Julia Gippenreiter Introduction to General Psychology: a course of lectures. Julia Gippenreiter - Introduction to General Psychology: a course of lectures

To my husband and friend

Alexey Nikolaevich Rudakov

I dedicate

Foreword
to the second edition

This edition of "Introduction to General Psychology" completely repeats the first edition of 1988.

The proposal to republish the book in its original form was unexpected for me and caused some doubts: the thought arose that, if republished, then in a modified, and most importantly, supplemented form. It was obvious that such a refinement would require a lot of effort and time. At the same time, considerations were expressed in favor of its rapid reprinting: the book is in great demand and has long been in acute shortage.

I would like to thank many readers for their positive feedback on the content and style of the Introduction. These responses, demand, and expectations of readers determined my decision to agree to the reprinting of the "Introduction" in its present form and at the same time undertake the preparation of a new, more complete version of it. I hope that the forces and conditions will make it possible to carry out this plan in the not too distant future.

Prof. Yu. B. Gippenreiter

March, 1996

Foreword

This manual has been prepared on the basis of the course of lectures "Introduction to General Psychology", which I read for first-year students of the Faculty of Psychology of Moscow University over the past few years. The first cycle of these lectures was given in 1976 and corresponded to the new program (earlier freshmen studied "Evolutionary Introduction to Psychology").

The idea of the new program belonged to A. N. Leontiev. According to his wish, the introductory course should have revealed fundamental concepts such as "psyche", "consciousness", "behavior", "activity", "unconscious", "personality"; consider the main problems and approaches of psychological science. This, he said, should be done in such a way as to dedicate students to the "mysteries" of psychology, arouse interest in them, "start the engine."

In subsequent years, the program "Introduction" was repeatedly discussed and finalized by a wide range of professors and teachers of the Department of General Psychology. At present, the introductory course already covers all sections of general psychology and is taught during the first two semesters. According to the general plan, it reflects in a concise and popular form what students then go through in detail and in depth in separate sections of the main course "General Psychology".

The main methodological problem of the "Introduction", in our opinion, is the need to combine the breadth of the material covered, its fundamental nature (after all, we are talking about the basic training of professional psychologists) with its relative simplicity, intelligibility and entertaining presentation. No matter how tempting the well-known aphorism sounds that psychology is divided into scientific and interesting, it cannot serve as a guide in teaching: scientific psychology presented uninterestingly at the first steps of study will not only not “start” any “motor”, but, as pedagogical practice shows, will just misunderstood.

The foregoing makes it obvious that an ideal solution to all the problems of the "Introduction" can be reached only by the method of successive approximation, only as a result of ongoing pedagogical searches. This handbook should be seen as the beginning of such a quest.

My constant concern has been to make the exposition of difficult and sometimes very intricate questions of psychology accessible and as lively as possible. To do this, we had to make inevitable simplifications, reduce the presentation of theories as much as possible and, conversely, widely draw on factual material - examples from psychological research, fiction, and simply “from life”. They were supposed not only to illustrate, but also to reveal, clarify, fill with meaning scientific concepts and formulations.

Teaching practice shows that novice psychologists, especially young people who have come from school, really lack life experience and knowledge of psychological facts. Without this empirical basis, their knowledge acquired in the educational process turns out to be very formal and therefore inferior. Having mastered scientific formulas and concepts, students too often find it difficult to apply them.

That is why providing lectures with the most solid empirical foundation possible seemed to me an absolutely necessary methodological strategy for this course.

The genre of lectures allows for some freedom within the program in choosing topics and determining the amount allocated to each of them.

The choice of lecture topics for this course was determined by a number of considerations - their theoretical significance, their special elaboration within the framework of Soviet psychology, teaching traditions at the Faculty of Psychology of Moscow State University, and finally, the author's personal preferences.

