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Plan Causes of the crisis Main currents Structuralism Würzburg school Functionalism Behaviorism Gestalt psychology Kurt Lewin's "field" theory Psychoanalysis (depth psychology) Humanistic psychology Consequences of the split I. Causes of the crisis. The more successful empirical work was in psychology, which dramatically expanded the field of phenomena studied by psychology, the more obvious became the inconsistency of its versions of consciousness as a closed world of the subject, visible to him alone thanks to trained introspection under the control of the experimenter's instructions. The major successes of the new biology radically changed the views on all the vital functions of the organism, including mental ones. Perception and memory, skills and thinking, attitude and feelings were now interpreted as a kind of "tools" that allow the body to effectively "operate" in life situations. The idea of consciousness as a special closed world, an isolated island of the spirit, was crumbling. At the same time, the new biology directed to the study of the psyche from the point of view of its development. Thus, the zone of cognition of objects inaccessible to introspective analysis (the behavior of animals, children, and the mentally ill) was radically expanded. The collapse of the original ideas about the subject and methods of psychology became more and more obvious. The categorical apparatus of psychology experienced profound transformations. Let us recall its main blocks: mental image, mental action, mental attitude, motive, personality. At the dawn of scientific psychology, as we remember, the indications of the sense organs - sensations - were considered the initial element of the psyche. Now the view of consciousness as a device of atoms - sensations - has lost its scientific credit. It was proved that mental images are wholes that can be split into elements only by artificial means. These wholes were designated by the German term "gestalt" (form, structure) and under this name entered the scientific glossary of psychology. The direction, which gave Gestalt the significance of the main "unit" of consciousness, was established under the name of Gestalt psychology. As far as mental action is concerned, its categorical status has also changed. In the former period, it belonged to the category of internal, spiritual acts of the subject. However, advances in the application of the objective method to the study of the relationship between the organism and the environment have shown that the field of the psyche also includes external bodily action. A powerful scientific school appeared, which raised it to the subject of psychology. Accordingly, the direction that chose this path, based on the English word "behavior" (behavior), acted under the banner of behaviorism. Another area that has opened up to psychology has given consciousness a secondary meaning instead of primary. The sphere of unconscious drives (motives), which drive behavior and determine the uniqueness of the complex dynamics and structure of the personality, was recognized as determining for mental life. A school that gained worldwide fame appeared, the leader of which was recognized as Z. Freud, and the direction as a whole (with many branches) was called psychoanalysis. French researchers focused on the analysis of mental relationships between people. In the works of a number of German psychologists, the central theme was the inclusion of the individual in the value system of culture. A special innovative role in the history of world psychological thought was played by the doctrine of behavior in its special version, which arose on the basis of Russian culture. II. Main currents As a result of the crisis, the following currents appeared: 1 Structuralism. Let's consider, first of all, the so-called structural school - the direct successor of the direction, the leader of which was W. Wundt. Its representatives called themselves structuralists, since they considered the main task of psychology to be an experimental study of the structure of consciousness. The concept of structure presupposes elements and their connection; therefore, the efforts of the school were aimed at searching for the initial ingredients of the psyche (identified with consciousness) and ways to structure them. This was Wundt's idea, reflecting the influence of mechanistic natural science. With the collapse of Wundt's program came the decline of his school. The nursery, where Cattell and Bekhterev, Henri and Spearman, Kraepelin and Munsterberg once mastered the experimental methods, was empty. Many of the students, having lost faith in Wundt's ideas, became disillusioned with his talent. 2. The Würzburg School At the beginning of the 20th century, dozens of experimental psychology laboratories operated in various universities around the world. There were over forty in the United States alone. Their topics were different: the analysis of sensations, psychophysics, psychometry, associative experiment. The work was carried out with great zeal, but essentially new facts and ideas were not born. W. James drew attention to the fact that the results of a huge number of experiments do not correspond to the efforts invested. But against this monotonous background, several publications in the journal "Archive of General Psychology" flashed, which, as it turned out later, influenced the progress of science no less than the tomes of Wundt and Titchener. These publications came from a group of young experimenters who were trained by Professor Oswald Külpe (1862-1915) in Würzburg (Bavaria). The professor, a native of Latvia (which was part of Russia), was a gentle, benevolent, sociable person with broad humanitarian interests. After studying with Wundt, he became his assistant. Külpe's fame was brought by the Outline of Psychology (1883), which expounded ideas close to Wundt's. But soon he, heading the laboratory in Würzburg, spoke out against his teacher. The experiments carried out in this laboratory by several young people turned out to be the most significant event in the experimental study of the human psyche for the first decade of the 20th century. At first, there seemed to be nothing remarkable in the set of experimental schemes of the Würzburg laboratory. Sensitivity thresholds were determined, the reaction time was measured, and the associative experiment, which became widespread after Galton and Ebbinghaus, was carried out. Karl Buhler (1879-1963) worked in Würzburg 1907-1909. He introduced a new orientation into the experimental practice of the school, which gave rise to the sharpest criticism from Wundt. The technique consisted in the fact that the subject was given a complex problem and he had, without using