Manifest in the mind of a person, is a personal meaning. This category, which lies at the intersection of the cognitive and affective spheres and consciousness, in our opinion, is the most important for explaining the mental mechanism of polygraph tests, and in the next section, which is entirely devoted to our theory, we will repeatedly return to the concept of personal meaning.

Yu.B. Gippenreiter in her book "Introduction to General Psychology" gave a very capacious definition of the category "personal meaning": personal meaning is "the experience of an increased subjective significance of an object, action or event that finds itself in the field of action of the leading motive." In this definition, the emphasis is on the affective aspect of the phenomenon of personal meaning. However, it should be remembered that personal meaning is at the intersection of cognitive, affective, motivational. The idea of ​​the unity of mental phenomena and processes is expressed in the category of personal meaning.

The phenomenon of personal meaning is clearly revealed at those moments when any neutral object (object, action, person) from a certain moment begins to be reflected in human consciousness as subjectively significant.

For example, the number 564, which previously meant nothing to a person, acquires personal meaning in a situation of a polygraph test in his mind if he (the person), using the access code (564) accidentally heard in a room closed to him, entered this room, stole important documentation and at the same time is well aware of the adverse consequences for him that will take place in the event of exposure.

In the theory of activity, it is emphasized that personal meaning is connected precisely with the motive that is leading at the moment. Secondary motives (motives-stimuli) are capable of generating only emotions, but not meanings. At the same time, the stronger, more intense the leading motive, the more motivating force it has, the wider the range of objects related to this motive acquires a personal meaning in the human mind.

Personal meaning appears in two forms, namely: 1) in terms of behavior (which in a situation of polygraph testing is interpreted as the development of physiological reactions) and 2) in terms of the consciousness of the subject. As will be noted in the next chapter, in some respects the concept of "personal meaning" is similar to A.G. Asmolov's interpretation of the concept of "semantic attitude".

In order to better understand what A.N. Leontiev had in mind when he spoke about the phenomenon of personal meaning, it is advisable to consider his interpretation of the universal structure of human consciousness.

According to A.N. Leontiev, from a functional point of view, human consciousness has a three-level structure. It distinguishes the sensory fabric, the field of meanings and the field of personal meanings:

The first of the constituents of human consciousness is its sensory fabric, which “forms the sensory composition of specific images of reality, actually perceived or emerging in memory, related to the future, or even just imaginary” (A.N. Leontiev, “Lectures on General Psychology”).

The main function of the sensory tissue is to create in the subject a certain "sense of reality" of the surrounding world. A.N.Leontiev explains this thesis as follows: “a special function of sensual images of consciousness is that they give reality to the conscious picture of the world that opens up to the subject.<…>In other words, it is thanks to the sensual content of consciousness that the world appears to the subject as existing not in consciousness, but outside his consciousness - as an objective field and object of his activity.<…>Sensual contents, taken in the system of consciousness, do not directly reveal their function, subjectively it is expressed only indirectly - in the unconscious experience of the “sense of reality”. However, it immediately reveals itself as soon as there is a violation or distortion of the reception of external influences.

During the Great Patriotic War, A.N. Leontiev participated in the rehabilitation of sappers who lost their sight and hands. He noted that such wounded often complained of an unusual state of "losing touch with reality." A.N.Leontiev wrote

«<…>A few months after the injury, the patients had unusual complaints: in spite of unimpeded verbal communication and the complete preservation of mental processes, the outside world gradually “moved away”, became “disappearing” for them; although verbal concepts (meanings of words) retained their logical connections, they, however, gradually lost their subject relatedness. A truly tragic picture of the destruction of the patients' sense of reality arose. “I read about everything, but didn’t see it ... Things are getting further and further away from me,” one of the blind amputees describes his condition. He complains that when they greet him, “it’s as if the person doesn’t even exist.”

Similar violations of "connection with reality" can be easily created in a healthy person in the laboratory. So, back at the end of the 19th century, J. Stratton conducted his classical experiments with wearing special glasses that inverted (turned “upside down”) the image on the retina. At the same time, the subjects experienced (as a rule, for a short time) a feeling of “unreality” of the surrounding reality similar to that described above.

However, on the basis of sensory tissue alone, a person would never be able to obtain such a picture of the world in which he could give himself (and others) an account. The images of perceptions and ideas receive a new quality in the human mind - their significance. Therefore, the field of meanings is the next defining aspect of human consciousness. In universal meanings in a folded form, the surrounding world is reflected in its objectivity, in the matter of language. In the field of meanings, any image is revealed in the totality of its properties, connections, relationships that have been developed by universal human practice. Thus, the ax appears in the field of meanings of consciousness primarily as an “axe”, i.e. as a kind of tool, the function of which is to cut something, and the boot acts as an object that provides comfort when walking and protects the foot from temperature effects and mechanical damage. In the same way, a pistol in the universal field of meanings acts as a kind of tool designed to fire shots (at the same time, regardless of who and in connection with what these shots are fired).

The structure of the field of meanings and differences in the functioning of the systems of meanings of individual and social consciousness of various small and large groups, as well as various ethnic groups, is studied by the science of psychosemantics. Thus, it has been established that almost all representatives of the military and the first post-war generations of the Slavic peoples of the Soviet Union, who carried the entire burden of the war with Nazi Germany on their shoulders (with the possible exception of the Slavs of Western Ukraine), acquired the word “German”, which is neutral for Western public consciousness. in the minds of a negative connotation and actually meant the concept of "enemy", "murderer", "robber" and "rapist" (remember how this universal meaning for our culture is played out in one of the episodes of the film "What Men Talk About" (2010) to create a humorous effect: the character of the film in his dream addresses the soldiers of the Wehrmacht: "Germans, how to live on?"

So, in the field of meanings of human consciousness, the surrounding reality is reflected in its universal objectivity, i.e. in its functional purpose (otherwise, in anthropoid apes, which have a completely different field of meaning; here it is enough to recall Krylov's fable "The Monkey and Glasses"). It is clear that for a specialist polygraph examiner, the polygraph's sensory unit appears in the field of values ​​precisely as a device designed to record the dynamics of physiological processes occurring in the human body, while in the field of values ​​of an Australian aborigine, the polygraph is just a piece of iron.

Finally, the third (and most intimate) component of human consciousness is the personal meaning, which, in contrast to the universal, in general, for people (belonging to the same culture) values ​​(the values ​​are the same for everyone), reflects what the object is, event, etc. for a specific person personally, i.e. how something correlates with the system of his motives (mainly with the hierarchy of leading motives).

In essence, personal meaning is a reflection of the motive in consciousness. A.N. Leontiev explains this view as follows:

“In order to answer the question of how the motive is represented in consciousness, it is necessary to consider the other side of the movement of meanings. This other side consists in their special subjectivity, which is expressed in the partiality they acquire. Meaning in itself is a thing that is deeply indifferent to a person, whether it is a table, a chair, abstractions - “N is a dimensional space” or happiness, good, trouble. In order not to be indifferent, the conscious objective meaning must turn into a meaning for the subject, acquire a personal meaning. Personal meaning is the third "formative" of consciousness.<…>Therefore, "meaning-in-itself" and "meaning-for-me" are distinguished. “meaning-for-me,” which I called meaning, and then limited it to “personal meaning,” is the third constituent of consciousness. Thus, the meaning lives another life - it is included in the relation to the motive.<…>It makes no difference whether the subject is aware or not aware of the motives, whether they signal themselves in the form of experiences of interest, desire or passion. Their function, taken from the side of consciousness, is that they, as it were, "evaluate" the vital significance for the subject of objective circumstances and his actions in these circumstances - they give them a personal meaning that does not directly coincide with their understood objective meaning.<…>If external sensibility connects meanings in the consciousness of the subject with the reality of the objective world, then personal meaning connects them with the reality of his very life in this world, with its motives. Meaning creates the partiality of human consciousness.

Thus, in a situation of verification, the word “red” itself, neutral in the field of meanings, becomes personally significant in the field of meanings of his consciousness for the person involved in the theft of money (from the red folder), while for a person who is not related to the theft and does not knows that the money was taken from the red folder, the word "red" remains objectively neutral (among other colors), thus not leaving the field of universal meanings of his consciousness.

In the same way, in a situation of a polygraph test, the word "pistol" acquires a personal meaning in the killer's mind along with other stimuli ("log", "knife", "stranglehold", "axe", etc.) if the murder was they committed it with a pistol.

From the foregoing, it becomes clear that in his work, the polygraph examiner deals with purposefully actualized in the situation of "lie detection" personal meanings of the person being examined, which have both subjective and behavioral (physiological changes) components.

Since the mid-1960s, attempts have been made in Russian psychology to elucidate the general structure of personality. Very characteristic in this direction is the approach of K.K. Platonov, who created the psychological concept of the dynamic functional structure of the personality. K.K. Platonov distinguishes four substructures in the personality structure. In his opinion, this number of substructures is necessary and sufficient, since all known personality traits can be included in them. The singling out of these main substructures of personality is determined by Platonov by a number of the following criteria.

The first such criterion is the relationship between biological and social, innate (but not necessarily hereditary) and acquired, procedural and content. The difference between these three concepts manifests itself differently in different substructures. At the same time, the 1st substructure, the most significant for the personality as a whole, includes almost exclusively socially conditioned content traits of the personality (orientation in its various forms, attitudes, moral qualities of the personality). In the 2nd substructure - experience, which includes knowledge, skills, abilities and habits, along with personal wholesale, which includes social, there is already a noticeable influence of innate, biological procedural properties. This influence is further enhanced in the 3rd substructure, which includes personality traits that depend on the individual characteristics of mental processes. And finally, in the 4th biopsychic substructure of the personality, the innateness of the procedural sharply prevails over the acquisition. This sequence, Platonov notes, helps to better understand the relationship between the social and the biological, not only in the personality as a whole, but also in the substructures of various levels, down to individual personality traits.

The second criterion for distinguishing these four personality substructures is the internal similarity of the personality traits included in each of them, and the already quite generally accepted and scientifically proven allocation in each of these substructures, taken as a whole, of its substructures of a lower level.

The third criterion for the identified four main substructures is that each of them has its own, special, basic type of formation for it. In the allocated substructures, the 1st is formed by education, the 2nd - by training, the 3rd - by exercises, the 4th - by training. The interaction of these types of formation, specific for each substructure, determines the individual feature of the development of each personality.

The fourth in the considered order, and in essence the most significant criterion for the selection of these substructures is the objectively existing hierarchical dependence of these substructures. Various structural links of coordination exist both between substructures and within each of them. But the causal connections of subordination are more clearly expressed in the interaction of various substructures than within any single substructure. At the same time, K.K. Platonov notes, the causal dependence of the personality traits of the 1st substructure on the traits of the 2nd, and together - on the traits of the 3rd, and all of them together - on the traits of the 4th, is clearly expressed objectively.

The fifth criterion that determines the selection of these four personality substructures is no longer logical, but historical. This fifth criterion says that the described four substructures of personality, in essence, only generalize the four stages in the development of the doctrine of personality in Soviet psychology.

These five criteria, according to Platonov, allow us to consider that the four identified substructures reflect objective reality and therefore are the main substructures of the personality; their number also reflects the objectively existing hierarchical and dynamic subordination.

Let's analyze the four substructures of personality identified by K.K. Platonov.

The 1st substructure of the personality combines the orientation and attitudes of the personality, manifested as its moral traits. The elements (features) of the personality included in this substructure do not have direct innate inclinations, but reflect the individually refracted group social consciousness. This substructure is formed through education. She, according to Platonov, can be called a socially conditioned substructure or, more briefly, the orientation of the personality. Orientation includes such forms as substructures: inclinations, desires, interests, inclinations, ideals, worldview, beliefs. In these forms of personality orientation, Platonov notes, both relationships and moral qualities of the personality, and various forms of needs are manifested. Most of all, according to Platonov, the activity of orientation is manifested through beliefs. Persuasion is the highest level of orientation, the structure of which includes not only a worldview that can be passive, but also an activating will to fight for it. Conviction is the highest result of the ideological education of the individual.

The 2nd substructure of personality combines knowledge, skills, abilities and habits acquired in personal experience through training, but already with a noticeable influence of both biologically and even genetically determined personality traits. This substructure, explains Platonov, is sometimes called individual culture or preparedness, but it is better to call it briefly experience.

The 3rd personality substructure combines the individual characteristics of individual mental processes, or mental functions, understood as forms of mental reflection: memory, emotions, sensations, thinking, perception, feelings, will. The influence of biologically determined features in this substructure is seen even more clearly, since the forms of reflection are functions of the brain and depend on its state. It, interacting with the other three substructures, is formed mainly through exercise.

The 4th substructure of personality combines the properties of temperament (typological properties of personality). This also, according to K.K. Platonov, includes the sex and age characteristics of the personality and its pathological, so-called “organic” changes. The necessary traits included in this substructure are formed (or rather, they are altered) by training, if this alteration is possible at all. More than in the previous substructures, compensation plays a role here. Personality properties included in this substructure are incomparably more dependent on the physiological characteristics of the brain, and social influences only subordinate and compensate for them. Therefore, this substructure, according to Platonov, can be briefly called biopsychic. The activity of this substructure is determined by the strength of nervous processes, and it is studied at the psychophysiological, and sometimes at the neuropsychological, down to the molecular level.

A special place in the structure of Platonov's personality is occupied by character and abilities.

Interest in the semantic sphere of personality is steadily growing in psychology. In the understanding of D.A. Leontiev, the semantic sphere of personality is its main constituent substructure. The semantic sphere of personality, according to the definition of D.A. Leontiev, “... is a specially organized set of semantic formations (structures) and connections between them, providing semantic regulation of the integral life of the subject in all its aspects.”

In the structural organization of the personality, D.A. Leontiev identified three levels:

1) the level of the nuclear mechanisms of the personality, which form the supporting psychological skeleton or frame, on which everything else is subsequently strung;

2) semantic level - a layer of semantic structures in which specific meaningful relations of a person with the world are crystallized, which regulate his life activity;

3) expressive-instrumental level - structures that characterize forms or methods of external manifestation, typical for a person, interaction with the world, its outer shell. As structures of this level, D.A. Leontiev considered, along with character traits and abilities, also the roles included by a person in his repertoire.

D.A.Leontiev singled out six varieties of semantic formations (structures) that act as functionally different elements of the semantic sphere of a person: personal meaning, semantic attitude, motive, semantic disposition, semantic construct, personal values. These six semantic structures were attributed by D.A. Leontiev to three levels of organization: the level of structures directly involved in the regulation of the processes of activity and mental reflection (personal meaning and semantic attitude); the level of meaning-forming structures, whose participation in regulatory processes is mediated by the structures of the first level generated by them (motive, semantic disposition and semantic construct); and, finally, the highest level, which includes one of the varieties of semantic structures - personal values, which are an invariable and stable source of meaning formation on the scale of the subject's life. The motivating effect of personal values ​​is not limited to a specific activity, a specific situation, they correlate with the life of a person as a whole and have a high degree of stability. A change in the system of values ​​is an extraordinary, crisis event in the life of an individual. Considering the form of experiencing and subjective representation of personal values, D.A. Leontiev noted that values ​​are experienced as ideals - the final guidelines for the desired state of affairs.

The six varieties of semantic formations considered by D.A. Leontiev are not presented separately in the personality structure, they are connected with each other and form a dynamic semantic system. The dynamic semantic system, according to the definition of D.A. Leontiev, “... is a relatively stable and autonomous, hierarchically organized system that includes a number of semantic structures of different levels and functions as a whole.” D.A.Leontiev considers the dynamic semantic system (DSS) as a principle of organization and as a unit of analysis of the semantic sphere of the personality. Personality is made up of several dynamic semantic systems. Dynamic semantic systems intersect with each other and have common areas that can be considered related to both dynamic semantic systems.

