Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911)- the founder of descriptive psychology - another direction that arose as a result of the "open crisis".

The main ideas of descriptive psychology:

1. Refusal to explain human nature through the search for causes, explanation and hypotheses. The main tasks of psychology are the comprehension and understanding of the meaning of mental life.

2. The method of descriptive psychology is understanding, which is fundamentally different from introspection. Understanding is characterized by a holistic approach to a person, while the researcher needs to abandon the construction of various kinds of hypotheses that explain the causes, and focus on a simple understanding of the phenomena of mental life.

3. The semantic contents of the spiritual life of a person become clear if the orientation of this person is comprehended (which is valuable for him). The development of a personality is considered from the point of view of the development of its values ​​at each age stage, which implies a qualitative change in values ​​and a transition from elementary to more complex ones.

4. Personality is a holistic structure that simultaneously includes intellectual, motivational, emotional and volitional spheres that interact very subtly with each other.

5. The spiritual life of a person is considered not in an organic, but in a historical manner, the human form of life activity is defined as the embodiment of experiences in the creations of culture.

6. The central point of human nature from the point of view of its historical development is experience, which acts as a kind of active force that connects all states of the soul and directs its activity in the necessary direction, and individual values ​​are the reasons for the activity of experience.

Historical value of Dilthey's concept:

Expanding understanding of the nature of the human soul, not reducible to its organic, or biological, component;

Introduction of the principle of historical consideration of human nature;

Introduction to the psychological turnover of the concept of value as a motivational and developing force.

64. Depth psychology

Depth psychology was the third school of psychology to emerge from the "open crisis", and its ideas received wide resonance in the public and scientific circles.

Ideas of depth psychology as an independent direction:

1. Independence of the psyche from consciousness, a clear separation of these phenomena of human nature;

2. Understanding the human psyche is opposite to the traditional empirical psychology of consciousness: in the psyche, in addition to consciousness, there are deep, unconscious layers - the unconscious, and it is this that is the basis of all mental life, controls the human psyche and behavior and is the main subject of study of depth psychology;

3. The main task of depth psychology as a scientific school is to prove the existence of the phenomenon of the unconscious in the human psyche through the practical study of its specifics and mechanisms of action on the human psyche;

4. Consciousness is considered as a mental phenomenon inherent in every person, but not central and guiding in the mental life of an individual, and, like the entire psyche, is subordinate to the unconscious;

5. The formation and development of personality depends on the unconscious as the leader in the human psyche.

Depth psychology, as a scientific direction that arose as a result of the “open crisis”, gave the world the largest number of different theoretical branches and concepts created on the basis of the theory of the unconscious. And each of them enriched psychological science with a powerful set of concepts, experiments, research, ideas and methodological apparatus. They belong to the schools of depth psychology.

Descriptive psychology

W. Dilthey is an outstanding German cultural historian, philosopher and psychologist. He is the founder of the so-called. `descriptive psychology`, which is based on the method of `understanding` as a direct comprehension of spiritual integrity. `Descriptive psychology` had a great influence on the leading representatives of various psychological schools of the XX century. The book is intended for a wide audience.

Wilhelm Dilthey

CHAPTER ONE THOUGHTS ON DESCRIPTIVE PSYCHOLOGY

The task of psychological substantiation of the sciences about the spirit

Explanatory psychology, which at the present time attracts so much attention and work, establishes a system of causality that claims to make all phenomena of mental life intelligible. It wants to explain the order of the spiritual world, with its components, forces and laws, just as chemistry or physics explain the structure of the corporeal world. Particularly prominent representatives of this explanatory psychology are the supporters of associative psychology, Herbart, Spencer, Taine, and spokesmen for various forms of materialism. The distinction between the sciences of explanatory and descriptive, on which we are based here, corresponds to the usual usage of words. Under the explanatory science one should understand any subordination of any field of phenomena to causal connection through a limited number of uniquely determined elements (ie, components of the connection). This concept is the ideal of such a science, formed especially under the influence of the development of atomistic physics. Explanatory psychology, therefore, seeks to subordinate the phenomena of mental life to some causal connection through a limited number of uniquely defined elements. Thought - of extraordinary courage - it would contain the possibility of an immeasurable development of the sciences of the spirit to a strict system of causal knowledge, corresponding to the system of natural sciences. If any doctrine of the soul strives to realize causal relationships in mental life, then the hallmark of explanatory psychology is its conviction that it is possible to derive a completely legitimate and clear knowledge of mental phenomena from a limited number of unambiguously determined elements. The name of constructive psychology would be an even more precise and striking name for it. At the same time, this name would single out and emphasize the great historical connection to which it refers.

