Emotions are mental phenomena that reflect personal significance and assessment of external and internal situations for human life in the form of experiences. Emotions serve to reflect the subjective attitude of a person to himself and to the world around him. Emotions are a mental process of reflecting the attitude of the subject to the phenomena of the inner and outer world. The most essential feature of emotions is subjectivity. Emotions are also characterized by orientation (positive or negative), the degree of tension and the level of generalization.
S.L. Rubinshtein, considering emotion as a phenomenon, identifies three of its main features:
1. Emotions express the state of the subject and his attitude to the object (as opposed to perception, which reflects the content of the object itself);
2. Emotions usually differ in polarity, i.e. have a positive or negative sign: pleasure - displeasure, fun - sadness, joy - sadness, etc. Moreover, these two poles are not mutually exclusive. In complex human feelings they often form a contradictory unity;
3. In emotional states, just as V. Wundt noted, opposites of tension and discharge, excitement and depression are found. The presence of tension, excitement and opposite states introduces a significant differentiation in emotions: along with joy-delight, joy-jubilation, there is a “quiet” joy - emotion, etc.
Three aspects of a holistic definition of emotions:
a) inner experience;
b) physiological activation (processes taking place in the nervous, endocrine and other systems of the body);
c) observable expressive complexes of emotions (external expression in behavior).
Classification of emotional phenomena (Granovskaya):
1) Affect is the most powerful emotional reaction. Distinctive features of affect: situational, generalized, high intensity, short duration.
2) Emotions proper are longer states. They can be a reaction not only to past events, but also to probable or remembered ones.
3) Feelings are even more stable mental states that have a clearly expressed objective character.
4) Mood is the longest emotional state that colors all human behavior.
5) Stress - an emotional state caused by an unexpected and tense situation.
Emotional states are mental states that arise in the process of the subject's life and determine not only the level of information and energy exchange, but also the direction of behavior. Emotions control a person much more than it seems at first glance. Even the absence of emotions is an emotion, or rather a whole emotional state, which is characterized by a large number of features in human behavior. BASIC emotional states distinguished in psychology:
1) Joy (satisfaction, fun)
2) Sadness (apathy, sadness, depression),
3) Anger (aggression, anger),
4) Fear (anxiety, fear),
5) Surprise (curiosity),
6) Disgust (contempt, disgust).

The concept of "emotion" is sometimes used to define a holistic emotional reaction of a person, which includes not only the mental component - experience, but also specific physiological changes in the body that accompany this experience. In such cases, one speaks of emotional state human (I.B. Kotova, O.S. Kanarkevich). In emotional states, changes occur in the activity of the respiratory organs, digestion, cardiovascular system, endocrine glands, skeletal and smooth muscles, etc.

The fact that emotions should be considered as states was first emphasized by N.D. Levitov. He wrote on this occasion: “In no sphere of mental activity is the term “state” so inapplicable as in emotional life, since in emotions, or feelings, the tendency to specifically color the experiences and activities of a person is very clearly manifested, giving them a temporal orientation and creating what, figuratively speaking, can be called the timbre or qualitative originality of mental life.

So, the emotional side of states is reflected in the form of emotional experiences (fatigue, apathy, boredom, aversion to activity, fear, the joy of achieving success, etc.), and the physiological side is reflected in a change in a number of functions, primarily vegetative and motor . Both experiences and physiological changes are inseparable from each other, that is, they always accompany each other

Consider such emotional states as anxiety, fear, frustration, affect, stress, interest, joy.

Anxiety- this is a vague, unpleasant emotional state, characterized by the expectation of an unfavorable development of events, the presence of bad forebodings, fear, tension and anxiety. Anxiety differs from fear in that the state of anxiety is usually pointless, while fear suggests the presence of an object, person, event or situation that causes it.

The state of anxiety cannot be called unequivocally bad or good. Sometimes anxiety is natural, appropriate, useful. Everyone feels anxious, restless or tense in certain situations, especially if they have to do something out of the ordinary or prepare for it. For example, speaking in front of an audience with a speech or taking an exam. A person may experience anxiety when walking down an unlit street at night or when they get lost in a strange city. This kind of anxiety is normal and even beneficial, as it prompts you to prepare a speech, to study the material before the exam, to think about whether you really need to go out at night all alone.

In other cases, anxiety is unnatural, pathological, inadequate, harmful. It becomes chronic, permanent and begins to appear not only in stressful situations, but also for no apparent reason. Then anxiety not only does not help a person, but, on the contrary, begins to interfere with his daily activities.

In psychology, the terms “excitement” and “anxiety” exist as extremely close in meaning to anxiety. However, theoretically, there is a possibility for separating excitement and anxiety into independent experiences in relation to anxiety. So, on the one hand, anxiety is characterized by a negative, pessimistic connotation (expectation of danger), while describing excitement, experience tells us that it can be both pleasant and joyful (expectation of something good). On the other hand, anxiety is usually associated with a threat to one's own personality (concern for oneself), anxiety is often used in the sense of "concern for another."

This dilution more clearly delineates the area that is described by the psychological term "anxiety". First of all, the following points should be emphasized: a negative emotional connotation, the uncertainty of the subject of experiences, a sense of a real threat, as well as a focus on the future, which is expressed in the fear of what will be, and not what was or what is.

Anxiety is a person's tendency to experience a state of anxiety. The measurement of anxiety as a personality trait is especially important, since this property largely determines the behavior of the subject. A certain level of anxiety is a natural and obligatory feature of a person's vigorous activity. Each person has their own optimal or desirable level of anxiety - this is the so-called useful anxiety. A person's assessment of his state in this respect is an essential component of self-control and self-education for him.

Individuals classified as highly anxious tend to perceive a threat to their self-esteem and life in a wide range of situations and react very tensely, with a pronounced state of anxiety. If a psychological test reveals a high rate of personal anxiety in a subject, then this gives reason to assume that he has a state of anxiety in a variety of situations, and especially when they relate to assessing his competence and prestige.

Under personal anxiety is understood as a stable individual characteristic that reflects the subject's predisposition to anxiety and suggests that he has a tendency to perceive a fairly wide range of situations as threatening, responding to each of them with a certain reaction. As a predisposition, personal anxiety is activated when certain stimuli are perceived by a person as dangerous, threats to his prestige, self-esteem, self-respect associated with specific situations.

situational, or reactive anxiety as a state characterized by subjectively experienced emotions: tension, anxiety, concern, nervousness. This state occurs as an emotional reaction to a stressful situation and can be different in intensity and dynamic in time.

Most often, a person's anxiety is associated with the expectation of the social consequences of his success or failure. Anxiety and anxiety are closely related to stress. On the one hand, anxious emotions are symptoms of stress. On the other hand, the initial level of anxiety determines individual sensitivity to stress.

If anxiety exists long enough, the person begins to look for the source of danger, eliminates it and repents. If the source of anxiety cannot be eliminated, anxiety turns into fear. Thus, fear is the result of the work of anxiety and thinking.