D.A.Leontiev singles out such a psychological category as the meaning of life. By his definition, the meaning of life is an integral semantic orientation.

Another domestic psychologist B.S. Bratus defines semantic formations as units of analysis of the moral sphere of a person. He considers not so much the structural and organizational as the content side of semantic formations: “The need to take into account this content side becomes, perhaps, especially obvious when meeting with difficult, abnormal, deviant development both in adolescence and in more mature age, which, as shown many studies usually proceed in conjunction with the egocentric orientation of a person, and often is a direct consequence of it.

B.S. Bratus identifies four levels of the semantic sphere of personality:

1) the zero level is actually pragmatic, situational meanings, determined by the very objective logic of achieving the goal in these specific conditions. So, going to the cinema and seeing a large queue and an announcement that there are few tickets left at the box office just before the start of the session, we can say: “There is no point in standing in this queue - we won’t get tickets.” It is clear that such a meaning can hardly be called personal, let alone moral.

2) the first level of the personal-semantic sphere - the egocentric level, in which the starting point is personal gain, ambition, convenience, prestige and other directly personal relationships. At the same time, all other people are made dependent on these relationships, are considered as helping (convenient, “good”), or as preventing (“bad”) their implementation. It should be noted that this level can sometimes be presented as very attractive and even have lofty intentions, such as self-improvement. However, it can turn out to be no more than self-centeredness, if it is directed only for the benefit of oneself.

3) the second level - group-centric, the defining semantic moment of the attitude to reality at this level is the person's close environment, the group. At the same time, the attitude towards another person essentially depends on whether he is a member of “his own” or “foreign”, “distant” group.

4) the third level is pro-social, characterized by the internal semantic aspiration of a person to create such products of his labor, activity, communication, knowledge that will bring equal benefit to others, even personally unfamiliar to him, "foreign", "distant" people, society as a whole.

If at the first level another person acts as a thing, as the foot of egocentric desires, and at the second level others are divided into a circle of “us”, having intrinsic value, and “strangers”, devoid of it, then at the third level the principle of intrinsic value becomes universal, defining the main thing. and, according to A.V. Sery and M.S. Yanitsky, the only true direction of familiarization with the generic human essence, without which the normal development of the personality is impossible.

So, meanings are not homogeneous formations, but from a psychological and moral and ethical point of view they differ significantly depending on their relation to one or another level of the semantic sphere of the individual.

Conclusion

Only by characterizing the main forces influencing the formation of personality, including the social direction of education and public upbringing, that is, by defining a person as an object of social development, can we understand the internal conditions for his formation as a subject of social development. In this sense, a person is always concrete-historical, she is a product of her era and the life of the country, a contemporary and a participant in events that make up milestones in the history of society and her own life path.

So, the formation of personality is a very complex process that lasts our whole life. Some personality traits are already laid in us at birth, others we develop in the course of our life. And the environment helps us in this. After all, the environment plays a very important role in the formation of personality.

To become a person means, firstly, to take a certain life, moral position; secondly, to be sufficiently aware of it and to bear responsibility for it; thirdly, to affirm it with your actions, deeds, with your whole life. After all, the origins of the personality, its value, and finally, good or bad fame about it, are ultimately determined by the social, moral significance that it really shows through its life.

Meaning

The subject plausibility of the conscious image in the event of a conflict between the conditions of perception and the principles of building the world is provided by the second component of the conscious image and consciousness as a whole - value, and, ultimately, the action with the object. In its most general form, meaning is knowledge about the world fixed in language. Unlike knowledge of a situation presented to a living being in sensual sensory-perceptual images, knowledge presented in meanings is conceptual knowledge about the world (including the knowledge of the subject about himself and about society), created by the cumulative activity of all mankind. The limiting case of meanings are scientific concepts obtained in the intentional cognitive activity of people (science). As mentioned earlier, the need for conceptual knowledge appears in connection with the creative constructive activity of man. If for the success of the adaptive activity of an individual it is enough to highlight stimuli and guidelines in the field of action of the subject, then the success of the creative activity of mankind is impossible without knowledge about the structure of the world.

Meaning as knowledge cannot exist except as the knowledge of individuals. Outside of man there is no knowledge and no meaning. If there are only signs with fixed meanings in them, then without deciphering the signs and understanding the meanings, knowledge does not arise (dead languages, the inscriptions on which cannot be read). At the same time, it should be noted that meaning as a universal knowledge that belongs to all mankind and includes the experience of all mankind (its practices) exists independently of each individual, living in the language of people and developing according to its own laws, i.e. exists supra-individually. But through fixation in the language, knowledge becomes available to any person who has mastered the language, entering the consciousness of this individual.

The emergence of consciousness and conceptual knowledge about the world also changes the sensory perception of a person. Instead of images of the objects of the situation, which stand out in the field of action as objects-stimuli or guidelines, a person begins to perceive the objects of human culture that are part of the image of the world.

Unlike the images of objects of the spatial field of action, described in the sensory language of a certain modality according to the rules for constructing objects of needs and according to the requirements of utility for adaptive activity, the object of culture must also obey the knowledge of the principles of the structure of the whole world. Meaning, as a carrier of knowledge about the world, transforms the image of an object from the field of action into an image of an object from the human world, meaning it and now allowing it to be perceived not just as, for example, a white object of a certain shape and size, but as a sheet of paper. Meaning thus becomes a means of "meaning" the perceived conditions of the external environment and thus enters into the structure of the conscious image.

It is clear that the requirements for the images of an object as an object of need and as an object of human culture are different. The image of an object as an object of need may be incomplete (due to sensory language) and differ in different sensory languages ​​(the images of a flower in the visible color spectrum and in the ultraviolet spectrum are not the same). But these images should provide an effective orientation of the adaptive behavior of a living being. The image of a cultural object must correspond to the general picture of the world, meet the requirements of the reliability of knowledge about the subject, fit into the categorical grid of the conscious image of the world of mankind and each person. It is the basis of the activity of a person who produces the conditions of his life and lives in the space of social relations.

Differences between the images of an object as an object of need and an object of culture are clearly visible in studies of altered consciousness.

If a subject in a hypnotic state is told that when he comes out of hypnosis he will not see cigarettes, then the subject does not really mention cigarettes when listing items lying on the table. At the same time, some subjects do not recognize the pack of cigarettes, the lighter, and the ashtray on the table, although they see them and pick them up. Sometimes these subjects are unable to describe the tobacco shop and explain what it means to smoke. But at the same time, the subjects, sitting at the table, do not put a cup of tea on "invisible" cigarettes, bypass "invisible" objects (table or chair). It turns out that in the mind at the moment there is no image of objects of culture, but as objects of the field of action that are not objects of human culture, they are perceived and regulate behavior in the spatial field of activity.

Also interesting, although not entirely clear, is the established fact of the perception of objects or their images by different hemispheres of the brain when it is split (if the nerve connections connecting the two hemispheres are cut).

If an image or object is briefly presented only to the left linguistic hemisphere, then the person sees this object and can describe it. If the same stimulation is presented to the right hemisphere, then the person reacts to it biologically "correctly", but cannot describe the object or image. That is, the connection of the perceptual process with linguistic meanings makes it possible to see a socially adequate habitual object. The absence of meanings in the process of perception will give a correct identification of the object and an adequate biological reaction to it (vegetative reactions in men to the image of a naked woman), but is not accompanied by the formation of an image of a cultural object.

This gives grounds to assert that meaning introduces new properties into the image of an object with its physical qualities, obtained by mankind in cognitive activity. Meaning captures and, as it were, transfers the "invisible" properties of objects, including those intentionally created by man, into the consciousness of the individual (into conscious images) and includes them in the system of the categorical picture of the world built by mankind. This is the main function of meaning in the construction of conscious images.

personal meaning

Conscious images, as well as images of objects of the objective field of action, are intended to control and regulate the activity of the subject, but now already creative activity. It follows from this that the needs of the subject must be represented in them in some form. Such representation is provided by the third component of the conscious image - personal meaning. If a biological meaning is fixed in the image of objects, representing the needs of a natural subject, then the subject of the human world must "contain" the needs of a person as a social being (including as a person), i.e. subject of social normative and moral relations. Personal meaning just represents the need "coloring" of all objects, one's own actions and events taking place in the world.

Meaning is understood as the meaning of objects, events, actions for the subject, i.e. as the relation of the external world to the needs of man as a social being and personality. A. N. Leontiev pointed out that the meaning of actions is given by the ratio of goals to a motive, behind which there is a need.

Voting in elections has the same meaning for everyone, but the meaning of voting can be different. If a person has a desire to get into the government and one of the candidates promised him this, then voting makes sense for him to be a member of the government, and the candidate's victory is only a condition for this. Raising your hand in such a vote makes sense for your own career.

If the medal "For the Capture of Berlin" saved the life of a soldier (the bullet ricocheted off the medal), then the meaning of the medal has not changed, and its meaning has become special - it saved a life. The meaning of war is clear to all adults, but the meaning of war is different for a mother whose son takes part in hostilities and a mother whose son does not serve in the army, and hence the different attitudes and different reactions of these mothers to military events.

The function of personal meaning is to provide partiality of consciousness, helping to choose behavior that is adequate to the situation. Later we will see that human emotions are determined not by the events themselves, but by the meanings that these events acquire for the person.

Differences between sensual unconscious and consciously constructed images of a person

Now we can highlight the differences between conscious and sensory unconscious images. A sensory image is an image of an object as an object of biological behavioral space. The conscious image as an object of human culture claims to be the reliability of knowledge and penetration into the nature of the object. It is part of the image of the human world.

The sensory image of an object has a biological meaning and a functional meaning of a landmark. A conscious image has a meaning that represents an object in the system of other objects (in the categorical grid of human knowledge), and a personal meaning, presented in the form of a need-based "coloring" of objects, actions, events.

From this comparison, it can be seen that consciousness really provides a new level of reflection of the world, opening for a person not the field of his actions (situation), but the world of his life (being), revealing the laws of the functioning of the world and creating conditions for a person to build his life based on the knowledge gained. And although this analysis did not allow us to single out consciousness as a special phenomenon, as a special reality, we received confirmation of the presence of some process that provides a new level of reflection and regulation of activity.

Today in psychology there are two non-competing understandings of consciousness:

• a) a new higher stage in the development of the psyche, at which a person is able to receive such knowledge about the world that cannot be obtained by the senses;
• b) the ability of a person to be aware of the presence of sensory images, desires, emotions, states, actions, thoughts, etc.

Understanding consciousness as the ability to self-report allows us to identify a number of its characteristics.

Empirical Characteristics of Consciousness

First of all, we can isolate the content of our consciousness, i.e. what is present now and can be present at all in our consciousness.

Secondly, we see that at this particular moment, not all the richness of our psyche is realized, not everything that we do, but only a small part of our activity. That is, we state the limitation of the volume of consciousness and thereby confirm the discrepancy between the concepts of "consciousness" and "psyche": the first is "already" (less in volume) of the second, is part of it. It also follows from the fact that the volume of consciousness is limited, that awareness is an independent task and an independent process of the movement of consciousness along the mental and motor activity of a person, which allowed C. G. Jung to compare consciousness with a ray of light.

Cases of pathology confirm the discrepancy between mental and conscious regulation of behavior. In some diseases, a person makes movement in a complex objective situation and does not stumble upon objects, but at the same time he is not aware of the speech addressed to him and then does not remember anything about what happened. We observe similar behavior in the post-hypnotic suggestion "not to see this object" or "to be in such and such a place." If a person is instilled that he is in a forest clearing and needs to pick flowers, then he picks imaginary flowers, but he never does it under the table that is in the room, and does not try to pass through the table.

Third the characteristic of consciousness is the allocation in the volume of consciousness of the focus (zone, field of clear awareness) and the periphery. The concepts of "volume", "focus" and "periphery" consciousness resonate with the concepts of "volume", "focus" and "periphery" perception and attention and we will discuss this further.

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Personal meaning as a unit of personality analysis

• Introduction
• 2. Semantic setting as a unit of personality in the theory of A.G. Asmolov
• Conclusion

Introduction

The relevance of this study is due to the fact that at the present stage of development of psychology there are many theoretical and practical studies that study the problems of personality psychology. One of these problems is the search for personality units - formations that have the properties of the whole.

There are certain methodological prerequisites that prevent the formulation of the problem of personality structure in modern psychology. One of them consists in the principles that push the researcher onto the atomic path of studying the psyche, when the subject is divided into elements that lose the properties of the whole, but at the same time make it together. These elements, or blocks, individually, having absolutely new properties, only in combination with each other, form a whole. To reveal the structure of personality, it is necessary to move from the analysis "by elements" to the analysis "by units".

The object of this study is personal meaning.

The subject of the study is personal meaning as a unit of personality analysis. The purpose of this work is to study personal meaning as a unit of personality analysis.

In this regard, it is necessary to solve the following tasks:

1) To reveal the essence of the concept of "personal meaning".

2) Consider the structure of personality from the standpoint of the semantic approach.

3) Describe various aspects of personal meaning.

Research methods: theoretical analysis of scientific, methodological and psychological literature. The theoretical basis of the study was the works of such authors as V.I. Slobodchikov, E.I. Isaev, A.N. Leontiev, A.G. Asmolov and others.

1. The concept of personal meaning in the theory of A.N. Leontief

Meaning is a subjective, personal, individual meaning that is most appropriate to the situation, context, personality as a whole and appears in the process of human activity, in the interaction of motive and goal. Meaning is subjective, it belongs to individual consciousness and is the answer to the question - "why". Objective knowledge, combined with partiality, attitude, subjectivity, turns into individual consciousness, is transformed into it psychologically, personally.

Meaning, becoming alive, actually involved, turns into meaning, into a meaning chosen by a person in the conditions of socially organized, distributed human activity. Meaning, being objective knowledge belonging to all mankind, is quite constant and changes according to the laws of knowledge. The subjective meaning is more changeable, as it appears and exists in a certain person and her activity, in a changing life situation.

Meaning, traveling through the system of meanings, exerts a certain psychological influence on it. Meanings are cognized and assimilated through meanings, through subjectively significant circumstances.

The concept of personal meaning in the works of A.N. Leontiev is included in the system of basic concepts of the theory of activity.

The concept of personal meaning was introduced in 1947. Meaning, as a generalized reflection of reality, which does not depend on the individual, personal attitude of a person to it, is a personal meaning, as the subjective meaning of a given objective meaning, as “in meaning for me.”

The meaning is always the meaning of something, there is no non-objective meaning. According to Leontiev, personal meaning is not a product of the structure of activity, but an essential “unit”, a determinant of consciousness. Personal meaning is one of the components of consciousness, together with meaning and feelings. Personal meaning can also be defined as a reflection in the mind of the individual of the relationship between the motive of activity and the goal of action.

Personal meaning is a dynamic part of the semantic system, a reflection of reality for a certain individual, which expresses the attitude of the individual to the objects of his activity. The main feature of motivational-semantic relations is their derivativeness from the place of a person, his social position in society and the set of possible motives for activity that this social position sets.

Considering meaning in the context of personality development, we can say that personality development is the formation of a system of personal meanings. At the same time, personal meaning does not depend on conscious control, as well as all semantic ones; thanks to this feature, it is possible to separate the concept of semantic formations from the concept of relation.

According to B.S. Bratus, the theory of activity has formed a specific image of a person. A person who assimilates, assimilates and appropriates the world of culture in the course of his own life. This is a person functioning in the world around him.

Such an understanding of meaning is close to Vygotsky's theory of the interaction of affect and intellect and of the affective attitude to reality as a specific human ability. This definition of personal meaning, according to Leontiev's theory, is consistent with the understanding of meaning as the interaction of the individual and the social in man.