a chronoscope, to describe as carefully as possible what was happening in his mind in the process of solving. It has been argued in the historical literature that "Buhler, more than anyone else, has made it clear that there are data in experience that are not sensory." Already after the departure of Külpe from Würzburg (first to Bonn, and then to Munich), the process of thinking was studied by Otto Selz (1881-1944?). He is credited with the experimental analysis of the dependence of this process on the structure of the problem being solved. Seltz introduced the notion of an "anticipatory scheme" which enriched previous data on the role of set and task. The main works of Zelts are "On the Law of the Orderly Movement of Thought" (1913), "On the Psychology of Productive Thinking and Error" (1922), and "The Law of Productive and Reproductive Spiritual Activity" (1924). Selz died in a Nazi concentration camp. The traditions of the experimental study of thinking, created by the Würzburg school, were developed by other researchers who did not belong to it. 3. Functionalism At the origins of this direction, which became one of the dominant in American psychology at the beginning of the 20th century, was the Austrian psychologist Franz Brentano. F. Brentano (1838-1917) began his career as a Catholic priest, leaving her because of disagreement with the dogma of papal infallibility and moving to the University of Vienna, where he became a professor of philosophy. Brentano's first work was devoted to the psychology of Aristotle, as well as its interpretation by medieval Catholic theologians, who developed the concept of intention as a special direction of thought. In the unfinished work Psychology from an Empirical Point of View (1874), Brentano proposed a new program for the development of psychology as an independent science, opposing it to the program of Wundt that was dominant at that time. He considered the problem of consciousness to be the main one for the new psychology. How is consciousness different from all other phenomena of being? Only by answering this question can one define the field of psychology. At that time, under the influence of Wundt, the opinion prevailed that consciousness consists of sensations, perceptions, ideas as special, successive processes. With the help of an experiment, they can be singled out, subjected to analysis, and the elements or threads from which this special "fabric" of the inner subject is intertwined can be found. Such a view, argued Brentano, is completely false, because it ignores the activity of consciousness, its constant focus on the object. To designate this indispensable sign of consciousness, Brentano proposed the term "intention". It is originally inherent in every mental phenomenon and it is precisely because of this that it makes it possible to distinguish between mental phenomena and physical ones. Intention is not just activity. In it, together with the act of consciousness, some object always coexists. Psychology uses, in particular, the word "representation", meaning by it the restoration in memory of the imprints of what has been seen or heard. According to Brentano, one should not talk about representation, but about representation, that is, about a special spiritual activity, thanks to which the former image is realized. The same applies to other mental phenomena. K. Stumpf (1848-1936) was a professor of philosophy in Prague, Halle and Munich. From 1894 he worked at the University of Berlin, where he organized a psychological laboratory. Under the influence of Brentano, he considered the subject of psychology to be the study of psychological functions, or acts (perception, understanding, volition), distinguishing them from phenomena (sensory or represented as forms, values, concepts, and similar contents of consciousness). Stumpf attributed the study of phenomena to a special subject area - phenomenology, linking it with philosophy, and not with psychology. Stumpf considered functions (or acts) to be his own subject of psychology. Thus, it is not the red color of the object (which, according to Stumpf, is a phenomenon, and not a function of consciousness) that is subject to research, but the act (or action) of the subject, thanks to which a person is aware of this color in its difference from others. Among the functions, Stumpf distinguished two categories: intellectual and emotive (or affective). Emotive functions consist of opposite pairs: joy and sadness, desire and rejection, desire and avoidance. Some phenomena that were called "sensual sensations" can also acquire an emotional connotation. W. James (1842-1910) dealt with many problems - from the study of the brain and the development of cognitive processes and emotions to personality problems and psychedelic studies. One of the main issues for him was the study of consciousness. James owns the idea of a "stream of consciousness", i.e. about the continuity of the work of human consciousness, despite the external discreteness caused by partially unconscious mental processes. The continuity of thought explains the possibility of self-identification, despite the constant gaps in consciousness. James emphasizes not only continuity, but also dynamism, the constant variability of consciousness, saying that the awareness of even familiar things is constantly changing and, paraphrasing Heraclitus, who said that you cannot enter the same river twice, he wrote, that we cannot have exactly the same thought twice. Functional psychology considered the problem of action from the point of view of its biologically adaptive meaning, its focus on solving problem situations that are vital for the individual. But on the whole, functionalism (both in the "Chicago" version and in the "Columbian" version) turned out to be theoretically untenable. The concept of "function" in psychology (in contrast to physiology, where it had a solid real foundation) was not productive. It was neither theoretically thought out nor experimentally substantiated and was rightly rejected. After all, a function was understood as an act emanating from the subject (perception, thinking, etc.), initially aimed at a goal or a problem situation. The determination of a mental act, its relation to the nervous system, its ability to regulate external behavior - all this remained mysterious. In the atmosphere of the growing weakness of functionalism, a new psychological trend is emerging. American functionalism is being replaced by behaviorism. 