Fear is a very dangerous emotion. Phobic fears bring great harm to a person, i.e. phobias. The person may be scared to death. Fear can explain the death of African natives after breaking a taboo. In ancient times, those sentenced to death died of fear, when the priest ran his hand over the skin of their elbows, they thought that their veins had been cut. But fear is not only evil. Fear is a protective reaction of the body, it warns of danger. The fact is that with fear, the stimulation of the nervous system increases.

In such a state it is easier to be active (of course, with low degrees of fear), which can lead to the development of interest, which often drowns out fear. Fear is given to us by nature for self-preservation. A belief such as "I'm not afraid of anything!" - harmful. This is one of the extreme poles, a deviation from the norm. A person completely devoid of fear does not feel any danger. He has a dull instinct for self-preservation. His life could end very quickly. Feeling fear is normal. It is helpful to believe that "I can control my fear."

frustration- the mental state of a person caused by objectively insurmountable (or subjectively perceived as such) difficulties that arise on the way to achieving a goal or solving a problem; experience of failure.

Distinguish: frustrator - the reason causing frustration, frustration situation, frustration reaction. Frustration is accompanied by a range of mostly negative emotions: anger, irritation, guilt, etc. The level of frustration depends on the strength, intensity of the frustrator, the functional state of a person who has fallen into a frustration situation, as well as on the stable forms of emotional response to life's difficulties that have developed in the process of personality formation. An important concept in the study of frustration is frustration tolerance (resistance to frustrators), which is based on a person's ability to adequately assess a frustration situation and anticipate a way out of it.

Levitov N.D. highlights some typical states that are often encountered under the action of frustrators, although they appear each time in an individual form.

These states include:

1) Tolerance.

There are different forms of tolerance:

a) calmness, prudence, readiness to accept what happened as a life lesson, but without much complaining about oneself;

b) tension, effort, containment of unwanted impulsive reactions;

c) flaunting with emphasized indifference, behind which carefully concealed anger or despondency is masked. Tolerance can be nurtured.

2) Aggression. This state can be clearly expressed in pugnacity, rudeness, cockiness, and can take the form of hidden hostility and anger. A typical state of aggression is an acute, often affective experience of anger, impulsive disorderly activity, anger, loss of self-control, unjustified aggressive actions.

3) Fixation - has two meanings:

a) stereotyping, repetition of actions. Fixation understood in this way means an active state, but in contrast to aggression, this state is rigid, conservative, not hostile to anyone, it is a continuation of the previous activity by inertia when this activity is useless or even dangerous.

b) attachment to the frustrator, which absorbs all attention. The need for a long time to perceive, experience and analyze the frustrator. Here the stereotype is manifested not in movements, but in perception and thinking. A special form of fixation is capricious behavior. An active form of fixation is withdrawal into a distracting activity that allows one to forget.

4) Regression - a return to more primitive, and often infantile forms of behavior. As well as a decrease in the level of activity under the influence of the frustrator. Like aggression, regression is not necessarily the result of frustration.

5) Emotionality. In chimpanzees, emotional behavior occurs after all other coping responses have failed.

Sometimes frustrators create a psychological state of external or internal conflict. Frustration takes place only in cases of such conflicts in which the struggle of motives is excluded because of its hopelessness, futility. The barrier is the very endless hesitation and doubt.

Frustration is different not only in its psychological content or direction, but also in duration.

She may be:

Typical of a person's character;

Atypical, but expressing the emergence of new character traits;

episodic, transient.

The degree of frustration (its type) depends on how prepared a person was for meeting the barrier (both in terms of being armed, which is a condition for tolerance, and in terms of perceiving the novelty of this barrier).

Affect- a strong and relatively short-term emotional state associated with a sharp change in important life circumstances for the subject and accompanied by pronounced motor manifestations and changes in the functions of internal organs. An affect can arise on an event that has already taken place and be, as it were, shifted to its end.

At the heart of the affect lies the state of internal conflict experienced by a person, which is generated either by contradictions between drives, aspirations, desires, or by contradictions between the requirements that are presented to a person (or he makes them to himself). The affect develops in critical conditions when the subject is unable to find a way out (adequate) from dangerous unexpected situations. A.N. Leontiev notes that affect arises when something needs to be done, but nothing can be done, i.e. in hopeless situations.

Criteria for determining affect according to A.N. Leontiev:

1) pronounced vegetative changes;

2) disorder of consciousness;

3) impulsive behavior, lack of planning;

4) discrepancy between affective behavior and personality.

Ya.M. Kalashnik considers pathological affect and distinguishes three phases in its development: preparatory, explosion phase and final phase.

Preparatory phase. Consciousness is preserved. There is a tension of emotions, the ability to reflect is disturbed. Psychic activity becomes one-sided due to the single desire to fulfill its intention.

explosion phase. From a biological point of view, this process reflects the loss of self-control. This phase is characterized by a random change of ideas. Consciousness is disturbed: the clarity of the field of consciousness is lost, its threshold is reduced. There are aggressive actions - attacks, destruction, struggle. In some cases, instead of aggressive actions, behavior acquires a passive character and is expressed in confusion, aimless troublesomeness, and incomprehension of the situation.

Final phase. The final phase is characterized by the depletion of mental and physiological forces, expressed in indifference, indifference to others, a tendency to sleep.

There are two functions of affect:

1. Possessing the property of a dominant, affect slows down mental processes not related to it and imposes on the individual a method of “emergency” resolution of the situation (numbness, flight, aggression), which has developed in the process of biological evolution.

2. The regulatory function of affect consists in the formation of affective traces that make themselves felt when confronted with individual elements of the situation that gave rise to the affect and warn of the possibility of its repetition.

The term "stress" comes from the field of physics, where it refers to any stress, pressure, or force applied to a system. In medical science, this term was first introduced by Hans Selye in 1926. G. Selye noticed that all patients suffering from a variety of somatic ailments seem to have a number of common symptoms. These include loss of appetite, muscle weakness, high blood pressure, loss of motivation to achieve. G. Selye used the term "stress" to describe all non-specific changes within the body and defined the concept as a non-specific response of the body to any requirement presented to it.

The most frequently criticized question in the current scientific literature is how “non-specific” the stress response is. Other researchers (Everly, 1978) argued that the stress reaction is of a specific nature, which depends on the strength of the stimulus and the individual characteristics of the organism. The strength of the stimulus is understood as the impact on the human body of a significant (meaningful) factor for him, as well as a strong extreme impact.

Thus, stress (in the narrow sense) - this is a set of non-specific physiological and psychological manifestations of adaptive activity under strong, extreme influences for the body. Stress (in the broadest sense) - these are non-specific manifestations of adaptive activity under the influence of any factors significant for the body.

In 1936, G. Selye described the general adaptation syndrome, which, in his opinion, contributed to the acquisition of a state of habit to harmful effects and maintained this state. Adaptation Syndrome - a set of adaptive reactions of the human body, which are of a general protective nature and arise in response to stressors - adverse effects that are significant in strength and duration.