Considering the development of the psyche in phylogenesis and ontogenesis, as a change in the biological meaning of animals by the conscious (personal) meaning of a person, as the development of a relationship between a person and the world, a dialogue between a person and the world. Leontiev's theory is close to the idea of ​​M. Bakhtin's "my non-alibi in the world".

Bakhtin noted that two interrelated human theories of the world - "man in the world" and "world in man" exist not in opposition to each other, but in constant dialogue. In this idea, which is also close to Spinoza and L.S. Vygotsky, it is shown that the outer world does not oppose a person, but is reflected in the inner world in the form of special semantic formations, where the world has “meaning for me”.

In this case, the external world is no longer a frozen rock for a person, but a certain dynamic and semantic model of the world, constructed by the person himself. A single “true” or “objective” reality cannot exist for a person; a person and a psychologist always interact with many subjective realities, the existence of which is a distinctive feature of a person.

Thus, a person independently creates a picture of his world, and pictures of other worlds (for example, an ideal world), connects himself as a person with the world around him, overcomes the biological logic of animal life and reaches the level of semantic regulation, based on his own meanings of his life or even being above them.

The inner world of a person is not a set of faceless meanings of the world or a set of subjective realities divorced from reality. The inner world of an individual is a modified and generalized outer world, colored by the meaning that it has for a person. The main components of the inner world of a person are considered to be characteristic of him and derived from his personal experience, stable meanings of significant objects, phenomena that reflect his attitude towards them.

A.N. Leontiev studied personal meanings, developed models of personality in the period from the 30s to the 70s, this was the first stage in the study of meaning in the activity approach, during which the theoretical meaning of the idea remained practically unchanged. The concept of personal meaning was supplemented by ideas about the relationship between meaning, motive, consciousness and activity.

For further study of the meanings, this concept was divided. In the works of A.N. Leontieva D.A. Leontiev divided the consideration of meaning into three aspects: structural, genetic and functional. The structural aspect studies the place of personal meaning in the structure of activity, consciousness and personality. Here personal meaning is considered not as a result of activity, but as a determinant of consciousness, one of the constituent parts of consciousness.

According to A.N. Leontiev, the development of personality is the formation of a coherent system of personal meanings. Genetic analysis shows the idea of ​​the origin, formation and change of meaning. The development of meaning is a consequence of the development of the motive of activity, which is determined by the real relationship of a person with the world, due to the objective conditions of his life.

The functional aspect is a reflection of ideas about the place and role of meaning in activity and among other mental processes. In the functional analysis of personal meaning, the dependence of the effectiveness of actions on activity, on the relationship between the motive of activity and the goal of activity, was studied.

Thus, according to A.N. Leontiev is some unconscious component of the consciousness of the individual, which is the objective meaning of something. The concept of meaning makes it possible to correlate such important categories as personality, motive, activity and communication, which were previously considered to belong to completely different schools and their leading theories.

This approach, implemented by A.N. Leontiev, not only removed the classical opposition for psychology, but also continued the traditions significant for science, emphasizing the need to go beyond the limits of a closed individual consciousness.

2. Semantic setting as a unit of personality in the theory of A.G. Asmolova

Subjective meaning always exists, but it is not always realized by the individual. Searching for and highlighting meaning is often intense and creative work for the entire psyche and personality. The process of understanding the meaning consists in its comparison, correlation with the objective meaning.

Diversity in life, its volume and integrity, the system of relationships between meaning and meaning is one of the most important individual and personal characteristics of the human psyche. With all the similarity, the sameness of knowledge among people, consciousness as an attitude to knowledge is always unique.

The concept of personal meaning, due to the great theoretical loading and generalization, had to be differentiated. In this connection, in the 70s, new ideas about the semantic formations of the personality arose in the activity approach.

The concept of a semantic attitude was introduced by A.G. Asmolov. Analyzing in the activity approach the theory of installation D.N. Uznadze, A.G. Asmolov determined the existence of different forms of attitudes, formulated a position on the relationship between the forms of attitudes and objective factors of reality, which determine various structural moments of activity, and also cause attitudes that are separate in nature.

Asmolov proposed a hypothesis of the level nature of the installation as a stabilization mechanism of activity.

Using the basic units of the structure of activity, the following levels of attitude can be distinguished: semantic, target, operational and the level of psychophysiological implementers of the attitude. The content of the installation of each level is influenced by the place in the structure of activity occupied by the objective factor that determines these installations. psychology personality semantic attitude

The level of semantic attitude is the leading level of attitude regulation. The semantic setting is a kind of filter in relation to other levels. The motive of activity actualizes the semantic attitude, which is a form of expression of personal meaning, readiness to perform a certain activity in general. According to Asmolov, personal meaning manifests itself in terms of consciousness, and the semantic attitude expresses personal meaning in terms of activity. The semantic attitude is divided into unconscious and conscious.

As E.V. Subbotsky notes, semantic education is a component of consciousness that connects a person with reality and forms the objective functions of this reality in the life of the subject.

The multidimensionality of semantic formations is shown, which finds expression in various influences on behavior and, to a certain extent, their awareness, the semantic task takes place only in relation to hidden motives.

A semantic education is a mental education that characterizes personal development and determines the personal-semantic sphere of a person's motivation. Semantic formations are formed in the course of a person's life, absorbing a subjective attitude to the objects of reality.

A group of authors (Asmolov, Bratus and others), using an analysis of approaches to personality, identified the main properties of the semantic formation of a personality as a specific basic unit of personality - the dynamic nature of personality units, objectivity, a character independent of consciousness, the relationship between motivational and cognitive spheres, integrity.

For the subsequent development of ideas about the semantic formations of the personality, the development of the structural line of the analysis of semantic formations was chosen. The dynamic semantic system was defined by A.G. Asmolov as a unit of personality analysis. This system is characterized not only by its derivativeness from the activity of the subject and from the position it occupies, but also its own internal movement, its own dynamics, determined by various complex relationships between the constituent parts of the dynamic semantic system.

The semantic setting is to some extent identical to the personal meaning, since the semantic setting is an expression of personal meaning in activity.

In the course of a person's life, certain changes occur in the relationship of meaning and meaning in the consciousness of the individual. These relationships and interactions become more complicated or simplified, narrow or expand, disappear or appear, weaken or grow stronger - these are meaningful, qualitative categories.

It is possible to separate three mutually dependent sources of change: due to meanings, meanings, as well as changes in the relationships and connections between them. To ensure these changes, various psychological processes and mechanisms are required. The system of meanings expands as a result of cognition, the acquisition of life experience, and learning. The creation of meaning occurs within the structure of human activity, in the relationship of motive and purpose.

The subjective meaning cannot be obtained theoretically, its formation, upbringing in the individual himself and by the individual himself occurs as a result of growth, reorganization of the need-motivational sphere of the personality, behavior and activity, in the course of changes in its psychological structure. Relationships and connections between meaning and meaning are reciprocal and multilateral.

At the same time, not everything in reality can be fully realized, exhaustively. There are basic categories in the world (life, death, time, space, psyche, infinity and others), the gradual awareness and understanding of which for a separately considered person and her life will be endless.

Conclusion

Thus, according to the theory of A.N. Leontiev, personal meaning is not a product of the structure of activity, but a special “unit” of consciousness, its component. Since any meaning is always the meaning of something, then the personal meaning will be a subjective meaning, "meaning for me." Personal development begins with the development of personal meaning.

The concept of meaning makes it possible to correlate such important categories as personality, motive, activity and communication, which were previously considered to belong to completely different schools and their leading theories. In the theory of A.G. Asmolov, the concept of a semantic attitude expresses personal meaning in terms of activity, is manifested by the willingness to do something, the relevance of the motive of activity. All semantic formations are deep formations, and as "units" they have a number of properties that allow them to be separated from the formations existing on the surface of consciousness (the concept of "relationship"). These properties include independence from consciousness and not subject to conscious control; orientation to the subject of activity; the impossibility of direct embodiment in the system of meanings. The source of meaning formation is the needs and motives of a person's personality. Meaning is characterized by effectiveness, it is involved in the regulation of the practical activity of the individual. Semantic formations, uniting into a single built-up system of meanings, form the core of the personality. Thus, the concept of meaning is not a psychological structure, but a complex multi-level semantic reality that takes different forms and manifests itself in various effects of the psyche.

List of sources used

1. Leontiev A.N. Lectures on General Psychology. - M.: Meaning, 2010. - 551s.

2. Leontiev D.A. The psychology of meaning. - M.: Enlightenment, 2009. - 487 p.

3. Petrovsky A.V., Yaroshevsky M.G. Psychology: Fundamentals of theoretical psychology. - M.: Infra-M, 2010. - 528 p.

4. Psychology: textbook. for ped. universities / ed. Sosnovsky B. A. - M .: Yurayt, 2011. - 798 p.

5. Psychology: textbook. for universities / Stolyarenko L.D. - St. Petersburg: Piter, 2012. - 592 p.

6. Slobodchikov V. I., Isaev E. I. Human psychology. - M.: School-Press, 2009. - 315 p.

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Characterization of the relationship between the concepts of "personal identification" and "personal identity". The mechanism of personality identification in ontogenesis. Theories of Personal Identification: Theoretical Concepts of Foreign Authors and Concepts of Domestic Psychology.

. V. M. Bekhterev

. D. N. Uznadze

. B. G. Ananiev

. B. F. Lomov

. B. I. Dodonov

. K. K. Platonov

. B. S. Bratus

. G. E. Zalessky

Section II. STRUCTURE OF PERSONALITY

The main topics and concepts of the section

Principles of organization of personality structure.

The composition of the personality.

Basic personality traits.

Functional structure of personality.

Personality traits.

Personal values.

Leading personality education.

Installation.

Personal orientation.

Organic and social sphere of personality. V. M. Bekhterev

‹…› The personal sphere, concentrating in itself the stock of the most important past experience for the life of the organism, forms, as it were, the main center of the neuropsychic activity underlying the active-independent relationship of the living organism to the surrounding world.

Hence it is obvious that the formation of this intimate core of the neuropsychic sphere, which implies the preservation in the centers of traces of reflexes that are associated with internal stimuli and are constantly enlivened under the influence of newly emerging internal and external stimuli that are in relation to them, is the key to an independent individual relationship of the organism. to the surrounding world, and this self-determining activity, as is clear from the previous one, is determined by internal conditions arising from the stock of constantly animated traces entering the personal sphere.

With the development of social life, the personal sphere of a person is not limited only to the traces of psychoreflexes, which stand in relation to organic influences, but in the closest connection with them, the formation of traces occurs, due to one or another relationship arising from the conditions of social life. Thus, in connection with the personal sphere of an organic character, a personal sphere of a social character develops, which underlies the so-called moral and social relations between people. The latter, therefore, is a further development of the main core of the neuropsyche, which, rising to an assessment of social relations, leads to the formation of a personality as an original mental individual in the social life of peoples.

“A personality from an objective point of view,” I say in one of my works, “is a mental individual with all its distinctive features, an individual who appears to be an independent being in relation to the surrounding external conditions” (“Personality and Conditions for Its Development and Health”) .

This personality is, as it were, two sets of traces closely connected with each other, of which one is more closely connected with the organic, the other with the social sphere, and, depending on the greater or lesser development of one or another set of traces, we have a predominance in the personality of the so-called egoism. or altruism.

Just as the organic sphere of the personality is, as we have seen, the main leader of responses to stimuli of the surrounding world, which are somehow related to the organic sphere, that is, to maintaining or lowering the well-being of the organism, so the highest management of actions and deeds is associated with the social sphere of the personality. , aimed at establishing relations between the individual and other members of the community in which he rotates.

At least with a higher development of the neuropsyche, the social sphere of the personality is the most important leader of all reactions that have a connection with social relations between people.

It must be borne in mind that the complex process of development of the social sphere of the personality does not in the least eliminate the organic sphere of the personality, it only supplements and partly suppresses it, as if layering on it new combinations arising from the influences related to the conditions of social life.

There is no need to say that the social sphere of personality in its more elementary manifestations is already found in the animal kingdom, but it is undoubted that in man, as a being not only social, but also cultural, we encounter the development of the social sphere of personality to such an extent that under certain conditions it undoubtedly reveals a predominance over the organic sphere of the personality, expressed by acts and actions of an altruistic nature, often to the detriment or even contrary to the organic needs of the individual.

Thus, the social sphere of the individual, developing on the basis of the organic sphere, expands it, depending on the social conditions of life, to the extent that organic influences are suppressed by past experience of social relations and social influences.

Just as external stimuli that excite organic reactions serve as a natural stimulus for all traces of the personal sphere in general that are in correlation with organic stimuli, so social relations are the causative agents of traces that animate to a greater or lesser extent internal or organic reactions, which determines the correlation of the social sphere. with the organic sphere of personality.

Thus, the social sphere of the individual is a unifying link and the causative agent of all traces of psychoreflexes in general that arise on the basis of social life and enliven certain other organic reactions.

Human installation. objectification problem. D. N. Uznadze

... There is nothing more characteristic of a person than the fact that the reality surrounding him affects him in two ways - either directly, sending him a series of irritations that directly affect him, or indirectly, through verbal symbols, which, not having their own independent content, only present us with some kind of irritation. A person perceives either a direct impact from the processes of reality itself, or the impact of verbal symbols representing these processes in a specific form. If the behavior of an animal is determined only by the influence of actual reality, then man is not always directly subordinate to this reality; for the most part, he reacts to its phenomena only after he has refracted them in his consciousness, only after he has comprehended them. It goes without saying that this is a very essential feature of man, on which, perhaps, all his advantage over other living beings is based.

But the question arises, what is this ability of his, on what, in essence, is it based.

According to all that we already know about man, the thought naturally comes to mind about the role that his attitude can play in this case. We are faced with the task of establishing the role and place of this concept in human life.

If it is true that our behavior, which develops under conditions of direct influence of the environment around us, is based on an attitude, then the question may arise, what happens to it on a different plane - on the plane of verbal reality represented in words? Does our attitude play any role here, or is this sphere of our activity built on completely different foundations? ‹…›

The area of ​​installations in humans. Let us assume that the act of objectification has ended and the process of thinking that has arisen on its basis has solved the problem in a quite definite sense. This is usually followed by the stimulation of an attitude corresponding to the problem solved, and then by an effort for the purpose of its implementation, its implementation. Such is the purely human path of psychic activity.

Above, when analyzing the problem of objectification, we came to the conclusion that the subject refers to its acts only when the need arises for this - when he is faced with a task that cannot be resolved under the direct guidance of the installation. But if this is not the case, if the task can also be solved directly, on the basis of a set, then in such cases there is no need for the activity of objectification, and the subject manages only by mobilizing the appropriate sets.

Let us assume that the problem was first solved on the basis of objectification. In such cases, when the same or a similar problem is repeated, there is no longer any need for objectification and it is resolved on the basis of an appropriate attitude. Once found, the attitude can be awakened to life directly, in addition to the objectification that mediated it for the first time. This is how the scope of a person's attitude states grows and develops: it includes not only attitudes that directly arise, but also those that were once mediated by acts of objectification.

The circle of human attitudes is not limited to such attitudes - attitudes mediated by cases of objectification and arising on its basis by their own acts of thinking and will. This should also include those attitudes that were first built on the basis of the objectification of others, for example, creatively established subjects, but then they passed into the possession of people in the form of ready-made formulas that no longer require the direct participation of objectification processes. Experience and education, for example, are further sources of formulas of the same kind. A special period in a person's life is dedicated to them - the school period, which captures an increasingly significant period of time in our lives. But the enrichment of the same kind of complex installations continues in the future - the experience and knowledge of a person is constantly growing and expanding.

