Maklakov A. General psychology

Part 4. Mental properties of personality

Summary

The concept of personality orientation and activity motivation. The main forms of orientation: attraction, desire, aspiration, interests, ideals, beliefs. The concept of motive. The problem of motivation of human activity. The concept of need. The purpose of the activity. The main characteristics of the motivational sphere of a person: breadth, flexibility, hierarchization.

Psychological theories of motivation. The problem of motivation in the works of ancient philosophers. Irrationalism. Automaton theory. The role of Ch. Darwin's evolutionary theory in the development of the problem of human behavior motivation. Theories of instincts. Theory of human biological needs. Behavioral theory of motivation and theory of higher nervous activity. Classification of human needs but A. Maslow. Motivational concepts of the second half of the 20th century. The theory of the activity origin of the motivational sphere of a person A. N. Leonteva.

The main patterns of development of the motivational sphere. Mechanisms for the development of motives according to A. N. Leontiev. The main stages in the formation of the motivational sphere in children. Features of the first interests of children. Features of the formation of the motivational sphere in preschool and school age. The role of the game in the formation of the motivational sphere.

Motivated behavior as a characteristic of personality. Achievement and avoidance motivation. The level of claims and self-esteem. Peculiarities of manifestation of the motives of affiliation and power. Rejection motive. prosocial behavior. Aggression and the motive of aggressiveness. Types of aggressive actions according to A. Bandura. Tendencies towards aggression and tendencies towards suppression of aggression.

The concept of personality orientation and activity motivation

In domestic psychology, there are various approaches to the study of personality. However, despite the differences in interpretations of personality, in all approaches, personality is distinguished as its leading characteristic. orientation. There are different definitions of this concept, for example, “dynamic tendency” (S. L. Rubinshtein), “sense-forming motive” (A. N. Leontiev), “dominant attitude” (V. N. Myasishchev), “main life orientation” (B . G. Ananiev), "the dynamic organization of the essential forces of man" (A. S. Prangishvili).

Most often in the scientific literature, directionality is understood as a set of stable motives that guide the activity of the individual and are relatively independent of the current situation.

It should be noted that the orientation of the individual is always socially conditioned and is formed in the process of education. Orientation is installations, which have become personality traits and manifested in such forms as attraction, desire, aspiration, interest, inclination, ideal, worldview, conviction. Moreover, the motives of activity lie at the basis of all forms of personality orientation.

Let us briefly characterize each of the selected forms of orientation in the order of their hierarchy. First of all, one should focus on in treatment. It is generally accepted that attraction is the most primitive, essentially biological form of orientation. From a psychological point of view, this is a mental state that expresses an undifferentiated, unconscious or insufficiently conscious need. As a rule, attraction is a transient phenomenon, since the need represented in it either fades away or is realized, turning into desire.

Wish - it is a conscious need and attraction to something quite definite. It should be noted that desire, being sufficiently conscious, has a motivating force. It sharpens the awareness of the purpose of the future action and the construction of its plan. This form of orientation is characterized by awareness not only of one's need, but also of possible ways to satisfy it.

The next form of directionality is pursuit. Aspiration arises when the volitional component is included in the structure of desire. Therefore, the desire is often considered as a well-defined motivation for activity.

most clearly characterize the orientation of the personality of her interests. Interest is a specific form of manifestation of a cognitive need, which ensures the orientation of the individual to the realization of the goals of activity and thereby contributes to the orientation of the individual in the surrounding reality. Subjectively, interest is found in the emotional tone that accompanies the process of cognition or attention to a particular object. One of the most significant characteristics of interest is that when it is satisfied, it does not fade away, but, on the contrary, it evokes new interests corresponding to a higher level of cognitive activity.

Interests are the most important motivating force to the knowledge of the surrounding reality. Distinguish between direct interest caused by the attractiveness of the object, and indirect interest in the object as a means of achieving the goals of the activity. An indirect characteristic of the awareness of needs reflected in interests is the stability of interests, which is expressed in the duration of their preservation and in their intensity. It should also be emphasized that the breadth and content of interests can serve as one of the most striking characteristics of a person.

