D. History of psychology: Textbook.

aid for students higher textbook institutions. - M.: Publishing center "Academy", 2001;

5. Rubinshtein S.L. Fundamentals of general psychology – St. Petersburg: Peter

2002. – 720 p.

6. History of psychology of the twentieth century. /Ed. P.Ya.

Galperina, A.N. Zhdan. 4th ed. – M.: Academic Avenue; Ekaterinburg. Business book, 2002. – 832 p.

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Introduction

1.2 Development of psychological knowledge in the 17th century and during the Enlightenment (XVIII century)

Conclusion

List of sources used

Introduction

In the Message of the President to the people of Kazakhstan dated March 6, 2009, N.A. Nazarbayev approved a list of the guaranteed volume of special social services, which include socio-psychological services that provide for the correction of the psychological state of citizens, provided in social service organizations of stationary and semi-stationary types.

Social and psychological services include: psychological diagnostics, personality examination, psychological correction. Psychology solves all these questions.

The science of psychology does not arise instantly. Its formation is a long process of historical development.

Psychology went through several stages in its development. The first ideas about the psyche were associated with animism (Latin “anima” - spirit, soul) - the most ancient views, according to which everything that exists in the world has a soul. In some other teachings of that time, for example, the famous mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras, souls were imagined as immortal, eternally wandering through the bodies of animals and plants.

The Middle Ages, which lasted almost ten centuries, does not have a sufficiently clear periodization in history. One of the most important characteristics of medieval science, in particular psychology, was its close connection with religion. More precisely, non-theological, non-church science did not exist in Europe at that time. Its important feature during this period was the emergence of sacredness.

The emergence of new approaches to the construction of science in the 15th-16th centuries, associated with the desire for rationality and evidence of theoretical positions, marked the onset of a new stage in the process of the formation of psychology. The development of these approaches became the leading motive for scientists developing psychological concepts in modern times. R. Descartes (1596-1650) comes to the conclusion that there is a complete difference between the human soul and his body. An attempt to reunite the body and soul of man, separated by the teachings of Descartes, was made by the Dutch philosopher B. Spinoza (1632-1677). The German philosopher G. Leibniz (1646-1716) introduced the concept of the unconscious psyche.

The process of developing knowledge about the human psyche, the system of his psyche, character, temperament has continued for centuries, and this process itself is as important as the result - the science of psychology.

The relevance of this research topic is due, on the one hand, to the great interest in the topic, on the other hand, to its insufficient development.

Purpose of the work: familiarization with the history of the formation and development of psychological knowledge, the formation of ideas about the specific features of psychology as a science, its subject and object.

Object of study: subject psychology.

Subject of research: features of the formation and development of the subject of psychology.

1. Systematize theoretical material on the research topic.

2. Analyze the formation and development of psychology as a science at different stages of its formation.

3. Describe the main modern schools of psychology.

Research methods: analysis of psychological and pedagogical literature devoted to this research topic.

Significance: consideration of issues related to this topic has both theoretical and practical significance. The results can be used to write a thesis on this research topic.

1. Formation and development of psychological thought In the historical aspect

1.1 Formation of psychological thought at the initial stage

The mythological understanding of the world, where bodies are inhabited by souls and life depends on the gods, has reigned in the public consciousness for centuries. At the same time, the pagans often attributed the style of behavior of the celestials to cunning and wisdom, vindictiveness and envy, and other qualities learned in the earthly practice of their communication with their neighbors.

Attempts to understand and explain mental phenomena arose in primitive society. The ideas of primitive people about the psyche were called in science an animistic view of the world. The animistic worldview gives every object a soul. Animals and natural phenomena have a soul, which acts as a source of movement and development. Dreams, hallucinations, death - all these facts prompted primitive people to think about the coexistence of the soul as a body within a body.

Animism (from the Latin “anima” - soul) is the first mythological doctrine about the soul. Animism included the idea of a host of souls hidden behind concrete visible things as special ghosts that leave the human body with their last breath. Elements of animism are present in every religion. The soul exists independently of the physical body and can influence a person’s fate, success or failure in activity, illness and health. A complex cult ritual of relations with the souls of the dead, influencing the souls of people and animals, and communicating with the patron spirit of the tribe developed.

The emergence of science as an independent field of spiritual life is associated with the emergence of class society. Psychic phenomena became the subject of philosophical works. In the philosophy of Ancient Greece, two diametrically opposed, clearly expressed points of view on the psyche developed: materialistic and idealistic, “the line of Democritus and Plato.”

In some other teachings of that time (for example, the famous mathematician and philosopher, Olympic champion in fist fighting Pythagoras), souls were imagined as immortal, eternally wandering through the bodies of animals and plants.