Explanatory psychology can achieve its goal only by linking hypotheses. The concept of a hypothesis can be viewed in different ways. First of all, it is possible to designate by the name of a hypothesis any conclusion that, by means of induction, supplements the totality of what has been obtained by experience. The final conclusion contained in such a conclusion, in turn, contains an expectation that extends from the realm of the given to the non-given as well. Psychological expositions of every kind contain such additional conclusions as a matter of course. I am not even able to relate the memory to the former impression without such a conclusion. It would be simply unreasonable to wish to exclude hypothetical constituents from psychology; and it would be unfair to reproach explanatory psychology with their use, since descriptive psychology could not do without them in the same way. But in the realm of the natural sciences, the concept of a hypothesis has been developed in a more definite sense on the basis of conditions given in the knowledge of nature. Since the senses are given only coexistence and succession without a causal connection between simultaneous or successive, the causal connection in our understanding of nature arises only by addition. Thus, the hypothesis is a necessary auxiliary means of progressive knowledge of nature. If, as usually happens, several hypotheses seem equally possible, then the task is to, by developing the consequences that follow from them and comparing these latter with facts, prove one hypothesis and exclude the rest. The strength of the natural sciences lies in the fact that they, in the person of mathematics and experiment, have auxiliary means that give the indicated method the highest degree of accuracy and reliability. The most significant and instructive example of how a hypothesis passes into the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe permanent possession of science can be the Copernican hypothesis about the rotation of the Earth around its own axis within 24 hours without 4 minutes and about its forward movement simultaneously around the Sun in 365 1/4 solar days , a hypothesis developed and substantiated by Kepler, Galileo, Newton and others, and which has become a theory no longer subject to doubt. Another well-known example of the increase in the probability of a hypothesis to the point where it is no longer necessary to consider other possibilities is the explanation of light phenomena by the hypothesis of vibrations, as opposed to the hypothesis of emanation. The question of the moment when the hypothesis underlying the theory of natural science reaches, by checking the conclusions arising from it on the facts of reality and in connection with the general knowledge of nature, such a degree of probability that the name of the hypothesis can be discarded, is, of course, an idle question and at the same time unsolvable. There is a very simple mark by which I distinguish between hypotheses in a vast field of propositions based on inferences. Let some conclusion be able to introduce a phenomenon or a range of phenomena into a connection suitable for them, consistent with all known facts and recognized theories, but if it does not exclude other possibilities of explanation, then we are, of course, dealing with a hypothesis. As soon as this sign takes place, such a situation is hypothetical in nature. But even in the absence of this sign, even where the opposite hypotheses have not been put forward or affirmed, the question still remains open whether the proposition based on inductive conclusions is of a hypothetical nature. After all, we do not have at our disposal an unconditional sign with the help of which, under any circumstances, we would be able to distinguish natural scientific propositions that have found a final formulation for all time, from those propositions that express the connection of phenomena only in relation to the current state of our knowledge about these phenomena. Between the highest degree of probability that an inductively justified theory can achieve and the apodicticity inherent in mathematical fundamental relations, there always lies an unbridgeable chasm. It is not only numerical ratios that are so apodictic; no matter how our spatial image was formed, the memory of this process was erased from our consciousness; this image simply exists; we can conceive of the same basic relations at any place in space, quite independently of the place in which they arise. Geometry is the analysis of this spatial image, completely independent of the existence of individual objects. In this sense, hypotheses are of decisive importance not only as certain stages in the emergence of natural science theories; it is impossible to foresee how, even with the most extreme increase in the degree of probability of our explanation of nature, the hypothetical character of this explanation may someday completely disappear. Our natural-scientific convictions do not waver in the slightest from this. When Laplace introduced the theory of probability into the consideration of inductive inferences, this method of calculation was extended to the degree of certainty of our knowledge of nature. This cuts the ground from someone who would like to use the hypothetical character of our explanation of nature in the interests of both fruitless skepticism and theological mysticism. But since explanatory psychology transfers to the realm of mental life the method of natural-scientific formation of hypotheses, thanks to which what is given is supplemented by the addition of a causal connection, the question arises whether such a transfer is legitimate. It is required to prove that this transference definitely takes place in explanatory psychology and point out those points of view from which objections arise against it; both are touched upon here only in passing, since throughout the rest of the presentation there will be direct or indirect considerations on this subject.