Some topics, especially those that are still insufficiently covered in the educational literature, found more detailed study in the lectures (for example, “The Problem of Self-Observation”, “Unconscious Processes”, “Psychophysical Problem, etc.). Of course, the inevitable consequence was the limitation of the range of topics considered. In addition, the manual includes lectures given only in the first semester of the first year (i.e., lectures on individual processes were not included: "Sensation", "Perception", "Attention", "Memory", etc.). Thus, the present lectures should be considered as selected lectures of the "Introduction".

A few words about the structure and composition of the manual. The main material is divided into three sections, and they are not singled out according to any one, “linear” principle, but on quite different grounds.

The first section is an attempt to lead to some of the main problems of psychology through the history of the development of views on the subject of psychology. This historical approach is useful in several respects. First, it involves the main "mystery" of scientific psychology - the question of what and how it should study. Secondly, it helps to better understand the meaning and even the pathos of modern answers. Thirdly, it teaches one to correctly relate to existing concrete scientific theories and views, understanding their relative truth, the need for further development and the inevitability of change.

The second section examines a number of fundamental problems of psychological science from the standpoint of the dialectical-materialist conception of the psyche. It begins with an acquaintance with the psychological theory of activity of A. N. Leontiev, which then serves as a theoretical basis for revealing the rest of the topics of the section. Appeal to these topics is already carried out according to the “radial” principle, that is, from a general theoretical basis to different, not necessarily directly related problems. Nevertheless, they are combined into three major areas: this is a consideration of the biological aspects of the psyche, its physiological foundations (using the physiology of movements as an example), and finally, the social aspects of the human psyche.

The third section serves as a direct continuation and development of the third direction. It is devoted to the problems of human individuality and personality. The basic concepts of "individual" and "personality" are also revealed here from the standpoint of the psychological theory of activity. The topics “Character” and “Personality” are given relatively great attention in lectures because they are not only intensively developed in modern psychology and have important practical implications, but also most correspond to the personal cognitive needs of students: many of them came to psychology to learn to understand yourself and others. These aspirations of theirs, of course, must find support in the educational process, and the sooner the better.

It also seemed to me very important to acquaint students with the names of the most prominent psychologists of the past and present, with individual moments of their personal and scientific biography. Such an approach to the "personal" aspects of the work of scientists greatly contributes to the students' own inclusion in science, the awakening of an emotional attitude towards it. The lectures contain a large number of references to original texts, acquaintance with which is facilitated by the publication of a series of anthologies on psychology by the Moscow State University publishing house. Several topics of the course are revealed through direct analysis of the scientific heritage of a particular scientist. Among them are the concept of the development of higher mental functions by L. S. Vygotsky, the theory of activity by A. N. Leontiev, the physiology of movements and the physiology of activity by N. A. Bernshtein, the psychophysiology of individual differences by B. M. Teplov, and others.

As already noted, the main theoretical outline of these lectures was the psychological theory of the activity of A. N. Leontiev. This theory organically entered the author's worldview - from my student years I was lucky to study with this outstanding psychologist and then work under his guidance for many years.

A. N. Leontiev managed to look through the first version of this manuscript. I tried to implement his comments and recommendations with maximum responsibility and a feeling of deep gratitude.

Professor Yu. B. Gippenreiter

Section I
General characteristics of psychology. The main stages in the development of ideas about the subject of psychology

Lecture 1
General idea of psychology as a science

Course objective.
Features of psychology as a science. Scientific and everyday psychology. The problem of the subject of psychology. Psychic Phenomena. Psychological facts

This lecture opens the course "Introduction to General Psychology". The objective of the course is to introduce you to the basic concepts and problems of general psychology. We will also touch on a bit of its history, insofar as it will be necessary to uncover some fundamental problems, for example, the problem of subject matter and method. We will also get acquainted with the names of some outstanding scientists of the distant past and present, their contributions to the development of psychology.

Many topics you will then study in more detail and at a more complex level - in general and special courses. Some of them will be discussed only in this course, and their development is absolutely necessary for your further psychological education.