Later, the ancient Greeks understood “psycho” as the driving principle of all things. They belong to the doctrine of the universal animation of matter - hylozoism (from the Greek “hyle” - substance and “zoe” - life): the whole world - the universe, the cosmos - is initially alive, endowed with the ability to feel, remember and act. No boundaries were drawn between living, non-living and mental. Everything was considered as a product of a single primary matter (primordial matter). So, according to the ancient Greek sage Thales, a magnet attracts metal, a woman attracts a man, because a magnet, like a woman, has a soul. Hyloism for the first time “put” the soul (psyche) under the general laws of nature.

This teaching affirmed the immutable postulate for modern science about the original involvement of mental phenomena in the circulation of nature. Hylozoism was based on the principle of monism.

The further development of Hyloism is associated with the name of Heraclitus, who considered the universe (cosmos) as an ever-changing (living) fire, and the soul as its spark. (“Our bodies and souls flow like streams”). He was the first to express the idea of a possible change, and, consequently, a natural development of all things, including the soul. The development of the soul, according to Heraclitus, occurs through oneself: “Know yourself.”

The idea of development in the teachings of Heraclitus “transferred” into the idea of causality of Democritus. According to Democritus, the soul, body and macrocosm consist of atoms of fire; Only those events the cause of which we do not know seem random to us; According to the Logos, there are no causeless phenomena; they are all the inevitable result of the collision of atoms. Subsequently, the principle of causality was called determinism.

The principle of causality allowed Hippocrates, who was friends with Democritus, to build a doctrine of temperaments. Hippocrates correlated poor health with an imbalance of various “juices” present in the body. Hippocrates called the relationship between these proportions temperament. The names of four temperaments have survived to this day: sanguine (blood predominates), choleric (yellow bile predominates), melancholic (black bile predominates), phlegmatic (mucus predominates). Thus was formulated the hypothesis according to which the countless differences between people fit into a few general patterns of behavior. The idea of organization (systematicity) of Anaxagoras, the idea of causality of Democritus and the idea of regularity of Heraclitus, discovered two and a half thousand years ago, have become the basis for all times for the knowledge of mental phenomena.

The turn from nature to man was accomplished by a group of philosophers called sophists (“teachers of wisdom”). They were not interested in nature with its laws independent of man, but in man himself, whom they called “the measure of all things.” In the history of psychological knowledge, a new object was discovered - relationships between people using means that prove any position, regardless of its reliability. In this regard, methods of logical reasoning, the structure of speech, and the nature of the relationship between words, thoughts and perceived objects were subjected to detailed discussion. Subsequently, the word “sophist” began to be applied to people who, using various tricks, present imaginary evidence as true.

Socrates sought to restore strength and reliability to the idea of the soul and thinking. Socrates was a master of oral communication, a pioneer of analysis, whose goal is to use words to expose what is hidden behind the veil of consciousness. By selecting certain questions, Socrates helped his interlocutor to lift these veils. The creation of the dialogue technique later became known as the Socratic method.

The brilliant student of Socrates, Plato, became the founder of the philosophy of idealism. He established the principle of the primacy of eternal ideas in relation to everything transitory in the corruptible physical world. According to Plato, all knowledge is memory; the soul remembers (this requires special efforts) what it happened to contemplate before its earthly birth.

The work on constructing the subject of psychology belonged to Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher and natural scientist who lived in the 4th century BC. e., which opened a new era in the understanding of the soul as a subject of psychological knowledge. It was not physical bodies or incorporeal ideas that became a source of knowledge for him, but an organism, where the physical and spiritual form an inseparable integrity. The soul, according to Aristotle, is not an independent entity, but a form, a way of organizing a living body.

Explaining the patterns of character development, Aristotle argued that a person becomes what he is by performing certain actions. The idea of character formation in real actions, which in people always presuppose a moral attitude towards them, placed a person’s mental development in a causal, natural dependence on his activities.

Aristotle should rightfully be considered the father of psychology as a science. His work “On the Soul” is the first course in general psychology, where he outlined the history of the issue, the opinions of his predecessors, explained his attitude towards them, and then, using their achievements and miscalculations, proposed his solutions.

The psychological thought of the Hellenistic era is historically connected with the emergence and subsequent rapid collapse of the largest world monarchy (IV century BC) of the Macedonian king Alexander. A synthesis of elements of the cultures of Greece and the countries of the Middle East, characteristic of a colonial power, arises. The position of the individual in society changes. The free personality of the Greek lost ties with his hometown and its stable social environment. He found himself faced with unpredictable changes granted by freedom of choice.

The Stoics (“standing” - the portico in the Athenian temples) declared any emotions harmful, seeing in them a corruption of the mind. In their opinion, pleasure and pain are false judgments about the present, desire and fear are false judgments about the future. Only the mind, free from any emotional turmoil, is able to correctly guide behavior. This is what allows a person to fulfill his destiny, his duty.