A peculiar approach to the formation of psychological science was developed in the theory of the German scientist V. Dilthea(1833-1911). If all the directions described above proceeded from the understanding of the need for the formation of experimental, empirical psychology and the development of its connections with the natural sciences, then Dilthey defended the importance of its connection with philosophy (primarily with the philosophy of Hegel), rejecting the priority of experiment over observation.

Dilthey was the author of the direction, called "philosophy of life". Central to this concept was the concept of a living spirit that develops in various historical forms. From these positions, the scientist approached the project of creating a new, descriptive psychology, which he outlined in his work Ideas of Descriptive Psychology (1894). Dilthey believed that descriptive psychology should exist along with explanatory psychology, which focuses on the sciences of nature, and should become the basis of all the sciences of the spirit.

Rejecting traditional metaphysics, Dilthey also spoke out against positivism, against transferring the methods of the natural sciences to psychology, which needs its own method and its own methodology. In his critique of "explanatory" psychology, Dilthey emphasized that the concept of causality is generally not applicable in the field of the mental (and historical), since here, in principle, it is impossible to predict what will follow the achieved state. Since it is practically impossible to give an accurate and objective substantiation of the facts obtained by comprehending one's own experiences, psychology must abandon attempts to explain mental life, setting itself the goal of describing and analyzing mental phenomena, trying to understand individual processes from the whole of life. It is this approach that will make psychology the leading, basic discipline for all the sciences of the spirit, all the sciences of man. This approach, in a slightly modified form, was received at the beginning of the 20th century. title psychologism; within the framework of this approach, psychology was considered as a methodology of the sciences of mental life.

Dilthey called his psychology descriptive and dismembering, contrasting description with explanation, dismemberment with the construction of schemes from a limited number of uniquely defined elements. He also opposed the associative approach to the psyche, traditional for that time, understanding it as a sensory mosaic consisting of elements. Instead of elements, he proposed internally connected structures that underlie mental processes, the development of which is determined by the goal. Integrity and purposefulness are, according to Dilthey, specific features of mental manifestations. Although these qualities themselves were not introduced into psychology by him (other scientists, for example, Brentano and James spoke about this), but fundamentally new in Dilthey's concept was the desire to derive them not from organic, but from historical life, from purely human activities that distinguishes the embodiment of experiences in the creations of culture.

One of the central concepts in his theory was the concept experiences. It acted not as an element of consciousness, but as an internal connection, inseparable from its embodiment in a spiritual, supra-individual product. Thus, individual consciousness correlated with the world of socio-historical values, with the world of spirituality. An important link both between culture and man, and between individual sciences (philosophy, history, psychology) has become hermeneutics, or the doctrine of interpretation, which in Dilthey's theory was a means of recreating the unique cultural worlds of the past.