So, the most general task of the "Introduction" is to lay the foundation of your psychological knowledge.

I will say a few words about the features of psychology as a science.

In the system of the sciences of psychology, a very special place should be assigned, and for these reasons.

Firstly, it is the science of the most complex that is known to mankind so far. After all, the psyche is a “property of highly organized matter”. If we mean the human psyche, then the word “most” should be added to the words “highly organized matter”: after all, the human brain is the most highly organized matter known to us.

It is significant that the outstanding ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle begins his treatise On the Soul with the same thought. He believes that among other knowledge, one of the first places should be given to the study of the soul, since “it is knowledge about the most sublime and amazing” (8, p. 371).

Secondly, psychology is in a special position because the object and the subject of cognition seem to merge in it.

To clarify this, I will use one comparison. Here a man is born. At first, being in infancy, he does not realize and does not remember himself. However, its development is proceeding at a rapid pace. His physical and mental abilities are being formed; he learns to walk, to see, to understand, to speak. With the help of these abilities he cognizes the world; begins to act in it; expands his social circle. And then gradually from the depths of childhood comes to him and gradually grows a very special feeling - a feeling of one's own "I". Somewhere in adolescence, it begins to take on conscious forms. Questions arise: “Who am I? What am I?”, and later “Why me?”. Those mental abilities and functions that until now have served the child as a means for mastering the external world - physical and social, turn to the knowledge of oneself; they themselves become the subject of reflection and awareness.

Exactly the same process can be traced on the scale of all mankind. In primitive society, the main forces of people went to the struggle for existence, to the development of the outside world. People made fire, hunted wild animals, fought with neighboring tribes, received the first knowledge about nature.

The humanity of that period, like a baby, does not remember itself. Gradually, the strength and capabilities of mankind grew. Thanks to their psychic abilities, people have created a material and spiritual culture; writing, arts and sciences appeared. And then the moment came when a person asked himself questions: what are these forces that give him the opportunity to create, explore and subjugate the world, what is the nature of his mind, what laws does his inner, spiritual life obey?

This moment was the birth of the self-consciousness of mankind, i.e. the birth psychological knowledge.

An event that once happened can be briefly expressed as follows: if earlier a person’s thought was directed to the outside world, now it turned to itself. Man ventured to begin to explore thinking itself with the help of thinking.

Thus, the tasks of psychology are incommensurably more difficult than the tasks of any other science, for only in psychology does thought turn back upon itself. Only in it does the scientific consciousness of man become his scientific self-awareness.

Finally, third, The peculiarity of psychology lies in its unique practical consequences.

Practical results from the development of psychology should not only be incommensurably greater than the results of any other science, but also qualitatively different. After all, to know something means to master this “something”, to learn how to manage it.

Learning to control one's mental processes, functions, and abilities is, of course, a more grandiose task than, for example, space exploration. At the same time, it should be emphasized in particular that knowing himself, man will change himself.

Psychology has already accumulated many facts showing how a person's new knowledge of himself makes him different: it changes his attitudes, goals, his states and experiences. If we again turn to the scale of all mankind, then we can say that psychology is a science that not only cognizes, but also constructive, constructive person.

And although this opinion is not now generally accepted, lately voices have been sounding louder and louder calling for understanding this feature of psychology, which makes it a science. special type.

In conclusion, it must be said that psychology is a very young science. This is more or less understandable: it can be said that, like the aforementioned teenager, the period of the formation of the spiritual forces of mankind had to pass in order for them to become the subject of scientific reflection.

Scientific psychology was formalized a little over 100 years ago, namely in 1879: this year the German psychologist W. Wundt opened the first experimental psychology laboratory in Leipzig.

The emergence of psychology was preceded by the development of two large areas of knowledge: the natural sciences and philosophies; psychology arose at the intersection of these areas, so it has not yet been determined whether psychology should be considered a natural science or a humanitarian one. It follows from the above that none of these answers seem to be correct. Let me emphasize once again: this is a science of a special type.