Simultaneously with the construction of these scientific schools, important research was carried out in the medical and biological fields of knowledge. Doctors of the Alexandria Scientific Center Herophilus and Erasistratus established anatomical and physiological differences between sensory nerves coming from the sense organs (eyes, ears, skin, etc.) to the brain and motor fibers going from the brain to the muscles. The discovery was forgotten, but after more than two thousand years it was re-established and formed the basis of the most important doctrine of reflexes for psychology.

Later, the ancient Roman physician Galen (2nd century AD), in his work “On the Parts of the Human Body,” described the dependence of the vital functions of the entire organism on the nervous system. In those days, anatomical research was prohibited, but Galen, a doctor of gladiators who observed open wounds of the brain, considered it the producer and guardian of the mind. Galen developed, following Hippocrates, the doctrine of temperaments. He argued that changes in the body (“blood boiling”) are primary in affects; subjective, mental experiences (for example, anger) are secondary.

At the same time, the disasters that the peoples of the East experienced in cruel wars with Great Rome, and then under its rule, contributed to the development of idealistic teachings about the soul, which prepared the views that were later assimilated by the Christian religion. These teachings include, for example, the views of Philo (1st century AD) that the body is dust, which receives life from the breath of the deity.

Christianity, which was victorious in Europe, introduced militant intolerance to all “pagan” knowledge. In the 4th century, the scientific center in Alexandria was destroyed, and at the beginning of the 6th century, the School of Athens was closed. Christianity cultivated the rejection of all knowledge based on experience, the sinfulness of trying to understand the structure and purpose of the human soul, different from the biblical understanding. Natural scientific research into nature has come to a halt. Scholasticism gradually reigned in the intellectual life of Europe, which was reduced to a rational justification of the Christian doctrine. The accumulation of knowledge about nature took place in the depths of the Arabic-speaking culture, focused on bringing philosophical thinking closer to empirical experience.

In the 7th century, on the foundation of Islam, the unification of Arab tribes took place. Soon the Arabs conquered the peoples of the East, who had knowledge of ancient cultures (the Hellenes, the peoples of India, etc.). The Arabic-speaking state of the Caliphate emerged. The works of Plato and Aristotle were burned in Europe. But in the East they were translated into Arabic, copied and distributed - from the Iberian Peninsula to Central Asia. A powerful cultural and scientific system emerged, in which the greatest minds emerged. Among them, the Central Asian physician of the 11th century, Abu Ali Ibn Sina, known in Europe as Avicenna, deserves special mention.

Ibn Sina was one of the first researchers in the field of developmental psychology. He studied the connection between the physical development of the body and its psychological characteristics at different age periods. At the same time, they attached great importance to the development of the theory of education, which determines the impact of the mental state of the body on its structure. According to Avicenna, adults, by causing certain affects in children that change the course of physiological processes, shape their nature. He developed the idea of the relationship between the mental and physiological - not only the dependence of the psyche on bodily states, but also its ability (in case of mental trauma, the activity of the imagination) to influence them - based on his extensive medical experience in the field of psychophysiology of emotional states.

At this time, European scholasticism began to adapt some provisions of ancient natural science, primarily the intellectual heritage of Aristotle. They are most convincingly revealed in the teachings of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), which was canonized as truly Catholic philosophy (and psychology). This teaching was called Thomism (somewhat modernized today - neo-Thomism). Thomas Aquinas extended the hierarchical template to describe mental life: every phenomenon has its place; souls are located in a stepped row (vegetative, animal, human); within the soul itself, abilities and their products (sensation, idea, concept) are hierarchically located.

Ideologists of the transition period from feudal culture to the bourgeois Renaissance considered the main task to be the revival of ancient values.

One of the titans of this period, Leonardo da Vinci (XV - XVI centuries), believed that a person can embody his spiritual powers into real values, transform nature with his creativity. The Spanish doctor H. Vives wrote in his book “On the Soul and Life” that he learned human nature through observation and experience; You can influence the nature of a child if you raise him correctly. Another Spanish doctor, J. Huarte, in his book “Study of Scientific Abilities”, for the first time in the history of psychology, set the task of studying individual differences between people in order to determine their suitability for various professions.

Thus, ancient scientists posed problems that guided the development of human sciences for centuries. It was they who first tried to answer the questions of how the physical and spiritual, the rational and the irrational, and much more are related in a person. This period ended in the 3rd-4th centuries, when the nascent religion began to dominate scientific concepts and the sacred approach to knowledge began to return, which was considered not from the point of view of its evidence, but from the point of view of faith or disbelief. The period of the Middle Ages was approaching. During this period, the development of oratory continued, aimed at controlling the feelings of listeners and infecting them with a certain emotional state. If in antiquity these techniques were based mainly on speech, then in the Middle Ages non-verbal means were also used (gestures, pauses, intonation, etc.), which was a serious acquisition of the psychology of that time.

