What is a person from the point of view of psychology. Cognitive mental processes

The openness of a person is determined by what part of her world she lets others into. The more parts of our life we ​​share with others, the more open we are.

A socially open person is distinguished by sociability and sincerity. At the same time, such a person still prefers to keep painful experiences in himself and makes them intimate.

In most cases in everyday communication being open means be open-minded. Such a person easily shares his experiences and thoughts, goals and hopes. An open person does not feel an internal barrier in sharing with someone his feelings and attitude towards something or someone. Such people easily confess their love or dislike, publicly admit their fears, speak openly about resentment and boldly share their point of view. For such a person, being open to people means not hiding his inner world from others and gladly accepting what comes from outside.

Spiritual openness is inextricably linked with the concept of trust. That is why these two terms are often considered as synonyms. True Openness implies both mental and social openness.

When openness is appropriate and when not

It should be borne in mind that not every kind of openness is acceptable. Excessive openness in sensitive matters can be regarded as thoughtlessness and simplicity. Even if such a person shares something in an absolutely positive way, his thoughtlessness may become unprofitable for him, and he may pass for a thoughtless simpleton.

If a person is mentally healthy, then moderate spiritual openness will be a normal state for him. It is this quality that is the most important basis for building long-term friendly relations. However, it should be understood that thoughtless trust in everyone around is sheer stupidity and a manifestation of shortsightedness. Nowadays, the people who come into contact with us are not always friendly and do not always have a positive intention. That is why it is very important to keep a sober mind and not trust just anyone. Otherwise, you can make yourself a lot of problems, which will be an important life lesson. Therefore, one should not ignore such qualities as the ability to understand people and the ability to maintain internal security.

At the same time, one should not confuse internal security with closeness. The latter is rather a negative quality, while the former in most cases will benefit everyone. It's no secret that many successful people practice the principle of hoping for the best and prepared for the worst. That is why a person who has serious inner protection and spiritual power can truly trust. If a person is rich, confident in himself and in his abilities, then it will not be difficult for him to be open. Therefore, it is very important to develop inner strength and psychological security in yourself. It is when you acquire these qualities that you will realize that trust is an important personal value.

How to be an open person

In the event that you are accused of being closed or not open enough, then it may make sense to change the perception of others about you. However, it should be understood that minor external changes cannot be avoided. You have to seriously reconsider many of your habits and life values. Moreover, you will have to change even facial expressions.

The first step towards openness - is to start appearing among people more often. Sitting at home at the computer or watching TV will not change your life for the better. Being in a company, it does not make sense to fight for leadership or the attention of others. For starters, try to be an attractive and interesting person.

Very often, closeness is inextricably linked with the fear of saying something inappropriate or wrong. And indeed it is. If you decide to develop in yourself such a quality as openness, then it is necessary to practice smart conscious openness with an understanding of who and what you are opening for. To figure this out, ask an intelligent person for advice. Think about who of those around you consider as such and ask how you need to act, what and in what cases you can say, and what you need to keep silent about.

Many people who don't know how to be an open person, but strive for this, make a mistake and begin to play some role that is not characteristic of them. You have to remember that being real is very important. Playing a role is a step towards closeness and unnaturalness.

One day you will discover that the best openness is based on helping the other person understand himself. This kind of openness causes your partner to open up in return. Realizing this can give you an incredible amount. If you don't want to talk about yourself, start taking an interest in others. Talk to them about topics that interest them. Let's look at how this relates to openness.

If you are called a closed person, then this means that others do not like to communicate with you. At the same time, when you touch on topics that are interesting to your interlocutor, he begins to enjoy communicating with you. At the same time, such a person will never again say about you that you are a closed person. You don't have to speak up all the time. However, when you say something, clarify your attitude towards something. For example, the phrase “it’s different for me” will be closed, while the phrase “unfortunately, everything is different for me” already clearly indicates your emotions. Avoid dry words like "I see." Instead, say something like "Very interesting, I never thought that...". By practicing this small change in communication, you will notice that your contacts with others will become more open.

Learn openness from children. It is for their immediacy that adults like to communicate with them. Their love for life and the pursuit of happiness, curiosity and thirst for knowledge make adults smile and admire. In order to become open, it is worth looking at the world through the eyes of a child.

When you express your attitude towards something, try to give preference to the positive more often. Without a doubt, it is also necessary to share negative emotions, but it is worth remembering that people are more attracted to someone who cheers up.