Let's move on to the next point of our lecture - the question on the relationship between scientific and everyday psychology.

Any science has as its basis some worldly, empirical experience of people. For example, physics is based on the knowledge we acquire in everyday life about the movement and fall of bodies, about friction and inertia, about light, sound, heat, and much more.

Mathematics also proceeds from ideas about numbers, shapes, quantitative ratios, which begin to form already in preschool age.

But it is different with psychology. Each of us has a store of worldly psychological knowledge. There are even outstanding worldly psychologists. These, of course, are great writers, as well as some (though not all) representatives of professions that involve constant communication with people: teachers, doctors, clergymen, etc. But, I repeat, the average person also has certain psychological knowledge. This can be judged by the fact that each person to some extent can understand another influence on his behavior predict his actions take into account his personality, help him, etc.

Let's think about the question: what is the difference between everyday psychological knowledge and scientific knowledge?

I will give you five such differences.

First: worldly psychological knowledge is concrete; they are timed to specific situations, specific people, specific tasks. They say that waiters and taxi drivers are also good psychologists. But in what sense, for what tasks? As we know, often quite pragmatic. Also, the child solves specific pragmatic tasks by behaving in one way with his mother, in another way with his father, and again in a completely different way with his grandmother. In each case, he knows exactly how to behave in order to achieve the desired goal. But we can hardly expect from him the same insight in relation to other people's grandmothers or mothers. So, everyday psychological knowledge is characterized by concreteness, limitedness of tasks, situations and persons to which they apply.

Scientific psychology, like any other science, strives to generalizations. To do this, she uses scientific concepts. The development of concepts is one of the most important functions of science. Scientific concepts reflect the most essential properties of objects and phenomena, general connections and correlations. Scientific concepts are clearly defined, correlated with each other, linked into laws.

For example, in physics, thanks to the introduction of the concept of force, I. Newton managed to describe, using the three laws of mechanics, thousands of different specific cases of motion and mechanical interaction of bodies.

The same thing happens in psychology. You can describe a person for a very long time, listing in everyday terms his qualities, character traits, actions, relationships with other people. Scientific psychology, on the other hand, seeks and finds such generalizing concepts that not only economize descriptions, but also allow one to see the general tendencies and patterns of personality development and its individual characteristics behind a conglomerate of particulars. It is necessary to note one feature of scientific psychological concepts: they often coincide with everyday ones in their external form, that is, simply speaking, they are expressed in the same words. However, the inner content, the meanings of these words, as a rule, are different. Everyday terms are usually more vague and ambiguous.

Once, high school students were asked to answer the question in writing: what is a personality? The answers turned out to be very different, and one student answered: “This is something that should be checked against the documents.” I will not now talk about how the concept of "personality" is defined in scientific psychology - this is a complex issue, and we will deal with it specifically later, in one of the last lectures. I will only say that this definition is very different from the one proposed by the mentioned schoolboy.

Second the difference between worldly psychological knowledge is that they are intuitive character. This is due to the special way they are obtained: they are acquired through practical trials and adjustments.

This is especially true in children. I have already mentioned their good psychological intuition. And how is it achieved? Through daily and even hourly trials to which they subject adults and which the latter are not always aware of. And in the course of these tests, the children discover from whom they can “twist ropes” and from whom they cannot.

Often teachers and coaches find effective ways of educating, teaching, training, going the same way: experimenting and vigilantly noticing the slightest positive results, that is, in a certain sense, “groping”. Often they turn to psychologists with a request to explain the psychological meaning of the techniques they have found.

In contrast, scientific psychological knowledge rational and quite conscious. The usual way is to put forward verbally formulated hypotheses and test the consequences logically arising from them.

