Personal development in cultural and historical psychology. Social and cultural-historical psychology
Developed by Vygotsky in the 20-30s. XX century - proposes to consider the social environment not as one of the factors, but as main source personality development.
The development of thinking and other mental functions occurs through the child's mastery of a system of signs-symbols, such as language, writing, counting system.
The higher mental function goes through two stages in its development. Initially, it exists as a form of interaction between people, and only later - as a completely internal process. He believes that learning should "lead" development. It is cooperation with other people that is the main source of development of the child's personality, and the most important feature of consciousness is dialogue (Consciousness develops through dialogue).
Another aspect of L.S. Vygotsky's idea of development is not as an evenly gradual, but as a staged, stepwise process, where periods of even accumulation of new opportunities are replaced by stages of crisis. A crisis, for Vygotsky, is a turbulent stage in the demolition (or rethinking) of old baggage and the formation of a new way of life. Crises are inevitable.
Psychological doctrines (behaviorism, gestaltism, psychoanalysis, humanistic psychology, cognitivism).
Description of the gestalt approach
The main advantage is a holistic approach to a person, which takes into account his mental, physical, spiritual and social aspects. Gestalt therapy instead of focusing on the question "Why is this happening to a person?" replaces it with the following: “What is the person feeling now and how can this be changed?”. Therapists working in this direction try to focus people's attention on the awareness of the processes that are happening to them "here and now".
The Gestalt approach is based on such principles and concepts as integrity, responsibility, the emergence and destruction of structures, incomplete forms, contact, awareness, "here and now"
A holistic gestalt consists of a personality and the space surrounding it, while mutually influencing each other.
Using the principle of the emergence and destruction of gestalt structures, one can easily explain the behavior of a person. Each person arranges his life depending on his own needs, to which he gives priority. His actions are aimed at meeting needs and achieving existing goals. After the desired is achieved (the need is satisfied), the gestalt is completed and destroyed.
However, not every gestalt reaches its completion (and further - destruction). This phenomenon is called the incomplete gestalt. For example, a person, despite the fact that he does not like to be exploited, constantly finds himself in precisely such situations, and someone who does not have a personal life comes into contact with people he does not need again and again. That is, a person who has an incomplete "structure", on a subconscious level, constantly strives to create a negative incomplete situation only in order to resolve it, and finally close this issue. The Gestalt therapist artificially creates a similar situation for his client and helps to find a way out of it.
Another basic concept of Gestalt therapy is awareness. Gestalt psychology associates awareness with being in the so-called "here and now" state. It is characterized by the fact that a person performs all actions guided by consciousness - responsibility is born. The level of responsibility for one's life directly depends on the level of clarity of the person's awareness of the surrounding reality. It is human nature to always shift the responsibility for one's failures and mistakes onto others or even higher powers, however, everyone who manages to take responsibility for himself makes a big leap on the path of individual development.
The principle of "here and now" According to him, everything really important happens at the moment.
Types of Gestalt Techniques and Contracting All Gestalt therapy techniques are conditionally divided into "projective" and "dialogue". The former are used to work with dreams, images, imaginary dialogues, etc.
The second is painstaking work that is carried out by the therapist at the border of contact with the client.
Description of behaviorism (Pavlov)
Behaviorism is the science of the behavioral responses of humans and animals in response to environmental influences. The most important category of this flow is the stimulus.
A stimulus is any effect of the environment on an organism or life situation. Reaction - the actions of a person taken in order to avoid or adapt to a particular stimulus.
The connection between stimulus and response is strengthened if there is reinforcement between them. It can be positive (praise, material reward, getting a result), then the person remembers the strategy for achieving the goal and then repeats it in practice. Or it can be negative (criticism, pain, failure, punishment), then such a strategy of behavior is rejected and a new, more effective one is sought. You can influence his behavior by changing incentives and reinforcements.
Description of psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a methodology based on the study, identification, analysis of the anxieties of the individual repressed from consciousness, hidden or suppressed, which obviously traumatized his psyche - Freud.
Human behavior is primarily regulated by his consciousness. Freud found out that behind the signboard of consciousness there is a certain layer of it, which is unconscious of the individual, but induces him to many lusts and inclinations. In many cases, it was they who became the source of nervous and mental illnesses.
Three Key Components
, named: "It", "I", "Super-I". The object of gravity of each individual is "It", and all the processes occurring in it are completely unconscious. "It" is the germ of "I", which is molded from it under the influence of the environment surrounding the individual. At the same time, the “I” is a very difficult combination, playing the role of psychological protection.
An important point in the application of this technique is the joint purposeful activity of the psychologist and the client in the direction of combating the latter's feelings of psychological discomfort.
The technique is based on the patient voicing the thoughts that come into his head, even if these thoughts border on complete absurdity and obscenity. It is based on the phenomenon of transfer, which consists in the unconscious transfer of the qualities of the patient's parents to the therapist. That is, a transfer is made in relation to the psychologist of those feelings that the client experienced at his early age to the subjects who were in his immediate environment, a projection of early childhood desires is performed on the substitute person. The course of understanding the existing cause-and-effect relationships, the fruitful transformation of the accumulated personal views and principles with the rejection of the old and the formation of new behavioral norms, is usually accompanied by significant internal opposition from the patient. Resistance is an actual phenomenon that accompanies any psychotherapeutic intervention, regardless of its form. The essence of such confrontation is that there is a strong desire for unwillingness to touch the unconscious internal conflict with the parallel emergence of significant obstacles to identifying the real causes of personal problems.
Description of the humanistic approach.
A. Maslow. From birth, seven classes of needs consistently appear in a person and accompany his growing up:
1) physiological needs such as hunger, thirst, sexual desire, etc.;
2) security needs - the need to feel protected, to get rid of fear and failure, from aggressiveness;
3) the need for belonging and love - the need to belong to a community, to be close to people, to be recognized and accepted by them;
4) the need for respect - the need to achieve success, approval, recognition, authority;
5) cognitive needs - the need to know, be able, understand, explore;
6) aesthetic needs - the need for harmony, symmetry, order, beauty;
7) the needs of self-actualization - the need to realize one's goals, abilities, development of one's own personality.
The needs of higher levels can only be satisfied if the needs of lower levels are first satisfied. Therefore, only a small number of people (about 1%) achieve self-actualization.
The therapeutic factors in the work of a humanistic psychologist and psychotherapist are, first of all, unconditional acceptance of the client, support, empathy, attention to inner experiences, stimulation of choice and decision-making, authenticity.
Description of cognitivism
The cognitive direction emphasizes the influence of intellectual or thought processes on human behavior. George Kelly believed that people perceive their world through clear systems or models called constructs.
A personality construct is an idea or thought that a person uses to make sense of or interpret, explain or predict their experience. All constructs have two opposite poles: the similarity pole reflects how two objects are similar, and the contrast pole shows how these objects are opposite to the third element. Examples of personality constructs can be “smart-stupid”, “good-bad”, “male-female”, "friendly-hostile", etc.
If a construct helps predict events accurately, a person is likely to keep it. Conversely, if the prediction fails, the construct may be excluded. Two people, even if they are identical twins or have similar views, refer to an event and interpret it differently. A person tries to explain reality in order to learn to anticipate events that affect his life.
if a person changes his constructs, he will change his behavior and his life. A structural system changes if it cannot correctly predict the sequence of events.
If two people share their views of the world, are similar in the interpretation of personal experience, then they are likely to behave similarly. Kelly explained the emergence of a number of emotional states through the concept of "constructs", for example, a state of anxiety, uncertainty, helplessness arises in a person if he realizes that his inherent constructs are not applicable to predict the events that he encounters. Kelly used the fixed role therapy method, which consists of several steps:
1. the patient writes a self-characteristic in the third person (describes his character as if from the outside), on the basis of which the constructs that he uses to interpret himself and his relationships with other people are revealed;
2. The psychotherapist develops a model, a constructive system that is useful to the patient and describes it as a "fixed role of a certain person";
3. The patient is asked to play this role for a certain time, trying to think, behave as this "fixed role" requires, so that he can discover new facets of his personality, make adjustments to his constructs, change his real behavior.
*6. Activity approach in psychology. Activity structure. (Leontiev, Rubenstein)
The principle of the unity of consciousness and activity captures the fact that consciousness (or, more broadly, mental) does not control activity from the outside, but forms an organic unity with it, being both a prerequisite (motives, goals) and a result (images, states, skills, etc.). e) activities. The psyche and consciousness are formed in activity, in activity they manifest themselves.