The adaptation syndrome is a process that naturally proceeds in three stages, which are called the stage of stress development:

1. Stage of "anxiety" (stage of mobilization) - mobilization of adaptive resources of the organism.

Lasts from several hours to two days and includes two phases:

1) phase of shock - a general disorder of body functions due to mental shock or physical damage.

2) the “anti-shock” phase.

With sufficient strength of the stressor, the shock phase ends with the death of the organism during the first hours or days. If the adaptive capabilities of the body are able to resist the stressor, then the antishock phase begins, where the body's defense reactions are mobilized. The person is in a state of tension and alertness. Physically and psychologically, he feels good, is in high spirits. In this phase, psychosomatic diseases (gastritis, stomach ulcers, allergies, etc.) often disappear, and by the third stage they return with a triple force.

No organism can be constantly in a state of alarm. If the stress factor is too strong or continues its action, the next stage of stress occurs.

2. Stage of resistance (resistance). It includes a balanced expenditure of adaptive reserves, supported by the existence of the organism in conditions of increased requirements for its adaptation. The duration of this stage depends on the innate adaptability of the organism and on the strength of the stressor. This stage leads either to stabilization and recovery, or to exhaustion.

3. Stage of exhaustion - loss of resistance, depletion of the mental and physical resources of the body. There is a discrepancy between the stressful effects of the environment and the body's responses to these requirements. In contrast to the first stage, when the stressful state of the body leads to the disclosure of adaptive reserves and resources, and the human body can cope with stress on its own, at the third stage, help can only be from outside, either in the form of support, or in the form of eliminating the stressor that exhausts the body.

Depletion of adaptive capacity- a condition that leads to the appearance of negative changes in the mental state of a person. These negative changes can cover all levels of mental maladaptation: psychotic and borderline.

The psychotic level includes various types of psychotic reactions and states (psychoses). Psychosis - a deep mental disorder, manifested in a violation of the adequacy of the reflection of the real world, behavior and attitude to the environment. A psychotic state or reaction can occur as a response of the body to a sudden acute psycho-traumatic event (death of relatives or information about death, threat to one's life, etc.) and, as a rule, are irreversible (complete recovery does not occur).

The borderline (pre-psychotic) level of response to stress includes various types of neurotic reactions (neuroses) and psychopathic states (psychopanies). neuroses - a group of borderline functional neuropsychiatric disorders resulting from a violation of especially significant life relationships of a person as a result of a psychotraumatic situation. Psychopathy is a personality anomaly characterized by the disharmony of its mental makeup.

Now consider our emotional needs. Man is programmed for happiness. If he wants to be healthy, active and live long, he must be happy.

For our well-being, three kinds of stimuli act on the brain:

Causing positive emotions (35%),

Causing negative emotions (5%) - they stimulate activity, make you look for new approaches and methods. They arise when our activity does not give the desired results.

Emotionally neutral stimuli (60%). Those. the environment should be neutral so that there is no discomfort and the person can concentrate on their activities.

The great thing about positive emotions is that they keep us in the present, the best time is the present. The past is no more, the future is not yet. Only in the present is the unity of soul and body. Negative emotions lead the soul either into the past or into the future. The body is always present.

Psychologically, a person strives for happiness. In emotional terms, the state of happiness is accompanied by positive emotions of interest and joy. They are manifested in creative work and love. Interest prevails only in creative work, and joy is, as it were, a reward for success in work. In love, on the contrary: in order to extract great joy, you need to work a little.

In biochemical terms state of interest is accompanied by the release of endorphins into the blood - substances that, in their psychological and physiological action, resemble the action of morphines. Therefore, when a person is interested, he does not get sick, eats moderately and does not want to drink. When does it occur state of joy , alcohol is released into the blood. At this moment, a person becomes a little stupid, stops working. In the presence of alcohol, recovery processes are fastest.

Interest is the most commonly experienced positive emotion. Interest, as the American psychologist K. Izard points out, is extremely important in the development of skills, knowledge and intellect. It contributes to the development of the intellect and allows the individual to engage in any activity or develop skills until he has mastered them.

Interest plays an important role in the development of creativity. “A creative person in a state of inspiration loses the past and the future,” wrote psychologist A. Maslow, “lives only in the present. She is completely immersed in the subject, fascinated and absorbed by the present, the current situation, what is happening here and now, the subject of her studies.

The emotion of interest is accompanied by the optimal functioning of all organs and systems. However, it also has a drawback. With a long-term sustained interest, you can deplete the body's resources. Recall how you could read an exciting book or play a computer game all night with unflagging interest without feeling sleepy. But the next day, your performance was declining.

Joy is what is felt after some creative or socially significant action that was not carried out for the purpose of obtaining benefits (joy is a by-product). According to K. Izard: “Joy is characterized by a sense of confidence and significance, a feeling that you love and are loved. The confidence and personal significance that comes from joy gives a person a sense of being able to cope with difficulties and enjoy life. Joy ... is accompanied by satisfaction with others and the whole world.

Some scientists believe that pain, fear, suffering are at the other pole of joy. As Tomkins points out, joy occurs when there is less stimulation of the nervous system. People who cannot experience a sense of joy directly from interesting creative work choose professions associated with increased danger (climbers, fitters, high-altitude workers, etc.). When they manage to avoid danger, they have a feeling of joy.

For some people, the whole process of life is connected with joy. They enjoy the fact that they live. Such people go through life more slowly and calmly. Joy enhances responsiveness and, according to Tomkins, ensures social interaction.

Intense interest keeps in suspense. Joy calms a person. Repeated joy increases a person's resistance to stress, helps him cope with pain, be confident in his own abilities.

from all of the above.

The emotional states of a person testify to the basic essence of a person, as they provide an opportunity to penetrate into his inner world, representing the base on which goals and decisions, intentions and behavior are built. The emotional states of a person are very important in relation to self-knowledge, understanding of one's own characteristics, action and planning for the future.

Emotional states of the individual regulate the behavior of a person in contact with others. External facial expressions, gestures and postures of people, which are the guides of any emotions, as well as a person’s speech, speak about the state of his inner world, about his experiences.

Among all the emotional states of a person, there are three main varieties that differ in strength and duration - these are affect, passion and mood.

An affect is a short, stormy, clearly manifested outwardly emotional state. As a rule, affects are manifested due to some very exciting events or situations in human life. Most often, the state of affect is observed as a reaction of the human psyche to an event that happened not so long ago. The basis of the state of affect is the state of internal conflict that a person experiences. The cause of the conflict may be a contradiction between desires and intentions, between requirements and the likelihood of their fulfillment.

Passion is a powerful, long-lasting, all-encompassing emotional state of a person that prevails over other aspirations and desires of a person and, as a rule, leads to a concentration of attention and mental strength on the object of all human desires. The main indicator of passion is the craving for action and the realization that passion captures. In fact, the emotional state of passion can be compared with a very prolonged state of passion. The difference is that passion is controllable, but affect is not.