If you want to be open with other people, you should get rid of certain conventions. Give well-deserved compliments, criticize fairly and to the point. However, do not allow rudeness and insults. You will succeed when you are able to put yourself in the place of your interlocutor. In order to avoid embarrassing situations, be able to criticize correctly and learn to constructively accept criticism addressed to you.

Smile more often, as this is a fairly simple way to be friendly with others. Smile even when it's against the situation. You will be surprised how pleasant a conversationalist your grouchy neighbor or a rude cashier in a supermarket can be.

A more difficult task is study of facial expressions. Make it more expressive. Remember that you can demonstrate your attitude both verbally and non-verbally.

Don't forget to say "thank you". Learn the art of laughing at yourself and your mistakes. Learn to take responsibility for your actions. Grab the opportunities that life gives you. Becoming an open person means finding inner harmony and learning to live in harmony with the outside world.

Now you know, what is openness and how one can make this property of character one's own.

openness as a quality of personality - readiness to realize oneself without feeling threatened by the perception of new or even impartial information about oneself.

Once the granddaughter asked her grandmother: - Grandmother, I don't know if I should tell him everything. It seems that there was nothing like that, but what if he finds out? And I don’t seem to have anything to admit, but I can’t tell either. And how can I demand from him to be honest with me if I myself begin to hide something and keep back? - Granddaughter, remember three simple rules. First: never, under any circumstances, deceive him. Second: never, under any circumstances, cheat on him. And the third: if you have already deceived and cheated, then never, under any circumstances, tell him about it. Just remember, granddaughter, no matter how you want, but the last rule follows only the first two.

Openness is an invitation to visit your inner world without any fear of being vulnerable. It is openness to new experience and inner experience without feeling threatened by the outside world. It is self-awareness combined with sincerity in which self-disclosure is realized. Opponents of openness, fearful of all sorts of tricks from others, Mother Teresa made a testament: “Yes, people are unreasonable, inconsistent and selfish. And still love them. If you do good, people will accuse you of hidden selfishness and selfishness. And still do good. If success accompanies you, you will find secret and open enemies. Still strive for success. The good you did today will be forgotten tomorrow. And still do good. Sincerity and openness will make you vulnerable. Still, be sincere and open. What you have been building for years can collapse in an instant. And still build. People will demand your help, but they will also reproach you for it. And still help people. Give the world the best you have and you'll get hit hard. And yet give the best you have."

Openness is the readiness to make for people not an open day, but constantly open doors of their souls. However, the inner world has its own doors. How many doors are open - such is openness. For example, opening a social door means being ready to communicate easily, get to know each other, give your coordinates and contact information. Opening the spiritual door means inviting a person into your inner world, sincerely expressing your point of view, opinions and assessments, personal attitude to the current event. And, finally, as in a fairy tale, each person still has a forbidden door, behind which the world of feelings and innermost desires is hidden. If he is consciously ready to open this door too, then we have full openness in all its enchanting beauty. In other words, the first door is communication, the second is sincerity, and the third is frankness. Since the third door, after all, is forbidden, therefore, in everyday speech, openness means, as a rule, spiritual openness.

When we say "an open person" - subconsciously we understand - not an egoist. A person whose whole consciousness is saturated with egoism, by definition, cannot be open - the Ego will rebel, throw such a scandal that at least "endure the saints." An open person has a pure consciousness, his mind, feelings and mind have not absorbed the poison of egoism, he speaks with his Ego in an orderly tone. In openness, the ego is in the position of Cinderella. An egoist, when he wants to free himself from the control and repressions of his Ego, in order to become open and “pour out his soul” to someone, goes to a bar or to a store for alcohol. Having taken on the chest, it temporarily becomes open. It is not for nothing that people say: "What a sober man has on his mind, then a drunkard has on his tongue." In an egoist, the protective function of the ego is an indicator of mental health. An open sober egoist is a wake-up call for a psychiatrist - maybe he is on the step of dementia or schizophrenia, or he is hooked on the “needle”.

The American anthropologist Jared Diamond, in his book The World Before Yesterday: What We Could Learn from Traditional Societies, examines the personality traits of the natives. The first thing that caught his eye was the striking openness of the natives. Jean Ledloff also spoke about the amazing openness of traditional communities, having spent two and a half years in the depths of the jungles of Latin America with the Yekuana Indians. For example, according to Ledloff's stories, Yekuan's "crying into a vest" is not a metaphor at all. Even an adult, if he is upset, goes to a woman close to him: mother, aunt or wife, and cries in her arms. If the mother of an adult woman or unmarried man dies, no matter how old they are at that moment, the tribe “appoints” them with a kind of foster mother, a guardian who takes over the emotional functions of the deceased. The woman to whom they come to cry retains a visible calmness, even indifference. She simply "accepts" the feelings of the grieving without commenting on them and not stopping the flow of tears until the person calms down on her own.