The principle of the unity of consciousness and activity made it possible to single out activity as:
an independent subject of psychological research (learning activity, we discover the mental world of a person);
as an explanatory principle.
The activity is described as consisting of three structural units:
Activity (determined by motive) - Action (determined by purpose) - Operation (determined by the conditions of its course)
For example, the educational activity carried out by a student can be guided by the motive of preparation for professional work or the motive of joining the intellectual elite, or the motive of communication with peers, or the motive of self-improvement, etc. in reality, each activity usually corresponds to several motives (not or/or, but and/and), therefore, one speaks of a multi-motivated activity.
At the level of action within the educational activity, the student can prepare for the exam, i.e. to realize a specific conscious goal - to get a high mark.
The goal is an image of the required future, to achieve which it is required to carry out an action, which in turn includes a number of operations.
An activity within an exam preparation activity could be reading a textbook, reviewing notes, and so on.
Keywords
CULTURE / CULTURAL-HISTORICAL PSYCHOLOGY/ L.S. VYGOTSKY / FREEDOM / DEVELOPMENT / EVENT / ZONE OF VARIATIVE DEVELOPMENT/CULTURE/ CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL PSYCHOLOGY/L.S. VYGOTSKY / FREEDOM / DEVELOPMENT / EVENT / ZONE OF VARIATIONAL DEVELOPMENTannotation scientific article on philosophy, ethics, religious studies, author of scientific work - Asmolov Alexander Grigorievich, Kudryavtsev Vladimir Tovievich
With the name of L.S. Vygotsky, the names of his students and numerous followers are associated not only with outstanding psychological discoveries, but also with major breakthroughs in modern education, including preschool education. And these breakthroughs themselves are due to these discoveries. The ideas of developmental education, which set the key vector for the innovative movement in educational practice a quarter of a century ago, are the brainchild of the Vygotsky school, although they are rooted in the history of psychological and pedagogical thought. From the mouths of educational practitioners today, turns and terms from the “dictionary” of Vygotsky and his school “learning leading development”, “zone of proximal development”, “social situation of development”, “leading type of activity” are not so rare… Vygotsky’s provisions , scientists who continued his work A.N. Leontiev, A.V. Zaporozhets, D.B. Elkonina, V.V. Davydova and others determined the ideology and design of the new federal educational standards. Cultural-historical psychology it is a “science of freedom”, and not its suppression under the dictates of society, about the development of a developing person becoming free, and that is why it is “cultural”. This is how L.S. thought it. Vygotsky. The article analyzes sometimes paradoxical phenomena of becoming freedom. They reveal the fundamental patterns of the "cultural development of the child" (L.S. Vygotsky), the disclosure of which involves referring to the phenomenon zones of variable development.
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Cultural and historical psychology is the “science of freedom”
The name L.S. Vygotsky and names of his students and numerous followers are associated not only with outstanding psychological discoveries, but also with major breakthroughs in modern education, including preschool education. And those breakthroughs themselves are due to these discoveries. The ideas of developing education, which gave a quarter of a century ago the push and the key vector of an innovative movement in educational practice, are the brainchild of Vygotsky’s school, although they have their roots in the history of psychological and pedagogical thought. Practitioners of education nowadays use terms and phrases from Vygotsky’s “dictionary” and his school-“education leading to development ”, “the zone of proximal development ”, the “social development situation”, the “leading type of activity” not so seldom. Vygotsky,scientists who continued his work A.N. Leontief, A.V. Zaporozhets, D.B. Elkonina, V.V. Davydov, and others, defined the ideology and construction of new federal educational standards. cultural and historical psychology is a “science of freedom” not of its suppression under the dictates of society, but of emerging a developing person as free one, and precisely because of this as “cultural”. So it was thought by L.S. Vygotsky. The article analyzes sometimes paradoxical phenomena of freedom in becoming. They reveal fundamental laws of “cultural development of the child” (Vygotsky), the disclosure of which implies resorting to the phenomenon of a zone of variational development.
The text of the scientific work on the topic "Cultural-Historical Psychology - "The Science of Freedom""
Cultural-Historical Psychology
A.G. Asmolov, V.T. Kudryavtsev
Cultural-historical psychology - "the science of freedom"
With the name of L.S. Vygotsky, the names of his students and numerous followers are associated not only with outstanding psychological discoveries, but also with major breakthroughs in modern education, including preschool education. And these breakthroughs themselves are due to these discoveries. The ideas of developmental education, which set the key vector for the innovative movement in educational practice a quarter of a century ago, are the brainchild of the Vygotsky school, although they are rooted in the history of psychological and pedagogical thought. From the mouths of educational practitioners today, phrases and terms from the "dictionary" of Vygotsky and his school are not so rare - "education leading development", "zone of proximal development", "social situation of development", "leading type of activity" .. The provisions of Vygotsky, the scientists who continued his work - A.N. Leontiev, A.V. Zaporozhets, D.B. Elkonina, V.V. Davydova and others - determined the ideology and design of new federal educational standards. Cultural-historical psychology is a “science of freedom”, and not its suppression under the dictates of society, about the development of a developing person free, and that is why it is “cultural”. This is how L.S. thought it. Vygotsky. The article analyzes sometimes paradoxical phenomena of becoming freedom. They reveal the fundamental patterns of the "cultural development of the child" (L.S. Vygotsky), the disclosure of which involves referring to the phenomenon of the zone of variable development.
Key words: culture, cultural-historical psychology, L.S. Vygotsky, freedom, development, event, zone of variable development.
Cultural-historical approach of L.S. Vygotsky to solve the fundamental problems of human psychology set the direction for the transformation of social practices - into the practices of human development. First of all, it refers to the practice
© Asmolov A.G., Kudryavtsev V.T., 2017
education at all its levels. That is why the term “Vygotsky school” can be used in two senses. This school has long been international. The current “Year of Vygotsky” is celebrated not only in Russia, but all over the world: from Brazil to Japan, from the USA to Australia. “According to Vygotsky”, not only psychologists work, but also teachers, educators, and most importantly, without suspecting it ... children in dozens of countries around the world who daily attend kindergartens and schools. To them should be added psychologists-practitioners (including family counselors), social workers, volunteers, etc. The International Network Congress "Mind in Society: Cultural and Activity Turn", which was held in Moscow in November 2016 and dedicated to the 120th anniversary of the scientist.
There is no doubt that Vygotsky is an active character in the psychology and education of the 21st century, one of the main characters in their recent history. How can this be explained?
"Two" Vygotsky
There is Vygotsky and Vygotsky. Vygotsky, who still lives in his texts and in the minds of their thoughtful readers, and Vygotsky "from textbooks." Schematically, Vygotsky “in textbooks” appears something like this. According to his concept, the child does not develop on his own, he draws the “forces” for development from the socio-cultural environment that an adult creates for him. More precisely, it is created by his hands, mind, and if you're lucky, then his heart. Because, doing this, the adult acts not “on his own behalf”, but on the “name and on behalf of” the culture itself, which has developed historically, while he acts only as an intermediary between it and the child. In cooperation with an adult, the child masters cultural patterns - ways of acting with human things, models of human behavior, standards of human worldview and criteria for evaluating what is happening in the world, deciphers "languages" - the symbolism of culture. And then he himself applies these samples and ciphers to various life situations.
Looks believable. But after all, the social factors of a child's development (which included communication with an adult) were written even before Vygotsky. But it is about the factors, part of the external environment. Usually - as about something imposed from the outside, directive. From this side, development was presented as a gradual "social
enslavement”, and the sources of freedom were sought in the unbridled play of the forces of mother nature, which is quite natural in this logic. Although this "mother" is, in a sense, a much tougher "dictator" than society.
Stamps in Vygotsky's understanding also reveal themselves in the interpretation of the specific positions of cultural-historical theory. For example, the ideas of sign-symbolic determination of consciousness and its development. The sign (symbol) ceases to be a cultural instrument of arbitrary action and is endowed with some kind of power of its own, in which, like the character of Goethe, Vygotsky’s supporters begin to “reverently believe”. While the opponents expend enormous efforts in order to refute this "faith" - Vygotsky is in no way inherent.
By the way, we find a kind of outline of the above idea in the first major work of E.B. de Condillac, An Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge (1746). The author, still a young abbot, reasoned something like this (we retell almost verbatim): since the creation of a sign is possible only in the communication of people, then the mechanism for the initial development of their mind should be sought here. And then he emphasized: I am talking about the initial development of the mind (the philosopher specifically highlights this place), because when he reaches a certain maturity, he learns the ability to independently create signs for himself, and therefore can acquire ideas without any outside help.