Mood is a collection of many feelings. Mood is the emotional state of a person, characterized by long-term immutability. Mood is a kind of basis on which all other mental and emotional processes take place. The difference between occasional emotions and states of affect is that mood is an emotional reaction not to the consequences of any events, but to the importance of these events in relation to life plans, interests and desires. The mood is reflected in the external behavior of a person, his communication with other people, actions and deeds.

The emotional state of the individual is also reflected in the effectiveness of labor activity. Each individual profession has certain requirements for the area of ​​human emotions. Professions that involve constant contact and communication with other people call on a person to exercise self-control over their own emotional states. Since ancient times, there has been an idea that a doctor heals mainly not the disease itself, but the person. In this regard, the effectiveness of treatment relies heavily on how a person can regulate and take control of their own emotions.

Theories of emotion

The concept of "emotion" appeared at the end of the 19th century and is associated with the names of W. James and G. Lange. According to their concept, emotions are caused by external influences, changes in the voluntary motor sphere and in the sphere of involuntary acts - the heart. The sensations appearing at the same time are emotional states, i.e. cause and effect are reversed.

W. Cannon noticed this discrepancy and, moreover, drew attention to the fact that the bodily reactions that occur with different emotions are similar and they cannot explain the diversity of human emotions. Cannon believed that bodily emotions tune the body to situations that require large energy expenditures.

The opinion of many psychologists is based on the fact that emotions are not a mental state, it is just the body's response to the situation.

There are theories that explain the nature of emotions through cognitive factors. This is L. Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance, according to which dissonance is a negative emotional state that occurs when a person has psychologically contradictory information about one object.

Positive emotions will arise when the actual results are in line with the intended or expected. A person with dissonance experiences discomfort and tries to get rid of it, either by changing the expectation, or trying to get new information.

Cognitive Information Theory of Emotions P.V. Simonov defines emotional states by the quality and intensity of an individual's need and the assessment that he gives of the probability of its satisfaction. This probability assessment is made up of one's innate and acquired experience, and is compared with the means of time, the necessary resources required to meet the need, and with momentary information.

It turns out that a person, conscious or not, constantly compares information about what is required to satisfy a need with what he has, and experiences the corresponding emotions.

Well-being, activity, mood

A person in the course of his activity experiences a number of emotions, both positive and negative. According to the law of K. Buhler, positive emotions in the course of complex activities move from the end to the beginning (development of an action plan and implementation).

Emotions on the impact on human activity are divided into:

Stenic emotions that help a person in his activities, increasing his energy and strength, give courage in committing actions and statements. A person in this state is capable of many accomplishments.

Asthenic emotions are characterized by passivity, stiffness.

Emotional states depend on the nature of mental activity, at the same time exerting their influence on it. With a good mood, the cognitive and volitional activity of a person is activated.

The emotional state may depend not only on the activity performed, but also on the act, on the state of health, a piece of music, a movie, a performance, etc. A person's well-being, in turn, depends on his emotional state. After all, even a person who is in a serious condition, at the moment of emotional upsurge, can feel completely healthy.

Emotional states are transient, but they reflect individual personality traits: a melancholic person has a minor mood, a choleric person is excited. But basically, the vast majority of people, with any individual characteristics, have average, mixed indicators of activity, which directly depends on the person's well-being and mood.

Mood is an emotional state that gives color to the experiences and activities of a person, it has a reason that is not always realized by a person. The mood can change under the influence of any events, facts, people, nature, health, work performed, study. Mood management affects the development of personality.

Given the individual characteristics of a person and the impact of emotions on him, his mental state can be assessed using the "Health, activity, mood" test from the "State" psychological test package.

Such an express analysis of the dynamics of indicators of the current mental state, depending on any significant events for the individual or the mode of study and work, is of the greatest value. To improve your well-being, increase activity, and hence efficiency, improve your mood, you can use the exercises from the Comfort complex.

situational anxiety

The main fundamental emotions according to K. Izard can be divided into positive and negative.

positive emotional states - interest and joy;

negative emotional states - suffering, anger, disgust, contempt, fear and shame;

surprise - does not have a clearly expressed negative or positive sign of an emotional reaction to suddenly appeared circumstances.

When fundamental emotions are combined, complex states such as anxiety can appear, combining fear, anger, guilt and interest. Emotional experiences are ambiguous, much depends on the character traits of a person, if a person is an introvert by nature, then anxiety is more inherent in him.

The state of constant anxiety can turn into stressful situations, and, therefore, can lead a person to neurosis and other diseases, so it is advisable to detect the presence of high levels of anxiety in time and take appropriate measures. One of the ways to improve a person's condition can be exercises from the "Comfort" package, especially psychotechnical exercises.

The scale "Situational anxiety" from the package "State" allows you to quantitatively and qualitatively determine the state of anxiety that occurs as an emotional reaction to a stressful situation.

Self-assessment of emotional states

The problems of mental stress and anxiety occupy a special place in ensuring the normal functioning of a person. Before performing a responsible task or act, a person experiences excessive emotional arousal.

Most often, the concept of anxiety is used to describe an unpleasant emotional state or internal condition, which is characterized by subjective sensations of tension, anxiety, gloomy forebodings, and, on the physiological side, by the activation of the autonomic nervous system.

A person himself can assess his condition as calm, anxious or intermediate between them. After successfully completing complex work or successfully passing an exam, a person calms down, his mood becomes elated, a feeling of self-confidence appears.

In case of failure, i.e. badly done work, or not passing the exam, a person emotionally experiences his failure, and he develops anxiety, fatigue, depression, helplessness, leading him to a painful state.

Introduction

emotional psychoanalytic dissonance feeling

There are many different views on the nature of emotional processes in the scientific community. A single, generally accepted theory has not yet been developed. In this regard, there is also no universal definition of the emotional process, just as there is no generally accepted term for their designation. Psychologists often use the terms "affect" in this broad sense. and "emotion", but these names are at the same time used to refer to narrower concepts. The term "emotional process" is also not generally accepted, but at least it is not ambiguous.

Emotions are understood as the processes of internal regulation of the activity of a person or animal, extended in time, reflecting the meaning (significance for the process of his life) that the situations that exist or are possible in his life have. In humans, emotions give rise to experiences of pleasure, displeasure, fear, timidity, and the like, which play the role of orienting subjective signals. A way to assess the presence of subjective experiences (because they are subjective) in animals by scientific methods has not yet been found. In this context, it is important to understand that emotion itself can, but is not obliged to generate such an experience, and it comes down to the process of internal regulation of activity.

Emotions have evolved from the simplest innate emotional processes, reduced to organic, motor and secretory changes, to much more complex processes that have lost their instinctive basis and are clearly tied to the situation as a whole, that is, expressing a personal evaluative attitude to existing or possible situations, to one’s own participation in them.