The unique nature of the object of study (the spiritual world), according to the scientist, determined the uniqueness of the method. It is not the explanation of phenomena in the sense accepted by naturalists that serves them, but the understanding comprehension. He wrote that "we explain nature, but comprehend spiritual life." Comprehension is based on the analysis of direct experiences of "I". It differs significantly from introspection, since it reveals the content of not only the conscious, but also the unconscious. This intuitive empathy helps to understand and then describe the meaning of life by including subjective experiences in the context of the cultural environment in which a person lives. Dilthey's focus on unconscious spiritual, moral experiences, which are the essence of the human personality, gave reason to S. L. Rubinshtein to call his psychology "top", in contrast to the "deep" psychology of Freud, who saw only biological drives in the unconscious.

Dilthey's idea about the connection of an individual with the spiritual values ​​accumulated by mankind was developed by his student E.Spranger(1882-1963). Like Dilthey, he believed that the leading method of studying the spiritual life is understanding, i.e. direct comprehension of the meaning of mental phenomena. At the same time, striving for a more objective comprehension of mental life, he made central in his concept not the experience, but the spiritual activity of the “I”, in which semantic connections with the content of a certain culture are realized, expressed in the system of values ​​of a particular person. Thus, the subjective experiences of a person were considered in their relationship with the supra-individual spheres of the objective spirit.

In his work “Forms of Life” (1914), Spranger argued that the main task of psychology is to study the relationship of the individual spiritual structure of a person to the structure of the “objective spirit”, i.e. the study of the main types of human orientation, which he called "the form of life." This orientation is based on the prevailing orientation towards certain values.

He singled out six main types of objective values: theoretical (a field of science, the problem of truth), economic (material wealth, utility), aesthetic (the desire for design, self-expression), social (social activity, appeal to someone else's life), political (power as a value), religious (meaning of life). Orientations to all these types of values ​​can be represented in each person, but in different proportions, some (or some) of them will dominate. This dominance determines the predominant form of life of a given person, the scope of his activities and experiences. Based on which group of values ​​dominates, Spranger singled out, respectively, a theoretical person, economic, aesthetic, social, political and religious. The form of life is an internal, spiritual education, therefore, for a more complete development of the personality, an adult must guess this form in a child and build his education based on what activity will be a priority for him.

Descriptive psychology showed new possibilities for building psychology as a humanitarian science, revealed the shortcomings of the purely natural-scientific orientation of psychology that prevailed at that time. Many of them became more obvious over time, but at that moment the advantages of an objective, experimental psychology were so obvious that Dilthey's reproaches and fears were not heard by most psychologists. The spread of his views was also prevented by the limitations of Dilthey's approach itself, which did not see the new perspectives that experiment and connection with the exact sciences open up for psychology.

Almost all schools that appeared at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries did not last long, their replacement was dictated by objective circumstances. For all their novelty, they were still connected with the old, associative psychology, in disputes with which they were born. At the same time, their very appearance and the discussions that arose when obtaining the results of new research showed the urgent need for psychology to form a new approach to understanding the mental, a new methodology for studying the psyche, which led to the emergence of those schools that determined the face of psychology in the 20th century.

Wilhelm Dilthey German philosopher and psychologist Founder of descriptive psychology (method of understanding).

Descriptive psychology- this is a psychological method that explores the individual and, with the help of understanding and interpretation, makes it possible to determine the manifestation of the individual. Its task is to penetrate into the structure of mental life and understand its meaning. In his approach to the study of "uniform human nature", Diltain notes the fundamental differences between traditional explanatory psychology and his own descriptive one.

According to Dilthey, the development of the spiritual life of each person has a universal universal character and is influenced by three classes of conditions:

1. Condition and development of the body.

2. Influence of the surrounding mimic environment.

3. The influence of the surrounding spiritual world.

The history of the development of mental life contains the rules for which the formation and development of individuals and individualities is carried out.

Descriptive psychology must examine the characteristics of human nature through the prism of individual characteristics of a person.

Deltey puts forward new requirements for cognitive processes:

1. Analysis of the individual characteristics of the mental life of people, the subject of descriptive psychology.

2. The study of social products as a means of obtaining a complete and reliable knowledge of mental life.

3. For the knowledge of the human soul, the experiment should become the leading one, and the rest of the means are considered as auxiliary.

