Psychological knowledge traditionally appears in three hypostases: (1). knowledge of psychological concepts and theories; (2). knowledge of facts and patterns discovered by other researchers and described by them in the literature; (3). psychological knowledge about a particular person. Let's look at these sections in turn.

The first section could be called theoretical. However, we can hardly talk about a single international or even a single Russian psychological terminology. Knowledge of psychological concepts can be compared with knowledge of languages ​​- native and foreign. The native language will be the terminology adopted in the psychological school in which this psychologist was formed, foreign - all the rest. This does not relieve a psychologist who claims to have a certain level of education from the need to know foreign languages. Knowledge of psychological concepts implies terminological multilingualism, that is, active knowledge of at least the main terminological languages. Knowledge of psychological concepts is the ability to give them different definitions and to analyze the consequences arising from these different definitions. Such consequences are the definitions of other psychological concepts associated with the originally defined concept.

One of the ways to overcome this contradiction was to remove psychology from its own subject, when the psychologist pretended that he himself did not subjectively participate in the process of psychological examination or that his personal participation did not make any changes in the results of the examination (or introduced minimal distortions that could be make appropriate adjustments later).

Turning now to such a variety of psychological knowledge as patterns revealed in experiments, we must first of all pay attention to the fact that many of them were obtained in an artificial vacuum of a psychological experiment that violates the real conditions of mental life and human interaction. In essence, knowledge of other people's experimental results and regularities identified by other researchers is knowledge of other people's interpretations of what was declared by these researchers to be an experimental fact.

We come to the conclusion that psychological knowledge is knowledge that generalizes knowledge about specific people. The path of psychological knowledge is the path of comprehending one person at first, revealing the patterns inherent in this one person. The next step is to study the other person and establish the laws of mental life inherent in him. If some of the identified individual patterns coincide, we can already talk about a more general pattern. Thus, the unit of psychological research is not some separate indicator or particular characteristic, but an individual pattern of mental life.

Topic 1. The human psyche as a subject of scientific study.

Origin of the word "psychology".Psychology owes its name and first definition to Greek mythology.

Eros, the son of Aphrodite, fell in love with a very beautiful young woman, Psyche. But Aphrodite was unhappy that her son, the celestial god, wants to join his fate with a mere mortal, and made every effort to separate the lovers, forcing Psyche to go through a series of trials. But Psyche's love was so strong, and her desire to meet Eros again was so great that it impressed the gods and they decided to help her fulfill all the requirements of Aphrodite. Eros, in turn, managed to convince Zeus - the supreme deity of the Greeks - to turn Psyche into a goddess, making her immortal. So the lovers are united forever.

For the Greeks, this myth was a classic example of true love, the highest realization of the human soul. Therefore, Psyche - a mortal who has gained immortality - has become a symbol of the soul, looking for its ideal.

The very word "psychology", formed from the Greek psyche (soul) and logos (science), first appeared only in the 18th century in the work of the German philosopher H. Wolf. Thus, the literal translation of this word is the science of the soul.

The concept of "psychology" is used in the ordinary, everyday sense. "Psychologist" speaks of a person who, thanks to experience, can feel, notice, understand a lot in other people. In this sense, each of us is a "psychologist" and is engaged in "psychology". In the process of relationships and interactions with other people (in everyday life, at work, in communication), we form certain ideas about the inner world of other people, we try to explain the reasons for their actions, to understand their feelings, thoughts, attitude to the world around them. The source of such "understanding", the interpretation of other people, is mainly our experience. In order for our judgments, our conclusions to turn into science, our knowledge must have a number of properties.

So what is science anyway?

In 1432, a heated discussion arose in one of the major monasteries in Italy, which attracted prominent scientists of that time from all over Europe. At the debate, the question was discussed: how many teeth a horse has. For 13 days stormy disputes continued from morning to night. All the sacred scriptures, the writings of the church fathers and saints were brought up. Grandiose erudition was shown, opposing opinions clashed, but the arguing could not come to any definite conclusion. And on the 14th day, a young monk made an unheard-of and monstrous proposal. He offered to bring a horse, open its mouth and count how many teeth it has. This proposal aroused the furious anger of the entire highly learned audience. Pundits and monks attacked the young blasphemer with cries that he offers unprecedented. heretical, blasphemous ways of research. He was beaten and thrown out of the audience. And the high scientific council decided that this question about the number of teeth in a horse will forever remain a great secret for people, because, unfortunately, nowhere in the writings of the holy fathers of the church is this mentioned.

In essence, what the young monk proposed was the beginning of the scientific method. Science begins where, instead of starting from what someone has said, we start from observations of the facts themselves.

Science begins where there is observation and fixation reliable facts (information obtained not from sources that are authoritative for us, but from the world around us, nature, through observations). Moreover, not everything is observed, not an endless stream of facts, but the purpose of observation is chosen. That is, in order to get an answer to the question posed, the observation must be purposeful. It might be a question about properties items; question about connections objects (why this or that phenomenon occurs, how they are interconnected, what is the cause); question about conditions, in which these connections are manifested (scientists either seek these conditions or create them themselves).