Thus, the expansion of the field of human attitudes, in principle, has no limit. It includes not only attitudes that develop directly on the basis of actual needs and the situation of their satisfaction, but also those that sometime arose on the basis of personally actualized objectifications or were mediated with the assistance of education - the study of the data of science and technology. ‹…›

Let's sum up what has been said. At the human stage of development we encounter a new feature of psychic activity, a feature that we characterize as the ability to objectify. It consists in the following: when a person encounters some difficulty in the course of his activity, he, instead of continuing this activity in the same direction, stops for a while, stops it in order to be able to concentrate on the analysis of this difficulty. . He singles out the circumstances of this latter from the chain of continuously changing conditions of his activity, detains each of these circumstances before his mental gaze in order to be able to re-experience them, objectifies them in order, observing them, to finally decide the question of the nature of the further continuation of activity.

The immediate result of these acts that delay, stop our activity is the possibility of recognizing them as such - the possibility of identifying them: when we objectify something, then we get the opportunity to realize that it remains equal to itself during the entire time of objectification, that it remains itself. yourself. In short, in such cases the principle of identity comes into force first of all.

But this is not enough! Once we have the idea of ​​the identity of an objectified segment of reality with itself, then nothing prevents us from believing that we can re-experience this reality any number of times, that it remains equal to itself during all this time. This creates psychologically in the conditions of social life a prerequisite for objectified and, therefore, identical reality to be designated by a certain name, in short, this creates the possibility of the emergence and development of speech.

On the basis of objectified reality and developing speech, our thinking develops further. It is a powerful tool for resolving the difficulties that arise before a person, it solves the question of what needs to be done in order to successfully continue further temporarily suspended activities. This it gives indications of the installation, which must be updated by the subject for the successful completion of his activity.

But in order to realize the instructions of thinking, a specifically human ability is needed - the ability to perform volitional acts - a will is needed that creates the possibility for a person to resume interrupted activity and direct it in a direction corresponding to his goals.

Thus, we see that in the difficult conditions of a person’s life, when difficulties arise and a delay in his activity, he activates, first of all, the ability of objectification - this specifically human ability, on the basis of which further identification, naming (or speech) and ordinary forms arise. thinking, and then, at the end of thought processes, and acts of will, again including the subject in an expedient direction in the process of temporarily suspended activity and guaranteeing him the opportunity to satisfy his goals.

Objectification is a specifically human ability, and on its basis the stock of attitudes fixed in a person becomes much more complicated. It must be borne in mind that the attitude mediated on the basis of objectification can be reactivated, under appropriate conditions, and directly, without a new participation of the act of objectification. It enters the circle of the subject's attitudes and acts actively, along with other attitudes, without the intervention of an act of objectification. Thus, it becomes clear to what extent the store of human attitudes, including those that were once mediated on the basis of objectivation, can become rich and complex.

The structure of personality. B. G. Ananiev

Consideration of the status, social functions and roles, goals of activity and value orientations of the individual allows us to understand both its dependence on specific social structures, and the activity of the individual himself in the general process of functioning of certain social (for example, industrial) formations. Modern psychology penetrates more and more deeply into the connection that exists between the interindividual structure of the social whole to which the individual belongs and the intraindividual structure of the individual himself.

The variety of connections of the individual with society as a whole, with various social groups and institutions determines the intra-individual structure of the personality, the organization of personal properties and its inner world. In turn, the complexes of personal properties that have formed and become stable formations regulate the volume and degree of activity of the individual's social contacts, and influence the formation of one's own development environment. Limitation or, moreover, rupture of social ties of an individual disrupt the normal course of human life and can be one of the causes of neuroses and psychoneuroses. The disintegration of the social associations themselves (interindividual structures) entails the breakdown of the intraindividual structure of the personality, the emergence of acute internal crises that disorganize individual behavior, or rather, the totality of individual behaviors of the participants in such disintegrating associations. ‹…›

The subjective factors also include the structure of the personality, which influences the state of the personality, the dynamics of its behavior, the processes of activity and all types of communication. The structure of the personality gradually takes shape in the process of its social development and is, therefore, the product of this development, the effect of the entire life path of a person. Like any structure, an intra-individual structure is a holistic formation and a certain organization of properties. The functioning of such an education is possible only through the interaction of various properties that are components of the personality structure. The study of components relating to different levels and aspects of personality development, in the structural study of this development, is necessarily combined with the study of various types of relationships between the components themselves.

It is known that not all psychophysiological functions, mental processes and states are included in the structure of personality. Of the many social roles, attitudes, value orientations, only a few are included in the structure of the personality. At the same time, this structure can include properties of the individual that are repeatedly mediated by the social properties of the individual, but are themselves related to the biophysiological characteristics of the organism (for example, the mobility or inertia of the nervous system, the type of metabolism, etc.). The structure of personality includes, therefore, the structure of the individual in the form of the most general and relevant complexes of organic properties for life and behavior. This relationship cannot, of course, be understood in a simplified way as a direct correlation dependence of the personality structure on the somatic constitution, type of nervous system, etc.

The latest research shows the presence of very complex correlation pleiades that combine different social, socio-psychological and psycho-physiological characteristics of a person. ‹…›

It should be noted, by the way, that in personality theory the importance of intellect in the structure of personality has often been underestimated. In the psychological and pedagogical literature there are often opinions about the danger of one-sided intellectualization of the individual. On the other hand, the theory of intelligence takes little account of the social and psychological characteristics of the individual, which mediate his intellectual functions. This mutual isolation of personality and intellect seems to us to be contrary to the real development of a person, in which social functions, social behavior and motivation are always associated with the process of reflection by a person of the world around him, especially with the knowledge of society, other people and himself. Therefore, the intellectual factor turns out to be so important for the structure of personality... ‹... ›

All four main aspects of the personality (biologically determined features, features of individual mental processes, the level of preparedness or experience of the individual, socially determined personality traits) closely interact with each other. The dominant influence, however, always remains with the social side of the personality - its worldview and orientation, needs and interests, ideals and aspirations, moral and aesthetic qualities. ‹…›

Status and social functions-roles, motivation of behavior and value orientations, structure and dynamics of relationships - all these are characteristics of a person that determine her worldview, life orientation, social behavior, and main development trends. The totality of such properties constitutes the character as a system of personality properties, its subjective relations to society, other people, activities, to oneself, constantly realized in social behavior, fixed in the way of life. ‹…›

At any level and with any complexity of individual behavior, there is an interdependence between: a) information about people and interpersonal relationships; b) communication and self-regulation of human actions in the process of communication; c) transformations of the inner world of the personality itself. Human behavior acts not only as a complex set of types of his social activities, with the help of which the surrounding nature is objectified, but also as communication, practical interaction with people in various social structures.

The question of whether human behavior is a more general concept than activity (labor, learning, play, etc.), or, on the contrary, activity is a generic characteristic of a person, in relation to which behavior is a particular type, should, as we seems to be decided specifically, depending on the plane of consideration of the person. In this case, when it is the personality and its structure that interests us, we can consider human behavior in society as a generic characteristic, in relation to which all types of activity (for example, professional labor) have a particular meaning. From this point of view, it seems to us very useful to understand the personality as a subject of behavior, through which the need for certain objects and certain situations is realized. ‹…›

The study of the social status and social roles of the individual, i.e., objective characteristics, reveals the active participation of the individual himself in changing the status and social functions. The complex and long-term nature of the activity of the subject is an indicator of the presence of not only tactics of behavior adapted to individual situations, but also a strategy for achieving distant goals, common ideas and principles of the worldview through these tactics. It is the strategic organization of behavior that includes the intellect and will in the structure of the personality, connecting them with the needs, interests, and all the motivation for the behavior of the personality.

In the real process of behavior, all "blocks" of correlated functions interact (from sensorimotor and verbal-logical to neurohumoral and metabolic). With any type of correlation, to one degree or another, the person as a whole changes as a person and as an individual (organism). However, only those correlative connections that correspond to the objective conditions of human existence in a given social and natural environment contribute to the preservation of the integrity of the organism and personality. ‹…›

We think, however, that the structure of the personality is built not according to one, but according to two principles at the same time: 1) subordinate, or hierarchical, in which more complex and more general social properties of the personality subordinate more elementary and particular social and psychophysiological properties; 2) coordination, in which the interaction is carried out on a parity basis, allowing a number of degrees of freedom for the correlated properties, i.e., the relative autonomy of each of them. The phenomena of intellectual tension considered above develop exactly according to the coordination type, like a system of value orientations, social attitudes, forms of behavior, represented in the personality structure by a complex set of properties.

Personality and Human Relations.V. N. Myasishchev

A person, a member of society, is considered by sociology, psychology and pedagogy as a person, although he remains an organism; all aspects of personality activity are based on the activity of the brain. The unit considered in the listed sciences is not the organism, but the personality of a person, which characterizes him as a figure and a more or less noticeable participant in the socio-historical process. Personality is basically defined as a socio-historically conditioned higher, integral mental formation, peculiar only to a person, as a conscious potential regulator of his mental activity and behavior.

In this connection, a few words can be said about mental formations and about the potential mental. The term "psychic education" is used from time to time by various authors, although its meaning is not fully specified. Thus, the process of visual perception differs logically and empirically from the memory of images; thinking, as a process of mental mastery, differs from the intellect, or mind, as the basis of one or another level of the thought process.

In the mental, two categories can be established: a) procedural; b) potential. The procedural and the potential do not exist without each other, this is a unity, but at the same time they are different, not identical concepts.

The potential psyche is not the subject of direct observation, but is determined on the basis of inference. This is a hidden variable, as defined by B. Green (Green B. F.), as well as P. Lazarsfeld. In this regard, the correlation of procedural and potential mental and human relations is important. Krech and Crutchfied R. S. define attitude as a fixed organization of motivational, emotional, perceptual and cognitive processes in relation to some aspect of the individual. G. Allport (Allport G. W.) defines attitude as a mental and nervous state of readiness to carry out directive influence, the response of the individual to the objects and situations with which he relates. Fuson (M. Fuson) characterizes attitude as the probability of identifying a certain behavior in a certain situation. The mentioned authors characterize attitude and inclination as a conclusion about the probability of a certain reaction to certain circumstances. Various methods of measuring propensity and attitudes are proposed, which cannot be discussed here. At the same time, experimental psychology still reveals a deep misunderstanding of the diversity of personality in connection with the diversity of its relationships. Such prominent psychologists as P. Fress, J. Piaget, in the experimental psychology edited by them, in the paragraph "behavior and attitude" use the formula of behavior: C (situation), P (person, personality), R (reaction). Establishing the relationship of the members of this formula, they provide options for the situation (C1; C2; C3) and options for reactions (P1; P2; P3), but consider the personality as one undifferentiated whole. They say they are studying the effects of changes in C on changes in P, or different ratios in different situations. Considered personality traits (gender, age) remain formal, and the attitudes of individuals to the content of the situation or task are not taken into account. This shows that a meaningful study of personality in its relations has not yet taken its proper place in experimental psychology.

Psychic formations are potential mental, being realized, formed in the process of mental activity. The personality of a person is the most complex and highest education in the human psyche. It is the highest in the sense that it is directly determined by the influences and demands of the social environment and the socio-historical process. Social demands relate primarily to the ideological side of human behavior and experiences.

One of the shortcomings of psychological research is the still not completely obsolete formalism in the consideration of his psyche. The processes of mental activity, as well as the mental formations underlying them, are considered without sufficient connection with the contents of mental activity. Consideration of the mental process in connection with its subject and the circumstances that cause it is the basis of meaningful research. Features of the content with which mental activity is associated determine the functional side of the mental process. But this structure, the activity of the process, its character (in the sense of a positive or negative reaction to an object), its dominance in consciousness and behavior depend on the attitude of a person, on the positive or negative significance of the content of the process, on the degree of this significance for a person. Without taking into account this role of the mental activity of relations, no process can be correctly elucidated, the abilities of a person performing this or that activity cannot be correctly determined; the nature of the process under study is determined not only by the characteristics of the task of activity, but also by the attitude of a person to this task. It must be emphasized that we are talking only about human relations or human relations. It is necessary to emphasize this because without it, the term of relations used widely and in various ways will turn out to be fuzzy and vague. In this sense, a person's relationship is a potential that manifests itself in the conscious active selectivity of a person's experiences and actions, based on his individual, social experience. The more elementary the organism, the more its selectivity is based on the innate connection of reactions with the object. This is physiologically defined as an unconditioned, or simple, reflex. IP Pavlov owns the formula: “Psychic relations are temporary connections,” that is, conditioned reflex formations; temporary, acquired connections represent, according to Pavlov, mental relations. I. P. Pavlov did not give a definition or characterization of human relations, therefore, speaking about Pavlov here, we will point out only two points:

1) mental relations as conditional temporary connections draw their strength from unconditional ones;

2) in humans, all relationships have moved into the 2nd signaling system. This means that relationships based on individual or personal experience, relying on unconditional, “instinctive” tendencies, are realized in systems of higher “second-signal” proper human processes that determine and regulate human activity.

And these higher relations and the underlying neuro-physiological and at the same time neuro-psychic formations are inextricably linked with the conscious thinking and rational will of a person.

There is no need to say that the actual human level of relations is a product of the socio-historical existence of a person, his communication with members of the human team, his upbringing, his conscious labor activity in the team. Here it is appropriate to recall that K. Marx and F. Engels noted that “the animal does not “refer” to anything and does not “relate” at all”; for an animal its relation to others does not exist as a relation. The proposition that for animals their relations "do not exist as relations" means that these relations are not recognized by animals. Returning to Pavlov, we point out that the dependence of the strength of the conditioned reflex cortical processes on the strength of the subcortical ones that charges them is of decisive importance for understanding the dynamics of higher processes in animals. Conditioned food reflexes are clearly detected if the animal is hungry, and are not detected if it is full. But this distinct dependence has less effect on a person's concrete personal relationships, for example, in attachments to someone or interests in something. It does not affect the higher ideological relations at all, although they also arise on the basis of physical temporal connections. Their strength and strength are determined by the psychosocial significance of the object and the emotional nature of the person's relationship. We can say: the more this or that manifestation characterizes a personality, the less it is connected with vital-biological relations and the more clearly its dependence on the history of personality formation appears. A person is a socio-historical formation that has absorbed all the social conditions and influences of a particular history of its development, and whose manifestations are conditioned and can be understood only on the basis of this history. Summing up everything that has been said here and earlier about human relations, we can consider them as the potential of a person's selective activity in connection with various aspects of reality. They meaningfully characterize human activity, are not manifested by any one functional aspect of the psyche, but express the entire personality in its connection with one or another aspect of activity. They are characterized by the greater activity of mental processes, the more significant the object of relations for the individual, differing in a positive or negative sign (attraction - disgust, love - enmity, interest - indifference). The higher the level of personality development, the more complex the processes of mental activity and the more differentiated and richer its relations.

A.F. Lazursky, the founder of the psychological theory of human relations, wrote that exopsyche, in other words, relationships, and endopsyche are two sides of the human psyche. It would be wrong to reproach A.F. Lazursky for dualism. His position denotes not duality, not dualism, but a synthesis of two obligatory planes of consideration. Similarly, the characteristic of the strength of the electric current exists simultaneously with the characteristic of the voltage of the current, which does not mean dualism in understanding the nature of electricity.

As I have repeatedly pointed out, human relations are not part of the personality, but the potential of its mental reaction in connection with any object, process or fact of reality.

The attitude is holistic, like the personality itself. The study of personality is, to a great extent, its study in its relations. Personal development is the process of formation of increasingly complex, enriching, deepening connections with reality, the accumulation in the brain of the potential for actions and experiences. Personal development is the development of the psyche, which means that it is the development and complication of mental processes and the accumulation of experience - mental potential. Experience is carried out in the form of accumulation:

1) knowledge;

2) skills;

3) skills;

4) relationships.