Historians of science talk about the indirect influence of French sensationalism (which is known not only for the recognition of the primacy of feelings over reason) - through neo-Kantianism - on the psychology of the first third of the last century. But there are more impressive coincidences, only without the use of the terms “interiorization”, “zone of proximal development”.
Meanwhile, this idea did not mature in Condillac's head, but already came to him, being part of the "pop-up" basis of European thought, which was repeatedly revealed by various thinkers in the course of its history. Even Plato considered the work of individual thought as a conversation, a discussion, a dispute, a dialogue of several thinking persons transferred inward.
And the individual thought (its carrier, of course) can process the “material” of this discussion in only one way - by “talking” to itself about the main thing that caused the need for discussion. So not understood by the debaters. Actually, this is where individual thinking begins. Thinking as creativity - would add V.S. Bibler. But I think it's against it.
the sensualist Condillac would not have objected to the addition. And even more so - L.S. Vygotsky, in which everything is much deeper and more interesting in comparison with Vygotsky from textbooks.
Freedom mediator
At the beginning of the 21st century, thanks to L.S. Vygotsky, cultural-historical psychology makes a serious claim to reveal not only the conditions (“environment”) of a person’s mental life, but also its intimate mechanisms, combining the advantages of deep and apex psychology2. In this conviction, we are supported by the results of the search for the creators of other variants of the cultural-historical approach in the psychology of K.G. Jung, E. Erickson, I. Meyerson, J.-P. Vernana, K. Suzuki. All of them considered culture not as an "environment", not as an external factor of mental life, but as its internal source. We will never be able to find this source in the dead "psychological fossils" (P. Janet), no matter how hard we try to "reanimate" them in the process of internalization. Growing into the living soil of culture, which is creatively mastered and re-created by living people, is the only way to become a man. It is in culture (according to Vygotsky - in tools and signs, according to Jung - in archetypes and symbols, according to Meyerson and Vernan - in "creations", etc.) that an individual acquires the means and strength for spiritual growth (primarily over himself, and then - and over the existing culture), as a result - their own human image, and not only and not so much a social model. And only insofar as this sample itself.
Hence the need arises to comprehend the specific content of the "culture" construct in cultural-historical psychology. I take into account the fact that this concept itself has historically developed and developed. Moreover, it becomes the subject of philosophical and theoretical reflection in special humanities after L.S. Vygotsky, in the second half of the 20th century, before that it appeared as a category used “by default”.
We owe to the French sociologist Émile Durkheim what this category is still saturated with by default, although to a large extent he only expressed the mindset of his time. Durkheim saw in culture a set of rigidly fixed social standards (values, norms, etc.), which each person learns from birth and which are no less rigidly
and directively determine the content of his individual experience. And then it turns out that the living speech of the child is only a product of the assimilation of the native dictionary and table of grammatical meanings, the search for a moral solution by an adult in the intricacies of unique life circumstances is a simple actualization of the set of learned moral norms, and the color scheme of the artistic canvas, where the original worldview of the creator appears , - a combination of sensory standards familiar from childhood.
However, if culture is a gigantic stamp (as E.V. Ilyenkov ironically3), on which the entire collective experience of mankind is marked, and individual consciousness is only an imprint of it, then where do such phenomena as human freedom and creativity come from, where does the unique arise - but with This is the "universal", and not "bad" (in terms of Hegel) - the individuality of the personality, and the personality itself? Especially when you consider that many thinkers and scientists reasonably believed and, following P.A. Florensky, they consider culture to be “the environment that grows and nourishes the personality”4.
For Vygotsky, culture in any of its manifestations is first of all a condition (possibility) and an instrument of freedom, its mediator, as V.P. Zinchenko following A.F. Losev. The barbarians not only ravaged Rome, but were also amazed at what they ravaged. Among other things, they were particularly struck by the plumbing. They are used to looking for water. Or she found them, sometimes at the most inopportune moment - falling down with a downpour or covering with a flood. And through the channel (pipe), water itself comes to the person at his will - in the amount that he needs. The channel, like any cultural artifact, is the curbing of the elements, “cutting off the superfluous” (Michelangelo), superfluous in the light of the intended goal. Reified human will. And the barbarians knew only the "will" of the elements. They, most likely, “did not recognize” their own will even in the products of that - sufficiently developed - “material culture” that they managed to create, without sharing it in a pagan way with the spontaneous. Plumbing - the result and means of arbitrary effort - made the human will visible. It is possible that when faced with it (and other similar inventions) with their own eyes, the barbarians experienced the first actual “cultural shock”. And in it - who knows? - flashed glimpses of the future European self-consciousness.
Sculptural approach to development
Analogies with this can be traced in ontogeny. A.V. Zaporozhets and his student L.A. Wenger created the concept of sensory etalons. A sculptural approach to the development of a preschool child, when "everything superfluous is cut off." Not in development, but in its environment, in order to retain in it the specifically cultural, the specifically human, and in this form the specifically childlike. So that the child himself can organize the natural chaos of the world in which he has to live, in which he already lives. This need is dictated by the culture itself.
For example, why does a child need to somehow learn to grasp things if he is born with a ready-made catching (“monkey”, according to Pavlov) reflex, why should he develop voluntary attention, if at first there is a “concentration reflex” that works flawlessly, etc.? However, grasping never becomes grasping in a child; it simply dies off soon after. And grasping arises anew, within the framework of the same infantile revival complex, when a child, at the sight of an adult, without any practical need, clenching and unclenching his fists. Why? Because grasping is “insensitive” to the shape of the object that is in the hands. Especially - if this form is given to him by other people, humanity, human culture. A newborn does not care what to cling to - a hand or a stick. But a rattle or a spoon must be grasped, recreating their special form in the act of grasping. In order to then act with these objects purposefully, according to their purpose (we repeat: human destiny). Clinging to a newborn is aimless. Involuntary action is the same "block" of Michelangelo, which the sculptor (in the dual person of an adult and a child) has to free from excesses of passive matter, and thereby from the dictates of not so much external as internal impulse.
For this, motor standards arose in culture, as well as sensory ones (the same rattle is a synthesis of one and the other). Sensory standards were not invented by A.V. Zaporozhets and his student L.A. Wenger5, but they - "on behalf of culture" - brought them to the children in the form of its samples. In culture, the world is structured in a special way. But after all, at first it appears to a small person as chaos, in which everything can become a model. Yes, and "big" in the XXI century. - Isn't it defenseless in its own way before the cultural chaos of "postmodern"? You need a system of orientation, a guide - for the eyes, ears, mind. Need
knowledge tools. So as not to "cling" to everything that is horrible. And sensory standards are just tools.
The point is not to mentally attach a blue circle to the sky, which I was taught in kindergarten to actually apply to other blue objects. And the fact that I "know the measure", I know how to use the cultural equivalent of blue, even if some halftones are mixed in. Therefore, it is very important to be able to create, to create with your hands what is to be seen, varying the form, conditions, the standard as a whole. It is no coincidence that in the laboratory of L.A. Wenger launched a unique cycle of research in the field of children's design. And sensory education was an integral part of the mental, as well as later artistic, development of sensory and perception - the formation of creative abilities.
And the movement from sensory standards to figurative models, more and more schematized, and from them to the sphere of symbols, everything that the child mastered “according to Wenger”, was not a simple complication of the “mediation system”. Behind the sensory standard, the gaze of another person, an adult “nearby”, who set this standard and, if necessary, will correct it, is “caught”. In the figurative model, this “view” is still present in a residual form, but here, relying on it, the child must build his own view of “things”. Generalized help, from which you can no longer extract a “specific recommendation”. You will only find your own way. And the symbol - completely frees from the specifics of "alien views", and through it the child can only see the world and himself in it "through the eyes of mankind" as his own.
So “according to Zaporozhets and Wenger” and, in general, “according to Vygotsky”. Cutting off the superfluous, a sculpture of development, when in the end only you yourself remain “not superfluous”. As a subject according to L.S. Vygotsky “the master of his behavior”, the creator of the “new forms” of which the subject is6.
In this regard, an example of an interesting ideological roll call:
“Each new period of life brings with it a new will” (L. Feuerbach)7.
“The psychologist-geneticist faces ... a task of the highest degree: to find in the development of the child the lines along which the maturation of free will takes place. We are faced with the task of presenting the gradual growth of this freedom, revealing its mechanism and showing it as a product of development” (L.S. Vygotsky)8.