The expression of emotions has the features of a socially formed, changing language over the course of history, which can be seen from various ethnographic descriptions. This view is also supported, for example, by the peculiar poverty of facial expressions in people blind from birth.

1. Emotional processes

Emotional processes include a wide class of processes, internal regulation of activity. They perform this function, reflecting the meaning that objects and situations that affect the subject have. their significance for the fulfillment of his life. In humans, emotions give rise to experiences of pleasure, non-pleasure, fear, timidity, etc., which play the role of orienting subjective signals. The simplest emotional processes are expressed in organic, motor and secretory changes and belong to the number of innate reactions. However, in the course of development, emotions lose their direct instinctive basis, acquire a complexly conditioned character, differentiate and form diverse types of so-called higher emotional processes; social, intellectual and aesthetic, which for a person constitute the main content of his emotional life. According to their origin, ways of manifestation and forms of flow, emotions are characterized by a number of specific patterns.

Even the so-called lower emotions in man are a product of socio-historical development, the result of the transformation of their instinctive, biological forms, on the one hand, and the formation of new types of emotions, on the other; this also applies to emotional-expressive, mimic, and pantomimic movements, which, being included in the process of communication between people, acquire to a large extent conditional, signal and. at the same time, the social character, which explains the noted cultural differences in facial expressions and emotional gestures. Thus, emotions: and emotional expressive movements of a person are not rudimentary phenomena of his psyche, but a product of positive development and perform a necessary and important role in regulating his activity, including cognitive. In the course of their development, emotions are differentiated and form different types in a person, differing in their psychological characteristics and patterns of their course. Emotional, in the broadest sense, processes are now commonly referred to as affects, actually emotions and feelings. Often moods are also distinguished as a separate class.

Soviet psychologist B.I. Dodonov proposed a classification of emotional processes based on, in his opinion, human needs associated with these emotional processes:

altruistic;

communicative;

gloric;

praxic;

pugnicheskie;

romantic;

gnostic;

aesthetic;

hedonistic;

active emotions.

Each person, Dodonov notes, has its own "emotional melody" - a general emotional orientation, characterized by the closest, desirable and constant emotions to a person.

affects

Affects in modern psychology are called strong and relatively short-term emotional experiences, accompanied by pronounced motor and visceral manifestations, the content and nature of which, however, can change, in particular, under the influence of education and self-education. In man, affects are caused not only by factors affecting the maintenance of his physical existence, associated with his biological needs and instincts. They can also arise in emerging social relations, for example, as a result of social assessments and sanctions. One of the features of affects is that they arise in response to a situation that has actually occurred and, in this sense, are, as it were, shifted to the end of the event (Claparede); in this regard, their regulatory function consists in the formation of a specific experience - affective traces that determine the selectivity of subsequent behavior in relation to situations and their elements that previously caused affect. Such affective traces ("affective complexes") reveal a tendency to obsession and a tendency to inhibition. The action of these opposing tendencies is clearly revealed in the associative experiment (Jung): the first is manifested in the fact that even words-stimuli that are relatively distant in meaning evoke elements of the affective complex by association: the second tendency is manifested in the fact that the actualization of the elements of the affective complex causes inhibition of speech reactions, as well as inhibition and violation of motor reactions associated with them (A.R. Luria); other symptoms also appear (changes in the galvanic skin response, vascular changes, etc.). This is the basis of the principle of operation of the so-called "light detector" - a device that serves to diagnose the involvement of the suspect in the crime under investigation. Under certain conditions, affective complexes can be completely inhibited, forced out of consciousness. Particular, exaggerated importance is attached to the latter, in particular, in psychoanalysis. Another property of affects is that the repetition of situations that cause this or that negative affective state leads to the accumulation of affect, which can be discharged in violent uncontrollable “affective behavior - an “affective explosion”. In connection with this property of accumulated affects, various methods have been proposed for educational and therapeutic purposes to get rid of affect, to “canalize” them.

Various forms of the flow of affects (according to W. Wundt):

a - quickly emerging affect, b - slowly growing,

c - intermittent, d - affect, in which periods of excitement are replaced by periods of breakdown.

Emotions

Unlike affects, emotions proper are longer states, sometimes only weakly manifested in external behavior. They have a clearly expressed situational character, i.e. express an evaluative personal attitude to emerging or possible situations, to their activities and their manifestations in them. Emotions proper have a distinctly ideational character; this means that they are able to anticipate situations and events that have not actually occurred yet, and arise in connection with ideas about experienced or imagined situations. Their most important feature is their ability to generalize and communicate; therefore, the emotional experience of a person is much broader than the experience of his individual experiences: it is also formed as a result of emotional empathy that arises in communication with other people, and in particular transmitted by means of art (B.M. Teplev). The very expression of emotions acquires the features of a socially formed historically changeable "emotional language", as evidenced by numerous ethnographic descriptions and such facts as, for example, a peculiar poverty of facial expressions in congenitally blind people. Emotions proper have a different relation to personality and consciousness than affects. The former are perceived by the subject as states of my "I", the latter - as states occurring "in me". This difference stands out clearly in cases where emotions arise as a reaction to an affect; so, for example, the appearance of an emotion of fear of the appearance of an affect of fear or an emotion caused by an experienced affect, for example, an affect of acute anger, is possible. A special kind of emotions are aesthetic emotions that perform the most important function in the development of the semantic sphere of personality.

Many researchers are trying, for various reasons, to single out the so-called basic or fundamental emotions, that is, those elementary emotional processes that make up the whole variety of a person’s emotional life. Various researchers offer different lists of these emotions, but there is no single and generally accepted one yet.

K.E. Izard offers the following list of basic emotions:

Interest - excitement;

Pleasure is joy;

Astonishment;

Grief is suffering;

Anger - rage;

Disgust - disgust;

Contempt - neglect;

Fear is horror;

Shame - shyness;

Guilt is remorse.

More conditional and less generally accepted is the allocation of feelings as a special subclass of emotional processes. The basis for their selection is their clearly expressed objective nature. arising from a specific generalization of emotions. associated with the idea or idea of ​​​​a certain object - concrete or generalized, abstract, for example, a feeling of love for a person, for the homeland, a feeling of hatred for an enemy, etc.). The emergence and development of objective feelings expresses the formation of stable emotional relationships, a kind of "emotional constants". The discrepancy between the actual emotions and feelings and the possibility of inconsistency between them served in psychology as the basis for the idea of ​​ambivalence as an allegedly inherent feature of emotions. However, cases of ambivalent experiences most often arise as a result of a mismatch between a stable emotional attitude towards an object and an emotional reaction to a current transitional situation (for example, a deeply loved person can in a certain situation cause a transient emotion of displeasure, even anger). Another feature of feelings is that they form a number of levels, ranging from direct feelings to a specific object and ending with the highest social feelings related to social values ​​and ideals. These different levels are also connected with various in their form - generalizations - the object of feelings: images or concepts that form the content of a person's moral consciousness. An essential role in the formation and development of higher human feelings is played by social institutions, in particular social symbols that support their stability (for example, the banner), some rituals and social acts (P. Janet). Like emotions themselves, feelings have their positive development in a person and, having natural prerequisites, are the product of his life in society, communication and education.