1.2 Development of psychological thought in the 17th century and during the Enlightenment (XVIII century)

A new outline of a psychological theory aimed at explaining the principles of Galileo and Newton's new mechanics belonged to the French naturalist Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650). He presented a theoretical model of the organism as a mechanically working automaton. He outlined different approaches to the psyche of animals and humans. According to his views, animals do not have a soul, and their behavior is a response to external influences. In other words, the animal’s psyche is strictly determined (determined) by external conditions. Later, Descartes' idea about mechanical determinism, the machine-like behavior of animals, was extended to humans by pre-Marxian materialists.

With this understanding, the living body, which had previously been considered as controlled by the soul, was freed from its influence and interference; the functions of the “body machine,” which include “perception, imprinting ideas, retaining ideas in memory, internal aspirations... are performed in this machine like the movements of a clock.”

One of Descartes’s most important works for psychology is called “The Passions of the Soul.” In it, the scientist not only “deprived” the soul of its royal role in the Universe, but also “elevated” it to the level of a substance equal to other substances of nature. There has been a revolution in the concept of the soul. The subject of psychology became consciousness. Believing that the machine of the body and the consciousness occupied with its own thoughts, ideas and desires are two entities (substances) independent of each other, Descartes was faced with the need to explain how they coexist in man. The explanation he proposed was called psychophysical interaction.

Spinoza adopted from the German philosopher and mathematician Leibniz (1646-1716), who discovered differential and integral calculus, the following idea of the unity of the physical and mental. The basis of this unity is the spiritual principle. The world consists of countless spiritual entities - monads (from the Greek “monos” - one). Each of them is “psychic”, i.e. not material (like an atom), but endowed with the ability to perceive everything that happens in the Universe. The imperceptible activity of “small perceptions”—unconscious perceptions—continuously occurs in the soul. In those cases when they are realized, this becomes possible due to the fact that a special act - apperception - is added to simple perception. It includes attention and memory. So, Leibniz introduced the concept of the unconscious psyche.

At the end of this section of psychology, it is necessary to mention the name of the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). Before him, rationalism reigned in psychological teachings (from the Latin racio - reason). Hobbes proposed taking experience as the basis of knowledge. They contrasted rationalism with empiricism (from the Latin “empirio” - experience). This is how empirical psychology arose.

In accordance with Newton's understanding of nature, the English physician Hartley (1705-1757) explained the human mental world. The task of education, in his opinion, comes down to strengthening in people such connections that would turn them away from immoral deeds and give pleasure from moral ones, and the stronger these connections are, the greater the chances for a person to become a morally virtuous person, and for the whole society - more perfect .

Other outstanding thinkers of the Enlightenment were C. Helvetius (1715-1771), P. Holbach (1723-1789) and D. Diderot (1713-1784). Defending the idea of the emergence of the spiritual world from the physical world, they presented the “man-machine” endowed with a psyche as a product of external influences and natural history. In the final period of the Enlightenment, the physician-philosopher P. Cabanis (1757-1808) put forward the position that thinking is a function of the brain.

Only a person with a brain is capable of thinking. The movements of a headless body are reflexive in nature and are not conscious. Consciousness is a function of the brain. P. Cabanis considered the expression of thoughts in words and gestures to be external products of brain activity. The external products of brain activity include the expression of thoughts in words and gestures. Behind the thought itself, in his opinion, is hidden an unknown nervous process, the inseparability of mental phenomena and the nervous substrate. The Italian thinker D. Vico (1668-1744) in his treatise “Foundations of a new science of the general nature of things” (1725) put forward the idea that every society passes successively through three eras: gods, heroes and people. As for the mental properties of a person, they, according to D. Vico, arise in the course of the history of society. In particular, he associated the emergence of abstract thinking with the development of trade and political life.

In Russia, the spiritual atmosphere of the Enlightenment era determined the philosophical and psychological views of A. N. Radishchev (1749-1802). A. N. Radishchev was looking for the key to the psychology of people in the conditions of their social life (“Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”), for which he was sentenced to death, replaced by exile to Siberia.

Based on the foregoing, we can conclude that psychology is currently defined as the science of the patterns of development and functioning of the psyche as a special form of human life, which manifests itself in his relationships with people around him, with himself, and the world around him as a whole. This understanding of psychology arose gradually, in the process of development of idealistic and materialistic ideas about the world around us. Several stages can be distinguished in the development of psychology as a science. At stage I, psychology acts as the science of the soul, the presence of which explained all incomprehensible phenomena in human life. The second stage of the development of psychology is associated with its understanding as a science of consciousness. Its beginning coincided with the period of rapid development of natural sciences in the 17th century. The ability to think, feel, desire was called consciousness. The main method of study was a person's observation of himself and the description of facts. Stage III psychology as a science of behavior (20th century). The main task of psychology at this stage is to conduct experiments and observe what can be directly seen, namely: human behavior, actions, and reactions. Stage IV - psychology as a science that studies objective patterns, manifestations and mechanisms of the psyche

2. MAIN MODERN SCHOOLS OF PSYCHOLOGY

2.1 The emergence of psychology as a science at the turn of the 19th century

The creation of scientific materialist dialectics by K. Marx and F. Engels generalized the advanced ideas expressed by materialist philosophers. Thus, by the beginning of the 19th century, methodological prerequisites for the emergence of psychology as a science had been developed.