All four types of potential mental to some extent characterize the personality. But at the same time, it is clear that a person is characterized not by knowledge, skills and abilities, but, as mentioned above, by relationships. The study of personality in its development is a historical study of personality in the dynamics of its meaningful relationships.

The study of relations represents the approach necessary for psychology, in which the objective is combined with the subjective, the external with the internal. Relationships exist between the personality of a person - the subject and object of his relations. The attitude is realized or manifested in an external factor, but at the same time the attitude expresses the inner "subjective" world of the individual. Personality is the subject of relations in the same way as the subject of external activity. Materialistic psychology is based on this unity of internal and external, objective and subjective.

The principle of consistency and integrity, which most clearly entered the doctrine of the brain, body and personality in the light of its objective research since the works of I.P. Pavlov, makes us consider personality as a system and unity of mental processes and formations, in which the system is effectively potential relations. The personality of mental processes lies in the fact that they realize the potential of conscious relations of the individual.

A number of integral psychological concepts are closely connected with the psychological problem of the personality and its relations. First of all, this includes the concept of orientation (Richtungsdipositionen) coming from W. Stern (Stern W.). We have quite widely used in psychology, and especially in connection with the doctrine of personality, the term "orientation". This term, in fact, characterizes the concept in a topographical-vector way; in application to psychology, this means a dominant attitude. The term “orientation” is, however, very general. Its use raises the question not only of what is what is directed, but also what is directed. So, they talk about the orientation of tastes, views, desires, dreams - interests, sympathies, inclinations, etc. The orientation of interests is a legitimate concept. It characterizes the dominant interests of the individual. But orientation is less applicable to the concept of personality. Personality is multilaterally selective. Personality has a characteristic that is neither linear nor flat. If we use a spatial image, a person is not only a three-dimensional value, like a statue, but, in contrast to it, like all living things, it is dynamic and changes differently in different systems in the process of life. The characterization of a personality by orientation is not only one-sided and poor, but it is not very suitable for understanding the majority of people whose behavior is determined by external moments; they do not have a dominant rudder. Human relations are diverse, and therefore they can reveal the diversity of the human psyche.

Many Soviet authors used the concept of a person's position, which was first proposed in this sense by A. Adler (Adler A.). The position of the individual means, in essence, the integration of the dominant electoral relations of a person in some significant issue for him.

The multilateral concept of attitude developed by Georgian psychologists also refers to mental integral formations, especially when it comes to personality attitudes. In this case, in contrast to the sensorimotor set developed experimentally, this concept is close to the just indicated concept of the position of the personality. However, the installation, as an unconscious formation, is impersonal. Installation is an acquired readiness for experimentally determined features of the course of mental processes. There may be a system of installations, an integral installation, individual and private installations. D. N. Uznadze characterized the attitude as the readiness of the individual for a certain activity determined by the need, as a mechanism based on effective experience that predetermines the characteristics of the response. It should be noted that in the attitude, as in the unconscious inertia of the past, the consciousness of the present and the prospects for the future are opposed, united in every act and experience of a person. In this sense, the set is similar to a conditioned reflex, although, according to the mechanism of its development, it is not necessarily connected with an unconditioned stimulus. The concept of need is included in the theory of set with good reason, which, however, is absent in the main experiment on the study of set. This shows that the concept of attitude used in psychology is wider, richer and deeper than the experimental model that illustrates the concept itself, demonstrating only inertia and its acquired mechanism.

In motivational psychology, the concept of motive occupies a special place. This concept is significant for any psychology and is important for the psychology of relationships. At the same time, one must be aware that the concept of motive has a double meaning: a) the motivating driving force of behavior or experience, or b) the basis of an act, decision, opinion. The so-called motivated action is based on the driving force of motivation and the basis of action. The so-called unmotivated action has only one motivational category - motivation, while the other, representing the basis of the action, is absent. In the so-called unmotivated action, its basis is not realized. Attitude can be the basis of a motive, for example, when a student learns out of love for knowledge, out of love for parents, out of a tendency for ambitious self-affirmation, etc.

The motive of the attitude can be this or that experience; for example, the experience of learning failure can become a motive for a negative attitude towards learning; the success of another student can become a motive for a hostile-envious attitude towards him. Thus, the concept of "motive" does not have a definite one-dimensional psychological content. The effectiveness of this or that circumstance is always connected with the attitude of a person towards it, but it is wrong to confuse motives and attitudes or to talk about motives regardless of attitude and replacing attitude with motives.

There is no need to talk about the need to distinguish between the concepts of personality traits and character, with their closeness and sometimes coincidence. No one doubts the need to distinguish between them; nevertheless, it is appropriate to say this, because this distinction is not always clear. Character is the mental originality of a person, the integral of all his properties. Basically, character is the unity of relationships and the way they are implemented in the experiences and actions of a person. Personality is a person considered from the point of view of his own human, social characteristics. Some mental properties can relate to both character and personality, while others only to one or the other. For example, decent or dishonorable, ideological or non-ideological, conscious or unconscious, creative or non-creative. These are all personality traits. Collectivism or individualism, honesty, dishonesty, nobility or meanness - these traits characterize a person. They testify to the level of social and moral development of a person. Some of these traits can be attributed to character, such as nobility or meanness. In this case, they are of decisive importance in the system of all mental properties of a person. The listed features are so closely connected with the peculiarities of a person's attitude that it will not be a mistake to say about a person as a person in his relationship to reality. At the same time, the relations themselves, having a personal character, are the elements in which the personality is realized in the process of its activity. Man as a person is not only consciously transforming reality, but also consciously related to it.

The integral concepts just considered are thus essential, they cannot be rejected, but they receive a refinement, and in this refinement an important place is occupied by their various connections with the concept of relations.

In connection with the question of the development of personality, the question of the development of relationships was mentioned. Here we will touch upon only one more aspect, namely, the variability and stability of personality reactions. Quite often, stability and lability, or variability, are considered in a formal-dynamic plan, but this consideration becomes meaningful only when relations are taken into account. At the same time, stamina is considered in connection with certain contents, for example, stamina and attachment to a loved one, steadfastness of convictions, moral stamina. These features express the attitude of a person. The reactions expressing these relationships, and hence the relationships themselves, can be stable or unstable, varying from momentary situational lability to high stability. But a stable relationship can also be inertly persistent. It is not this stability that is the basis for the development of relations; what is important is fundamental stability. Fundamental stability is based on some conscious and generalized principle.

Establishing differences in the stability of relations depending on the inertness of the mechanism or the stability of the principle requires consideration of the relationship of the individual and the psychophysiological mechanisms of the activity in which they are carried out. There are no relationships without reflection, that is, relationships are always associated with an object that is reflected in consciousness. To understand the personality and the psyche, not only their unity is essential, but also their difference. Human judgment, thinking in general, can be dispassionate, passionate, and partial. The first does not prevent adequate reflection, but is not enough for its depth, the second contributes to the depth and richness of reflection, and the third is distorted by tendencies in which the subjective components of the attitude make the reflection inadequate, incorrect. ‹…›

These concepts are not only vital, but therefore scientifically and theoretically important. Without denying the role of the functional procedural consideration of human psychology, one cannot fail to take into account that content-synthetic perception is both the initial and the final moment of psychological research and psychological characterization. From this follows the question of the place of the concept of mental or personal, or human relation in the system of psychological concepts. Proceeding from the fact that this concept of relation is irreducible to others and indecomposable into others, it must be recognized that it represents an independent class of psychological concepts. The singling out of this class is especially important in the struggle for personal psychology, against the impersonal functional-procedural psychology and for the content psychology of the personality.

Personal orientation. subjective attitudes of the individual. B. F. Lomov

Despite the difference in interpretations of personality, in all approaches, orientation is singled out as its leading characteristic. In different concepts, this characteristic is revealed in different ways: as a “dynamic tendency” (Rubinshtein), “sense-forming motive” (Leontiev), “dominant attitude” (Myasishchev), “main life orientation” (Ananiev), “dynamic organization of the essential forces of a person "(Prangishvili). One way or another, it is revealed in the study of the entire system of mental properties and states of the individual: needs, interests, inclinations, motivational sphere, ideals, value orientations, beliefs, abilities, giftedness, character, volitional, emotional, intellectual characteristics, etc.

Indeed, the orientation acts as a system-forming property of the personality, which determines its psychological make-up. It is in this property that the goals in the name of which the personality acts, its motives, its subjective attitudes to various aspects of reality are expressed: the whole system of its characteristics. On a global level, orientation can be assessed as the ratio of what a person receives and takes from society (meaning both material and spiritual values), to what she gives him, contributes to his development.

How exactly a particular person participates in certain social processes (promotes their development, opposes, slows down or evades participation in them) depends on its direction, which is formed in the process of personality development in the system of social relations. ‹…›

The motives and goals of activities belong to the person who performs them. The relationship between activity and motive as a personal entity is neither simple nor unambiguous. One or another motive that has arisen in a person and prompts him to a certain activity may not be exhausted by this activity; then, having completed this activity, the person begins another (or implements this motive in communication). In the process of activity, the motive can change, and in the same way, if the motive is preserved, the activity being performed (its program, structure, composition of actions, etc.) can change. ‹…›

‹…› The motivational sphere of a person as a whole is inextricably linked with the needs that objectively and naturally determine human behavior. The motive is a subjective reflection of needs, mediated by the position of the individual in society. ‹…›

‹…› The need-motivational sphere characterizes the orientation of the personality, however, partially; is, as it were, its initial link, the foundation. On this foundation, the life goals of the individual are formed. It is necessary to distinguish between the purpose of activity and life purpose. A person has to perform many different activities during his life, in each of which a specific goal is realized. But the goal of any individual activity reveals only one side of the orientation of the personality, which is manifested in this activity. The life goal acts as a general integrator of all private goals associated with individual activities. The realization of each of them is at the same time a partial realization (and at the same time development) of the general life goal of the individual. ‹…›

Subjective personality relationships

Until now, we have been talking about orientation as a system-forming property of the personality in connection with the analysis of its goals, motivational sphere and needs. But this property also has other forms of manifestation. Analyzing the psychological make-up of a personality, it is hardly possible to do without considering its value orientations, attachments, likes, dislikes, interests and a number of other characteristics, which, although related to needs, motives and goals, are not reduced to them.

In our opinion, the most general concept denoting the above characteristics of a person (and a number of others not listed here) is the concept of “subjective relations of a person”. It is about how a person relates to certain events and phenomena of the world in which he lives. In this case, the term "relationship" implies not only and not so much the objective connection of the individual with his environment, but, above all, his subjective position in this environment. "Attitude" here includes the moment of evaluation, expresses the partiality of the individual.

The concept of "subjective relations of the individual" is close in content to the concepts of "attitude", "personal meaning" and "attitude". But, from our point of view, it is generic in relation to them. The concept of "attitude", disclosed as a central modification of personality (Uznadze), emphasizes the integral nature of subjective-personal relations; "personal meaning" - their connection with socially developed meanings; “attitude” is their subjectivity. ‹… ›

The subjective relations of a particular individual, of course, are not limited to those based on economic relations. In the process of life, a person also forms certain subjective attitudes towards scientific discoveries, cultural and art phenomena, political events, the ideological life of society, etc.

As has been noted more than once, a person in his development is included in many, both large and small, communities of people. Participation in the life of each of them forms in her certain subjective attitudes both to the one in which she is included, and to other communities. At the same time, certain “distortions” sometimes arise in the development of the individual, which are expressed in the fact that some of her private relations begin to dominate over the general ones, she puts the interests of a group above the interests of society. Such distortions include nationalism, chauvinism, groupism, corporatism, protectionism, etc.

In the process of life in society, each individual forms the most complex - multidimensional, multilevel and dynamic - system of subjective-personal relations. It could be described as a multidimensional "subjective space", each of the dimensions of which corresponds to a certain subjective-personal attitude (to work, property, other people, political events, etc.). These dimensions are what E. Erickson called "the radii of meaningful relationships." "Subjective space" does not always coincide with the "space" of social relations in which the individual is included objectively. It is not uncommon to find facts of a "shift" of the subjective relations of an individual with respect to those social relations in which he is objectively included.

The question of the relationship between the objective and subjective "spaces" of the personality, as well as the question of distortions in its development, requires a special psychological study. Their constructive solution is of exceptionally great importance for educational work.

Changing the objective position of the individual in society necessarily requires restructuring and its subjective relations. If this does not happen, then difficulties may arise in mastering a new social function, conflicts with other people, or “internal discord”. ‹… ›

In the broadest sense of the word, the subjectivity of relations means that they belong to the individual as a social subject. They are formed and developed in the process of accumulation and integration of the entire life experience of the individual. They characterize the life position of the individual in society. Their determination by social relations sometimes gives the individual the impression that his subjective relations are stronger than himself (the experience of their imposition). Perhaps nowhere, as in these relations, is the cumulative nature of determination so clearly manifested. It would be wrong to associate subjectivity, partiality necessarily with the distortion or illusory nature of these relations. Subjectivity and subjectivism are not the same thing. If the relationship of the individual is adequate to the progressive trends in the development of society, then their subjectivity is not only not an obstacle in relationships with other people, but, on the contrary, contributes to the development of these relationships. However, under certain conditions, partiality can also appear in the form of subjectivism (prejudice, bias, rigidity in behavior and opinions, etc.), which hinders the normal relationship of the individual with other people, and hence its own development.

Being integral properties of the personality, subjective relations leave a certain imprint on all mental processes (more broadly: on all mental phenomena). This is especially clearly expressed in their emotional tone, as well as in those links in the processes that are associated with choice and decision-making.

In the course of the development of subjective relations, specific “formations” are formed: a system of preferences, opinions, tastes, and interests. There is also a certain system of images in which, from the standpoint of a given person, i.e., subjectively and biasedly, various aspects and components of the reality in which he lives are represented (the image of other individuals, communities, society as a whole, etc.).

Subjective relations act as a kind of "backbone" of the subjective world of the individual.

In the process of their development, certain habits, stereotypes of behavior, ways of interacting with other people (for example, what is commonly called a sense of tact) are also formed - in short, the style of behavior of the individual as a whole.

About the "personality" system. B. I. Dodonov

The correct definition of such a function, corresponding to the systemic approach, requires, first of all, considering the personality as a component of another, higher system, as a “particle” of society, the function of which cannot be divorced from the life of the latter. At the same time, a person is by no means such a component of a system of the highest rank as, say, a cog for a machine ...

Let us ask ourselves the question: what meaningful characteristics of a person can influence the way of his social existence? Obviously, there will be only three such characteristics: firstly, her social status; secondly, her socially significant physical features; and thirdly, her psychological make-up. This, one must think, is the main "morphological" composition of the "personality" system.

Social status characterizes a person as a component dependent on society. The psychological make-up and physical characteristics, on the contrary, belong to the individual as a relatively independent system capable of a certain choice of social roles available to her and their individual and peculiar performance. They (psychological warehouse and physical characteristics) represent the control and executive subsystems of the socialized individual.

Since all human behavior is directly determined by the control subsystem, which subjectively reflects in itself both his social status and his physical capabilities, it is the psychological make-up of the personality that will become the subject of our further analysis. To do this, you first need to identify those elements from which the more complex psychological formations directly constituting it are “built”.

"Ideal content" of personality as elements of its basic psychological formations... The role of the main series of components of the psychological makeup of the personality in our model will be functional associations of certain contents of the personality ...

The main classes of ideal contents of personality. The selection of elements of the ideal content of the personality should be based not on the ontological, but on the logical principle. Following it, we first of all divide all ideal contents into motivating and orienting. Then the first - again, to those that carry ready-made goals, determining the initiative behavior of the individual, and those that are fixed emotional assessments of reality, providing situational reactions to various life circumstances. The second - on the conceptual and figurative information about the world and the "schemes" of mental actions that have developed in the experience of life, which control the extraction, transformation, multiplication and practical use of this information. The four different classes of ideal contents of our psyche singled out in this way, according to the usual terminology, represent objectified needs in all their modifications, stable psychological relationships, knowledge and skills. We will also call the first class of elements the block of target programs, and the third - the block of operators.