Moods

Mood is understood as an emotional process that expresses a person's attitude to his life situation as a whole. Usually the mood is characterized by stability and duration over time, as well as low intensity. Otherwise, it may be a symptom of a mood disorder.

Specialists distinguish between the concept of "mood" and the concepts of "feeling", "affect", "emotion" and "experience":

Unlike feelings, moods do not have an object attachment: they arise not in relation to someone or something, but in relation to the life situation as a whole. In this regard, moods, unlike feelings, cannot be ambivalent.

Unlike affects, moods can have practically no external manifestations, are much longer in time and weaker in strength.

Unlike emotions, moods are long-lasting and less intense.

By experiences, they usually understand the exclusively subjective-psychic side of emotional processes, not including physiological components.

. Development of the theory of emotions in psychology

The first attempts to explain the nature of emotions appeared in ancient China. The mental component of a person was expressed in ancient China in the concept of xin - "heart". However, the Chinese did not adhere to a strict heart-centric concept of the psyche. There was also an idea that the heart is one of the organs in the whole organism, which correspond to certain mental correlates. The heart is only the most important of them, in it, as in the "core" of the body, the resultant of mental interactions is concentrated, which determines their general direction and structure. Therefore, in Chinese, many hieroglyphs denoting emotional categories contain the hieroglyph "heart" in their composition. The human being was considered by the Chinese as part of the cosmos, as an organism within an organism. It was believed that the mental structure of the human body has the same number of structural levels as the holistic cosmos, the internal states of a person are determined by his relationship with the outside world.

A later and scientifically substantiated theory belongs to C. Darwin. Having published the book Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals in 1872, Charles Darwin showed the evolutionary path of the development of emotions and substantiated the origin of their physiological manifestations. The essence of his ideas is that emotions are either useful, or they are only remnants (rudiments) of various expedient reactions that were developed in the process of evolution in the struggle for existence. An angry person blushes, breathes heavily and clenches his fists because in his primitive history, any anger led people to a fight, and it required energetic muscle contractions and, therefore, increased breathing and blood circulation, providing muscle work. He explained the sweating of the hands during fear by the fact that in ape-like human ancestors this reaction in case of danger made it easier to grasp the branches of trees.

Biological theories of emotion

The concept of "emotions" appeared in psychology at the beginning of the 19th century. The theory of emotions was proposed independently by the American philosopher and psychologist W. James and the Danish physician Ya.G. Lange. This theory states that the emergence of emotions is due to changes caused by external influences both in the voluntary motor sphere and in the sphere of involuntary acts of cardiac, vascular, and secretory activity. The totality of sensations associated with these changes is an emotional experience. According to James: “We are sad because we cry; we are afraid because we tremble, we rejoice because we laugh.

If James associated emotions with a wide range of peripheral changes, then Lange - only with the vascular-motor system: the state of innervation and the lumen of the vessels. Thus, peripheral organic changes, which were usually considered as a consequence of emotions, were declared to be their cause. The James-Lange Theory of Emotions was an attempt to turn emotions into an object accessible to natural study. However, linking emotions exclusively with bodily changes, she transferred them to the category of phenomena that are not related to needs and motives, depriving emotions of their adaptive meaning, regulating functions. At the same time, the problem of voluntary regulation of emotions was interpreted in a simplified way, it was believed that unwanted emotions, such as anger, could be suppressed by deliberately performing actions characteristic of positive emotions.

These theories laid the foundation for a whole series of metaphysical theories in the study of emotions. In this respect, the theory of James and Lange was a step backward in comparison with the work of Darwin and the direction that developed directly from him.

The main objections to the James-Lange theory of emotions put forward in psychology relate to the mechanistic understanding of emotions as a set of sensations caused by peripheral changes, and to explaining the nature of higher feelings. Criticism of the James-Lange theory of emotions by physiologists (Ch.S. Sherrington, W. Kennon and others) is based on data obtained in experiments with animals. The main ones indicate that the same peripheral changes occur in a variety of emotions, as well as in states not associated with emotions. L.S. Vygotsky criticized this theory for contrasting “lower”, elementary emotions, as caused by shifts in the body, with “higher”, truly human experiences (aesthetic, intellectual, moral, etc.), supposedly having no material basis.

The psycho-organic theory of emotions (this is how the James-Lange concepts can be conventionally called) was further developed under the influence of electrophysiological studies of the brain. On its basis, the activation theory of Lindsay-Hebb arose. According to this theory, emotional states are determined by the influence of the reticular formation of the lower part of the brain stem. Emotions arise as a result of disturbance and restoration of balance in the corresponding structures of the central nervous system. The activation theory is based on the following main points: - The electroencephalographic picture of the brain that occurs with emotions is an expression of the so-called "activation complex" associated with the activity of the reticular formation. The work of the reticular formation determines many dynamic parameters of emotional states: their strength, duration, variability, and a number of others.

Psychoanalytic theory

Psychoanalysis draws attention to the energy component of mental processes, considering the emotional sphere in this regard. Despite the fact that the proposed abstract version of the interpretation of emotions had little to do with the organization of the brain, it subsequently attracted the attention of many researchers who dealt with this problem. According to Sigmund Freud, the unconscious is a source of excess energy, which he defines as libido. The structural content of the libido is due to the conflict situation that took place in the past and is encrypted at the instinctive level. It should be noted that the facts that testify to the pronounced plasticity of the nervous system do not agree well with the idea of ​​a “preserved” conflict, not to mention the fact that biological meaning is poorly visible in this hypothesis. Over time, psychoanalysis came to the conclusion that the energy of the “unconscious” is not stored in the structures of the brain as a “developmental defect”, but is a consequence of the appearance of an excess of energy in the nervous system, as a result of imperfect adaptation of the individual in society. For example, A. Adler believed that most children initially have a sense of their own imperfection, in comparison with "omnipotent adults", which leads to the formation of an inferiority complex. Personal development, according to Adler's views, depends on how this complex will be compensated. In pathological cases, a person may try to compensate for his inferiority complex by striving for power over others.

Activation theory

The theory is based on the work of Giuseppe Moruzzi and Horace Magone, who showed the presence of a non-specific system in the brain stem that can activate the cerebral cortex. More recent studies have established the presence of a nonspecific activating system in the thalamus and the involvement of the striopallidary system in the regulation of activity levels. Since these formations provide the strength and intensity of the processes occurring in the brain, help the body adapt to the environment, and certain parts of this system are in reciprocal relationships, it was assumed that emotions are the sensory equivalent of the activating system of the brain. Donald Olding Hebb analyzed the electroencephalographic picture of the brain in connection with the activity of the reticular formation and showed that its activity correlates with the strength, duration and quality of emotional experience. Hebb expressed his ideas graphically and showed that in order to achieve a successful result of activity, a person needs an optimal, average level of emotional arousal. This theory supplemented existing ideas about the connection of emotions with behavior and autonomic reactions, showing their connection with the activating system of the brain.