The development of methodological foundations is not yet sufficient for the emergence of science as an independent field of knowledge. This requires, firstly, the development of a number of areas of knowledge related to this science, on which the newly emerging science can rely, and secondly, the development of variants of the experimental method that will allow collecting scientifically reliable facts, separating the range of factual data to be analyzed in a given science, from a range of phenomena close to it.

Let us consider the branches of science whose development paved the way for the emergence of psychology:

By the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, the view of the mentally ill was changing. Until this time, a mentally ill person was considered either a “man of God” or possessed by the devil. In both cases, the patient was not treated. The idea that mental disorder is a disease, that it needs to be treated, that it has its own causes, has made it possible to begin collecting a large number of facts about mental disorders. The norm and pathology in the psyche begin to be compared. The psyche as a property of the brain could not be deeply studied until physiological and anatomical knowledge about its substrate had developed. The development of anatomy and physiology led at the beginning of the 19th century to the discovery of sensory and motor nerves and the formulation, based on anatomical and physiological data, of the concept of a reflex arc.

At the end of the 18th century and in the first two decades of the 19th century, phrenology, created by Gal (1752-1822), gained wide popularity. An anatomist by profession, Gal put forward the idea that abilities are determined by the structure of the brain and depend on the number of cells located in this structure. He believed that by the outline of the skull one can judge the development of the brain, and therefore the abilities of a person. None of the specific ideas of phrenology have stood up to scrutiny. But the widespread use of phrenology attracted the attention of physiologists to the study of the role of the brain in mental activity.

The work of Flourens (1794-1867), Claude Bernard (1813-1878), and later Fritsche and Hitzig made it possible to significantly clarify knowledge about the functions of the brain. Fritsche and Hitzig discovered sensory and motor areas in the cerebral cortex. Broca (1824-1880) discovered the motor centers of speech. Wernicke (1848-1905) discovered the sensory centers of speech. Thus, over the course of the 19th century, the brain transformed from an incomprehensible and poorly differentiated mass, the “seat of the soul,” into an organ regulating mental activity.

In the 19th century, in parallel with the study of the brain, the study of the patterns of functioning of the sense organs developed widely. Despite the fact that the methodological basis of these studies was physiological idealism 1 - the doctrine of the specific energy of the sense organs, science has collected an extensive range of facts about the anatomical structure and principles of functioning of vision, hearing, smell, taste and other forms of sensitivity. The question of the emergence of knowledge about the external world began to be developed scientifically.

In the 19th century, the most important question for natural science about the origin of man was scientifically resolved. Having substantiated the origin of animal species through natural selection, Charles Darwin (1809-1882) proved the natural emergence of man from the animal world. Man was included in a unified system of development of the organic world. Mental life appeared as a result of evolution. In parallel with Darwin, this idea was expressed and developed by G. Spencer (1820-1903).

Thus, in the second half of the 19th century, in medicine, physiology and biology, the sciences, on the basis of which scientific psychology could be formed, a large stock of knowledge was accumulated about the nature of man as a biological individual.

The development of natural scientific views in general biology and physiology stimulated the search for experimental methods for studying the psyche. Practice also contributed to the development of experimentation in psychology.

In 1834, E. Weber’s (1795-1878) book “On the Sense of Touch” was published. He conducted an experimental study of skin sensitivity and came to the establishment of one of the central patterns of sensations - the threshold of discrimination. Somewhat later, G. Fechner (1801 --1887), summarizing Weber's research, gave it a mathematical interpretation. Although Fechner was an idealist in his methodological principles, his work objectively showed the dependence of sensations on the strength of the physical stimulus affecting the body.

G. Helmholtz (1821 --1894) measured the speed of nerve impulse transmission in the nervous system. This discovery showed that nervous processes, and consequently the mental phenomena associated with them, unfold in time and space in the brain. G. Helmholtz deeply studied the mechanisms of vision and hearing. His works, like the works of a number of other physiologists, significantly advanced knowledge about the psychophysiology of human sensory organs. The task arose of studying the connection between the senses and the work of the brain, that is, the question of the psychophysiological mechanisms of sensory cognition came up on the agenda.