4. Behaviorism Behaviorism, which defined the face of American psychology in the 20th century, radically transformed the entire system of ideas about the psyche. His credo was expressed by the formula according to which the subject of psychology is behavior, not consciousness. (Hence the name from the English behavior - behavior) Since then it was customary to equate the psyche and consciousness (processes that begin and end in the mind were considered mental), a version arose that by eliminating consciousness, behaviorism thereby eliminates the psyche. The true meaning of the events associated with the emergence and rapid development of the behaviorist movement was different and consisted not in the annihilation of the psyche, but in a change in the concept of it. One of the pioneers of the behaviorist movement was Edward Thorndike (1874-1949). He himself called himself not a behaviorist, but a "connectionist" (from English, "connection" - connection). However, researchers and their concepts should be judged not by how they call themselves, but by their role in the development of knowledge. Thorndike's work opened the first chapter in the annals of behaviorism. Thorndike outlined his findings in 1898 in his doctoral dissertation "The Intelligence of Animals. An Experimental Study of Associative Processes in Animals". Thorndike used traditional terms - "intelligence", "associative processes", but they were filled with new content. That the intellect has an associative nature has been known since the time of Hobbes. That intelligence ensures the successful adaptation of an animal to its environment became generally accepted after Spencer. But for the first time, it was Thorndike's experiments that showed that the nature of the intellect and its function can be studied and evaluated without recourse to ideas or other phenomena of consciousness. Association no longer meant a connection between ideas or between ideas and movements, as in previous associative theories, but between movements and situations. The theoretical leader of behaviorism was John Braadus Watson (1878-1958). His scientific biography is instructive in the sense that it shows how the formation of an individual researcher reflects the influences that determined the development of the main ideas of the direction as a whole. The motto of behaviorism was the concept of behavior as an objectively observed system of reactions of the organism to external and internal stimuli. This concept originated in Russian science in the works of I. M. Sechenov, I. P. Pavlov and V. M. Bekhterev. They proved that the area of mental activity is not limited to the phenomena of the subject's consciousness, cognizable by internal observation of them (introspection), because with such an interpretation of the psyche, the splitting of the organism into soul (consciousness) and body (organism as a material system) is inevitable. As a result, consciousness was separated from external reality, closed in a circle of its own phenomena (experiences), placing it outside the real connection of earthly things and inclusion in the course of bodily processes. Rejecting this point of view, Russian researchers took an innovative path of studying the relationship of the whole organism with the environment, relying on objective methods, interpreting the organism itself in the unity of its external (including motor) and internal (including subjective) manifestations. This approach outlined the prospect for revealing the factors of interaction of the whole organism with the environment and the reasons on which the dynamics of this interaction depends. It was assumed that knowledge of the causes would make it possible in psychology to realize the ideal of other exact sciences with their motto "prediction and control." 5. Helstatt Psychology At the same time that the behavioral "revolt" against the psychology of consciousness broke out in the United States, in Germany another group of young researchers rejected the psychological "establishment" with no less decisiveness than Watson. This group became the nucleus of a new scientific school. The core formed a triumvirate, which included Max Wertheimer (1880-1943), Wolfgang Köhler (1887-1967) and Kurt Koffka (1886-1941). They met in 1910. in Frankfurt am Main, at the Psychological Institute, where Wertheimer was looking for an experimental answer to the question of how the image of perception of visible movements is built, and Köhler and Koffka were not only subjects, but also participants in the discussion of the results of the experiments. In these discussions, the ideas of a new direction of psychological research were born. E. Husserel (1859-1938) saw his task in reforming logic, not psychology. The attitude to build psychological knowledge according to the type of physical and mathematical knowledge distinguished Gestaltism from other phenomenological concepts. Both the behaviorists and the Gestaltists hoped to create a new psychology along the lines of the natural sciences. But for the behaviorists the model was biology, for the Gestaltists it was physics. The concept of insight (from the English insight - discretion) has become a key concept in Gestalt psychology. It was given a universal character. It became the basis of the Gestalt explanation of adaptive behaviors, which Thorndike and the behaviorists explained in terms of "trial, error, and chance success." The dividing line between Gestaltism and behaviorism has also created, commonly held to be, the problem of the whole and the part. Gestaltism defended the idea of integrity as opposed to the behaviorist view of a complex reaction as a sum of elementary ones. The ideas of Gestaltism significantly influenced the transformation of the original behaviorist doctrine and paved the way for neobehaviorism, which began to take shape at the turn of the 30s. 6. The "field" theory of Kurt Lewin The theory of the German psychologist K. Lewin (1890-1947) was formed under the influence of the successes of the exact sciences - physics, mathematics. The beginning of the century was marked by discoveries in field physics, atomic physics, and biology. Having become interested in psychology at the university, Levin tried to introduce the accuracy and rigor of experiment into this science, making it objective and experimental. In 1914, Levin received his doctorate. Having received an invitation to teach psychology at the Psychological Institute of the University of Berlin, he becomes close to Koffka, Koehler and Wertheimer, the founders of Gestalt psychology. The closeness of their positions is connected both with general views on the nature of the mental and with attempts to choose physical science as the objective basis of experimental psychology. However, unlike his colleagues, Levin focuses not on the study of cognitive, but on the study of human personality. After emigrating to the US, Levin has taught at Stanford and Cornell Universities. During this period, he dealt mainly with the problems of social psychology and in 1945 headed the research center for group dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Levin developed his theory of personality in line with Gestalt psychology, giving it the name "psychological field theory". He proceeded from the fact that a person lives and develops in the psychological field of the objects surrounding her, each of which has a certain charge (valence). Levin's experiments proved that for each person this valence has its own sign, although at the same time there are objects that have the same attractive or repulsive force for everyone. Influencing a person, objects cause needs in him, which Levin considered as a kind of energy charges that cause tension in a person. In this state, a person strives for discharge, that is, the satisfaction of a need. Lewin distinguished two kinds of needs - biological and social (quasi-needs). Levin's approach was distinguished by two points. First, he moved from the idea that the energy of the motive is closed within the body, to the idea of the "organism-environment" system. The individual and his environment acted as an inseparable dynamic whole. Secondly, in contrast to the interpretation of motivation as a biologically predetermined constant, Levin believed that motivational tension can be created both by the individual himself and by other people. Thus, the motivation itself was recognized as a psychological status. It was reduced more to biological needs, by satisfying which the body exhausts its motivational potential. Levin showed the need for not only a holistic, but also an adequate understanding of oneself as a person. 7. Psychoanalysis (depth psychology) Without exaggeration, we can say that the Austrian psychologist and psychiatrist Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is one of those scientists who largely influenced the entire further development of modern psychology. No other psychological trend has gained such wide popularity outside this science as Freudianism. This is due to the influence of his ideas on art, literature, medicine, anthropology and other areas of science related to man. Z. Freud called his teaching psychoanalysis - after the method he developed for the diagnosis and treatment of neuroses. The second name - depth psychology - this direction received in its subject of study, as it concentrated its attention on the study of the deep structures of the psyche. Although not all aspects of Freud's theory have received scientific recognition, and many of his provisions today seem to belong more to history than to modern psychological science, it is impossible not to admit that his ideas had a positive impact on the development of world culture - not only psychology, but also art, medicine, sociology. Freud discovered a whole world that lies beyond our consciousness, and this is his great merit to humanity. Analytical psychology. The Swiss psychologist K. Jung (1875-1961) graduated from the University of Zurich. After an internship with psychiatrist P. Janet, he opens his own psychological and psychiatric laboratory. At the same time, he gets acquainted with the first works of Freud, discovering his theory. Rapprochement with Freud had a decisive influence on Jung's scientific views. However, it soon became clear that, despite the closeness of their positions and aspirations, there were also significant differences between them, which they failed to reconcile. These disagreements were connected, first of all, with a different approach to the analysis of the unconscious. Jung, unlike Freud, argued that "not only the lowest, but also the highest in a person can be unconscious." Disagreeing with Freud's pansexualism, Jung considered the libido to be a generalized psychic energy that can take on various forms. No less significant were the differences in the interpretation of dreams and associations. Freud believed that symbols are substitutes for other, repressed objects and drives. In contrast to him, Jung was sure that only a sign consciously used by a person replaces something else, and a symbol is an independent, living, dynamic unit. The symbol does not replace anything, but reflects the psychological state that a person is experiencing at the moment. Therefore, Jung was against the symbolic interpretation of dreams or associations developed by Freud, believing that it is necessary to follow the symbolism of a person deep into his unconscious. Individual psychology. A. Adler (1870-1937) graduated from the medical faculty of the University of Vienna, starting work as an ophthalmologist. However, his interests soon shifted towards psychiatry and neurology. Adler denied the provisions of Freud and Jung about the dominance of individual unconscious instincts in the personality and behavior of a person, instincts that oppose a person to society and separate from him. Not innate instincts, not innate archetypes, but a sense of community with people, stimulating social contacts and orientation to other people - this is the main force that determines human behavior and life, Adler believed. Adler became the founder of a new, socio-psychological direction. It was in the development of these new ideas of his that he parted company with Freud. His theory has very little to do with classical psychoanalysis and represents an integral system of personality development. 8. Humanistic psychology Personalism also had a great influence on humanistic psychology that arose in the middle of the 20th century. Humanistic psychology, which appeared as an alternative to the psychological schools of the middle of the century, primarily behaviorism and psychoanalysis, has formed its own concept of personality and its development. The United States became the center of this direction, and the leading figures were K. Rogers, R. May, A. Maslow, G. Allport. Humanistic psychology has come out with a call to understand human existence in all its immediacy at a level below the gulf between subject and object that was created by modern philosophy and science. As a result, humanist psychologists assert, on one side of this abyss there was a subject reduced to "ration", to the ability to operate with abstract concepts, on the other - an object given in these concepts. Man disappeared in the fullness of his existence, and the world as it is given in the experiences of man also disappeared. With the views of the "behavioral" sciences on the personality as an object that does not differ either in nature or in cognizability from other objects in the world of things, animals, mechanisms, psychological "technology" also correlates: various kinds of manipulations related to learning and eliminating anomalies in behavior ( psychotherapy). G. Allport (1897-1967) considered the concept of personality he was aware of as an alternative to the mechanism of the behavioral approach