Two factor theory

The two-factor theory of emotions is associated with the name of the American social psychologist Stanley Schechter (1962), it says that the emergence of feelings can be represented as a function of physiological arousal (the quantitative component of emotion) and the "appropriate" interpretation of this arousal (qualitative component). According to the theory, "the products of the cognitive process are used to interpret the meaning of physiological responses to external events." Despite the fact that already in 1924 Gregory Maranon's "Two-Component Theory of Emotion" was published, and after that, even before Schechter, similar models of the emergence of emotions were published, for example, Russell (1927) and Duffy (1941), nevertheless it was Schechter's theory, which had a huge impact on the psychology of the next 20 years due to the fact that it was based on experimental projects (which also serves as evidence for causal attribution), and thereby prompted again and again attempts to conduct a complete re-examination.

Subsequently, the Schechter-Singer study was increasingly systematically criticized, which gave rise to a number of subsequent experiments (mainly on causal attribution) and complete re-studies (including Marshall and Philip Zimbardo, Valins), which nevertheless, even together, could not reproduce the results obtained in the Schechter-Singer study.

The two-factor theory has made important contributions to the psychology of emotion, even if the thesis that physiological arousal is sufficient to produce an emotion can no longer hold. She provided models of explanation for panic attacks as well, and encouraged scientists to focus on the cognitive-physiological research paradigm. In 1966, psychologist Stuart Valins modified the Two Factor Theory of Emotions. He conducted research on the perception of perceived physiological changes when an emotional response is actualized (known as the Valins effect).

The biological theory of emotions developed by P.K. Anokhin, explains the emergence of positive (negative) emotions by the fact that the nervous substrate of emotions is activated at the moment when a match (mismatch) of the action acceptor is detected, as an afferent model of expected results, on the one hand, and a signal about the actually achieved effect, on the other.

Need-information theory of emotions

The need-information theory of emotions by Pavel Vasilievich Simonov develops the idea of ​​Petr Kuzmich Anokhin that the quality of an emotion must be considered from the standpoint of the effectiveness of behavior. All the sensory diversity of emotions comes down to the ability to quickly assess the possibility or impossibility of actively acting, that is, it is indirectly tied to the activating system of the brain. Emotion is presented as a kind of force that controls the corresponding program of actions and in which the quality of this program is fixed. From the point of view of this theory, it is assumed that "... emotion is a reflection by the human and animal brain of some actual need (its quality and magnitude) and the probability (possibility) of its satisfaction, which the brain evaluates on the basis of genetic and previously acquired individual experience" . This statement can be expressed as a formula:

E = P× (Is - Ying),

where E - emotion (its strength, quality and sign); P - the strength and quality of the actual need; (In - Is) - an assessment of the probability (possibility) of meeting a given need, based on innate (genetic) and acquired experience; In - information about the means that are predictively necessary to meet the existing need; Is - information about the means that a person has at a given time.

It is clearly seen from the formula that when Is > In, the emotion acquires a positive sign, and when Is<Ин - отрицательный.

Theory of cognitive dissonance

In the context of Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance, emotion is viewed as a process whose quality is determined by the consistency of interacting systems. A positive emotional experience appears when the action plan being implemented does not encounter obstacles in its path. Negative emotions are associated with a discrepancy between the current activity and the expected result. Dissonance, a discrepancy between the expected and actual results of activity, suggests the existence of two main emotional states that are directly related to the effectiveness of cognitive activity, the construction of activity plans and their implementation. Such an understanding of emotions, limited to an explanation of their positive or negative components, somewhat one-sidedly shows the nature of emotions as a signaling system that reacts to the quality of behavior programs and veils the active, energetic side of emotions, as well as their qualitative diversity. At the same time, this theory emphasizes the dependence of the sign of emotions on the quality of the action program, and not on the quality of the emotional sensation.

. Emotional condition

Emotional state is a concept that combines moods, inner feelings, drives, desires, affects and emotions. Emotional states can last from a few seconds to several hours and be more or less intense. In exceptional cases, an intense emotional state may persist longer than the above periods, but in this case it may be evidence of mental disorders.

Assessment of the emotional state

Evaluation of the emotional state of patients is important in neurological and therapeutic practice due to the significant influence of emotional stress on the clinical manifestations and nature of the course of many neurological and somatic diseases. Increasing attention is paid to the daily monitoring of the patient's emotional state, which allows optimizing the psychological assistance to patients.

Of clinical interest is both the diagnosis of the level of emotional maladaptation and the determination of the nature of the emotions experienced by the patient, which contributes to understanding the personal causes of stress. Determination of the degree of emotional maladaptation in clinical practice is most often carried out by assessing the symptoms of anxiety and depressive disorders, recognized as clinical correlates of mental stress. Verbal questionnaires are most often used for this purpose, such as the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale, the Beck Depression Scale, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, the Conditions and Properties of Anxiety questionnaire, and many others.

Such scales have proven themselves well in diagnosing the level of chronic stress. However, their disadvantage is the limitation of the characteristics of the emotional sphere only to the area of ​​anxiety and depression, while the range of emotions inherent in a person is much wider. Meanwhile, clarifying the range of the patient's experiences is essential for understanding the psychological causes of his emotional discomfort associated with the violation of certain biopsychosocial needs. In addition, the components of such affirmation scales (for example: “I don’t take care of my appearance”) characterize a relatively stable state of a person. In this regard, these scales do not allow observing the dynamics of a person's emotional state over short periods of time, calculated in hours or one day.

A dynamic assessment of the level of mental stress can be given by the scale “The List of Emotional Adjectives” (The Affect Adjective Check List), developed by Zuckerman and his collaborators in the 1960s (cited by Breslav G., 2004). According to this method, the subject is presented with a list of 21 adjectives that reflect the presence of anxiety experiences or its absence, and is asked to evaluate the severity of each of the listed experiences “here and now” and “usually” on a 5-point scale. At the same time, this technique also limits the diagnosis of a person’s emotional state only by determining the level of his mental stress, leaving out of consideration the range of feelings experienced by a person, the analysis of which is significant insofar as it allows us to find out the very source of this mental stress.

A number of projective methods also make it possible to assess the severity of emotional stress, of which the Luscher test is most often used for this purpose. The severity of emotional stress (“anxiety”) is determined in points according to a special rating system, determined by the location of various color standards in a number of preferences of the subject. A number of studies have confirmed the existence of correlations between the preference for one or another color standard and the actual emotional state of the subject (Kuznetsov ON et al., 1990). At the same time, the Luscher test, like the verbal scales of anxiety and depression described above, only reveals the general level of mental stress, without indicating the specifics of the emotions experienced by a person.