Without openness, it is difficult to imagine a strong and harmonious marriage. Harmonious relations in the family develop when the wife is open to her husband, freely talks about her experiences, shares her anxiety, in a word, naturally shows her emotions. A woman must express herself, this shows her feminine self-control. If she hides her emotions, then she will soon possess herself. Reasonable emotionality adorns a woman and, conversely, secrecy causes tactlessness, rudeness and coldness in a man. He begins to doubt her purity and fidelity, and a suspicious, jealous mind will instantly build a structure out of insignificant situations - the betrayal of his wife. Tensions, suspicions, dissatisfaction, quarrels and distrust arise in the family. In a word, the lack of openness on the part of a woman leads to the destruction of relationships.

There is such a sad parable about how the lack of openness leads to senseless sacrifices. The old man confesses to his wife on death: “For you, only for you, I always obediently ate that nasty pea soup that you loved so much, and even found the strength to praise it.” And the old woman replies: “I myself have always hated it, but you spoke of it with such enthusiasm that I had to boil it almost every day.”

We all know that psychology is the science of set of psychological phenomena and behavior of man, higher animals, which is explained on the basis of these phenomena. So, object of science is a man, a being endowed with consciousness and an inner subjective world. psychology can be classified as one of the most interesting sciences. If you still want to know more, they will help you.