and the biological, instinctive approach of psychoanalysts. Allport also objected to the transfer of facts related to sick neurotic people to the psyche of a healthy person. One of the main postulates of Allport's theory was the position that the personality is open and self-developing. Carl Rogers (1902-1987) graduated from the University of Wisconsin, abandoning the career of the priest, for which he had been preparing since his youth. Speaking about the structure of the Self, Rogers attached special importance to self-esteem, which expresses the essence of a person, his self. Rogers insisted that self-esteem should not only be adequate, but also flexible, changing depending on the situation. Along with these currents, there were others, such as Neobehaviorism - led by the American psychologists E. Tolman and K. Hull. Social behaviorism - American scientist George Mead (1963-1931) who worked at the University of Chicago Genetic psychology of Jean Piaget - J. Piaget (1896-1980) - one of the most famous scientists, whose work constituted an important stage in the development of genetic psychology. III. Consequences of the crisis. As a result of the crisis, various schools appeared, each of which placed one of them at the center of the entire system of categories - be it an image or an action, a motive or a person. This gave each school a unique profile. Focusing on one of the categories as the dominant of the history of the system and giving other categories the function of subordinates - all this became one of the reasons for the disintegration of psychology into various - sometimes opposing each other - schools. This created a picture of the crisis of psychology. But if behind the opposition of schools and the enmity of theories there was not a root system of invariant categories (which received different interpretations), adherents of different schools could not understand each other, discussions between them would be meaningless and no progress in psychology would be possible. Each school would turn out to be a closed system, and psychology as a single science would not exist at all. Meanwhile, despite repeated warnings about its collapse, psychology continued to build up its heuristic potential. And further development went in the direction of the interaction of schools. Literature Romenets V.A., Manola I.P. - Kiev: "Libid" 1998 History of psychology: From Antiquity to the middle of the twentieth century M.G.Yaroshevsky. – Moscow Academy 1997.
End of the 19th century was marked by discussions about how to build a new, objective psychology, what methods should become leading in the study of the mental. At the turn of the century, it still seemed that these disputes would lead to a consensus and build the methodology of a new, positive psychology. The general trend was the transition from psychology, which studies the phenomena of consciousness, to psychology, which studies the integral organism-environment system. However, the logic of the development of the first schools showed that there are several ways of building such a psychology, which radically differ from each other not only in understanding the priorities and tasks of psychological science, but even in determining its subject and content. The approach to dynamics was also different, its laws and conditions that promote or hinder it.
Therefore, at the beginning of the XX century. psychology was going through a serious methodological crisis, associated primarily with the difficulties that arose in the search for objective methods for studying the psyche. The methods proposed by functional psychology, structuralism or the Würzburg school turned out to be far from objectivity on closer examination, which was also confirmed by the disagreements that arose when discussing the results obtained. It turned out that it is practically impossible to find a direct and objective method for studying the mental state of a person, its content, and even more so. The way out was either in the transformation of the method, which turned into an indirect one, or in such a change in the subject that would make its direct experimental study real (for example, make external activity an object), or in the rejection of attempts to explain the laws of the psyche, replacing them with a description of phenomena, as suggested by Dilthey.
The First World War revealed such negative layers of the human psyche (, cruelty, irrationalism) that needed a scientific explanation. These facts were also associated with the ideological crisis at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, which was most fully reflected in the leading philosophical schools of that time. Similar thoughts were also close to Russian psychology, the formation of which at that time took place in line with European science. These ideas were especially clearly expressed in the concept of V. Solovyov and his followers.
Philosophical concepts, proving the need to revise the old foundations of psychology, could not help it in the formation of new ones at that time. But such support could be provided by the natural sciences, which were then on the rise.
Discoveries in biology, physics, genetics contributed to the formation of psychological trends. Genetic data, which showed the wide possibilities of adaptation and change in the body, lability and plasticity, influenced the analysis of the role of the environment in the development of the psyche, understanding the possibilities and boundaries. These materials acquired especially great importance in Russia, where in those years there was one of the strongest schools of geneticists.
The achievements of physicists, which helped psychologists to see the possibilities of experiment in a new way, opened up the prospects for studying. They tried to apply the laws and methods of studying the physical field in the analysis of the mental field, dynamics and.
The need for a revision of psychological postulates was also evidenced by the demands of practice, which could not be ignored by scientists. Orientation towards practice was expressed not only in the philosophy of pragmatism, especially popular in the United States, but also in the development of interdisciplinary issues, primarily in conjunction with medicine and pedagogy. If clinical data had a greater influence on and on the formation, then the tasks of training and the “new person”, the development of new approaches to the problem of socialization became leading in the USA and Russia, influencing the development of Russian psychology.
Different scientific interests, methodological principles and the social situation in which scientists worked in the first decades of the 20th century did not allow them to come to a common understanding of the goals, subject of psychology and its methods.