‹…› If we consider each class of ideal content as a separate block of them and ask the question about the differentiation of content elements within it, then one of their most important differences will be the degree of breadth and stability. A person's knowledge can relate to the most general laws of nature, society and human thinking, and can relate to more private areas of his life or even to very insignificant facts of his being. Target programs can be programs of a person’s life and programs of tonight, etc. In other words, each block of contents (regardless of their actual entry into one or another functional formation of the psychological make-up of a person) has a “multi-story”, hierarchical structure. At the same time, its upper “floors” are constantly being completed and rebuilt, but the closer we approach their foundation, the more solid, fundamental contents of the personality we will deal with. It is precisely because of this that a mature personality dialectically combines both extreme dynamism and often exceptional stability. It is like a tree that every year puts out new shoots and is covered with new foliage, but which usually retains the main thing almost unchanged: roots, trunk and branches.

Components of the psychological make-up of a person. Along with the differentiation of the ideal contents of the personality, which was mentioned above, they should be divided according to one more principle: depending on whether they relate to the external world or to the individual himself. In this regard, in the system of the psychological make-up of the personality, we distinguish extraversion and introversion subsystems.

subsystem of extraversion. Obviously, it is possible to establish a by no means accidental analogy between the "regulatory mechanisms" that regulate people's behavior on the part of society, and the individual's own control mechanisms. Both provide three kinds of orientations necessary for the successful functioning of both society as a whole and the individual. These orientations are the following: 1) a general understanding of the reality in the "space" of which one has to act; 2) target orientation; and 3) orientation that provides a quick response to various typical situations and circumstances of life.

In the system of the personality itself, the functions of the regulator of behavior are performed by its worldview, orientation and character.

... The first of the components of personality - outlook- is a fundamental formation of a sufficiently mature psyche, which includes the most important knowledge of a person about the world and attitudes towards it, from the position of which he carries out his general “reconnaissance” of reality in the development of new target programs for his life and in the fundamental assessment of various phenomena and events.

… Orientation of personality- this is the already established system of its most important target programs, which determines the semantic unity of its initiative behavior, opposing the randomness of life. In other words, this is what phenomenally makes itself felt in the subject's enduring life aspirations.

Another of the components of the psychological make-up of a personality that we have mentioned is its character. From our positions character is a psychological formation that includes a person’s entrenched emotional attitudes to typical life situations and stereotypes of cognitive and behavioral “schemes” of responding to these situations that are connected in a certain way ...

Character, as a system of certain stereotypes of emotional, cognitive and behavioral response to typical life situations, being formed under the strong influence of a person’s worldview and especially orientation, does not in any way overlap them, it determines the reactive, rather than initiative, primary behavior of the individual. Another thing is that the reaction of the character itself, caused by an external impulse, can serve as the beginning of the formation of a new target program, which will then become part of the orientation of the personality ...

The three components of the personality's psychological make-up described above are regulators of our behavior with ready-made information content, but the personality needs a constant influx of new information from the outside world and the extraction of already existing knowledge about it from the "memory stores". It also needs to analyze this information, transform it, recode it and use it as signals that control the body. This goal is served by the fourth, most complex component of the human psychological system - his capabilities. Abilities (as well as other personality components, by the way) can be characterized by their manifestation - and then it is convenient to call them qualities, features, etc. and can be considered as some structures of ideal contents, "embedded" in the very schemes of functional systems of processes - and then it is better to define them as formations of personality ...

We think that the presence of a person's knowledge and skills, considered not as their simple sum, but as their specific system, is the psychological education that makes him, first of all, to one degree or another capable of both acquiring new knowledge and skills, and and to solve various theoretical and practical problems with their help. It is no coincidence that for those researchers who have to not only theorize about abilities, but practically determine them, “it seems unrealistic to exclude past experience from the intellect, that is, the knowledge and skills that an individual has” (A. V. Petrovsky, 1982). The level of these abilities depends on three factors. Firstly, on the quality of the individual elements of this knowledge and skills (true and incorrect, hard and soft, etc.) and on their combination into a single whole, on the quality of the structure of this whole. Figuratively speaking, in one case it may resemble a well-organized library, in another - a waste book warehouse. Secondly, from the natural inclinations of a person, from the quality of those primary nervous mechanisms of elementary mental activity with which a child is already born. Thirdly, probably from the greater or lesser "training" of the brain cells themselves involved in the implementation of cognitive and psychomotor processes.

Abilities are personal formations that include structured knowledge and skills of a person in a certain way, formed on the basis of his innate inclinations and, as a whole, determine his capabilities in successfully mastering the technical side of certain activities.

Introversive subsystem, or "I" of the personality. Personality is not only purposeful, but also a self-organizing system. Therefore, the object of her attention and activity is not only the external world, but she herself. Phenomenally, this manifests itself in the feeling of one's "I".

The “I” of a personality should not be understood as a kind of homunculus standing above all its other components and having “supreme power” in relation to them. Its constituents are some parts of the content of all the same personal structures that we have already considered. “I”, thus, includes, so to speak, “self-view” (ideas about oneself and one’s self-esteem), and programs for one’s self-improvement, and habitual reactions to the manifestation of some of one’s qualities, and the ability of introspection, introspection and self-regulation. It is through the “I”, which enables a person to navigate in himself, as well as in the outside world, that the unification of all components of the personality into a single whole and the constant harmonization (coordination) of its components are carried out to the greatest extent.

But "I", we repeat, is not some special supreme decider of the fate of the individual. Reflecting, a person evaluates himself from the position of his general outlook and orientation.

The structure of the psychological warehouse of the individual and the individual qualitative characteristics of its components.

The structure of any system is inextricably linked with its functions. Since the general regulatory function of the psychological make-up of a person consists of the functions of its components, in its general structure, the connections of the first and second orders can also be respectively singled out ...

We believe that the leading, system-forming component of the personality's psychological make-up is its orientation. All other components somehow “work” for it. This applies even to a person's worldview. In its prepersonal form, orientation in the form of a set of innate biological needs begins to determine the external and internal activity of the child even when he does not even have a hint of a general understanding of the world, but even in an adult, needs determine his comprehension of reality to a much greater extent than this comprehension. - his needs.

Of course, what has been said here is still far from revealing the full complexity of the relationship between the orientation of the personality and its worldview. It is important for us to outline only the most general idea of ​​the structural connections between them, which boils down to the fact that a worldview rather helps a person develop his orientation than primarily determines it.

Clearly visible, for example, is the service role in relation to the orientation of the personality of its abilities and character. There are, however, cases when they do not quite correspond to it. But then the individual, realizing this discrepancy, tries to "pull" them up to the level of his orientation.

The function of the very awareness of such a discrepancy and efforts to eliminate it, as already mentioned in the previous section of the article, falls on the "I" of the individual. Such, in the most general form, are the structural relationships between the components of her psychological make-up, making it a single, albeit very complex, formation. And if at certain moments of a person's behavior, the role of one or another of its psychological components can come to the fore more clearly, then in general, its activity is determined by all of them. At the same time, the more responsible the person acts, the more fully all its components participate in the regulation of its actions. That is why even a clearly timid person at other times can behave courageously, unrestrained - restrainedly, frivolous - seriously, absent-minded - attentively.

In concluding this part of the article, we briefly touch upon the question of the integrative qualitative characteristics of individual psychological components of the personality when considering it in terms of individuality. Such characteristics, generally speaking, can be given from different points of view, which we will not specifically discuss now. Let us note only very important ones: the characteristics of the component from the point of view of its moral assessment and from the point of view of the degree of consolidation of its elements. So, for example, considering the components of a personality from the first angle of view, we can talk about its collectivist or individualistic orientation, its responsive or callous character, its good or bad abilities, etc. Characterizing the personality’s orientation from the standpoint of the second plane of its analysis , we must determine to what extent the individual target programs that make up it have developed into a single, internally coordinated system. There may be a person with a dominant collectivist orientation and just a collectivist orientation - this is not the same thing. And not at all because the second is devoid of any aspirations for personal happiness and self-affirmation. It’s just that her collectivist needs have so penetrated into all others that she can’t imagine either the satisfaction of personal ambition or happiness itself on any other path than the path of the most honest and selfless service to the interests of society. The simple dominance of some needs-programs over others is always fraught with the possibility of internal conflicts, the struggle of motivation and severe emotional experiences. A special, broader individual psychological characteristic of a person is the measure of her extraversion-introversion, determined by the ratio of her extraversive "part" to her "I".

Personality in the system-integrative aspect. A personality has relatively few integrative characteristics that reveal its individual appearance in the most important features. First of all, it is determined by three main parameters of a person: the degree of her humanity, talent and sociopsychophysical harmony, manifested in her general mental mood. Let's briefly dwell on each of them.

concept humanity close to concept kindness, but much wider and deeper than the latter. Kindness is just a quality of character; a person with a very narrow and limited, petty-bourgeois worldview can also be kind. True humanity requires a broad humane view of the world as a whole, which makes itself felt in relation to those close to us, and to the "distant", and to man, and to nature, and to science, and to art. It manifests itself not only in a simple, reactive responsiveness to someone else's grief, but in a person's programs of active struggle against evil. Humanity is incompatible with nationalism, a poorly developed sense of human dignity, forgiveness, etc.

In the integrative quality of humanity, as in no other, the unity of man and society is reflected.

Talent (talent, genius) is usually interpreted as the highest degree of development of abilities. But it can be interpreted in this way only with a very broad understanding of the latter. And this not only prevents the ability to find its own place in the system of the psychological make-up of the individual, but also hides the complex dialectic of talent development, leading to a number of incorrect conclusions, also of a practical, applied nature. It is believed that abilities reach their maximum development by 20–25 years. Further, age-related decline in abilities gradually begins. Of course, not all people age at the same rate. There are numerous facts when individuals achieve their highest creative success in their 60s and even 70s.

All this indicates that human creativity is determined not by one, but at least two factors, the dynamics of which is characterized by different directions. The decrease in abilities with age can be compensated and even overcompensated by the continuing enrichment of the ideal contents of his worldview, the direction of his character and the "I"-system. The ability for the most intensive and unmistakable handling of information decreases, but the individual's ability to view reality from more and more original points of view, determined by the ever enriching relationship of a person to the world, often continues to grow.

The mental mood of the individual is explained as its internal harmony or disharmony (when “you find the root of torment in yourself and you cannot blame the sky for anything” - M. Yu. Lermontov), and certain physical qualities of the individual, the external circumstances of his life.

The general mental mood of the individual has many shades, the most opposing of which are optimistic, major and tragic. An example of a person with a stable major mood is the famous French painter Auguste Renoir, about whom A. V. Lunacharsky wrote as follows: “Renoir had an extraordinary inner unity of mood; in fact, he always had the same mood, but very rich. That mood was happiness.”

The opposite of him was, for example, the mental attitude of Vrubel.

The concept of the dynamic functional structure of personality. K. K. Platonov

The concept of "structure" in the doctrine of personality

The development of the concepts of structure and system and system-structural methods of cognition became in the middle of our century a common phenomenon in various sciences, and above all in philosophy. Psychology is no exception here. But Gestalt psychology, with its distorted understanding of structure, played a significant role in shaping the structural approach to mental phenomena. Therefore, psychologists often voluntarily or involuntarily rely on the views of Gestalt psychology.

At the same time, many works by Soviet authors have already been devoted to the development of the concept of "structure" as a philosophical category, and the content of the concept of "structure" in its historical and logical aspects has already been studied quite well. ‹…›

The modern definition of structure should more clearly overcome the errors of one-sided understandings of structure not only as a construction of elements (in psychology - functions) or as relationships between them (in psychology - interfunctional connections), but also as a whole, incomprehensibly how it affects its components (Gestalt psychology).

Therefore, for the psychological theory of personality (as well as for psychology in general) it is much more “working” to understand the structure not as an attribute of any system, but as an objectively existing interaction of a real-life mental phenomenon taken as a whole (in particular, personality), as well as its really existing substructures, elements and their all-round connections. ‹…›

Starting a system-structural analysis, with any understanding of these terms, first of all, it is necessary to clearly establish which cognizable phenomenon is taken as a whole, which will be further revealed through its components and their connections. It can be the entire psychological science or only one of a number of psychological sciences, one problem or topic. But it can be any psychological category or only one of its properties or manifestations.

Thus, applying the system-structural analysis in the aspect of the problems of this book, at its first stage one can take the personality as a whole or only the orientation of the personality, the activity as a whole, or only one action. Moreover, both the personality and its orientation, as well as its activities and individual actions, can be taken in their general, special or individual meaning. It is only necessary that this integrity must necessarily be delimited and defined. Then it is necessary to find out what constitutes the elements of this integrity, understanding by them those parts that are indecomposable within the framework of a given system and relatively autonomous of it.

At the next most important stage of the system-structural analysis of mental phenomena, it is necessary to reveal the most significant and general connections between the elements and between each of them and integrity. It can be both one-way causal relationships, and interdependence and mutual influence in the processes of functioning, behavior and development of the whole phenomenon. Next, it is necessary to identify the necessary and sufficient number of substructures (or subsystems) in which or at the intersection of which all elements of the analyzed integrity will fit. Substructures (or subsystems) and elements are classified as a necessary step in comprehending their order. The classification of parts and the whole can be singled out as an independent stage of system-structural analysis in psychology.

Criteria for understanding the dynamic structure of personality

The stated concept implies a psychological structure. It has long been understood that in reality there are two kinds of structures: static and dynamic. More precisely, these are two aspects of the mandatory dynamism of any structure, determined by the time parameter of its change under the influence of not only external influences, but also its internal laws. After all, it would seem that the structure of the crystal is the most static. But it is also static only from the standpoint of "human" time and dynamic from the standpoint of geological time.

One cannot disagree with the definition given by V. D. Shadrikov: “A dynamic system is a system that develops over time, changing the composition of its components and the relationships between them while maintaining the function” (1979).

This definition also applies to the dynamic structure of personality. Moreover, if its dynamics coincides with progressive development, then the result can be not only the preservation, but also the improvement of functions; with the social or biological degradation of the individual, on the contrary, there will be deterioration.

... As mentioned above, when describing the main stages of system-structural analysis, it begins with the establishment of what is taken as a whole. The concept of the dynamic functional structure of the personality takes the personality as a whole, that is, the person as the bearer of consciousness and as one of the two substructures of the person, taken as an even wider whole (recall that his other substructure is the organism).

The second stage of the system-structural analysis is the refinement of the elements of this whole. If we consider the personality as a whole, then the elements of this whole will be persistent mental properties, usually called "personality traits". This does not cause disagreement among any of the Soviet psychologists, as well as the understanding of the mental properties (features) of a personality given by S. L. Rubinshtein, who wrote: “A mental property is the ability of an individual to naturally respond to certain objective influences with certain mental activities” (1957 ). Based on this understanding, personality traits, being elements of its structure, at the same time are its elementary activities ...

Further, when conducting a system-structural analysis of personality, it is necessary to take into account the fullest possible number of these elements. In this case, this was achieved by compiling a list and counting the number of words that can be considered as names of personality traits in the Dictionary of the Russian Language by S. I. Ozhegov (1952).

It turned out that out of 52,000 words of this dictionary, about 1,500 can be considered as elements of personality. It was also found that there are more than 4,000 of these words in the Georgian language, and about 2,500 in Bulgarian. personality traits, commonly referred to as traits. Secondly, it deserves attention that the people needed almost 2 times more words that more differentiatedly denote negative properties. And thirdly, there are even more personality traits, since many of them cannot be defined in one word.