  • # 1: brain activity continues even when we are resting. At this moment, there is a filtering of what really needs to be put aside in memory, and what to remove “in reserve”. Waking up in the morning, you will never forget what is really important to you, but you will not remember what you focused on yesterday.
  • #2 A person only feels more successful and happy when they mind is busy. Moreover, the gray matter is not interested in monotonous work - it is just about the constant fuss of concentration and switching from one job to another. Only at such moments the person feels happy.
  • #3: You can't help but pay attention to food, sex and danger. Have you noticed that people always stop to look at accident scenes. In fact, we cannot ignore the danger situation. Each person has a special part of the brain that is responsible for survival and asks: “Can I eat this? Can you have sex with this? Could this kill me? ".
  • #4 Researchers have proven that if a person was able to give up what they really wanted in their youth, life tests easier and with minimal losses.
  • #5: In order to get used to something you need no more than 2 months, or rather - 66 days. It is this period that a person will need in order to form and bring any action to automaticity. For example, if you want to switch to proper nutrition, then you may need a little less - about 55 days. And here to sports have to get used to longer - up to 75 days.
  • #6: If you think you can have unlimited friends, you are wrong. It turns out that Human for all my life can be friends up to 150 times.
  • #7: There are times when you want make a girl happy giving a gift, but don't know what she needs. There is a solution! Tell her you bought a present and ask her to guess what it is. She will list what she wants.
  • #8: If you are being tormented nightmares at night you may be freezing in your sleep. Scientific fact - the colder it is in the bedroom, the more likely you are to have a bad dream.
  • #9: Even positive developments, such as the graduating from university, getting married or new job can lead to depression.
  • #10: Best remedy for anxiety and stress is reading. This exercise has a faster effect on the body. Surprisingly, this method is much better than drinking alcohol, much more effective than walking, drinking tea or listening to music.
  • #11: In psychology there is principle: the more expectations about some event, the higher the likelihood of crushing disappointment. You wait more, you get less; you wait less, you get more.
  • #12: Most people in an unfamiliar place keep to the right. If you do not want to be in the crowd or stand in line for a long time, then knowing this fact, feel free to go left or take the queue to the left.
  • #13: According to experts, people with blue eyes may fall in love in just a few minutes and people with brown eyes may love two people at the same time. To fall in love with green eyes takes a long time, sometimes years. People with all colors can fall in love in just an hour.
  • #14: The interesting thing is that people remember good grades many times better than bad ones. With a probability of 89%, people will remember the mark "5" and only 29% - the mark "3". As a consequence, it seems that the score was higher than it really is.
  • #15: Wonder what judges in sports punish more often those teams whose uniforms are black. This is confirmed by the statistics NHL, FIFA.
  • #16: It is a well-known fact that women, while in a clothing store, focus more on shelf and hangers, on which there is a mess. Subconsciously, it seems to them that there is something better, more interesting.
  • #17: The whole realm of psychological factors and techniques is used by stores. For example, recurring items at the checkout, promotions and price tags in different colors. If you write on the price tag instead of "Socks - $ 2." - "STOCK! 5 pairs of socks - $10 "Sales can be increased exactly by half..
  • #18: At the residents South-East Asia, primarily Chinese, often seen Koro's syndrome- mental pathology, when a person thinks that his penis is decreasing or retracting into the stomach. At the same time, the “patient” is seriously afraid of the onset of death. This is a cultural feature of Asians, since cases of Koro's syndrome in Africans or Europeans are usually not accompanied by fear of death. Often, as part of self-treatment, men hang some kind of weight on the penis in order to stop retraction.
  • #19: If the glass in the house is broken, then soon there will not be a single whole window left in it, and then looting will begin- that's the main idea broken windows theory. In a broader sense, this theory is that people are much more willing to break the rules and norms of behavior if they see clear signs of disorder around them - this has been repeatedly experimentally proven.
  • #20: People are reluctant to contradict a calm, level-headed person. On the contrary, when someone fiercely and aggressively defends his opinion- they will resist him and will argue with him.
  • #21: Those who sleeps 6-7 hours, are less at risk of premature death than those who sleep at 8:00. It is worth noting that those who sleep less than 5:00 are three times more likely to suffer from mental disorders than those who sleeps for 8-9 hours.
  • #22: No for a person better word than her name. The first thing to remember when meeting is the name. NOT a position, not a profession, but name. This is the basic rule for establishing good relationships.
  • #23: To fall asleep quickly you need to lie on your back, stretch out and relax your whole body. Close your eyes and roll the pupils up under the closed eyelids. This is the normal state of the eyes during sleep. Having taken this position, a person falls asleep quickly, easily and deeply.
  • #24: Psychologists have determined that it takes only 45 seconds for a woman to appreciate an unfamiliar man. Of these, she builds a general impression of the figure for 10 seconds, evaluates the eyes for 8 seconds, looks at the hair for 7 seconds, looks at the lips and chin for 10 seconds, and looks at the shoulders for 5 seconds. And the last 5 looks at the ring, if it is.
  • # 25: Knowledge of psychology makes life easier, takes into account the possible reactions of people around, and application practical psychology improves mutual understanding and helps resolve conflicts in a timely manner.
  • #26: Depressed people often say that they perceive the world around them in gray tones. It turned out that this is not just a psychological phenomenon - the dullness of colors in depression has a physiological basis. This conclusion was made by German scientists from the University of Freiburg, who studied the processes in the eyes of patients using an electroretinogram. They found a strong relationship - the stronger the depressive symptoms, the weaker the retina reacts to stimulation by displaying contrasting images.
  • #27: Every time you think back to an event, you change it, as the neural pathways fire differently each time. This can be influenced by later events, and the desire fill gaps in memory. So you don't remember who else was at the family reunion, for example, but since your aunt is usually present, you can later include her in your impression.
  • # 28: Incompetent people often find themselves higher up the career ladder than their more qualified counterparts due to the Dunning-Kruger effect. According to him, people with a low level of qualification tend to overestimate their abilities, and, making unsuccessful decisions, are often unable to recognize the fallacy due to, again, weak competence. People with a high level of skills look at things more soberly and, on the contrary, tend to underestimate their abilities, and also believe that others do not appreciate them highly. These findings were experimentally confirmed by psychologists Dunning and Krueger at Cornell University in 1999.