Thus, in the second half of the 19th century, significant factual material was collected in physiology and psychophysics, obtained by experiment. The prerequisites have emerged for synthesizing the existing methodological guidelines in understanding the psyche, factual material and experimental method into a single science. One of the first attempts in this direction was made by W. Wundt (1832-1920). In 1879 in Leipzig, he organized a laboratory of experimental psychology, in which sensations and perceptions, reaction speed, and later associations and feelings were studied. The systematic acquisition of psychological facts by the experimental method began. However, the interpretation of this material was idealistic. Introspection was included as a necessary condition for experimental research.

Also, for the emergence of psychology, the works of I.M. Sechenov, who was a student of the Moscow school of physiologists who accepted and developed the teachings of Darwin, were very important. They put forward the idea of the unity of the environment and the organism, according to which the organism is not a self-contained entity. It can exist only by establishing connections with the outside world. To show the place of the psyche in this interaction, to reveal its mechanisms - this is the task that I. M. Sechenov set for psychology. The formation of advanced psychological thought in Russia took place in a sharp struggle against idealism. A number of Sechenov's works are polemically directed against the idealistic views of K. D. Kavelin (1818-1885). Assessing the scientific contribution of I.M. Sechenov, it should, first of all, be emphasized that he extended the principle of reflexes to the activity of the brain and thereby transformed the reflex from a private mechanism of nervous activity into the basic principle of the functioning of the nervous system. Thus, the mental was considered as a phenomenon determined by external conditions. It is organically included in nervous activity as the central link of the reflex.

The richness of dialectical materialism was fully revealed to psychology only after the Great October Socialist Revolution.

The collective nature of work gave rise to an important factor in the development of consciousness - human speech. The need to preserve in the process of labor its final goal in an ideal form, the ability to use speech to consolidate and repeat these goals led to the development of consciousness. Consciousness is, first of all, conscious being. Thus, the philosophy of the classics of Marxism convincingly proves that consciousness is not a self-contained entity, but the highest form of reflection of surrounding activity.

In the 1930s, tests were widely used in Soviet psychology. They were used by pedologists for professional selection and to study the mental development of schoolchildren. The tests were borrowed from bourgeois psychology in the pre-revolutionary period. As a result of the uncritical use of tests, work on the development and upbringing of children was replaced by the determination of the so-called giftedness coefficient of schoolchildren, on the basis of which students were sent to classes and schools of different levels of performance. Pedology was based on the theory of innate abilities, alien to Marxism.

Crisis of psychology. The noted contradiction between the desire to introduce an objective experimental method into psychology and an idealistic understanding of the psyche led to a crisis in psychology, which emerged by the beginning of the 20th century. Introspection led to the fact that there was as much psychology in explaining experimental data as there were researchers. Instead of searching for a connection between consciousness and the outside world, there was a complete separation of consciousness from reality. The world from reality turned into a complex of sensations, the psyche into the only reality for the individual. The scientific analysis of the psyche was replaced by solipsism and subjective idealism taken to the extreme.

The crisis in psychology coincided with a period of aggravation of economic and socio-political contradictions in bourgeois society, due to its transition to imperialism. The growth of production was accompanied by qualitative changes in the economy, politics and ideology, the development of the process of concentration of capital and the dominance of monopolies and financial oligarchy, an aggressive foreign policy aimed at redistributing colonies and markets through imperialist wars, among which the First World War (1914-1918) was the first of the greatest social upheavals of the 20th century.

Despite the idealistic interpretation of the data, the enrichment of psychology with facts continued. They were collected experimentally, primarily in the field of psychophysiology of the sensory organs and in the measurement of motor reactions.

The increasing complexity of machine production, the development of transport, the improvement of the management system - all this began to place increased demands on the mental qualities of the worker. Taking into account the psychological factor has become increasingly necessary in various professions. Capitalist relations of production stimulated the search for methods of controlling people's behavior in accordance with the goals of the imperialist monopolies. In these social conditions, at the beginning of the 20th century, modern trends in bourgeois psychology took shape.

Based on the analysis, we can conclude: at the beginning of the 19th century, new approaches to the psyche began to take shape. From now on, it was not mechanics, but physiology that stimulated the growth of psychological knowledge. Having as its subject a special natural body, physiology turned it into an object of experimental study. At first, the guiding principle of physiology was the “anatomical principle.” Functions (including mental ones) were studied from the point of view of their dependence on the structure of the organ and its anatomy. Physiology translated the speculative, sometimes fantastic views of the previous era into the language of experience.

2.2 Education and development of new psychological schools

In the first half of the 20th century, a number of independent psychological trends were formed in Europe and the USA, differing from each other in their understanding of the subject of psychology, research methods and a system of basic concepts. The turn of the century was marked for psychology by the first division of the previously unified psychology into a number of schools.