Further, for structural analysis, it is necessary to select the necessary and sufficient number of substructures. In the concept of the dynamic functional structure of personality, four such substructures are distinguished. This number of substructures is necessary and sufficient, since they can include all known personality traits, the number of which is not only not the same, as has been shown, in different languages, but in each of them can further increase.

The isolation of these main substructures of personality is determined by a number of the following criteria.

The first such criterion is the relationship between biological and social, innate (but not necessarily hereditary) and acquired, procedural and content. The difference between these three pairs of concepts manifests itself differently in different substructures. At the same time, the 1st substructure, the most significant for the personality as a whole, includes almost exclusively socially conditioned content traits of the personality (orientation in its various forms, attitudes, moral qualities of the personality, etc.). In the 2nd substructure - experience, which includes knowledge, skills, abilities and habits, along with personal experience, which includes social experience - there is already a noticeable influence of innate, biological procedural properties. This influence is further enhanced in the 3rd substructure, which includes personality traits that depend on the individual characteristics of mental processes as forms of reflection of reality. And finally, in the 4th biopsychic substructure of the personality, the innateness of the procedural sharply prevails over the acquisition.

This criterion determines both the distinction and the sequence of substructures, arranged in the order of their "human significance", although in the genetic aspect it would be more logical to arrange them in reverse order. This sequence helps to better understand the relationship between the social and the biological, not only in the personality as a whole, but also in the substructures of various levels, down to individual personality traits. At the same time, it is more correct to speak of meaning, and not of share, since in the latter case the ratio of the social and biological in each substructure and in the individual as a whole can be understood as a “mixture of grain and sand”, and this is the notorious theory of two factors.

The second criterion for distinguishing these four personality substructures is the internal similarity of the personality traits included in each of them, and the already quite generally accepted and scientifically proven allocation in each of these substructures, taken as a whole, of its substructures of a lower level. According to the same criterion, their personality substructures are distinguished (although they do not use this term, but more often they say “sphere”, “side”) V. N. Myasishchev, A. G. Kovalev, V. S. Merlin, B. G. Ananiev and others, although in the presented concept, character and abilities are considered to be “superimposed” substructures of the personality, general qualities of the personality. But this issue requires special consideration, which will be done in the next chapter.

The third criterion for the identified four main substructures is that each of them has its own special, basic type of formation for it. In the allocated substructures, the 1st is formed by education, the 2nd - by training, the 3rd - by exercises, the 4th - by training. The interaction of these types of formation, specific for each substructure, determines the individual feature of the development of each personality.

The fourth in the considered order, and in essence the most significant criterion for the selection of these substructures is the objectively existing hierarchical dependence of these substructures. Various structural links of coordination exist both between substructures and within each of them. But the causal connections of subordination are more clearly expressed in the interaction of various substructures than within any single substructure. At the same time, the causal dependence of the personality traits of the 1st substructure on the traits of the 2nd, and together - on the traits of the 3rd, and all of them together - on the traits of the 4th, is clearly and objectively expressed.

The fifth criterion that determines the selection of these four personality substructures is no longer logical, but historical, returning the reader to the four stages of study by Soviet psychologists of personality ... (except for the 1st stage and the 6th). After all, the 1st stage (personality as a soul) of the development of the doctrine of personality has long been discarded, and the 6th (personality as a person) is unproductive, but the four intermediate ones, in turn absolutizing one of the sides (one might say aspects) of the personality, have very productively accumulated a large empirical material and topics, in essence, proved the objective reality of each of the four substructures of personality.

This fifth criterion says that the described four substructures of personality, in essence, only generalize the four stages in the development of the doctrine of personality in Soviet psychology, relying on all the material obtained, only by changing the ratio of the sequence of the substructure of the stages.

These five criteria allow us to consider that the four identified substructures reflect objective reality and therefore are the main substructures of the personality, and not its, which can be conditional, subsystems; their number also reflects the objectively existing four groups of mental properties of the personality, their order also reflects the objectively existing hierarchical and dynamic subordination.

The concept of "structure" can and should be applied to the personality in its direct sense - as the unity of the elements of their connections and the whole. But since here we are talking about the relationship of not material, but functional properties and qualities of a person, it is useful to recall that we are talking about the functional structure of a person.

Neither the individual personality traits that are included as elements in its functional structure, nor the personality as a whole remain unchanged during a person's life. Personality changes can be associated not only with its development as a result of age-related maturation and formation, but also with social decay, senile degradation and pathological development. In addition, the variability of personality depends on the compensation of some, insufficiently developed personality traits by others and on changes in the methods and degree of this compensation. After all, a defect in memory in one and the same person in one case can be compensated by arbitrary attention, and in another - by quick wit. That is why it is necessary to say even more precisely "the dynamic functional structure of the personality." ‹…›

So, the concept of the dynamic functional structure of the personality is the core section of the doctrine of the personality, because theoretically it allows you to more deeply reveal the essence of the personality as a structural phenomenon, in practice it allows you to systematize a very large number of personality traits and overcome their diversity.

The above criteria make it possible to determine the number of necessary and sufficient substructures not arbitrarily, but on the basis of a reflection of an objectively existing reality and arrange them in an objectively existing hierarchical series.

Interaction of hierarchies of personality substructures and their properties

The personality substructures identified according to the described criteria and their main properties with the same hierarchy are shown in the table. Without dwelling on the details of this table, let us analyze the most significant interactions of these hierarchies.

The 1st substructure of the personality combines the orientation and attitudes of the personality, manifested as its moral traits. The elements (features) of the personality included in this substructure do not have direct innate inclinations, but reflect the individually refracted group social consciousness. This substructure is formed through education. It can be called a socially conditioned substructure, but it can also be called, more briefly, an orientation of the personality. Orientation, taken as a whole, in turn, includes such forms as substructures: inclinations, desires, interests, inclinations, ideals, worldview, beliefs. In these forms of orientation of the personality, both relationships and moral qualities of the personality, and various forms of needs are manifested.

This substructure includes various manifestations of relations on the basis of the fifth criterion for the selection of substructures - the generally accepted psychological concepts. However, it is more correct to consider the attitude not as a property of the personality, but as an attribute of consciousness, along with experience and cognition, which determine various manifestations of its activity. But most of all, the activity of orientation is manifested through beliefs. The study of this substructure requires a socio-psychological level.

The mentioned term "persuasion" requires clarification. In one sense, it is synonymous with confidence in the truth of a particular fact or position. In this sense, beliefs are a component of the worldview, moreover, the most essential.

But in the second meaning, emphasized by psychologists, persuasion is the highest level of orientation, the structure of which includes not only a worldview that can be passive, but also an activating will to fight for it. In this sense, conviction is the highest result of the ideological education of the individual.

The 2nd substructure of personality combines knowledge, skills, abilities and habits acquired in personal experience through training, but already with a noticeable influence of both biologically and even genetically determined personality traits. This substructure is sometimes called individual culture or preparedness, but it is better to call it experience briefly. The activity of experience is manifested through volitional skills, and its study requires a psychological and pedagogical level.

The properties included in this substructure are not considered by all psychologists as personality properties. Indeed, a skill that is just beginning to form, like any one-time action (as well as a single, short-term manifestation of interest in the previous substructure or mental function in the next one), is not yet a personality property, but only a short-term mental process or state. But their typical manifestations for a given individual, as well as fixed knowledge, skill (not only mental or volitional, but also motor and sensory), and even more skill and habit, are already an indisputable property of a person. This, after all, is the dialectic of the transition of quantity into quality in the series: short-term process - state - personality trait.

Scheme of the hierarchy of the main adjacent substructures

The 3rd personality substructure combines the individual characteristics of individual mental processes, or mental functions, understood as forms of mental reflection: memory, emotions, sensations, thinking, perception, feelings, will. This order is not accidental. Psychic memory developed on the basis of physiological and genetic memory, and without it other forms of reflection could neither exist nor develop. Therefore, this hierarchical series of mental processes as forms of reflection begins with it. But each form of reflection, being fixed by its own kind of memory, becomes a property of the individual. If mechanical memory opens this series, then semantic memory, as it were, closes it. Therefore, it is better to consider memory as a trace form of reflection, penetrating the entire hierarchical series of its forms from top to bottom.

Emotions and sensations as forms of reflection are also characteristic of animals. The influence of biologically determined features in this substructure is seen even more clearly, since the forms of reflection are functions of the brain and depend on its state. It, interacting with the other three substructures, is formed mainly through exercise. It is studied mainly at the individual psychological level.

As you know, there are more forms of reflection of the world than those two that philosophers speak of as sensual and abstract, or, more precisely, direct and mediated cognition, which corresponds, in the language of the school of I.P. Pavlov, to the primary and secondary signal cognition. All psychic phenomena are forms of reflection or combinations thereof, although they are not yet sufficiently well studied in the light of Lenin's theory of reflection.

The 4th substructure of personality combines the properties of temperament, or, as they now say after B. M. Teplov, typological properties of personality. This also includes the sex and age characteristics of the personality and its pathological, so-called "organic" changes. The necessary traits included in this substructure are formed (or rather, they are altered) by training, if this alteration is possible at all. More than in the previous substructures, compensation plays a role here. Personality properties included in this substructure are incomparably more dependent on the physiological characteristics of the brain, and social influences only subordinate and compensate for them. Therefore, briefly this substructure can be called biopsychic. The activity of this substructure is determined by the strength of nervous processes, and it is studied at the psychophysiological, and sometimes at the neuropsychological, down to the molecular level.

These four substructures can contain all known personality traits. Moreover, some of these properties relate mainly to only one substructure, for example, conviction and interest - to the 1st; erudition and skill - to the 2nd; decisiveness and ingenuity - to the 3rd; exhaustion and excitability - to the 4th. Others, and there are more of them, lie at the intersections of substructures and are the result of the interconnections of various proper substructures. An example can be a morally educated will as the relationship of the 1st and 3rd substructures; musicality as the relationship of the 3rd, 4th and usually 2nd substructures.

Not only do each of these four substructures, considered as a whole, in turn have its own substructures, but each personality trait also has its own structure, which includes more subtle connections. For example, although conviction mainly belongs to the 1st substructure, its structure includes will and related knowledge and mental skills as elements.

So, as a result of the foregoing, it can be argued that the four main adjacent substructures of personality include all known personality traits and their already well-studied generalizations. The hierarchy of the various properties of these substructures (correlation in each of the roles of the social and biological, the characteristics of activity, specific types of formation and levels of study) reveals their regular coincidences.

The semantic sphere of personality. B. S. Bratus

Personality as a specific, irreducible to other dimensions (temperament, individual properties, etc.) construction is not self-sufficient, carrying the ultimate meaning of its existence in itself. This meaning is acquired depending on the emerging relationships, connections with the essential characteristics of human existence. In other words, the essence of personality and the essence of man are separated from each other by the fact that the first is a way, a tool, a means of organizing the achievement of the second, and, therefore, the first receives meaning and justification in the second, while the second bears its highest justification in itself. It is not a person who acts, loves, hates, fights, but a person who has a personality, through it, in a special, only inherent way, organizing his activity, love, hatred and struggle. ‹…›

To become a person means, firstly, to take a certain vital, first of all, interpersonal moral position; secondly, to be sufficiently aware of it and to bear responsibility for it; thirdly, to affirm it with your actions, deeds, with your whole life. And although this life position has been worked out by the subject himself, belongs to him and is deeply biased (if not to say, suffered by him), nevertheless, in its objective meaning, it is an affiliation of human society, a product and at the same time the cause of social interpersonal ties and relationships. Therefore, the origins of the personality, its value, and finally, good or bad fame about it, are ultimately determined by the social, moral significance that it really shows (or showed) with its life. ‹…›

A very special question is who and how sets the “task for meaning” in front of a person. Purely outwardly, phenomenologically, it seems that everything depends only on the level of self-consciousness, the desires of a given person, on whether he wants to think about the meaning of his actions or not, whether life events, friends, educators, teachers, family direct him to that. external circumstances around him. There are, however, completely objective internal laws of the movement of activity, its own logic, which prepares the situation from the inside for understanding oneself, one's actions and one's place in life. And consciousness then plays the role of a summator, activator, implementer, rather than the reason for setting the “task for meaning”.

When the “task for meaning” is nevertheless solved and we are talking about one form or another of awareness, reflection of the most general semantic formations, then it is appropriate, in our opinion, to say about values personality or, better, about personal values distinguishing them from personal meanings, which are by no means always of a conscious nature. Thus, personal values ​​are conscious and accepted by a person the general meanings of his life. They should also be distinguished from purely declared, nominal values ​​that are not provided with a "golden reserve" of the corresponding semantic, emotionally experienced, personal attitude to life, since such values ​​do not, in fact, have a direct bearing on the semantic sphere, moreover, they can become props that mask completely different personal aspirations ...

It is the general semantic formations (in the case of their awareness - personal values), which, in our opinion, are the main constitutive (forming) units of the consciousness of the individual, determine the main and relatively constant relationship of a person to the main areas of life - to the world, to other people, to himself. yourself. It is impossible to talk about the normal or abnormal development of a personality without considering these relationships - both their dynamic side (the nature of their tension, methods of implementation, the ratio of real and ideal goals, etc.), and the content side.

It should be noted that if the task of studying the mechanisms of the dynamic side of mental activity is accepted without reservation by the majority of psychologists, then the task of studying the content side often causes sharp objections, which most often come down to the fact that this is rather a subject of philosophy, ethics, but not psychology. However, one cannot agree with this opinion, otherwise the most important determinant that determines the features of both specific and general personality traits will be lost sight of. The need to take into account the content side becomes, perhaps, especially obvious when encountering difficult, abnormal, deviant development (both in adolescence and at a more mature age), which, as studies show, is often a direct consequence of a person's egocentric orientation. The most favorable conditions for the development of personality, which has long been noticed by experienced psychologists, are created by the opposite egocentric - altruistic orientation. For example, even in the work of the Russian psychologist A.F. Lazursky, we find that spiritual health provides the ideal of altruism to the greatest extent: “Altruism in one form or another is a form and means and an indicator of the best harmony between the individual and the environment. There are no perverts here." Modern experimental psychological data generally confirm these judgments.

So, the totality of the basic relations to the world, to people and to oneself, set by dynamic semantic systems, forms in its unity and its main essence a moral position inherent in man. Such a position is especially strong when it becomes conscious, that is, when personal values ​​appear, which we consider as conscious general semantic formations. The confession of these values ​​consolidates the unity and self-identity of the personality in significant periods of time, for a long time determining the main characteristics of the personality, its core, its morality. ‹…›

Let us now turn to the specific functions of semantic formations as the basic constitutive units of the personality's consciousness. Let us denote here only two functions that are the most significant in the context of our presentation.

Firstly, it is the creation of an image, a sketch of the future, that perspective of personality development that does not follow directly from the present, today's situation. If, in the analysis of real human activity, we confine ourselves to units of motives as objects of needs, units of goals as foreseeable results, then it will not be clear how a person is able to overcome the current situations, the prevailing logic of being, which leads him to go beyond the bounds of established conformity, to that future. , to which he himself today cannot give exact descriptions and reports. Meanwhile, this future is the main mediating link in the movement of the individual, without the assumption of which it is impossible to explain either the real course of human development or his endless potentialities.

Semantic formations are, in our opinion, the basis of this possible future, which mediates the present, today's human activity, since integral systems of semantic formations do not define specific motives in themselves, but the plane of relations between them, i.e. just that initial plan, a sketch of the future, which should preexist its real incarnation.

At the same time, one should not think that the future in question is always localized somewhere indefinitely ahead in time. When we talk about the semantic field of consciousness, it should be borne in mind that the future is constantly present here as a necessary condition, as a mechanism for development, mediating the present at every given moment.