Any field of knowledge, in order to be called a science, must have its own object of study (what the attention of science is directed to), its own subject (one of the sides of the object, what exactly science studies in this object), its own conceptual and categorical apparatus. and their own, different from other sciences, methods of research, study of the subject.

The object of psychology is man. The subject of psychology is the psyche, the mental activity of a person. The psyche is a function, i.e. mode of action, a certain form of highly organized matter - the nervous system and in its highest manifestation - the brain. Mental is not material. The function is not something material. It is a process, an action. For example, the function of a car is driving. The car itself, of course, is quite material. But its movement in space is not the car itself. It is a process - changing the position of the car in space.

It is in this sense that the psychic is immaterial. Its carrier is material. This is the brain. The mechanisms that generate it are material. These are physical and chemical processes in the nervous system. But the psyche itself is not material. It is the result of these processes, like movement in space, the result of physical and chemical processes that occur in the mechanisms of a working car.

Sometimes there comes a period in life when interest in activities disappears, there is not enough inspiration to accomplish things. It comes to someone suddenly, and someone has to achieve it using various methods.

SOURCES OF INSPIRATION

Communication with like-minded people. In life, we meet many people who have inspired us to overcome new frontiers.

Sport. Constantly after playing sports, the state changes and the strength becomes greater. And most importantly, new ideas come ...

The presence of the analyst/witness makes it possible to re-experience and re-integrate the earliest pre-verbal relationships. Here one can most clearly recognize the images of transference and countertransference.

In this article, we will present five symbolic actions that appear again and again in the motor process in many people.

They seem to represent certain stages in the development of consciousness in the pre-verbal, pre-symbolic period of infancy, i. from birth to approximately...

The basic mechanisms that are used today in autogenic training are based on the observations of researchers who have dealt with the problem of hypnosis. In the 1920s, the French pharmacist E. Coue developed a technique that he called "the school of self-control through conscious self-hypnosis."

Coué assured his patients that they would be able to recover if several times a day, taking a comfortable position (sitting or lying down), in a whisper or mentally, they repeat a specific one 30 times in a row ...

Sometimes we can feel a lack of strength, a lack of energy, and so we want to find ways to solve this issue.

I propose to consider 2 key factors that affect our strength and energy.

1. The ability to be satisfied with what you do.

It is extremely important for us to feel pleasure and satisfaction from what we do.

These are a kind of fives that we can set ourselves every day.

As children, we got used to the fact that we were constantly evaluated first by our parents, then ...

Meeting up with friends or doing more work? Eat a piece of cake or save your figure? Every day we make many decisions that are influenced by our time perspective: orientation to the past, present or future.

An adult who lives only in the present knows how to have fun, he has many friends, he is sexy and creative. The problem is that he wants to get everything at once, and he cares little about long-term results. I would venture to suggest that the devil in paradise succeeded in this way ...

Shock, ecstasy, which is not given to everyone to experience ... It is very difficult to formulate what constitutes sensual pleasure. But, perhaps, everyone will agree that in this state we can no longer operate with any concepts: everything that we know about sexuality disappears and dissolves in sensations and feelings that cannot be compared with anything.

And at the same time, in order to surrender to your natural impulses, you must be able to trust your own body, not be afraid of your erotic ...

The life of each of us begins with a wonderful feeling of weightlessness: for nine months we are surrounded by life-giving warmth, care, and comfort. But there comes a moment, and this native space suddenly begins to shrink, pushing us out.

In an effort to get away from pain, we are looking for a way out that will lead us to freedom. So we find ourselves in a new world that lives according to its own rules and laws unknown to us. This "lost paradise", the mother's body, where any of our needs were immediately satisfied without the slightest ...

Every great achievement was once a dream
before someone's vision was made a reality.

Henry Kissinger

Every person has a powerful creative force. Using this power correctly, you can achieve a lot in life by creating the necessary conditions and attracting the necessary resources, opportunities for the realization of your plans.

Both pleasant events and troubles are attracted to life by the person himself. The result of what is happening in your life depends on the quality of your thoughts, emotions. O...

Evening. Monday. Two letters arrived yesterday. One with insults. The other one is grateful. In the first case, I wanted to send. Second, thank you. Didn't do either one or the other. Why?

The answer is in the postscript. Now let's talk about 3 sources of motivation.

The "Three Sources" are not the last ones, especially those claiming to be true. Thank God that you are different from me, and I from you. Imagine how bored the country would be if everyone wore the same clothes...

A person can get knowledge about himself from various sources. The first thing a person encounters in childhood is the people around him: to have, parents, relatives, what people replace them. They psychologically assess the child, characterize his behavior. The child takes these assessments on faith, refers them to himself: as a result, he develops a certain self-esteem, which, in fact, is an assessment formed by other people.