Psychoanalysis. Psychological system proposed by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Having first emerged as a method of treating neuroses, psychoanalysis gradually became a general theory of psychology. Discoveries based on the treatment of individual patients have led to greater understanding of the psychological components of religion, art, mythology, social organization, child development and pedagogy.

Moreover, by revealing the influence of unconscious desires on physiology, psychoanalysis has made a significant contribution to understanding the nature of psychosomatic illnesses.

Psychoanalysis views human nature from the point of view of conflict: the functioning of the human psyche reflects the struggle of opposing forces and tendencies. At the same time, the influence of unconscious conflicts, the interaction in the psyche of forces that the individual himself is not aware of, is especially emphasized. Psychoanalysis shows how unconscious conflict affects the emotional life and self-esteem of an individual, his relationships with other people and social institutions.

The source of conflict lies in the very conditions of human experience. Man is both a biological and a social being. In accordance with his biological inclinations, he strives to seek pleasure and avoid pain. This obvious observation is known as the “pleasure principle,” which describes a fundamental tendency in human psychology.

Freudianism. One of the most reactionary trends in personality psychology. Named after the Austrian psychologist S. Freud, a direction that explains the development and structure of personality by irrational mental factors antagonistic to consciousness and uses psychotherapy techniques based on these ideas. By belittling the role of the social factor in the psyche, it justifies the emptiness of the ruling classes of bourgeois society. Although psychoanalysis drew attention to the energetic, motivational side of the psyche and raised the problem of the unconscious and its relationship to consciousness, the formulation and solution of this problem were mystified and, with the exception of individual observations and methodological techniques, their theoretical constructions do not stand up to criticism. Having emerged as a concept for the explanation and treatment of neuroses, Freudianism later elevated its provisions to the rank of a general doctrine about man, society and culture, gaining great influence. The core of Freudianism is the idea of an eternal secret war between unconscious psychic forces hidden in the depths of the individual (the main of which is sexual attraction - libido) and the need to survive in a social environment hostile to this individual. Mental processes and phenomena were considered in Freudianism from three main points of view: topical, dynamic and economic. Initially, Freud's topical system of mental life was represented by three instances: the unconscious, the preconscious and consciousness, the relationships between which were regulated by censorship. Since the beginning of the 20s. Freud distinguishes other instances: I (Ego), It (Id) and Super-I (Super-ego). The last two systems were localized in the “unconscious” layer. The dynamic consideration of mental processes involved their study as forms of manifestations of certain (usually hidden from consciousness) purposeful inclinations, tendencies, etc., as well as from the point of view of transitions from one subsystem of the mental structure to another. Economic consideration meant the analysis of mental processes from the point of view of their energy supply (in particular, libidinal energy). Freudianism 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.

Behaviorism. At the very beginning of the 20th century, a powerful movement arose that established behavior as a subject of psychology as a set of reactions of the body, conditioned by communication with the stimuli of the environment to which it adapts. The credo of this direction was captured by the term behavior (from the English “behavior”), and it itself was called behaviorism. His “father” is considered to be John Watson (1878-1958), whose article “Psychology as the Behaviorist Sees It” (1913) became the manifesto of the new school. Watson demanded that all concepts of subjective psychology of consciousness be “thrown overboard” as a relic of alchemy and astrology and translated into the language of objectively observable reactions of living beings to stimuli.

Neither Pavlov nor Bekhterev, on whose concepts Watson relied, adhered to such a radical point of view. They hoped that an objective study of behavior would eventually, as Pavlov said, shed light on the “torment of consciousness.” Behaviorism began to be called “psychology without the psyche.” This turn assumed that the psyche is identical to consciousness. Meanwhile, by demanding the elimination of consciousness, behaviorists did not at all transform the organism into a device devoid of mental qualities; they only changed the idea of these qualities. The real contribution of the new direction was the dramatic expansion of the field studied by psychology. From now on, it included “stimulus-reaction” relationships accessible to external objective observation, independent of consciousness.

Wurzburg school. The Würzburg School is a group of researchers led by the German psychologist O. Külpe, who studied at the beginning of the 20th century. at the University of Würzburg (Bavaria) higher mental processes (thinking, will) through a laboratory experiment in combination with a modified method of introspection (“experimental introspection”). In which the subject carefully observed the dynamics of the states he experienced at each stage of executing the instructions. The German psychologists K. Marbe, N. Ach, K. Buhler, the English psychologist G. Watt, the Belgian psychologist A. Michotte and others belonged to the Wurzburg school. The Wurzburg school introduced into experimental psychology as a new object of analysis the performance of tasks of an intellectual nature (the study of logical judgments, answers to questions requiring mental effort, etc.). It was revealed that thinking is a mental process, the laws of which cannot be reduced either to the laws of logic or to the laws of the formation of associations. The originality of thinking was explained by the fact that associations are selected in accordance with the tendencies created by the task accepted by the subject. The organizing role was recognized as an attitude that preceded the search for a solution, which some representatives of the Würzburg school considered an “attitude of consciousness,” while others considered it an unconscious act. In contrast to the generally accepted views of that time, the Würzburg school came to the conclusion that consciousness contains non-sensory components (mental actions and meanings independent of sensory images). Therefore, the specificity of the concept of the Würzburg school is usually seen in the fact that it introduced the concept of ugly thinking into psychology. She interpreted the thinking process as a change in operations, sometimes acquiring affective tension (feelings of uncertainty, doubt, etc.).