Secondly, the most important function of semantic formations lies in the following: any human activity can be evaluated and regulated in terms of its success in achieving certain goals and in terms of its moral assessment. The latter cannot be produced "from within" the current activity itself, based on the available actual motives and needs. Moral assessments and regulation necessarily imply a different, extra-situational support, a special, relatively independent psychological plane, not directly captured by the immediate course of events. Semantic formations become this support for a person, especially in the form of their awareness - personal values, since they do not set specific motives and goals in themselves, but the plane of relations between them, the most general principles of their correlation. So, for example, honesty as a semantic formation is not a rule or a set of rules, not a specific motive or a set of motives, but a certain general principle of correlating motives, goals and means of life, implemented in one form or another in each new specific situation. In one case, this will be evaluation and screening, selection of some ways to achieve goals, in the other - a change, a shift in goals, in the third - the termination of the activity itself, despite its successful course, etc. The semantic level of regulation does not prescribe, therefore, ready-made recipes for actions, but gives general principles that in different situations can be implemented by different external (but internally the same) actions. Only on the basis of these principles for the first time does it become possible to evaluate and regulate activity not from its expedient, pragmatic side - the success or failure of the flow, the completeness of the results achieved, etc., but from the moral, semantic side, i.e., from the side of how from the point of view of these principles, the relations between motives and goals, goals and means of achieving them that have actually developed in this activity are legitimate. ‹…›

Consideration of personality as a method, a tool for forming relationships to a generic human essence, primarily to another person (as a value in itself at one pole, as a thing at the other), is, in our opinion, the very general criterion, a watershed that separates the personal in sense formation from the non-personal, which can be attributed to other layers of mental reflection. Using this criterion, we outline the following levels of the semantic sphere of personality.

The zero level is actually pragmatic, situational meanings, determined by the very objective logic of achieving the goal in these specific conditions. So, going to the cinema and seeing a large queue and an announcement that there are few tickets left at the box office just before the start of the show, we can say: “There is no point in standing in this queue - we won’t get tickets.” It is clear that such a meaning can hardly be called personal, as it is tied to the situation, fulfilling a regulatory regulatory role in its awareness.

The next, first level of the personal-semantic sphere is the egocentric level, in which personal gain, convenience, prestige, etc. are the starting point. At the same time, all other people are made dependent on these relationships, are considered as helping (convenient, “good” ) or as hindering (“bad”, enemies) their implementation.

Second level - group-centric; the defining semantic moment of the relationship to reality at this level is the close environment of a person, a group that he either identifies with himself or puts it above himself in his interests and aspirations. The attitude towards another person essentially depends on whether he is “one's own” or “alien”, “distant”. The third level, which includes collectivist, social and, as its highest level, universal (actually moral) semantic orientations, can be called, using the term accepted in psychology, prosocial. Unlike the previous one, where the semantic, personal orientation is limited to benefit, well-being, strengthening the position of a relatively closed group, a truly pro-social level, especially its higher levels, is characterized by an internal semantic aspiration of a person to create such results (products of labor, activity, communication, knowledge) which will bring equal benefit to others, even personally unfamiliar to him, "foreign", "distant" people, society, humanity as a whole. If at the first level the other person acts as a thing, as the foot of egocentric desires, and at the second level others are divided into a circle of “us”, having intrinsic value, and “strangers”, devoid of it, then at the third level the principle of intrinsic value becomes universal, defining the main thing. and, as we know, the only true direction of familiarization with the generic human essence ...

The distinction of semantic levels is captured even in the very language of describing human behavior. So, in terms of the effective field and the corresponding situational, pragmatic meaning, we are talking about actions and, if they are unsuccessful, about mistakes, blunders. As soon as we move to the plane of the semantic field, moral meanings, we are talking about deeds, deeds that are low (i.e., determined by egocentrism, selfishness, as if pressed against pragmatic meanings) and high (i.e., striving for universal ideals ). ‹…›

So, the meanings are not homogeneous, and even more so one-level formations, but differ significantly depending on their relation to one or another level. In addition to level relatedness, in order to characterize a specific semantic formation, it is extremely important to introduce an idea of ​​its intensity, the degree of appropriation by a person. E. Z. Basina suggests talking, for example, about three types of semantic formations - semantic contents, particular semantic formations and general semantic orientations ...

This classification seems to be valuable, although the proposed terms, in our opinion, do not look entirely successful ... Therefore, in the future we will talk about unstable, situational semantic contents, characterized by episodic nature, dependence on external circumstances; about sustainable, personally appropriated semantic contents, included, woven into the general structure of the semantic sphere and occupied a certain place in it; and finally oh personal values ​​that we have already defined above as the most general, generalized meanings of his life realized and accepted by a person.

If the levels of the semantic sphere (egocentric, group-centric, prosocial) make up, as it were, the vertical, the ordinate of the grid of semantic relations, then the intended degrees of their appropriation by the personality (situational, stable, personal-value) make up the horizontal, the abscissa of this grid. In each specific case, it is possible, in principle, to single out the leading level for a given semantic sphere, the nature of its connections with semantic formations, the degree of its internal stability, etc. It is clear that the course of the normal in our understanding, i.e. human essence, the development of the semantic sphere should consist in the simultaneous movement along the vertical and horizontal - to universal human ideas, semantic identification with the world and along the line of transition from unstable, episodically emerging relationships to stable and conscious value-semantic orientations ...

Semantic systems, at least their highest, moral and value levels, carry the function of not so much reflecting, but transforming reality, linking heterogeneous and particular interests, underlying meanings (“barrier” and “conflict” as well) into a single, defining the essence and purpose of a person is a look at himself and the life around him. Value perception, according to the correct remark of F. E. Vasilyuk, enables a person to overcome failures and obstacles of the effective field. This does not mean that at the same time a person does not experience conflict states and experiences at all, that in his semantic system there are not and cannot be conflict meanings. There can be any number of them. But the underlying conflicts (more often in the course of a special activity of understanding of meaning) are removed, more precisely, they are transformed by the value level, are considered and receive their true price depending on one or another solution of the original driving generic contradiction. Therefore, in particular, the abundance of conflicting meanings, failures in their “deconfliction” may not change either the general level of self-esteem of the individual, or its stability, or self-confidence, and, on the contrary, changes in value orientation are always accompanied by a deep personality crisis, even in the case , if there are no visible conflicts at other levels of semantic consciousness. In this regard, the following definition of meaning, which we find in A. A. Brudny, is very true: meaning is such a reflection of reality in consciousness that can change reality. It is only necessary to add and clarify: not only can it change, but it necessarily changes, transforms, transforms reality in the act of semantic perception, making it in its inner vision not at all what it is nominally, but giving it a special, not directly seen by "objective vision » others and not directly arising from this reality itself, the meaning, the connection of events.

The disintegration of this connection is tantamount to the loss of a common meaning, a crisis of the semantic sphere. At the same time, reality, its reflection, even the "objectivity" of this reflection remain, but what is worth reflecting it for is lost - a general view, a common idea that binds life together. Clinical experience convincingly shows that the so-called neuroses of the loss of meaning (nusogenic, existential neuroses, etc.) are primarily associated not with overcoming obstacles, not with difficulties in choosing behavior in favor of one or another motive, but with the absence, loss of a moral and value outlook on life as the main condition for its meaningfulness, from which, as a particular, the desire to achieve certain motives with all the current experiences associated with the tasks of this achievement follows. It is clear that in the everyday life of a person, it is precisely these worries that are overpowering here and now that sometimes create the illusion of their mainness, their reality and visibility, as opposed to distant and vague general ideas. But a sharp change of circumstances, a crisis, a turn of external events is enough to see the pivotal role of the latter for the whole fate of the individual.

As for a specific activity, it can be interpreted in significantly different ways, depending not only on its place in the hierarchy of other activities, its relationships, intersections with other activities, but also on what stage of its movement and development it is in.

Worldview and beliefs of the individual as psychological categories. G. E. Zalessky

The concept of "belief" is widely used in various fields of science, but the definitions of its content are very diverse. Most authors adhere to the position according to which belief is considered as a unit of a person's worldview, giving it an effective character. In philosophical literature, persuasion is most often understood as a certain state of consciousness of an individual, a person’s confidence in the correctness of his views, principles, ideals, which implies their effective implementation ... Pedagogical literature emphasizes the unity of knowledge and personal attitude towards it contained in beliefs, the experience of its truth ...

In psychology, beliefs are associated with the motivational sphere of personality. In psychological dictionaries and textbooks, persuasion is traditionally defined as "a system of motives of a person that induces him to act in accordance with his views, principles, worldview." It is noted that beliefs are conscious motives, and their presence implies a high level of personality activity. True, in a number of studies, beliefs are interpreted as special social attitudes of the individual ...

Noting the lack of unity in the definitions of this concept given in the philosophical, pedagogical and psychological literature, we note that in this variety of opinions, a certain invariant is clearly distinguished, which allows us to consider belief as an “organic unity”, an “alloy” of three main components: knowledge as the basis for decision-making , a positive personal attitude to this knowledge, the need to act in accordance with existing knowledge. ‹…›

Belief, being a unit of worldview, in addition to the noted functions, can also serve as the basis, criterion, standard in the performance of acts of value choice (motives, goals, actions). We also note that, according to these authors, the cognitive function inherent in persuasion (along with the incentive) also serves to select and evaluate those knowledge (assessments, norms) with the help of which the mechanism of social orientation "works". It seems that these considerations about the role of persuasion in the mechanism of socially oriented activity deserve the most serious attention and should be taken into account when constructing the conceptual apparatus of the problem. This is also evidenced by the results of our theoretical study of the nature of the functions of persuasion and motive, which they perform in the structure of the method of social orientation ...

From the developed positions, we consider it possible to assume that in the operation of the mechanism that ensures the choice of two (several) competing motives of one, the main one, along with such means of regulation as meaning-forming motives, value orientations, attitudes, another psychological formation should also participate, which by its nature, it is supra-situational and capable of including a system of personal values ​​as standards in the acts of internal choice. At the same time, it must also be connected with the mechanism of "meaningful" experiences. In case of refusal to follow in the acts of internal choice (motives, goals, actions) one's own standards, ideals, principles, a person under the influence of internal sanctions must, obviously, experience a state of psychological discomfort. On the contrary, in the case of their implementation, the subject will experience a state of inner comfort, satisfaction (Stolin V.V., 1983).

Such requirements, in our opinion, are satisfied by psychological education, referred to as persuasion of the individual. Being a unit of worldview, it is called upon to realize certain personal values. Therefore, persuasion can act as a standard that can serve as a criterion when comparing conflicting motives (goals, means to achieve them) with each other. The belief, as it were, "probes" and "evaluates" each of the competing motives from the point of view of their compliance with the content of the value that it is called upon to realize. The motive, the nature of which corresponds to these values ​​(the cognitive component of persuasion), is given "permission" to be included in the process of building a social orientation. On the contrary, for motives, the nature of which is not consistent with the content of a given personal value, persuasion acts as a barrier that excludes their participation in social orientation activities. Such motives are rejected by the person, suppressed. At the same time, the motive that is singled out with the help of persuasion as acting, leading, is simultaneously endowed with the corresponding personal meaning, depending on the rank that this belief occupies among other beliefs. (The higher in the hierarchy of personal values ​​this belief is, the deeper personal meaning is attached to its implementation, and, consequently, to the motive highlighted with its participation.)

While the organizing function of the motive is aimed at choosing the appropriate action, the product of a similar function performed by persuasion is the choice of the motive itself (the adoption of the motive that corresponds to personal values). The selected (with the participation of a certain belief) motive will then act as the leading and meaning-forming beginning of the formation of an activity that determines the nature of the act (corresponding to this motive).

In accordance with the above considerations, the insufficient validity of attempts to identify the concept of "belief" with the concept of "social attitude" becomes clear. The attitude, as is known, is closely connected with the situation of the action, includes both the moment of the motive and the moment of the situation, and more often functions at an unconscious level. On the contrary, it is generally accepted to consider belief as a conscious formation, which in itself is not included in specific acts of behavior, but acts as a superstructure that provides supra-situational orientation.

We believe that, despite the close interconnection of the mental phenomena behind them, the concepts of "belief", "motive" and "attitude" cannot be confused, identified with each other. Persuasion is a special mental formation that has specific functions that it performs in the structure of worldview activity (in the structure of the method of worldview orientation). It serves as an incentive for the selection of knowledge and ways of their practical implementation in the manifestation of a personal position - a motivating, incentive function - and the basis for choosing a certain desired system of values ​​and norms as guidelines - a cognitive function. In the latter case, it participates in the choice of motives, goals, actions. Thus, the influence of personal values ​​on the nature of socially oriented activity is ensured ...

Another, cognitive, function of persuasion is clearly seen in the functional analysis of the problem, in which it acts as a psychological regulator of relations between the individual and society. Here, the conviction has, as it were, a dual character: the social values ​​adopted by the person “trigger” it, and being actualized, the conviction itself introduces a personal meaning, bias in the implementation of the learned social value, participates in the acts of choosing a motive, goal, act ...

Further. Belief as a regulator is, in our opinion, conscious values ​​subjectively ready for implementation through their use in socially oriented activities, which is carried out with the help of special skills and techniques. (A special case of such an organization of activity is the choice of motives.) It, like other semantic formations, can serve as that supra-situational moral and evaluative support, from the standpoint of which a person realizes the results of his activity, checks, his personal values ​​are somewhat embodied in it. It is in this sense that belief can be considered as a unit of worldview. Therefore, it is able to perform its regulatory function even in extreme situations, compensating for the lack of information necessary for decision-making by using as standards, criteria for acts of internal choice of those knowledge, assessments, norms that are personally significant and the value of which the subject is sure ...

The analysis of the psychological content of the concept of "belief" (in accordance with the principles of systemicity and activity) opens up the possibility for a more rigorous study of the question of its relationship with other terms of the conceptual apparatus of the problem - with the concepts of "knowledge", "views", "ideological conviction", "ideal" personality...

We believe that knowledge, views and beliefs, being elements of the worldview, differ in the way of formation and functioning in the structure of worldview activity (in the structure of the method of social orientation). Knowledge acts as a means of recognition, selection of objects and operating them mentally, performs a cognitive function. Beliefs, being a component of the worldview, represent the unity of the objective and the subjective. They perform a different role in the structure of "ideological" activity. With their help, the connection of assimilated knowledge with personal interest in acquiring it is realized, thereby the public interest is recognized as personal. In the structure of the method of worldview orientation, beliefs participate in the formation and functioning of methods of evaluation, acts of goal-setting and selection of proposed actions, while performing a dual role - they serve as a criterion for choosing motives used as guidelines that determine the deployment of orientation activity, and a "screen" in relation to singling out as the leading ones those motives that do not correspond to personal values ​​(cognitive function) and the reasons for the incentive impulse for the realization of motives in goal-setting acts (motivating function).

Of course, "views", like "belief", also express the unity of knowledge (assessments, norms, ideals) and a positive attitude towards them. The difference between them is precisely in the function that each of them performs in social orientation. If “views” are used by a person to express their assessment, their position in relation to a situation or event that falls under the “action” of the meaning fixed in them, then “belief” performs a different function. With its help, the question is decided whether to use these views (knowledge) as a criterion for choosing motives and goals that a person intends to be guided by in a given situation.

A special, specific function is performed in the structure of a socially oriented mechanism by a mental property, denoted as a person's conviction. Acting as the highest form of a generalized motivational orientation, conviction (as well as beliefs) in itself is not included in specific acts of behavior as their element, but acts as a superstructure that implements the application of scientific knowledge and techniques as a personal way of social orientation. Thus, the transition from the abstract possession of the scientific worldview to its practical use to build an active life position is carried out.