The psychological characteristics that a person gives to other people are formed on the basis of what the person himself sees, communicating with these people and studying the reviews of others about these people. By comparing his own impressions with the assessments of other people, a person forms resentments of these people. All this, taken together, constitutes the first and main source of a person's knowledge about himself and about the people around him. To one degree or another, he uses such knowledge practically throughout his life, starting from the moment when he masters the language and learns to understand the people around him.

The second important source of psychological knowledge is the practical deeds and products of human activity. Evaluating them, comparing the results of one's own activity and the activity of others, a person forms an idea of ​​his own qualities, abilities and capabilities. He develops a self-assessment of knowledge, skills, business, strong-willed and other personal qualities. Comparing the achievement of other people with their own successes and failures, a person forms resentments of other people.

The third possible source of psychological self-knowledge and knowledge of other people can be various kinds of trials and critical life situations in which a person most clearly manifests his own characteristics. Tests, which are sometimes additionally used in some cases, provide the most reliable and accurate information about a person. They are most often the only source of knowledge about such psychological properties of people that cannot be observed and evaluated directly.

As the next source of psychological knowledge, they can become a work of science, literature and art, in which the psychology of different people is embodied or represented. Yes, an important source of psychological knowledge of people are the works of talented writers - connoisseurs of human souls: by all accounts, these are Shakespeare, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and others.

Let us now consider how the cognitive psychological abilities of a person are manifested and with age as life experience is acquired. The beginning of their development is probably associated with the formation of a certain self-esteem in the child, and, as is known, it appears until about two or three years of age. Self-esteem usually arises along with the child's understanding of evaluative words that relate to human psychology, along with the first signs of self-awareness that is born. Approximately from the age of three or four, the child begins to understand and psychologically evaluate the people around her. The sources of psychological knowledge, along with the judgments of the people around him, become for him his own observations and the practical deeds of those people whom he undertakes to evaluate.

During these years, that is, approximately in the interval from two to four years, the child's knowledge of himself and of people is very poor and, as a rule, does not go beyond subjective and approximate estimates that relate to individual psychological properties and actions. Moreover, these assessments are given in limited terms such as "good" or "bad" with a simplified, one-sided understanding of the content of the evaluated properties themselves.

Starting from the age of five, a qualitative change begins in the development of self-consciousness and the next stage in the psychological knowledge of people. At this stage, evaluating the surrounding people, the child will already take into account the thoughts of not only adults, but also of the same age. In addition, in the psychological assessment of people as individuals, the child's own position begins to clearly emerge, which she defends and which in these years differs markedly from the positions of other people. However, up to the age of seven - eight years, self-esteem and assessments of other people by the child are still quite subjective, limited and inaccurate. This is due to both the weak development of self-awareness and the lack of life experience.

This experience begins to accumulate and enrich rapidly from the moment the child enters school, primarily due to the activation and expansion of the sphere of interpersonal communication, the inclusion of the child in new types of joint activities. She gets the opportunity to discover herself and see the people around her in different situations. Accordingly, the psychological knowledge of the child about himself and about other people expands and deepens. As a result, his self-assessment and the assessments that are given to others, people, become more flexible and versatile.

In adolescence and especially in early adolescence, a person's psychological knowledge about himself and about people begins to lose the features of childishness and gradually acquire the qualities of adulthood, that is, they become similar to the assessments of adults. Both a teenager and a young man begin to fully reasonably answer various questions that relate to the psychology of people, and in these answers you can already find information about their cognitive processes, emotional states, personality traits, abilities, motives, needs, relationships.

Before graduation, psychological cognitive abilities become sufficiently developed. True, knowledge of the psychology of people remains one-sided for a long time, which is associated not so much with abilities as with a lack of life experience among young people. This experience is gradually gained during life, and, as a result, enriched, expanded and deepened - a person's knowledge about himself and about the people around him.

With age, individual discrepancies in the depth, versatility and adequacy of psychological knowledge also grow. Some people are known to have a better and deeper understanding of themselves and others than others. This is due both to their personal life experience, in particular professional, and to the general level of cultural and intellectual development. It has been established, for example, that people of certain professions - actors, psychologists, teachers and doctors - are better than representatives of other professions who are able to understand and evaluate the psychology of people.

As a rule, a person knows relatively well, for example, his own merits and developed abilities. He knows much less about his negative sides, for example, about character flaws. The latter are especially poorly understood by a person in the event that they conflict with the formed positive self-esteem and turn out to be incompatible with the morality adopted by him. Such knowledge is usually forced out of the sphere of human consciousness and stored in the subconscious, where neither he nor the people around him have free access. Psychological information that is stored in the human subconscious can become known only as a result of the use of special psychoanalytic procedures or tests, called projective tests, which allow one to penetrate into the content of the human subconscious.