“Will is the same loneliness” - this is already an aphoristic formula by Albert Camus. Loneliness in the sense that your individual will is a product of the suppression of other people's wills in you. Precisely as isolated wills, with which you yourself "willed" in the absence of your own. They tore you apart, and she collects. Collects in "I" (the second person is always there, and the first is only to be found). Including - from the "pieces" of these wills, for which you were pulled apart. Collects freely, and they remain both material and tool in the master's hands. And the synthesis (not everyone, but transcendental - Kant would say) results in this new unique, no longer taken apart quality - "I". Assembled by the individual will “with fantasy” (not without the help of a productive imagination, a full-fledged co-author of the “I”). Loneliness is concentration. And here Vygotsky and Ilyenkov are already visible behind Camus ... Nietzsche (of course, with the soaring Schopenhauer, where without him, here, in any case) - from behind the other shoulder. But behind it is the development of "bad" individualism into absolute impersonality (its inevitability was comprehended by E.V. Ilyenkov9), and behind this - a historically and "biographically" growing Personality. In the circle of the same Personalities, completely different individuals - universal, according to Hegel, and free, according to Marx. They “see everything” (and themselves in everything) without reference to an individual point of view, but at any moment they are able to take it.
Personality in culture, for all its intrinsic value, acts as an integrator of the "human" in people. It is such an externalized will. Only the will gathers a person, and personality - people. Personality - this one who is able to unite human individuality not by chance, but by essence. Not by sign, but by gut. Not about, but on business. Not on impulse, but on a sensible decision. Not by command, but by choice. Not by call, but by calling. Not out of gullibility, but out of trust. Not out of "interest", but out of conscience. Not in looks, but in mind. Not by achievements, but by opportunities to grow.
And “freedom is the central problem of personality psychology,” as Vygotsky wrote in his notes10.
secret indication
Imagine a lecture, the audience is a little more lively than the lecturer needs. And to recapture their attention, he raises his finger. He directs his hand not towards the audience, but towards some abstract “height”. Pointing gesture. Typical
a symbolic action that arose in culture for "administrative purposes". For each of us, he is "come from childhood." But how does a child learn to indicate? It is logical to assume - imitating adults. After all, they endlessly point him to something in order to show him or order him... Logic is overturned by Vygotsky's explanation.
Here the baby is trying to grab the thing he likes, for example, a rattle. But she's too far away. His hands, reaching for the rattle, hang helplessly in the air, his fingers make grasping movements, and one of them - the index one - opposes himself to the others. But the baby is not aware of this as an indication. Mom realizes. Realizes, comes to the rescue and takes out a toy. And after some time, the child himself begins to regard the index finger, which is opposed to the rest, as a gesture that allows him to solve a whole class of tasks that are inaccessible to him with his mother's hands (isn't the magic wand's roots from there?). According to Vygotsky, a movement directed at an object turns into an action addressed to another person, into an instrument of social connection between people. In "management tool". What is important - the "weak" here controls the strong. A helpless baby is an omnipotent adult, a bearer of universal, cultural experience that has been accumulated historically, for millennia! Of course, this is a kind of "omnipotence advance" that the child receives. But this advance creates what Erik Erickson called "basic trust in the world" that still fits in the nursery.
A failed grasp becomes quite an effective indication. From the “movement of the hand” grows the “movement of the soul”, as F.I. called the pointing gesture. Chaliapin. How can one not recall one of the aphorisms of Robert Kiyosaki: “When someone tells you:“ You can’t do it! ”, Then they point at you with one end. but three fingers are pointed at them.” These three fingers are no less expressive than one index finger. Yes, initially management is the effect of performance failure.
And later, not only mother obeys the order. And thanks to him, not only an inaccessible toy is in his hands. Hundreds, thousands of people and things are able to "gather into a fist" pointing finger. But for this you already need to know the "direction". And to be able to "gather" not only others, but first of all - oneself: pointing out, ordering oneself what to do and how. Master the situation and yourself in it. A classic example is the motto of the crisis of independence of the three-year-old “I myself!”, no matter what comes of it. Vygotsky considers
it is like mastering the position of the subject with its inherent arbitrariness. And arbitrariness, along with imagination, is the key acquisition of preschool childhood, the psychological basis of freedom, the instrument of which is culture.
Development event, or Children want to be... everything!
In any kindergarten physical education program (or physical education section of a general education program) there is such a section - “Basic types of movements”, which include walking, running, jumping, crawling, climbing. It seems that the child already knows how to do all this even before coming to kindergarten. Is it necessary to somehow develop something that has developed "on its own", without us? With running or jumping, it’s even more or less clear: here you can come up with a lot of exciting games. And then motor activity will become an event. But what about walking? One of the authors faced this seemingly private issue when starting to work on the project “Developing Pedagogy of Health Improvement” in the 90s11. And I came to the conclusion that children, and then adults walk. they don’t know how (take a closer look at gaits, in particular, at the aesthetics of walking). Precisely because "itself" arises. And in physical education classes, according to the samples, what has arisen is fixed. Movement does not stand out from the general flow. And to distinguish it as a special “object”, in which, moreover, there is “nothing special”, unusual, for a child, especially a small one, is really difficult.
A.V. Zaporozhets12 described how children of 2-3 years of age perform physical exercises. The teacher demonstrates how to build the movement correctly, but the kid does not see the standard. You can, of course, “be coy”, “copy” the external pattern of movements, which children at this age are quite successful at. But it is beyond our power to meaningfully pull out a standard from it. Only here's what's interesting. Toddlers immediately notice how wrong their peers are, and can correct them. Why? Because consciousness at this time is arranged in such a way that the child not only does not single out the standard in the variety of complex movements, but really - and himself from the world of people. He sees someone else's motor error as his own (you can't see your own yet), and only through it correlates his own action with the standard. Your bump is stuffed, but on the neighbor's forehead. What is important - on a living forehead. He faces his problem outside. Not mired in the chaos of one's own experience, from which "order" is yet to be created. And - himself, although through the mediation
cultural model, which is initially comprehended through what and how a peer does. Then the "chaos" gradually becomes "controllable". Your "bump" on someone else's forehead, your "log" in someone else's eye - an event! But not mine. How to make yours?
We return to walking. Among others, 4-5-year-old children (middle group) were offered the game exercise "Puppets". Imagine that invisible ropes descend from your hands to your feet, binding them. The hands, for obvious reasons, have more freedom. And here you are in different ways - with different strengths, in different directions - you begin to "pull" the strings. Legs move according to manual movements. You can be not only a “puppeteer”, but also a “director”, “screenwriter” of your own walk. And, perhaps for the first time, you really “get acquainted” with everyday movement. And this acquaintance can become an event not only for a child, but also for an adult.
The event of walking, the event of cognition, even the event of breathing (it is not for nothing that there are game breathing exercises). They are woven from what is everyday - the development of "human in man", but often goes unnoticed and is not experienced as internal changes.
The book by V. V. Davydov “The Theory of Developmental Learning”13 describes a typical case:
Children, what new did you learn at the lesson today?
We have learned to solve problems in two steps.
Raise your hands, who today learned to solve problems in two steps? ... I see, almost everyone has learned. And you, Vanya?
And I already knew it!
But some 45 minutes ago, Vanya showed complete helplessness in solving problems of this type, but the lesson (teacher) did its job, and Vanya learned. More precisely, he was taught, because the new skill "mastered" the child imperceptibly for him. Vanya did not even see the difference, did not see the boundaries between the two states - "former" and "current". He really was instilled with something “new”, but for himself he remained the same. The real event of meeting with new knowledge (skill), alas, did not take place. After all, the arena of such a meeting is not at all a blackboard or a page of a textbook.
Solving the problem, the child could not comprehend the transformations that take place inside him. Problem solved - great! And those internal, psychological problems that
rye were overcome by the child in the leap from ignorance to knowledge, from inability to skill, and remained unnoticed by him. The child did not even have time to understand that a small “revolution” had taken place in his mind, he never learned anything new ... about himself, the student, being only taught by someone from outside. But after all, this is the main meaning of teaching, in contrast to schoolwork. This is the condition for the emergence of the desire and ability to learn, if not to confuse it with simple “learning” or “learning ability”.
Vanya's example is typical for a traditional mass school. The traditional school is the school of the learners. “Strong” children also fit into this category. The same Vanya, exercising in solving problems of a new type, could show some kind of activity, overcoming the cognitive difficulties inevitable in “learning a new one”. Moreover, it is possible that then the teacher, in order to concretize and consolidate the learned method of solving, will offer Vanya to apply it not only in typical, but also in non-standard conditions. Perhaps, now already "trained", Vanya will cope with this. But still. Vanya, like most of his fellow students, "overslept" the most important thing - the moment of his own intellectual growth.