  • # 29: An optimistic or pessimistic view of the world Each individual person is genetically programmed. According to research by scientists from the University of Michigan, it is determined by the concentration of neuropeptides Y in the brain: a reduced concentration makes one perceive the environment pessimistically and depressively.
  • # 30: Sometimes unrequited love develops into a real obsession and even threatens with mental disorders. Such, for example, as the Adélie syndrome. Adélie syndrome- this is a long without corresponding painful love obsession with another person.
  • #31: After analyzing over a billion tweets posted during major sporting events, scientists have found that the louder and more confident the debater's statements, the more likely they are to win the debate. In other words, speak confidently even if you know you're wrong.
  • #32: If a person trying to remember something, but at the same time continues to look into your eyes, be sure you are being deceived.
  • #33: Women feel loved when they are face-to-face with their partner, men, on the contrary, feel emotional closeness in communication when they work, play, or talk, sitting next to a partner.
  • #34: The average man claims to have had sex with 7 women. The average woman attributes 4 partners to herself. The fact is that men and women have different motivations. For men, having many partners is considered a plus, while for women, the opposite is true. Therefore, they "remember" the number of partners in different ways. In fact, the number is about the same.
  • #35: There is a direct relationship between appearance and crime. Criminals are less attractive than the average person. And people who are more attractive are much less likely to go to crime.
  • # 36: Male Witnesses and Female Witnesses remember differently details of crimes. When a criminal snatches a purse, for example, female witnesses remember the expression on the victim's face. Male witnesses, on the contrary, remember the robber.
  • #37: According to psychologists, we all love to dream. Researchers say that people who like to daydream tend to be more resourceful and better problem solvers.
  • #38: There is psychic phenomenon, the reverse of deja vu, called jamevu. It consists in the sudden feeling that you are encountering a situation or person for the first time, although in fact you are very familiar with it. But if almost every one of us has experienced deja vu at least once, jamevu is much less common and can be a sign of a serious mental disorder. On a par with them, you can put the phenomenon of presquevu - a state well known to many when you cannot remember a familiar word that “spins on the tongue”.
  • #39: The most famous example "cheating through honesty". A person who voices his evil intentions will look more honest in the eyes of others than a person who has these intentions completely absent or she hides them.
  • # 40: The "blindness of inattention" effect. The idea is that we are often blind to what is literally “under our noses” if we are focused on some other task.
  • #41: You can memorize only 3-4 elements at a time. There is a rule of "magic number 7 plus or minus 2", according to which a person cannot store more than 5-9 blocks of information at the same time. Most of the information in short-term memory is stored for 20-30 seconds, after which we quickly forget it, unless we repeat it again and again.
  • #42: You see things differently than you perceive them. According to a study by the University of Cambridge, "it doesn't matter in yakou the order in which letters are placed in a word." The main thing is that the first and last letters are in the right place. Even if the other letters are jumbled, you can still read the sentences. This happens because the human brain does not read every letter, the word as a whole. It constantly processes the information it receives from the senses, and the way you perceive information (words) is usually different from what you see (letters are mixed up).
  • # 43:You know how to do things that you've never done before. Imagine that you have never seen an iPad, but they gave you one and offered to read books on it. Even before you turn on the iPad and start using it, you will already have a model in your head of how to read books with it. You will have suggestions about what the book will look like on the screen, what features you will be able to use, and how you will do it.
  • # 44: The child begins to perceive his separate "I" only after two years of birth, and before that, he feels one with the whole world around him. Just as you and I consider our hand and leg to be “ourselves”, so the baby considers the whole world around him to be a part of himself.
  • # 45: 90% of all diseases are psychological character, and a person can be finally cured only with restoring your mental balance.
  • #46: Proved that a child deprived of physical contact with people for a long time degrades and may die. As a consequence, the lack of physical emotional connections can be fatal for a person. It is a kind of sensory hunger that needs to be stimulated in a person's life.
  • #47: Observation of psychologists show that with personal contacts the interlocutors are not able to look at each other constantly, but only no more than 60% of the total time. However, the time of eye contact can go beyond these limits in two cases: in lovers and in aggressive people. Therefore, if an unfamiliar person looks at you for a long time and intently, most often this indicates hidden aggression. :))
  • # 48: Duration of eye contact depends on the distance between the interlocutors. The greater the distance, the more prolonged eye contact is possible between them. So communication will be more effective, if the partners are sitting on opposite sides of the table - in this case, the increase in the distance between them will be compensated by the increase in the duration of eye contact.
  • # 49: Women look longer at those who like them, and men look at those who like them. Observations show that women are more likely than men to use a direct gaze, and therefore they are less likely to perceive a gaze as a threat.
  • #50: Don't think that a direct look is a sign of honesty and openness. A person who can lie, can fix his gaze on the eyes of the interlocutor, and also control his hands, preventing them from approaching his face.
  • # 51: Pupil constriction and dilation NOT subject to consciousness, so their reaction very clearly shows the partner's interest in you. The expansion of the pupils shows an increase in interest in you, their narrowing will tell about hostility. However, such phenomena should be observed in dynamics, since the size of the pupil also depends on the illumination. In bright sunlight, the pupils of a person are narrow, in a dark room, the pupils dilate.
  • # 52: Theory of Neuro-Linguistic Programming claims that by the movement of the eyes of the interlocutor, you can find out exactly what images are now in the mind of a person and what he is doing at the moment: he is inventing or remembering.
  • # 53: If the interlocutor looks up to the left or just up, most likely he is immersed in visual memories. Such a look can be observed in a person who answers the question "Who is depicted on a five-dollar bill?".
  • # 54: Looking up to the right gives visual construction. The man is trying to imagine what he has never seen. For example, try imagining your close friend wearing an astronaut suit.
  • # 55: Looking left to the side speaks of auditory memories. For example, consider the sounds of the piano. If the gaze is directed to the right to the side, this is a sign of auditory construction. For example, imagine how aliens talk.
  • # 56: Looking down to the left is an internal conversation with yourself. The ability to easily and imperceptibly observe the eyes of the interlocutor, analyzing him, will provide you with invaluable help, both in daily conversations and in the case of an important business conversation.