This situation was reflected by scientists as a crisis of psychology. And we can agree with this assessment if we consider this natural methodological crisis as a crisis of growth. Naturally, development is impossible without the search for something new, without mistakes. Modern developmental psychology has proven that each critical period begins with negativism, denial, which is replaced by a period of construction, the acquisition of something new. And psychology really changed, became more and more significant both for society and for other sciences. It is not surprising that such cardinal changes were also associated with throwing, negativism in relation to the old psychology, search and trials in the formation of a new science, the emergence of new discoveries and new trends in psychology. However, scientists of the beginning of the century, who were still striving to come to a common opinion about a unified psychology, realized the crisis as the impossibility of working it out, i.e. as the collapse of the old psychological science, which was true, and as a dead end in the process of becoming a new one, which, as time has proven, is not true.
This also explains the paradoxical, at first glance, fact that the period that is now assessed as the heyday of scientific outstanding scientists, the period that determined the face of the psychology of the 20th century, scientists as a decline, as an "open crisis".
Thus, in fact, by the 20s of the XX century. psychology was divided into separate schools, which built their concepts of content and content in different ways, considering the cognitive, motivational, or behavioral sphere of the mental as the leading one. At that moment, three leading directions appeared - behaviorism, gestalt psychology and depth psychology, each of which had its own subject of psychology and its own method of studying the psyche.
The subject of behaviorism was behavior, which was studied by experimental study of the factors influencing its formation, i.e., the formation of connections between stimuli and reactions.
Gestalt psychology investigated the integral structures that make up the mental field (primarily the field of consciousness), and new methods were used to study these gestalts, developed by analogy with the methods for studying the physical field.
Depth psychology has made its subject the deep, unconscious structures of the psyche, the method of study of which has become.
Later, already in the second half of the 20th century, new schools arose - humanistic and psychology. The Russian psychological school, which, although it developed in the logic of global psychological science, has always had an original character, and therefore at the beginning of the 20th century. also significantly changed its methodology.
Neither the subjects nor the methods in these schools completely coincided with each other, and therefore, at the first stages of the formation of schools, it was impossible even to talk about some kind of unification. Several decades of independent development passed, each of the directions accumulated many new facts before it became possible to talk again about unification, about creating a unified psychology.
The main provisions of the cultural-historical theory:
In his works, L.S. does not use the term "cultural-historical theory" for the name of your concept, you can find a rather different definition, namely - "instrumental".
Historical concept L.S. was called because it is impossible to understand the mental processes and consciousness that have “become”, the mental processes and consciousness that are now available, but one should consider the history of their development and formation, but at the same time it is development, that is, qualitative changes, the appearance of neoplasms, and not simple evolution. L.S. tried to consider mental development in all types genesis. However, his focus was on ontogenetic studies of the formation and development of HMF in a child.
Culturally given concept called because L.S. believed that the consciousness of the child, the specific features of his HMF are formed in the child as a result of communication with adults, in which the child masters the systems of cultural signs. These signs mediate his "lower" (involuntary) PF and thereby lead to the creation of completely new formations in the child's mind.
The main characteristics of the VPF:
§ Can be reduced without a trace to elementary functions
§ Have sign mediation
§ Have a social origin
§ Formed in vivo
§ Conscious and arbitrary
Historically, the emergence of HMF as new forms of human thinking and behavior is associated with the development of labor activity. HMF is not a product of biological evolution. They have a social history. The provision on the relationship of labor and higher intellectual functions led to the conclusion that "psychological tools" , which is language. Psychological tools differ from labor tools: if the latter are aimed at mastering the processes of nature, then psychological tools act as a means of influencing oneself and, because of this, make mental processes arbitrary and involuntary. The main development process of the HMF is interiorization. HMFs come from outside, they "are initially built as external forms of behavior and are based on an external sign." The transition from an interpsychic function to an intrapsychic one occurs in the child's cooperation with other children and with adults. The area available to the child in cooperation is called zones of proximal development , the area of what is done independently is the area of actual development.
Just as a person masters nature with the help of tools, he also masters his own psyche with the help of tools of a special kind - psychological ones. Psychological tools are signs through which consciousness is built. Vygotsky sees in it a special socio-cultural mediator between the individual and the world.
At the beginning of the 10s of the XX century. psychology entered a period of open crisis, which lasted until the mid-1930s. Vygotsky's article "The Historical Meaning of the Psychological Crisis" is the first attempt to study and scientifically explain the crisis of psychology from a Marxist standpoint.
Criteria for a crisis: the collapse of the unity of psychologists, the presence of a large number of schools and trends that are hostile to each other (different terminology, subject, methods, etc.). THEN. outward expression of this crisis was the emergence of new schools and directions. Science was divided into directions, the supporters of which operated with different facts and ideas, not taking into account each other. Each system (Freudianism, behaviorism, gestaltism, personalism) claimed to open a new era in psychological science.
The essence of the crisis: a crisis methodological(Vygotsky). Questions were raised about methods, basic concepts, interpretations of these concepts, i.e. methodological problem.
Psychology was formed into an independent science at the end of the 19th century, but on the basis of the philosophy of the 18th century (Descartes, Locke). And on this contradiction arises psychology in the form of introspective psychology, the psychology of consciousness.
Psychology of consciousness (basic principles):
introspective interpretation of consciousness;
the principle of sensationalism (knowledge begins with sensation; the element of consciousness is sensation);
the principle of atomism (consciousness is divided into elements);
the principle of naturalism (the psyche is considered in connection with corporality - the position of Descartes; the psyche as a by-product of the work of the National Assembly);
intellectualism of interpretation of consciousness;
you can add the principle of associationism.