Development takes place, but sometimes "passes by" the one who develops. If it does not turn into an event. Where does it go? It is difficult to say - there are no studies, in any case, they are unknown to us. It can be assumed that in the sphere of "hidden human potential" (at best!), which is then so difficult to "reveal" again.
And adults have their own views on the "potential" and the "events" associated with it.
A few years ago, in the program “Minute of Glory”, they showed a charming and very capable, incredibly artistic four-year-old girl. She has been doing gymnastics since the age of two, and now she stands on her hands and sings into a microphone at the same time.
Do you like what you do? the presenter asked when
number has ended.
No, the little girl replied.
And before the transfer, she was asked the following question:
Who would you like to be?
The answer was short and to the point.
What is her “everything”? This is a flight under the dome of the circus, and filming a movie (what she herself included), and, for example, writing poetry, drawing. But such “everything”, from the point of view of adults, is a pie in the sky. That doesn't happen. Better a titmouse in your hand, that is, a microphone into which you sing, while doing an acrobatic stance. It delights everyone, it can be trained, it deeply satisfies parental ambitions.
Our heroine, for example, admits: she does not like acrobatics. And to perform here - yes, she is very happy in front of the audience and cameras. Let us assume that this is the payment for a truly unlived and unexperienced childhood. Note: it is disproportionately large.
Of course, there is nothing unusual here: adults are trying to create spaces for life together with children in the information field, including spaces for play activities, and thanks to the mass media, these opportunities have significantly expanded. When behind these undertakings there is a knowledge of the psychology of the child, interesting and wise projects are obtained that contribute to development. For example, the cartoon "Smeshariki" conveys to children the attitude to the respect of others, instills tolerance, norms that will help build relationships with different people. Another direction is attempts to reproduce real games on TV, say, the same quizzes, together with children. This is how the youth game “What, where, when?” appeared. - one of us (A.G. Asmolov) as a psychologist worked on its creation back in 1977, and it is alive to this day. Educational games on television also turned out to be very successful - the methods that Tatyana Kirillovna Chernyaeva practiced in the ABVGDeika program in the same 1970s are now used in education standards.
Recently, the focus of our culture is the demonstration of the phenomenon of leadership. This is characteristic not only of Russian culture, but rather of a pan-European phenomenon. In countries where approved models of competition have long existed, leadership in various forms has long been practiced precisely as a cultural practice, as an important aspect of the worldview. The question is to what extent such leadership models, namely, they are cultivated in such programs as “Voice. Children”, “Best of all!”, “Master chef. Children” and in other competitions are positive for the development of a child “growing into culture”. So: no adequate researcher in the field of psychology, if he is in his right mind, will answer you that they are positive. At the same time, no one will give a harshly negative answer ...
In some specific situations, the authors of such television projects may involve psychologists, but, as a rule, modern programs represent an explosion of creative consciousness. Often, really talented actors and directors who do their job brilliantly are involved in children's programs. But this does not negate the essence: in a situation with the rapid promotion of a talented person from his environment, we were faced with an "optimistic tragedy for giftedness." And there is no getting away from this.
A child, receiving leadership preferences in one or another TV program, in life finds himself in other worlds, where he does not receive confirmation of his leadership. In other words, in one area he develops an overestimated self-esteem, which is far from always adequately perceived in other areas. What happens is what psychologists call the “affect of inadequacy”: anxiety and neuroticism increase sharply. Such cases are especially frequent when a child receives a leadership position, that is, wins on television, as a result of intellectual acceleration. For example, due to his pace of development, he can enter the first year of Moscow State University at the age of 14 or even at 12 (and there have been such cases). Intellectually, such a child will be advanced, but personally he will still be the same child who is 12-13 years old. As a result, in a group of personally more advanced students, he will constantly experience “personal dissonance”. Such situations can cause a “caisson sickness” or “takeoff sickness” in a person - at least, he is unlikely to aspire to leaders in adulthood.
There is a “fakir for an hour” effect, after which the child finds himself in a world of deceived hopes - a kind of revolution of deceived expectations takes place. In the most difficult cases, this leads to serious depression and incredible difficulties in finding one's "I". The loss of the meaning of existence, one's identity, one's "I" is too expensive a price to pay for a "minute of glory".
The problem is that in all these programs, adults are trying to motivate the child to confirm the installation "I am the best, I am the best, I am the best." In other words, he is immediately offered a model of competition as a key model for moving up the ladder of life. But is it always competition that drives us in life? In a number of cultures there is another great rule: to act not according to the formula “the strongest will win”, which, frankly, is more related to the animal world, but according to the formula “tomorrow you must be better than yesterday”. For example, in Japanese kindergartens there are entire programs
we who seek to develop in the child the ability to "rejoice" in the success of another. It turns out that “rejoicing” is psychologically much more difficult than compassion, more mature individuals can afford it. A wonderful formula of one German poet works here: “People can also have compassion, but only angels can rejoice.” Sympathy, compassion (that is, empathy) - the same source of movement of the child in the zone of the nearest - and any, no matter how remote - development, as assistance, cooperation. More precisely, both characterize the single source of this movement from different angles.
What is better for a child - to win or lose in a TV show? There are no scales that allowed us to evaluate which is better. But more fragile, more sensitive, as a rule, are precisely those who are at the pinnacle of success. Those who lose are infected for years with the social strategy of life-giving, which is inherent in our entire society, the strategy of competition - they are driven by the feeling that by pushing others, you can rise. We ourselves give them this model: try to be stronger, try to beat others. But there is a very thin line here, which is sometimes difficult for children to grasp: if you have to beat someone else, then you can also omit the other, “throw” the other, etc. It turns out that we are actively planting an archetype that is increasingly spreading in Russian life. Viktor Erofeev called it "the archetype of collective dishonesty." The most defenseless, from this point of view, adolescence. At this time, the fragility of the individual is especially great, and talk show models are often built according to the formula "personality for show". Such a personal "striptease" hurts the soul of a teenager. But it meets the desire of parents to realize their “unrealized tendencies”. They consciously, and more often unconsciously, experience their biography as "failed", they want to play out the game of their own life at the expense of the child. They are convinced that the television show model of competitive success can be a real way to develop their child's personality.
It can be assumed that the circles of adult fans of children's TV shows and "enthusiasts" of early learning overlap, if not the same (it would be interesting to conduct a study). A significant proportion of the problems that child psychologists have to work with are rooted in adult ambitions. The result of the “ambitiousness” of adults is dead learning interests in the bud, “school neuroses” even before school, emotional distress, in general, uncontrolled attention, inadequate self-esteem - just a modest list of these
problems. Many experts - for decades - have been talking about the dangers of early drills for children in kindergartens with "special" educational programs, in specialized studios and sports sections, classes with tutors at home, starting from a year and a half, but most of the same parents are unaware of their scale. And now on the stream (and like hot cakes) - another "Mathematics, without looking up from the chest." The paths to collapse with such literature are paved with good intentions and myths that "it's too late after three years."
It's not even about cognitive and other "overdoses" that do not correspond to "age capabilities". Up to a certain age, children are not at all oriented towards the content side of what they are assimilating (maybe this is to the rescue). Moreover, at first, an adult pedagogical offer is perceived by them as a chance to try something interesting from the desired “everything”. But the child's imagination is drawn to another "interesting" which is "interesting" only as part of this "everything", and suddenly runs into a limitation. About him - musician John Lennon:
We want to tell the world only one thing: "You will all be wonderful, beautiful and happy." It's like a story I've told a million times. Who told us that we are artists? All children draw and write poetry, but most often they quit at about 12 years old. After all, it is then that some gentleman appears who says: “You are mediocre.” This is what we are constantly told: “You don’t know how, you’re not talented, you don’t succeed.” People have been forced to do this, they think they can't do it their own way. We want to say that no one is limited by any boundaries, you are all geniuses, you were all artists and musicians, until some go...yuk said: “You should do wood carving, and you do metal carving, and you there is no place for lithography here.”
Lennon is practically echoed by his Beatles bandmate Paul McCartney: “We don't learn to be artists or performers. We are learning to be. “To be everything,” a talented girl from the “Minute of Glory” program would say.
This life observation is not particularly at odds with the statement of the great psychologist Jean Piaget (his 120th birthday was also celebrated this year), who pointed out that adolescence coincides with the final point in the development of thinking, which by this time reaches its highest stage (hypothetical-deduk -active intelligence). Piaget associated this, in general, sad
ending with natural biological reasons, embedded in the structure of the brain and therefore fatal. V.V. Davydov14 doubted Piaget's finalism and fatalism, convincingly showing that these and other limitations (quite surmountable) are conserved by the existing system of education, which sometimes appears to the child in the image of Lennon's gentleman. Is and "plans events."