Interest in the dynamics of its development can turn into inclination. This happens when the volitional component is included in the interest. Propensity characterizes the orientation of the individual to a particular activity. The basis of the inclination is the deep, stable need of the individual for this or that activity, i.e., interest in a particular activity. The basis of the propensity can also be the desire to improve the skills associated with this need. It is generally accepted that the emerging inclination can be considered as a prerequisite for the development of certain abilities.

The next form of manifestation of personality orientation is ideal. The ideal is the objective goal of the inclination of the individual, concretized in the image or representation, that is, what he strives for, what he focuses on. Human ideals can act as one of the most significant characteristics of a person’s worldview, i.e., his system of views on the objective world, on a person’s place in it, on a person’s attitude to the reality around him and to himself. The worldview reflects not only ideals, but also the value orientations of people, their principles of cognition and activity, their beliefs.

Belief - the highest form of orientation is a system of motives of the individual, prompting him to act in accordance with his views, principles, worldview. Beliefs are based on conscious needs that encourage a person to act, form her motivation for activity.

Since we have approached the problem of motivation, it should be noted that there are two functionally interrelated aspects in human behavior: incentive and regulatory. The mental processes and states considered by us earlier provide mainly the regulation of behavior. As for its stimulation, or motives that provide activation and direction of behavior, they are associated with motives and motivation.

A motive is a motive for activity associated with the satisfaction of the needs of the subject. The motive is also often understood as the reason underlying the choice of actions and deeds, the totality of external and internal conditions that cause the activity of the subject.

The term "motivation" is a broader concept than the term "motive". The word "motivation" is used in modern psychology in a double sense: as a system of factors that determine behavior (this includes, in particular, needs, motives, goals, intentions, aspirations, and much more), and as a characteristic of a process that stimulates and supports behavioral activity at a certain level. Most often in the scientific literature, motivation is considered as a set of psychological causes that explain human behavior, its beginning, direction and activity.

The question of the motivation of activity arises every time when it is necessary to explain the reasons for a person's actions. Moreover, any form of behavior can be explained by both internal and external causes. In the first case, the psychological properties of the subject of behavior act as the starting and ending points of the explanation, and in the second, the external conditions and circumstances of his activity. In the first case, they talk about motives, needs, goals, intentions, desires, interests, etc., and in the second - about incentives coming from the current situation. Sometimes all psychological factors that, as it were, from the inside, from a person determine his behavior, are called personal dispositions. Then, respectively, one speaks of dispositional and situational motivations as analogues of internal and external determination of behavior.

Internal (dispositional) and external (situational) motivation are interconnected. Dispositions can be updated under the influence of a certain situation, and the activation of certain dispositions (motives, needs) leads to a change in the subject's perception of the situation. In this case, his attention becomes selective, and the subject perceives and evaluates the situation in a biased way, based on current interests and needs. Therefore, any human action is considered as doubly determined: dispositionally and situationally.

The orientation of the personality in psychology is the cumulative union of its needs, abilities, desires, beliefs, interests, ideals, values ​​and interests. Together, all this forms the meaning of life for a particular person. Gives you a reason to get up in the morning and move forward. Psychology has long been trying to understand the ways in which personality orientation is formed. It tries to determine exactly how a person receives all these installations.

The orientation of the personality in psychology explains many of its motives and motives. They are unstable and constantly influence each other. At the same time, only one component is dominant, which determines the main line of human behavior. Also, all of them are united in the motivational sphere and form a system.

The orientation of personality in psychology - what determines a person's desires

The paradox lies in the fact that human life begins to suddenly acquire meaning only when faced with limitations. One should not wish for opposite things (like driving a good car and walking). It's pretty easy to explain everything. Initially, a person resembles an ordinary radio receiver. When all waves are received simultaneously, white noise is obtained. However, when filtering out all unnecessary channels, it begins to transmit and receive information. With all this, something is laid initially, despite the fact that these same channels can sometimes change very much, the core will always remain the same.