Third the difference is ways transfer of knowledge and even in the the possibility of their transmission. In the field of practical psychology, this possibility is very limited. This follows directly from the two previous features of worldly psychological experience - its concrete and intuitive character. The deep psychologist F. M. Dostoevsky expressed his intuition in the works he wrote, we read them all - did we become equally insightful psychologists after that? Is life experience passed on from the older generation to the younger? As a rule, with great difficulty and to a very small extent. The eternal problem of “fathers and sons” is precisely that children cannot and do not even want to adopt the experience of their fathers. Each new generation, each young person has to "stuff his own bumps" in order to gain this experience.

At the same time, in science, knowledge is accumulated and transferred with a high, so to speak, efficiency. Someone long ago compared representatives of science with pygmies who stand on the shoulders of giants - outstanding scientists of the past. They may be much smaller, but they see farther than the giants, because they stand on their shoulders. The accumulation and transfer of scientific knowledge is possible due to the fact that this knowledge is crystallized in concepts and laws. They are recorded in the scientific literature and transmitted using verbal means, i.e., speech and language, which, in fact, we have begun to do today.

Fourth the difference is in methods obtaining knowledge in the fields of everyday and scientific psychology. In worldly psychology, we are forced to confine ourselves to observations and reflections. In scientific psychology, these methods are supplemented experiment.

The essence of the experimental method is that the researcher does not wait for a confluence of circumstances, as a result of which a phenomenon of interest arises, but causes this phenomenon himself, creating the appropriate conditions. Then he purposefully varies these conditions in order to reveal the patterns that this phenomenon obeys. With the introduction of the experimental method into psychology (the discovery of the first experimental laboratory at the end of the last century), psychology, as I have already said, took shape as an independent science.

Finally, fifth The difference, and at the same time the advantage, of scientific psychology lies in the fact that it has a vast, diverse and sometimes unique factual material, inaccessible in its entirety to any bearer of worldly psychology. This material is accumulated and comprehended, including in special branches of psychological science, such as developmental psychology, educational psychology, patho- and neuropsychology, labor and engineering psychology, social psychology, zoopsychology, etc. In these areas, dealing with various stages and levels of mental development of animals and humans, with defects and diseases of the psyche, with unusual working conditions - conditions of stress, information overload or, conversely, monotony and information hunger - the psychologist not only expands the range of his research tasks, but also faces new unexpected phenomena. After all, consideration of the work of any mechanism in the conditions of development, breakdown or functional overload from different angles highlights its structure and organization.

I'll give you a short example. Of course, you know that in Zagorsk we have a special boarding school for deaf-blind-mute children. These are children who have no hearing, no vision and, of course, initially no speech. The main "channel" through which they can make contact with the outside world is touch.

And through this extremely narrow channel, in conditions of special education, they begin to learn about the world, people and themselves! This process, especially at the beginning, goes very slowly, it unfolds in time and in many details can be seen as if through a “time lens” (the term used to describe this phenomenon by well-known Soviet scientists A.I. Meshcheryakov and E.V. Ilyenkov). Obviously, in the case of the development of a normal healthy child, much passes too quickly, spontaneously and unnoticed. Thus, helping children in the conditions of a cruel experiment that nature has put on them, help organized by psychologists together with teachers-defectologists, simultaneously turns into the most important means of understanding general psychological patterns - the development of perception, thinking, personality.

So, summarizing, we can say that the development of special branches of psychology is the Method (method with a capital letter) of general psychology. Of course, worldly psychology lacks such a method.

Now that we have become convinced of a number of advantages of scientific psychology over everyday psychology, it is appropriate to raise the question: what position should scientific psychologists take in relation to the bearers of everyday psychology?

Suppose you graduated from the university, became educated psychologists. Imagine yourself in this state. Now imagine next to you some sage, not necessarily living today, some ancient Greek philosopher, for example. This sage is the bearer of centuries-old reflections of people about the fate of mankind, about the nature of man, his problems, his happiness. You are the bearer of scientific experience, qualitatively different, as we have just seen. So what position should you take in relation to the knowledge and experience of the sage? This question is not idle, sooner or later it will inevitably arise before each of you: how should these two kinds of experience be related in your head, in your soul, in your activity?