In the zone of variable development
The concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) is probably one of Vygotsky's most mentioned concepts. ZPD is often interpreted as follows: this is the distance between what a child could previously do only with the help of an adult, and now he is able to do it on his own. Outwardly, it looks something like this. But only outwardly. I. not quite so. It turns out that the “content of the case” does not change, it is only reproduced, only in an independent form. Hence, an adult, a teacher, is confident that he can "zone" children's development, having at hand a certain ready-made project for passing the zones of proximal development, where everything is painted in the spirit of a "road map". Not even taking into account what Vygotsky understood very well: the ZPD is always variable15, extremely individualized, and its boundaries are very mobile. That the expansion (and contraction) of these boundaries involves not only adults, but also children interacting with each other. Not only peers, but also people of different age, representing different age formations and "subcultures" of childhood (for example, the educational program "Golden Key" by E.E. and G.G. Kravtsovs is based on this). And most importantly, the hero himself of the “journey through the zone of proximal development” (an expression of the Finnish follower of Vygotsky, Yuryo Engestrem16). The child - with his counter initiatives in response to the initiative of an adult.
Let's look at an example. Toward the end of infancy and throughout early childhood (1-3 years), the child intensively masters human ways of acting with human things. An adult expands the range of objects with which the child will be able to perform more and more new actions. Here, for example, a newly purchased machine is excellent for this. Let's play with her: turn her wheels, disperse, watch how fun her light blinks. And an adult, in a serious, didactic manner appropriate to the occasion, tries to organize
child activity with a toy. For some time, the attention of the baby is riveted to an attractive and useful, from the point of view of an adult, thing, but soon it fades. And then it turns out that the novelty has a "competitor". From the whole variety of toys, the kid chooses an old and nondescript rubber ring and does everything to “interest” his mentor in it. The kid stretches out a hand with a ring to him, waves the ring like a magic wand in front of an adult. The actions of the child are somewhat reminiscent of a ritual, the meaning of which is hidden to the uninitiated.
In order to open it, an adult needs to become a "little" life psychologist. Then, perhaps, he will remember how some time ago he “occupied” the baby with that same ring and under what bright emotional accompaniment (affectionate conversation, gentle stroking on the head and hands, etc.) this happened. And remembering, perhaps, he will understand that with the help of a ring, the child seeks to return the event of that wonderful communication. For him, the ring embodies his own living emotional memory of the event of communication with an adult.
A ring for a baby is both a “totem”, a symbol of kinship with an adult, and a “magic crystal”, through the prism of which the human essence of an adult is able to refract in a new way, and (in some ways) an “talisman amulet”, a guarantee of the constancy of the experienced emotional well-being .. Refusal of the typewriter in favor of the ring leads to a break in the “line of conduct” previously planned and implemented by adults in relation to the child.
The child spontaneously turns the ring into a kind of sign - a "sign" of the problem that he actually poses to an adult. Indeed, for an adult, the motive for involving this object in the course of interaction is not at all obvious, and the child’s proactive appeal to him through the object looks clearly redundant from the standpoint of the norms of ordinary, norm-compliant behavior. The adult was guided by a very clear didactic goal - to arouse cognitive interest in a new toy and teach the baby some methods of using it. And he failed to see the main thing: the unconscious desire of the “trainee” to preserve the meaning of the activity, to find or give it to her again. Meanwhile, this is the necessary condition under which the child will be able to successfully learn a lot more. The kid in his own way solved the “meaning problem” (A.N. Leontiev) and coped with its solution quite successfully. This is what an adult had to realize, who is accustomed to fixing in any task primarily cognitive or utilitarian-performing goals.
By the way, here it is, in full view - the whole drama of education! We come to children with “meanings” (social meanings of things), and they expect “meaning” from us, with which, by the way, they are ready to accept all these meanings. We set ourselves the goal of teaching them (“translating meanings”), but they need to. education that fills life with meaning! Including in order to learn how to learn, because this is a “semantic task”.
Once D.B. Elkonin, one of Vygotsky's brightest and most beloved students, jokingly (?) asked himself the question: "So who 'socializes' whom - an adult child or a child of an adult?"
Let us also ask: whose zone of proximal development does a child and an adult pass through together?
It seems that even today psychologists, teachers, and parents are still only at the beginning of that grandiose “zone of development” that Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky opened up to them in the 1920s and 1930s.
Notes
1 Condillac E.B. Experience on the origin of human knowledge // Condillac E.B. Works: In 2 t. M., 1980. T. 1. S. 234.
2 Kudryavtsev V.T. On the way to deep-apex psychology // Questions of psychology. 2006. No. 5. S. 113-125.
3 Ilyenkov E.V. What is a personality? // Where does personality begin. M., 1979. S. 183-237.
4 Florensky P.A. At the watersheds of thought: In 2 vols. T. 2. M .: Pravda, 1990.
5 Zaporozhets A.V., Venger L.A., Zinchenko V.P., Ruzskaya A.G. Perception and Action / Ed. A.V. Zaporozhets. M., 1967.
6 By the way, so L.S. Vygotsky defined creativity as “the creation of new forms of behavior” (See: Vygotsky L.S. Imagination and creativity in childhood. M., 1991, p. 46). "Creating new forms of behavior" - not in contradiction to L.S. Vygotsky and in logic E.V. Ilyenkov, we can add: new forms of human-to-human relations (in history and ontogenesis), which set (from the word “task”) the need to construct “new forms of behavior” that invisibly appear in objective creations - new ideas and things. And new ideas and things unite people in a new way. "La Gioconda" and "Hamlet", "High Mass" and "Battleship Potemkin", the steam turbine of Heron of Alexandria and the personal computer - all this is a "new will", a new way of thinking, action, life, with the advent of which to "will", to think, to act, it is no longer possible to live as before.
7 Feuerbach L. About spiritualism and materialism, especially in their relation to free will // Feuerbach L. Selected philosophical works. M., 1955. S. 435.
8 Vygotsky L.S. The history of the development of higher mental functions // Vygotsky L.S. Sobr. cit.: In 6 vols. T. 3: Problems of the development of the psyche / Ed. A.M. Matyushkin. M., 1983. S. 190.
9 Ilyenkov E.V. Philosophy and culture. M., 1991.
10 From the notes of L.S. Vygotsky // Bulletin of the Russian State University for the Humanities. Ser. "Psychology". 2006. No. 2. S. 30-36.
11 Kudryavtsev V.T., Egorov B.B. Developing pedagogy of health improvement. M., 2000.
12 Zaporozhets A.V. Fav. psychol. Proceedings: In 2 vols. Vol. 2: The development of voluntary movements / Ed. V.V. Davydova, V.P. Zinchenko. Moscow: Pedagogy, 1986.
13 Davydov V.V. The theory of developmental learning. M., 1996.
14 Davydov V.V. Types of generalization in teaching. M., 1972. Asmolov A.G. Optics of Enlightenment: Sociocultural Perspectives. M., 2013. Engestrom Y. Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to development research. Helsinki: Orienta-Consultit Oy, 1987.
Historical psychology is a new field of knowledge that took shape in world science as an independent discipline in the 1940s. XX century, which is borderline in nature and is formed at the junction of psychology with a wide range of humanities - history, sociology, cultural studies, etc.
Being a young scientific discipline, historical psychology at the same time has a long history. The origins of its origin go back to those early stages of historiogenesis, when a person becomes aware of his historical belonging, and historical and psychological reflection appears and begins to develop.
The development of historical and psychological knowledge in different countries differed significantly in terms of chronological framework, the direction of the issues under consideration, and the content of ideas. Thus, in Russia, historical and psychological problems arise earlier than in other countries. It was introduced in the first half of the 19th century. in the works of Slavophiles and Westerners, is clearly reflected in the activities of members of the Geographical Society and is developing in line with the study of the psychology of the Russian people.
In European science, the identification of historical and psychological problems, the study of the psychology of peoples according to the products of their spiritual activity, as well as the first attempts at the historical and evolutionary study of the psyche arise in the second half of the 19th century. Here we should highlight the works of G. Spencer, L. Levy-Bruhl, K. Levy-Strauss, X. Steinthal, M. Lazarus, W. Wundt, W. Dilthey. There were practically no empirical studies at this stage, and the developments were descriptive.