Psychology proclaimed itself an empirical science based on fact (experimental research). The experiment leads to the discovery of new facts that conflict with the basic principles of introspective psychology. For example, the discovery of the holistic nature of perception rejects the principle of atomism (Gestaltists), the ugly nature of thinking is undermined by the fact that the fabric of consciousness is based on sensation (undermining the principle of sensationalism) - the Würzburg school; opening of the unconscious (undermining that the subject is consciousness). Each new discovery refutes the old principle. Each of the directions, starting from its own discovery, offers its own explanatory principle.
Logic of development of explanatory ideas: first, a particular fact appears, a certain interpretation is given to the fact, a particular explanatory principle arises, which is then blown up to a wider area of phenomena, to the sphere of psychology as a whole, and then to broader phenomena up to the worldview principle. But as a general psychological principle, no school satisfies the task of explaining most of the psychological facts accumulated in the field of psychology. (Vygotsky)
Vygotsky observes a striking similarity between evolution of different psychological concepts(Freudianism, reflexology, gestaltism, personalism): from a private discovery in a special discipline to the subsequent extension of his ideas to the whole of psychology and to human knowledge in general. This shows the urgent need for a general science.
The crisis in psychology is evidenced by the fact that psychology has realized the need for a general science (methodology), but is not ready to bring it into being. Separate disciplines are trying to replace general psychology - these are child psychology, pathopsychology, zoopsychology, etc.
The purpose of the crisis : "To harmonize heterogeneous data, to bring disparate laws into a system, to comprehend and verify the results, to clear methods and basic concepts, to lay down fundamental principles - thereby to build general science».
For V. creation of "general science" was the most important task. It must be created on the basis of the Marxist interpretation of theoretical knowledge, from the principles of reflection and historicism.. Abstraction always contains a piece of reality.
General science is born at the stage of maturity. Psychology has come to the conclusion that its further development without a general science is impossible. General science is needed, first of all, because psychology cannot cope with the growing practical problems; this requires its own logical and methodological infrastructure.
General Science- this is a science that receives material from particular scientific disciplines and generalizes this material, which is impossible within each individual discipline. With the help of fundamental concepts (category) and explanatory principles, general science performs the role of methodology in relation to specific empirical research.
V. believes that concepts should be continuously criticized in practice, because Every discovery in science is always an act of criticism of a concept.
This interaction of concept and fact forms subject of general science . It can be called methodology in the sense of the doctrine of the methods, ways, techniques of concrete scientific knowledge.
General science takes over this operation with concepts, namely with general concepts. Thus, it determines the subject and method of any form of scientific and psychological research.
Methodology of concrete science is formed under the influence of philosophy, the subject of this science, the historical development of its categorical structures.
The cornerstone of Vygotsky's reasoning- the idea of the inseparability of two ways of studying science: logical and historical.
Scientific methodology on a historical basis is possible because regularity is inherent in the very process of cognition. The pattern in the change and development of ideas is associated with:
with the general socio-cultural subsoil of the epoch;
with general conditions and laws of scientific knowledge;
with the objective requirements of the objective reality that science studies.
Way out of the crisis (Vygotsky): creation of general psychology- generalization and systematization of accumulated facts, formulation of a general explanatory principle and fact, building a hierarchy of particular disciplines and how they relate.
Causes of the crisis(according to Vygotsky):
Non-reflectiveness of methodological foundations and philosophical base. Behind this is the general attitude of psychology, which defined itself as an empirical science based on experience. Psychology sought to dissociate itself from philosophy. The psychologist enters into a fundamental self-deception that laboratory work will help solve his problems. Those. on the one hand, psychologists abandon philosophy, but on the other hand, they rely on the philosophical paradigm (Descarto-Lockean paradigm).
Excessive academic psychology. Attitude towards applied psychology as something lower and beyond the limits of science (contempt for practice).
The struggle of opinions in the field of theory, new facts obtained during the period of intensive development of empirical and applied research in the first 50 years of the existence of psychology as an independent science, more and more revealed the inconsistency of psychological theory.
At the beginning of the 10s. psychology entered a period of open crisis, which lasted until the mid-1930s. Like the crisis experienced by natural science during this period, it was an indicator of the growth of science, the development of which leads to the need to replace previous ideas with new knowledge.
The positive content of the crisis was the work on the creation of a new psychological theory, which was unfolding both in foreign and domestic science.
The crisis in psychology coincided with a period of exacerbation of economic and socio-political contradictions in bourgeois society, due to its transition to imperialism. The growth of world domination was accompanied by qualitative changes in the economy, politics and ideology, the development of the process of concentration of capital and the domination of monopolies and financial oligarchy, an aggressive foreign policy aimed at redistributing colonies and markets through imperialist wars, among which the first world war was the first of the greatest social upheavals 20th century
Prerequisites (reasons) that led to the emergence of an "open crisis":
1) the complexity and inconsistency of the social situation. contradictions
between the individual and society were perceived as an eternal incompatibility
the biological nature of man with the moral requirements of society.