I would like to warn you about one erroneous position, which, however, is often taken by psychologists with great scientific experience. “The problems of human life,” they say, “no, I don’t deal with them. I am a scientific psychologist. I understand neurons, reflexes, mental processes, and not the "throes of creativity."

Does this position have any basis? Now we can already answer this question: yes, it does. These certain grounds consist in the fact that the mentioned scientific psychologist was forced in the process of his education to take a step into the world of abstract general concepts, he was forced, together with scientific psychology, figuratively speaking, to drive life in vitro, "to tear apart" the spiritual life "to pieces". But these necessary actions made too much impression on him. He forgot the purpose for which these necessary steps were taken, what path was envisaged further. He forgot or did not take the trouble to realize that the great scientists - his predecessors introduced new concepts and theories, highlighting the essential aspects of real life, suggesting then to return to its analysis with new means.

The history of science, including psychology, knows many examples of how a scientist saw the big and vital in the small and abstract. When I. V. Pavlov first registered the conditioned reflex separation of saliva in a dog, he declared that through these drops we would eventually penetrate into the pangs of human consciousness. The outstanding Soviet psychologist L. S. Vygotsky saw in “curious” actions such as tying a knot as a memento as a way for a person to master his behavior.

You will not read anywhere about how to see the reflection of general principles in small facts and how to move from general principles to real life problems. You can develop these abilities by absorbing the best examples contained in the scientific literature. Only constant attention to such transitions, constant exercise in them, can give you a sense of the "beat of life" in scientific studies. Well, for this, of course, it is absolutely necessary to have worldly psychological knowledge, perhaps more extensive and deep.

Respect and attention to worldly experience, its knowledge will warn you against another danger. The fact is that, as you know, in science it is impossible to answer one question without ten new ones. But new questions are different: "bad" and correct. And it is not just words. In science, there have been and still are, of course, whole areas that have come to a standstill. However, before they finally ceased to exist, they worked idle for some time, answering "bad" questions that gave rise to dozens of other bad questions.

The development of science is reminiscent of moving through a complex labyrinth with many dead-end passages. To choose the right path, one must have, as is often said, good intuition, and it arises only through close contact with life.

Ultimately, my thought is simple: a scientific psychologist must be at the same time a good worldly psychologist. Otherwise, he will not only be of little use to science, but will not find himself in his profession, simply speaking, he will be unhappy. I would like to save you from this fate.

One professor said that if his students mastered one or two main ideas in the entire course, he would consider his task completed. My desire is less modest: I would like you to learn one idea already in this one lecture. This thought is as follows: the relationship between scientific and worldly psychology is similar to the relationship between Antaeus and the Earth; the first, touching the second, draws its strength from it.

So, scientific psychology, firstly, relies on everyday psychological experience; Secondly, extracts its tasks from it; finally, third, at the last stage it is checked.

And now we must move on to a closer acquaintance with scientific psychology.

Acquaintance with any science begins with the definition of its subject and a description of the range of phenomena that it studies. What is subject of psychology? This question can be answered in two ways. The first way is more correct, but also more complicated. The second is relatively formal, but brief.

The first way involves considering different points of view on the subject of psychology - as they appeared in the history of science; analysis of the reasons why these points of view changed each other; acquaintance with what ultimately remained of them and what understanding has developed today.

We will consider all this in subsequent lectures, and now we will answer briefly.

The word "psychology" in translation into Russian literally means "science of the soul"(Greek psyche - "soul" + logos - "concept", "teaching").

In our time, instead of the concept of "soul", the concept of "psyche" is used, although the language still has many words and expressions derived from the original root: animate, spiritual, soulless, kinship of souls, mental illness, intimate conversation, etc.