It is possible to diagnose the nature of emotions experienced by a person using methods based on the assessment of facial expression. However, methods for identifying the current emotional state of a person by his facial expressions and pantomimes are mainly used for experimental purposes and have not been widely used clinically due to their laboriousness (Breslav G., 2004). The diagnostics of the emotional state according to the characteristics of speech (voice volume and pitch, tempo and intonation of statements) is also described. So Mehl M.R. et al. (2001) for dynamic monitoring of the affective sphere of the subject proposed to use an electronic portable device that provides a periodic (repeating every 12 minutes) 30-second audio recording of the speech of the subject himself and the sounds of his environment. It has been proven that such a record allows one to obtain an accurate dynamic description of the psychological state of a person during the observation period. The disadvantages of the method include the need to use expensive electronic equipment, as well as the complexity of the analysis and interpretation of the data obtained.

There are also verbal methods for diagnosing the nature of emotions experienced by a person. So, Matthews K.A. et al. (2000) developed a method for assessing the emotional state, based on the choice of verbal characteristics of the emotions experienced by the subject. According to the methodology, the subject is presented with a list of 17 words denoting various emotions, after which they are asked to indicate the degree of experience by him at the time of the examination of each of these emotions on a four-point scale (1 point - I do not feel at all, 4 points - I feel very strongly). At the stage of developing the method, the authors identified three mood options - "negative", "positive" and "bored". Negative mood characteristics were tense, irritable, angry, indignant/offended, agitated, restless, impatient, and sad. Signs of a positive mood were considered to be emotions denoted by the words “satisfied”, “joyful”, “satisfied”, “energetic”, “controlling oneself”, “interested / involved”. The signs of a bored mood included emotions denoted by the words “tired”, “indifferent” and “tired”. Based on the results of the factor analysis of the data obtained by the authors, each of the listed 17 emotions was assigned its own "weight" depending on the degree to which it reflected the corresponding mood. The severity of each of these mood options in a particular subject was assessed by "weighing" and summing up the points assigned to them by the emotions corresponding to this mood.

The disadvantage of this method is the ignoring of information about the degree of mental stress experienced by the patient. Another disadvantage is the need to repeat the factor analysis and determine the "weight" coefficients denoting the emotions of words when conducting studies on samples belonging to new populations. All this complicates the method and complicates its application in clinical practice.

Peculiarities of Emotional State Assessment in School-Age Children

One of the problems of the modern school is the increase in the number of stressful situations in the educational process. In combination with unfavorable social conditions, this leads to an increase in the number of students with various emotional difficulties.

An analysis of the emotional state of schoolchildren showed that more than 40% of children at school are dominated by negative emotions. Among them are suspicion, distrust (17%), sadness, irony (8% each), fear, fear (8%), anger (18%), boredom (17%). There are also children who experience only negative emotions at school. In the opinion of students, teachers often experience negative emotions in the classroom. As a result, the school and the learning process lose their emotional appeal for children, being replaced by other, sometimes destructive interests for the individual. Emotional problems in children can also cause them headaches, which sometimes lead to more severe manifestations: muscle spasms and sleep disturbances. The survey revealed the presence of various kinds of sleep disorders in 26% of students. The presence of internal psycho-emotional stress in a child leads to psychosomatic disorders, to a general physical weakness of his body.

Psychosomatic trouble affects the personal development of children. In recent years, more and more often, along with balanced characters, there are emotionally unstable ones. In children, one can often observe a variety of options for personal accentuation, which complicates the learning process. These are impulsiveness, aggressiveness, deceit, criminal inclinations, increased vulnerability, shyness, isolation, excessive emotional lability.

82% of children are diagnosed with imbalance and irritability. In addition, studies show that today's schoolchildren are dulled emotional hearing. More than 60% of students rate angry and threatening intonations as neutral. This speaks of a deep rebirth of the psyche: aggression in the minds of children and adolescents displaces the norm and takes its place. Many of them believe that speech is given in order to attack and defend, and among the traits of character, firmness, determination, and the ability to resist others become the most attractive. Children often cannot build constructive communication and interaction with other people: adults and peers.

Psychological support of the educational process involves identifying the difficulties experienced by schoolchildren in learning, behavior and mental well-being. In practical work, it is often difficult to determine the emotional background of a child's personal development.

Modern children are characterized by emotional deafness, it can be difficult for them to determine what they feel, to verbally reflect their feelings. Poor ability to recognize both one's own emotions and the feelings of others leads to a low level of empathy development. Their incorrect interpretation is one of the factors leading to the growth of aggression, rejection, alienation, and anxiety.

The use of projective methods in diagnosing the emotional states experienced by students makes it possible to respond to them, remove negative psychological defenses, determine the emotional background of the child's development, build work in accordance with his personal characteristics. Observation of drawing activity, analysis of the drawing and post-drawing conversation help to reveal such features of the student that are hidden from the observer in ordinary school life.

Projective techniques make it possible to establish the contact necessary for subsequent corrective and developmental work. They also contain developing opportunities, since in the process of using them, schoolchildren learn to recognize their emotional states, verbally reflect them.

Rice. 2. Information card. Projective technique "Map of emotional states"

Conclusion

Diagnosis of the emotional state is important in many areas of life. This may be a study of the psycho-emotional state of a patient undergoing medical examination, or testing of school-age children to identify possible sources of anxiety and psychological discomfort, a survey of adolescents to identify suicidal tendencies or prison inmates, the accuracy and clarity of the diagnostic method is very important.

In terms of semantic content and quantitative indicators, it is possible to give a fairly voluminous description of the personality and, no less important, to outline individual measures for prevention and psycho-correction. The following questions are covered: what symptoms dominate; what prevailing and dominant symptoms accompany "exhaustion"; whether “exhaustion” (if it is revealed) is explained by the factors of professional activity included in the symptoms of “burnout”, or by subjective factors; what symptom (what symptoms) most of all aggravate the emotional state of the person; in what directions it is necessary to influence the production environment in order to reduce nervous tension; what signs and aspects of the behavior of the personality itself are subject to correction so that the emotional state does not harm her, her professional activities and partners.

References

1. William Huitt. The Affective System.

2. A.S. Batuev Chapter 6. Factors of behavior organization. #3. The role of emotions in the organization of behavior // Physiology of higher nervous activity and sensory systems. - 3. - Peter, 2010.

Whalen C.K. et al., 2001; Bolger N. et al., 2003.

A.N. Needs, motives and emotions. - Moscow: Moscow State University, 1971.

Berezanskaya, N.B., Nurkova, V.V. Psychology. - Yurayt-Izdat, 2003.

Kolominsky Ya.L. Man: psychology. - M.: Enlightenment, 1986.

Izard K.E. Human emotions - M., 1980. - S. 52-71.

8. Elizabeth Duffy Emotion: An Example of the Need for Reorientation in Psychology.

9. Carson A.J. et al., 2000.

S. Panchenko, Methods for determining the emotional states and personal characteristics of students.

Psychological tests / Ed. A.A. Karelina. - M.: Humanit. ed. center VLADOS, 1999.

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