2) understanding by scientists of practical and theoretical
failure of old attitudes, views and methods of research
phenomena and phenomena of science;
3) the intensive development of philosophical ideas, positivism, differential, developmental psychology, animal psychology ensured the emergence of new disparate trends, concepts and views on the subject of psychological science;
4) the development of biology, which changed the idea of consciousness as a closed world of the subject;
5) expansion of the sphere of the unknowable by the classical method
introspection of phenomena (behavior of animals, children, mentally ill
of people).
In 1910-1930. in psychology, a large number of competing incompatible paradigms have been formed that have implemented potentially possible versions of understanding the subject and method of psychology.
Psychology broke up into a number of major areas, each of which acted as an opponent on one of the points of the old psychology of consciousness, putting forward its own subject and its own research methods. Let's list these areas.
1. Gestalt psychology
2. Behaviorism
3. Depth psychology
4. French sociological school
5. Descriptive psychology, etc.
Thanks to the crisis that broke out, psychology received a number of new independent directions, each of which subsequently actively expanded and gave science many interesting views and concepts, the further development of these psychological schools went in the direction of interaction with each other.
The time limits of this stage in the development of psychology are the 10-30s of the 20th century. The essence of the open crisis in psychology is the inconsistency in the answers to basic methodological questions about the subject and method of psychology. During the fifty-first years of the existence of psychology as an independent science, Wundt's interpretation of the subject and method of psychology gradually lost its force. The functionalist approach undermined structuralism. This stage in the development of psychology was called the era of latent (hidden) crisis. When the generation changed, and Wundt's students left key positions, a situation arose of the equal existence of schools that gave radically divergent versions of the answer to the question about the subject and method. The presence of a special subject and method makes it possible to single out a separate science. sciences of psychology Textbooks of that time were called "modern psychology".
The main psychological schools of the period of open crisis
Behaviorism. Originated in the USA. Founder - John Watson. In 1913, his program article "Psychology from the point of view of a behaviorist" was published. The subject of behaviorism he called the study of behavior by an objective method - an experiment without the admission of introspection, the goal - serving practice; the task is to predict behavior and control behavior “Give me a dozen healthy, normally developed babies and my own special world in which I will raise them, and I guarantee that by choosing a child at random, I can make him a specialist in any profile - a doctor, a lawyer, an artist, a merchant, even a beggar or a pickpocket - regardless of his inclinations and abilities, occupation and racial affiliation of his ancestors. Control the influences (stimuli) and you will achieve the desired behavior (reaction). The American public was excited by Watson's call to create an ideal society based on scientifically based management of people's behavior. Behaviorists tried to find laws directly linking the external situation (stimuli) and behavior (reactions) without reference to "internal" variables (psyche). The behaviorists gradually replaced the psyche itself with motor and bodily reactions, reducing emotions to physiological shifts, thinking to micro-movements of the larynx that occur during internal speech, etc. The main interest of the behaviorists was concentrated on the theory of learning. The law of learning was discovered, expressing the idea of a smooth decrease in errors from trial to trial with access to a stable level of errors. Experimental studies of behaviorists were mainly conducted on animals. Behaviorists themselves believed that this was done in order to comply with the requirement of strict objectivity - laboratory experiments on animals made it possible to most scrupulously monitor the effect of all factors. Critics of behaviorism expressed the opinion that only in animals (creatures with a primitive psyche) can a direct connection be found between stimuli and reactions.
Gestalt psychology. Originated in Germany Founders: Max Wertheimer. Kurt Kofka, Wolfgang Köhler. The date of official birth is considered to be 1912 - the moment of publication of the first article, where the analysis of the phenomenon (the illusion of imaginary movement) made it possible to prove that a complex mental phenomenon is not a combination of elements. In their experiment, the elements are stationary, but the final image moves. This means that the image is not created from the elements, it is primary. The methodological platform of the Gestaltists was the denial of the structuralist idea that the reflection of the elements is primary, and the appearance of the structure that links the elements into a single whole is secondary. The initial stage of reflection is the appearance of a structure, a whole, an image (in German - “gestalt”) - it is the laws of formation and transformation of gestalts that should become the subject of psychology, the method of psychology should be an experiment with elements of introspection. Criticizing behaviorism, Gestaltists pointed out that they study learning in artificial conditions that interfere with the dynamics of Gestalt transformation. In Köhler's experiments, which refute the behaviorist's learning scheme, the monkey, taking out the banana, makes a series of equally erroneous trials; after which, immediately, without a gradual decrease in the number of errors, he performs the correct actions, constructing a pyramid from the boxes scattered in the cage. There is no smooth learning curve here, defended by behaviorists, since the psychic field has been abruptly reshaped, forming a new gestalt. The main achievements of the Gestaltists were obtained in the study of perception (phenomena associated with objectivity, integrity, generalization; constancy of images of perception).
Psychoanalysis. Creator - Sigmund Freud. (1900 "Psychology of dreams", 1901 "Pathopsychology of everyday life"). The subject of study is personality from the point of view of the motivation of behavior, mainly due to subconscious processes. Method - psychoanalysis.