Introspective psychology. Introspective psychology (from the Latin “introspecto” - I look inside, I peer) is a number of directions in psychology that use the subject’s observation of the contents and acts of his own consciousness as the only method of studying the psyche.

The origins of introspective psychology go back to the teachings of R. Descartes and J. Locke that human consciousness is cognized in a fundamentally different way than the external world, namely through internal contemplation, or internal experience, the object of which is mental images, thoughts, experiences.

During the formation of psychology as an independent science, this method became the guiding one for the German psychologist W. Wundt and his school, who combined introspection, which meant the subject’s internal perception of the mental processes he was aware of, with the experimental method. It was assumed that the unreliability of ordinary self-observation could be overcome by special training of subjects who develop the skill of self-reporting what they are directly aware of at the moment the stimulus is presented. The American psychologist E. B. Titchener most consistently and straightforwardly defended this approach. Another version of introspective psychology is presented by the German philosopher F. Brentano and his followers (K. Stumpf, T. Lipps, O. Külpe), who saw the task of psychology as unbiasedly reconstructing what an individual experiences in its entirety and specificity.

This attitude influenced the program of the Würzburg School, which, without limiting introspection to a report of immediate stimuli, combined it with retrospection - the subsequent reproduction of what the subject had previously experienced when solving intellectual problems. Introspective psychology was subjected to sharp criticism by supporters of behaviorism and psychoanalysis, which was carried out primarily from a mechanistic position.

Cognitive psychology. Cognitive psychology is one of the leading areas of modern foreign psychology. Cognitive psychology emerged in the late 50s and early 60s. XX century, as a reaction to behaviorism, characteristic of the dominant behaviorism in the United States. Initially, the main task of cognitive psychology was to study the transformations of sensory information from the moment a stimulus hits the receptor surfaces until the response is received (D. Broadbent, S. Sternberg). In doing so, the researchers proceeded from the analogy between the processes of information processing in humans and in a computing device. Numerous structural components (blocks) of cognitive and executive processes have been identified, including short-term memory and long-term memory (J. Sperling, R. Atkinson). As an attempt to overcome the crisis of behaviorism, Gestalt psychology and other directions, cognitive psychology did not live up to the hopes placed on it, since its representatives failed to unite disparate lines of research on a single conceptual basis. From the standpoint of Soviet psychology, analysis of the formation and actual functioning of knowledge as a mental reflection of reality necessarily involves the study of the practical and theoretical activity of the subject, including its highest socialized forms.

Gestalt psychology. Psychological direction that arose in Germany in the early 10s. and existed until the mid-30s. twentieth century (before the Nazis came to power, when most of its representatives emigrated) and continued to develop the problem of integrity posed by the Austrian school. First of all, M. Wertheimer, V. Köhler, K. Koffka belong to this direction.

The methodological basis of Gestalt psychology was the philosophical ideas of “critical realism” and the positions developed by E. Hering, E. Mach, E. Husserl, I. Muller, according to which the physiological reality of processes in the brain and the mental, or phenomenal, are related to each other by isomorphism.

Because of this, the study of brain activity and phenomenological introspection, focused on different contents of consciousness, can be considered as complementary methods that study the same thing, but use different conceptual languages.

Subjective experiences are merely the phenomenal expression of various electrical processes in the brain. By analogy with electromagnetic fields in physics, consciousness in Gestalt psychology was understood as a dynamic whole, a “field” in which each point interacts with all the others.

For the experimental study of this field, a unit of analysis was introduced, which began to act as a gestalt. Gestalts were discovered in the perception of shape, apparent movement, and optical-geometric illusions.

In the field of psychology of thinking, Gestalt psychologists developed a method for experimental research of thinking - the method of “reasoning out loud” and introduced such concepts as problem situation, insight (M. Wertheimer, K. Duncker). At the same time, the emergence of one or another solution in the “productive thinking” of animals and humans was interpreted as a result.

Functionalism. Proponents of which, rejected the analysis of internal experience and its structures, tried to find out how these structures work when solving problems related to the actual needs of people. Thus, the subject area of psychology expanded, covering not only elements, but also mental functions - internal operations that are performed not by a disembodied subject, but by an organism to satisfy its need to adapt to the environment.