Problems of historical psychology in Russian psychology in the first half of the 20th century. considered in the works of L. S. Vygotsky, S. L. Rubinstein, A. R. Luria, B. D. Porshnev, L. I. Atsiferova, O. M. Tutundzhyan, V. G. Ioffe, I. D. Rozhanksky and others. L. S. Vygotsky put forward the principle of cultural-historical determination of the psyche, which became one of the foundations for building a new scientific discipline. A critical analysis of foreign schools of historical psychology (mainly French) was carried out. In the works of A. R. Luria, an attempt was made to empirically study the historical development of cognitive processes. Interesting studies concerning the formation of a person and his psyche in the course of anthropogenesis and the first stages of the historical development of society were carried out by B. D. Porshnev. However, these works were isolated and failed to ensure the creation of a special direction in psychology - historical psychology. The empirical basis of research was extremely limited. In fact, no serious steps were taken from the declaration of the historical nature of mental processes to their concrete empirical study.
A growing interest in the problems of historical psychology and the development of research in this area have been outlined in our country in recent decades. In the 1980s-1990s. a number of serious generalizing works were published, highlighting the methodological problems of this area (Belyavsky I. G., 1991; Shkuratov V. A., 1994, 1997, etc.), the first textbooks were published (Shkuratov V. A., 1997; Bobrova E. Yu., 1997), a series of interesting historical and psychological studies was carried out (Spitsina L.V., 1994; Barskaya A.D., 1998, 1999, etc.). Historical psychology thus begins to acquire its theoretical framework and empirical foundation. And although this science has not yet been recognized as an independent science, it has already been introduced as a special curriculum at a number of psychological faculties (Moscow University, St. Petersburg University, Moscow Institute of Youth). Problems of historical psychology have become the subject of discussion at all-Union and international scientific conferences in recent years. Examples of this are the conferences systematically held in Samara on the problems of Russian consciousness and the peculiarities of the provincial mentality, the conferences on the history of psychology "Moscow Meetings" (1992, 1993), etc.
What explains such a growing interest in this issue in recent years? Answering this question, it is necessary to single out a number of reasons, both of a socio-cultural and logical-scientific nature.
The relevance and significance of historical psychology is largely due to the deep and fundamental changes that are currently taking place in all spheres of modern Russian society. The system of socio-economic relations that existed for many decades is changing; serious transformations are taking place in the sphere of spiritual life, in the worldview and consciousness of a person. And under these conditions, interest in questions of history naturally grows, the desire to understand the roots and origins of all modern events, one's own status and position in a changing world, reflection on the laws and trends of historical development in general becomes more acute. As noted by the famous Russian philosopher N. I. Berdyaev in his work “The Meaning of History”, the very concept of “historical” reflects the spirit of social change and becomes objectively in demand and is fully realized precisely in the critical periods of history. “In order to understand the “historical,” in order for thought to be turned to the perception of the “historical” and to its comprehension, it is necessary to go through a certain bifurcation. In those epochs when the human spirit abides integrally and organically in some completely crystallized, completely settled ... settled epoch, questions about historical movement and the meaning of history do not arise, with due acuteness. Staying in an integral historical epoch is not conducive to historical knowledge.
It is necessary that a split, a bifurcation, take place in historical life and in human consciousness in order for the possibility of the opposition of the historical object and subject to appear; it is necessary for reflection to come in order for historical knowledge to begin ... ”(Berdyaev N.A., 1990. P. 5).
But what does it mean to understand history, to penetrate into its deep mechanisms, to realize its essential characteristics? This means behind the succession and flashing of events to see, first of all, their creators, to voice history, to make it speak in a human voice. After all, a person is a system-forming, integral component of an integral historical process, its subject. Thanks to his vigorous activity, his attitude to reality, a person creates and transforms history, is its main creative and driving force. Any socio-historical transformations, the solution of certain social problems is possible only on the basis of their awareness and acceptance by a person, his interest in their implementation, that is, it involves an appeal to the human component of the historical process. The results and course of development of history depend on the activity of people, their will, the nature of their involvement in public life. Therefore, it is important to understand how a person fits into history at each turn of its development, how he reacts to socio-historical processes, what he brings into history and how ideas, aspirations, ideas, and experiences of people influence it. And this brings us directly to the study of the problems of historical psychology.
Man is not only the subject of history, but at the same time he acts as its object, product. By its nature, he is a social being - in society and in interaction with people, with the world of culture, he receives the conditions and sources of his development, masters the system of meanings, is formed as a personality. Labor, communication and culture determined the formation of a person in the process of his historiogenesis and act as the most important conditions for the development of the psyche and socialization of each individual in the process of his ontogenetic development. The human psyche and its highest product - human consciousness - are subject primarily to historical laws. Having created a story, a person is organically included in it both as its integral element, and as its creator, and as its product. Thus, human being becomes historical, that is, a person exists in the context of a certain historically developing society - in the context of history.
Each person bears the imprint of his culture, his historical time. With the change of society, the psychology of a person changes - attitudes, values, needs, interests. By transforming history, a person also changes his inner world.
Obviously, underestimation of the psychological component in the real historical process is fraught with serious consequences in practical terms. There is a disharmony of socio-historical and psychological development plans, which is a breeding ground for the development of social contradictions and conflicts, causes a negative or indifferent attitude of a person to reality, his social passivity. In our country, this problem area has not been the subject of deep scientific and practical consideration until recent years. This is explained, firstly, by the homogeneous social structure that existed in our society, the absence of qualitative differences in the social positions and interests of various social groups, which in turn excluded social contradictions and determined the relative stability of society. The second reason is in the forms of social leadership, among which administrative-command methods and the use of political leverage dominated while ignoring socio-psychological factors and means of social development. Finally, an important circumstance that determined the inattention to the issues under consideration was the ideology prevailing in our country with its characteristic principle of economic determinism. When addressing issues of social development, the main attention was paid to economic, production relations, considered as the main, fundamental, ontologically primary ones. All other substructures of society acted as emerging from them and reflecting them, secondary, superstructural. As N. A. Berdyaev wrote on this occasion, “all life... all spiritual culture, all human culture... is only a reflection, a reflex, and not true reality. There is ... a process of dehumanization of history ... ”(Berdyaev N.A., 1990. P. 10). The Russian philosopher S. N. Bulgakov saw the main drawback of Marxist views on society and man in the loss of a real living person by this doctrine and its replacement by some kind of scheme.
In modern conditions, when society is transformed in its foundations, becomes mobile, loses its homogeneity, and the well-being of a person depends on his activity, ignoring the psychological factor is no longer possible. All of the above convincingly testifies to the relevance of considering the problem of "man-history".
Along with practical significance, the study of problems of historical psychology has serious theoretical significance. It occupies a special niche in psychology and is associated with the development of a number of its key areas.
The subject of study in historical psychology is a special class of determinants - the historical determinants of the development of the subject's psyche (both individual and collective). A person or group is considered here as the bearers of historical norms and values. Historical psychology, therefore, explores the higher levels of the psyche - socio-historical consciousness as the reality that connects a person with society, civilization, history as a whole. The correlation of the history of the development of man and his mental world with the history of mankind is studied; it is considered how a person fits into history, creating it, and how he himself is determined in his mental development by history.
Considering a person in the context of history as a constantly developing and changing process, historical psychology deals with the dynamic aspects of the mental world and studies the historiogenesis of mankind and man. It thus constitutes a field of genetic psychology.
The theoretical significance of historical psychology is also determined by the specifics of its object. It can be a person, society, mass phenomena, but they are necessarily studied in connection with a certain historical context, in their historical conditionality, moreover, often remote from us, hidden behind the thickness of centuries (for example, when studying the psychological characteristics of a person in antiquity, the Middle Ages). The study of psychological phenomena in the context of history expands the boundaries of psychological knowledge, introducing macro-level factors and conditions into it, and also allows for a dialogue between the past and the present. As noted by L. Febvre (1989), historical and psychological research is focused on talking with the dead on behalf of the living and in the name of the living. The peculiarity of historical psychology is that it a priori assumes as its object and explores a real holistic person, thereby, in fact, realizing the principle of a holistic approach in psychology. Finally, in the mainstream of historical psychology, ample opportunities arise for studying man as an active, acting being, embodying and objectifying his psychological properties in the products of activity and being studied by these products. It should be noted that the subject-activity approach developed in the works of S. L. Rubinstein, A. V. Brushlinsky, K. A. Abulkhanova is currently defined as the most promising direction in the development of psychological science.
The peculiarity of historical psychology lies in its interdisciplinary status: the study of a person in history necessarily predetermines the interaction of a psychologist with sociologists, culturologists, historians, the use of data and methods of source study. Thus, important steps are being taken towards the organization of interdisciplinary research, the development of an integrated approach in psychology, and the implementation of the program put forward by B. G. Ananiev for the formation of a complex human knowledge.