Dilthey made a critique of associative psychology, critique of psychological materialism, the concept of Herbart, Spencer and others.

Dilthey believed that it is necessary to analyze the integral mental life, which cannot be divided into unnatural components. Dilthey proceeds from the assumption that a fundamental perception of a person's inner life is possible already because each person knows his own mental states - feelings of pleasure, volitional impulse, mental act, and others.

He believed that the perception of perception is nothing but the inner consciousness of any state and process. He believed that the content of consciousness is the relation of the world and J. Dilthey introduces the mental principle into the theory of knowledge, betraying the mental status of a positively loaded cognitive value.

The general state of the mental life of mankind is embodied in cultural systems and is the subject of psychological science. In his works, Dilthey seeks to substantiate that the psychological is a cross-cutting for the entire process of development of thinking and cognition.

He considers the mental as the universal beginning of the development of thinking and cognition, thereby trying to separate the concepts of "subjective" and "psychological". Memories, ideas, fantasies, concepts, motives, etc. all this is concentrated in the spiritual life, all this is coordinated by the soul of man - the life unit. This is a life unit, there is a whole and there is life.

All mental processes are connected in an incredibly complex way in real life, and Dilthey is trying to find out the nature of these connections. The spiritual structural connection is targeted, which leads to the achievement of the fullness of life, to the satisfaction of one's own life and rejecting suffering to happiness. Dilthey ascribes the property of expediency exclusively to inner experience.

He believed that only a person has a value attitude to reality, therefore only the actions of a person, but not the whole living world, are expedient.

Feelings are the carrier and source of goal setting. Dilthey singled out two levels in a holistic mental life:

· Soulful. Related to all living things as sentient

Spiritual. Specifically human

A person has sensual expediency, which is expressed in spiritual expediency associated with cognitive values. Dilthey is a sinualist and builds his philosophy on feeling as the only source of life that generates everything else.

Understanding psychology - A direction in German psychology of the late 19th - early 20th century, based on a special method of analyzing mental content through an intuitive experience of its integrity and correlation with cultural and historical values. Main representatives: W. Dilthey, E. Spranger.

During the period of open crisis, the German idealist philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey, the founder of the "philosophy of life", announced a new approach to the study of the spiritual world of man. His main work is Descriptive Psychology. According to him, all the sciences of the spirit must be based on psychology.

The main provisions of understanding psychology:

1) the mental develops from the mental

2) the mental is reduced to an intuitive understanding of the "modules of real life"

3) one should not look for any objective reasons for the development of the personality, it is only necessary to correlate the structure of the individual with the spiritual values ​​and culture of society.

The opposition of understanding and explanation is the central methodological principle of all descriptive psychology. To understand means to evaluate subjective experiences as meaningful, to include subjective experiences in more meaningful semantic connections that determine them. These connections are outside the subject, in the spiritual culture, embodied in art, religion, morality, law.

According to Dilthey, descriptive psychology (or dissecting) is a true psychology. Its subject matter is the developed man and the fullness of the finished spiritual life. It must be described, understood and analyzed in its entirety.

Each state of consciousness simultaneously includes:

1.intellectual part (its content);

2. motivation and feeling (like - dislike);

3. volitional component, as an intention, which guides every thought process.

Motives and feelings occupy a central part in the structure of mental life. It is they who direct spiritual activity to some objects of the environment, to which they give a feeling of pleasure when satisfaction of impulses. Thus, something that is outside our spiritual life, with which a feeling of satisfaction is connected, is experienced as a value.

It follows that life value through relation to the subject is what we use to achieve a sense of pleasure and satisfaction. The comprehension of values ​​and the creation of new values ​​are the essence of mental life and mental development. Comprehension is based on the analysis of direct experiences of "I". It reveals the content not only of the conscious, but also of the unconscious.