And what interesting facts about psychology do you know? Write in the comments, we will be glad to hear something new.

The essence of a person is a philosophical concept that denotes the essential characteristics of a person that distinguish him and are not reducible to all other forms and kinds of being, or his natural properties, to one degree or another inherent in all people. The essence of man according to Aristotle is those of his properties that cannot be changed so that he does not cease to be himself.

The essence of man seems self-evident to everyone, and very often they do not even think about it. But in fact, this is the problem that is still a mystery to many. There are different views on this problem: starting from the fact that there is no certain essence, or that it exists, but it is impossible to know it, to the fact that it is knowable and different conceptions of the human essence are offered. The opinion is especially widespread that the essence of a person is connected with his personality, and that, in turn, with the psyche, and having known the psyche, you can know the essence of a person. But can the science of psychology, the subject of which is the study of the psyche, give an understanding of the essence of man?

This question can be answered only by showing the historical connection of the psyche with human activity, how does it arise in a person or is it inherent in him from birth?, what are the laws of its change, and whether psychology correctly considers the human psyche. It is known that the term psychology - "the science of the soul" - began to be used in ancient Greece, and the term "psyche" comes from ancient Greek mythology, which originated in the primitive communal system. It was no coincidence, because it was then that people first began to think about the world around them. According to the materialistic concept, a person's consciousness, like the person himself, arises when he begins to separate himself from nature - to oppose himself to nature. The reason for this is the real opposition of oneself to nature with the help of tools. From now on, a mediator stands between him and nature - an object, certainly an object of human labor, referring to which, a person relates to nature. At first, a person treated everything as a living thing: every natural thing and phenomenon was endowed with a soul for him, but over time, when human activity began to reproduce these natural phenomena and things, when they became understandable, his attitude towards them changed. In parallel, people developed a special attitude towards consciousness, which was then inextricably linked with the concept of the soul. Mythology solved this issue in its own way, by virtue of the knowledge available at that time, but the main thing that it gave in this regard is the basis of the concept of the soul, with which science subsequently dealt.

Modern psychologists have every right to have a negative attitude towards the term "soul", since for many centuries it was believed that the soul is given by God, and there is no other way to know a person, as through the knowledge of God. Mental illnesses were called mental illnesses, and they were treated only in appropriate institutions (even now in cities, old psychiatric hospitals are located next to a church or a monastery). Of course, this did not advance mankind a single step towards understanding the real essence of man, towards understanding the personality.

The doctrine of the soul was freed from religious fetters, and began to be interpreted as a theory of personality. It was, without a doubt, a progressive step. But the opposite approach also does not give an understanding of the essence of man. If you look for the essence of a person in his body, in the work of the brain, then this path will also turn out to be a dead end. Nevertheless, many modern psychologists are looking for the essence of a person in the features of the neurophysiological structure of the body. In line with this approach, thinking is understood as a product of the work of the brain, and the riddle of personality lies in the features of the structure of the brain. Why are social conditions decisive in the formation of personality? Yes, because the personality itself is a purely social concept, it arises and exists exclusively in society. At the same time, society is not just a habitat for a human individual, and not even a collection of individuals, but a living, developing organism, an ensemble of all human relations.

This is also evidenced by many modern fashion trends in philosophy and psychology, that the essence of a person is his unique inner world, experiences, emotions.

The essence of man must be sought in his relation to the world, which is different even from his closest relatives in terms of biological species. Since this relation differs in that a person does not adapt to natural conditions, but, on the contrary, adapts natural conditions to his needs, then his essence must be sought in the method of adaptation - and this is production. Production, although it is carried out through the activities of specific people, nevertheless, cannot be reduced to this. It is always public.

The essence of man is a historical concept, it changes with each era, as the mode of production changes.