The development of historical psychology reflects another new trend in psychology - the desire for a more complete development and use of idiographic approaches and methods. X. Wolf in the 18th century, and later - W. Windelband, G. Rickert, W. Wundt divided all sciences, including psychology, into nomothetic (focused on identifying the patterns of the studied phenomena, their explanation, and appealing to the data obtained on large statistical samples) and idiographic (aimed at describing individual phenomena in their individual manifestations). The former traditionally belong to the sphere of natural science knowledge, the latter - to the humanities. Domestic psychology of the Soviet period for many years developed in a purely natural-science spirit. Until recently, humanitarian approaches were represented in it very little. Historical psychology can actually fill this gap. On the one hand, having as its object, as a rule, single phenomena, historical psychology thus belongs to the field of idiographic knowledge, on the other hand, striving to strictly scientifically investigate the problems under consideration, it is based on the principles of natural science analysis. That is, in line with historical psychology, a synthesis of natural-science and humanistic approaches in the psychological knowledge of a person is carried out, which seems to be extremely promising and corresponding to the main trends of modern scientific research in general.
Thus, the development of the problems of historical psychology leads the researcher simultaneously to the solution of a number of important and promising problems and directions in the development of psychological knowledge.
Cultural historical psychology (English cultural-historical psychology)- a virtual (non-institutionalized) branch of knowledge and research, which formally can be considered a section of equally virtual cultural psychology - a discipline that studies the role of culture in mental life (M. Cole). Concerning virtuality Cultural-historical psychology has traces in scientific folklore. joke (Chaiklin S., 2001):
What's over 75 but still a baby?
- Cultural-historical psychology.
It is logical to consider that cultural-historical psychology is focused on the global problem of the role of culture in mental development, both in phylogenesis (anthropogenesis and subsequent history) and in ontogenesis. At the same time, Cole prefers to use the term "Cultural-Historical Psychology" to refer to one of the variants of cultural psychology, to which he considers himself and a number of grew up. psychologists (Mr. o. L. S. Vygotsky and his school). It is fundamentally wrong to identify K. - and. n. with historical psychology, which studies social history from a psychological point of view. and developing the problem of the psychological (including personal) factor in history.
Cole, who dedicated his book Cultural-Historical Psychology, called it the science of the future, but, as follows from the history of culture, incl. and from the history of psychology, K.-and. p. is also a science of the past. Moreover, practical psychology began with it, solving the problems of controlling the behavior and activities of people and arose long before scientific psychology. Such a statement only seems paradoxical. An example is mnemonics, well known and practiced at least since antiquity. Its tasks may well be formulated in terms of K.-i. in Vygotsky's version, as the development and mastery of symbolic means that transform memory from a natural mental function into a cultural one, incl. higher mental function. At the same time, it was not about a notch, a tag, or a “memory knot”, but about internal, ideal means of memorization that were developed during memory exercises. In the Phaedrus, Plato's Socrates tells of the meeting of the ancient deity Teut with the king of Egypt, Tamus. Teut showed the king many of his inventions, incl. writings that will make the Egyptians wise and remembering; found a remedy for memory and wisdom. To which the king said: “You, the father of letters, out of love for them, gave them directly against. meaning. They will instill forgetfulness in the souls of those who have learned them. memory will be deprived of the exercise: they will begin to recall from the outside, trusting the letter, according to extraneous signs, and not from within, by themselves. So you have found a remedy not for memory, but for recollection. You give students imaginary, not true wisdom. They will know a lot from you by hearsay, without training, and will seem to be knowledgeable, remaining mostly ignorant, people difficult to communicate with; they will become falsely wise instead of wise.”
As we can see, this story is quite modern. For 2.5 thousand years, people (and psychologists!) have not decided what is best? Rich memory or means of recall? Modern K.-i did not answer this question either. for which the concept of mediation has become central. But it was the same for dialectics (Hegel). Without the mediating role of a symbol, it is impossible to turn a thing into an idea and ideas into a thing (P.A. Florensky). Non-mutually mediated, isolated or "pure" mental functions (if they occur in life, and not in the laboratory) are mechanical and have no development prospects. They, according to Hegel, remain a combination, a mixture, a heap. It must be said that this fully applies to mutually unmediated knowledge, which is a functional organ of the individual. Hegel writes about this unambiguously: “Mechanical mode of representation, mechanical memory, habit, mechanical mode of action mean that what the spirit perceives or does lacks its inherent penetration and presence.” The dead mechanism is the process of interaction of objects, “which directly showed themselves as independent, but for this very reason they are actually not independent and have their center outside themselves” (Hegel).
A peculiar reaction to the insufficient explanatory power of the schemes of interaction of mental functions proposed by classical psychology can be considered the appearance of calls for an organic worldview, the addition of the epithet living to mental functions, states, phenomena: “living image”, “living movement”, “living word-concept” , "living knowledge" (cf. Knowledge is alive), even “living feeling”, “living memory”.
What is the merit of Cultural-Historical Psychology, if the inclusion of memory in the cultural context and its means have been thought from time immemorial? Cultural-historical psychology has made a fruitful attempt to return mental functions torn out of it by classical experimental psychology into the cultural and life context. It can be considered a new and natural stage in the development of psychology: if classical psychology had not accumulated material, had not studied isolated functions, had not built an ontology of the psyche, there would have been nothing to cultivate and spiritualize, to return to life and culture. It is important that this return occurs not speculatively, but practically and experimentally. Hence the conceptual framework of K.-and. n. psychology, operating with the concepts of psychological tools, tools, means, mediators, artifacts. The main psychological tools in Vygotsky's teachings are signs (especially the word), which manifest themselves in sign-symbolic activity, the various forms of which were the subject of his attention. A complete list of mediators includes a sign (in a narrower sense), a word, a symbol (see. Cassirer E. , Florensky P.), meaning, myth. A huge role in the development is played by personified mediators, to which m. b. Gods, parents, teachers, generally significant others are referred. This "tool set" of mediators clearly demonstrates the fundamentally interdisciplinary nature of the conceptual and methodological apparatus of K.-i. etc., with which, in fact, as a rule, chronic difficulties are associated on the way of the institutionalization of this science.
The main reason for the difficulties in the development of cultural-historical psychology is considered not the lack of a heuristic theoretical platform (such, for example, Cole, Vygotsky’s concept may well serve as), but the unpreparedness of psychologists for interdisciplinary cooperation, which, in turn, is associated with a deep fragmentation of scientific research. human knowledge. As Cole writes, it is difficult for psychologists to keep culture in the spotlight because, when psychology was institutionalized as a social and behavioral science, the processes that played a decisive role in the formation of the psyche were divided among several disciplines: culture moved to anthropology, social life to sociology. , language - to linguistics, the past - to history, etc. " (Cole M., 1997). At the same time, Cole does not question Vygotsky's interdisciplinary approach. Other authors also pointed out the merits and fruitfulness of the latter (for example, Asmolov A.G., 1996; Verch D., 1996). Vygotsky, indeed, showed a lot of impressive examples of the use of historical-cultural, ethnographic, linguistic, defectological, pedagogical, neurological and psychiatric sources for the interpretation and reconstruction of psychological facts. The ability of Vygotsky's concept to serve as a theoretical and methodological foundation for interdisciplinary K.-i. n. Nevertheless, for the development of K. - and. this was not enough. The very working structure of human knowledge must be fundamentally rebuilt, because, according to Cole, the the division of sciences into social and humanities, whatever his achievements, has exhausted itself. This structure and the corresponding division of labor prevent the organization of cooperation between different branches of the "tree of knowledge" of man. This position is also supported by D. Werch (1996): the existing “division of labor leads to the creation of an overly complex puzzle with a huge number of details that cannot be put together: the parameters of the phenomenon are defined in such a way that the principles and units of analysis of each parameter prevent their recombination into a more general picture."
However, despite all the difficulties in the formation of K. - and. etc., the attitude towards it should be proleptic (see Prolepsis), by analogy with the normal human attitude towards babies: their future state must be hypostatized in the present and past, i.e. they must be treated as if they already were what they should become. Cultural-historical psychology is the return of psychology to cultural sources. In Hegelian terminology, cultural-historical psychology is the search for a path from the abstract to the concrete, the reproduction of the concrete through thinking. Inside K. - and. the activity approach in psychology was born, in which many ideas of K.-i were developed. n. In the future, contacts between K.-i. and cognitive psychology, which continues the analytical work begun in classical psychology and seeks its own paths to a holistic understanding of man and his psyche. (V.P. Zinchenko