The development of mental life takes place in the conditions of the development of the body and depends on the connection with the outside world - the physical and spiritual environment. Feelings and impulses are the driving force of development. Development is made up of separate life states, each of which seeks to obtain and retain its life value. Each age is characterized by a focus on their values.

Expresses the idea that every period of life has an independent value. Dilthey's psychology can be characterized as pinnacle psychology. He proceeds from the fact that the psychological depths of the personality are revealed not in its lowest instincts, but in its highest objectified manifestations.

One of the central concepts in his theory was the concept of experience. It acted as an internal connection, inseparable from its embodiment in a spiritual, supra-individual product. Hermeneutics, or the doctrine of interpretation, which in Dilthey's theory was a means of recreating the unique cultural worlds of the past, became an important link both between culture and man, and between individual sciences (philosophy, history, psychology).

Dilthey's ideas about the connection of an individual with the spiritual values ​​accumulated by mankind were developed by his student E. Spranger. He believed that the leading method of studying the spiritual life is understanding, that is, direct comprehension of the meaning of mental phenomena. He made central in his concept not the experience, but the spiritual activity of the “I”, in which semantic connections with the content of a certain culture are realized, expressed in the system of values ​​of a particular person. Thus, the subjective experiences of a person were considered in their relationship with the supra-individual spheres of the objective spirit.

He argued that the main task of psychology is to study the main types of human orientation, which he called "the form of life." This orientation is based on the prevailing orientation towards certain values.

He distinguishes six types of objective values:

1. theoretical (area of ​​science, the problem of truth);

2. economic (material wealth, utility);

3.aesthetic (the desire for design, expression of one's impressions, self-expression);

4.social (social activities, appeal to someone else's life, feeling of being in another);

5. political (power as a value);

6.religious (meaning of life).

In each personality all six types of values ​​are represented, but in a special direction and with different strength. The guiding ones that determine life form the psychic structure of the personality.

On the basis of the predominance of one or another value, six typical basic forms of individuality are distinguished, called by Spranger forms of life because they to some extent determine the form in which the life of the individual takes place:

1. theoretical person (all his aspirations are directed to knowledge);

2.aesthetic (strives to comprehend a single case, to exhaust it without a trace with all its individual features);

3. economic (utility effect as the meaning of all activity, all life);

4. social (meaning of life in communication, in love, in life for others);

5. political (desire for power and honor, domination and influence);

6. religious (refers any single phenomenon to the general meaning of life and the world).

Since there are no pure types in life, each individual case must be able to be reduced to one of these types. Based on this, he drew pedagogical conclusions. Universal education should not be the same for everyone. The teacher must intuitively guess the mental structure that has not yet been formed and is not realized by the child and prepare him for the most expedient and accessible way of life for him.

Descriptive (understanding) psychology openly opposes itself to the natural sciences and is speculative. Her conclusion about the impossibility of a natural-scientific explanation in psychology sounds like a return to the old idealistic psychology as the science of the soul. An attempt made in this direction to correlate the structure of an individual with spiritual values ​​and forms of culture created historically, due to their idealistic understanding, represented the development of higher mental functions as a purely spiritual process: "With such an understanding of history and culture and with such an understanding of psychology, to say that psychology should be studied historically, which means, in essence, that the spiritual should be brought closer to the spiritual.... Understanding psychology is far from adequate development of the problems of cultural development" Thus, the period of open crisis led to a fairly wide development of options for interpreting the essence and tasks of psychological knowledge. Many areas of psychology subsequently changed their original foundations, transforming into scientific theories with the prefix neo-: neo-Freudianism, neobehaviorism, etc. At the same time, for example, Gestalt psychology, another important area of ​​psychological thought in the first third of the 20th century, which was formed as part of the study of the problems of thinking, was subsequently transformed into personality theory, retaining and expanding the original postulates.

Historical value of Dilthey's concept:

Expanding understanding of the nature of the human soul, not reducible to its organic, or biological, component;

Introduction of the principle of historical consideration of human nature;

Introduction to the psychological turnover of the concept of value as a motivational and developing force.