Basic forms of orientation

It is worth highlighting the main forms of personality orientation in psychology:

All these forms in one way or another form the properties of personality in psychology. Personality is characterized by motives, secondary and dominant. The latter are determining human behavior, which is why they are the most stable.

Since not all needs can be satisfied in principle, they can take many forms. The result depends on the person's awareness of their goals.

The problem of personality in psychology - as scientists see it

The problem of personality has occupied many well-known psychologists. Thus, the greatest contribution was made by L. I. Bozhovich and A. N. Leontiev.

L. I. Bozhovich argued that at a certain moment a person can reach the maximum of his development and harmonize with the outside world. Thus the personality is formed. After that, a person begins to interact not only with the people around him, but also with the world as a whole. It is necessary to track the stages at which a personality is formed, as well as to consider the factors that can influence its development.

A. N. Leontiev managed to prove that the human personality is capable of being born twice. This happens for the first time in preschool age, and the second - in adolescence. During this period, the basic beliefs, worldview, attitude to the world, and values ​​are formed. They determine what a person will become and how he will relate to the world.

Orientation of personality in psychology - a system of stable motives (video)

In metric certificates they write,

where a person was born, when he was born,

and they just don’t write why he was born

M. Safir

Orientation occupies the most important place in the structure of personality.

PERSONALITY ORIENTATION- a system of needs, motives, interests, beliefs, ideals, value orientations of a person, giving his life meaningfulness and selectivity.

Orientation acts as the highest level of personality, which is socially conditioned to the greatest extent, most fully reflects the ideology of the community in which the person is included.

NEED- the need felt by a person for something that lies outside him, it manifests the connection of a person with the outside world and his dependence on it.

In addition to the items necessary for existence, there are those whose presence is not necessary, but are of interest to a person. Ideals rise above needs and interests.

Motives are directly related to needs.

MOTIVE - incentives for activities related to the satisfaction of the needs of the subject.

Motive is sometimes briefly defined as a conscious need. Those. as needs are recognized and objectified, they become motives.

Orientation includes two closely related points:

a) subject content, since the focus is always a focus on something (interests, goals, values);

b) the mental tension that arises in this case (energy generated by unsatisfied needs).

Real behavior is rarely caused by a single motive (a person goes to work because of money, and because of self-affirmation, and because he likes work, and for many other reasons). Such a complex conditionality of behavior in psychology is called polymotivation.

There are three main types of personality orientation: personal, collectivistic and business.

Personal orientation - is created by the predominance of motives for one's own well-being, the desire for personal superiority, prestige. Such a person most often happens to be busy with himself, his feelings and experiences and reacts little to the needs of the people around him: he ignores the interests of employees or the work that he must do. In work, he sees, first of all, an opportunity to satisfy his claims, regardless of the interests of other employees.

Focus on mutual actions- takes place when a person's actions are determined by the need for communication, the desire to maintain good relations with colleagues at work, study. Such a person shows interest in joint activities, although he may not contribute to the successful completion of the task, often his actions even make it difficult to complete the group task, and his actual help may be minimal.

Business orientation - reflects the predominance of motives generated by the activity itself, passion for the process of activity, disinterested desire for knowledge, mastering new skills and abilities. Typically, such a person seeks cooperation and achieves the greatest productivity of the group, and therefore tries to prove a point of view that he considers useful for the task.

It has been established that persons with a predominant focus on themselves have the following character traits:

More busy with themselves and their feelings, problems;

Make unreasonable and hasty conclusions and assumptions about other people, also behave in discussions;

They try to impose their will on the group, others do not feel free in their presence.

People with a predominant focus on mutual action:

Avoid direct problem solving;

Give in to group pressure;

Do not express original ideas and it is not easy to understand what such a person wants to express;

Do not take the lead when it comes to choosing tasks.

People with a predominant business orientation:

Help individual members of the group to express their thoughts;

Support the group so that it achieves the goal;

Easily and clearly express their thoughts and considerations;

Take leadership when it comes to choosing a task;

Do not shy away from directly addressing the problem.

The third level of the system is the general (dominant) orientation of the interests of the individual. It is formed on the basis of higher social needs

and represents a predisposition to identification with a particular area of ​​social activity. For some people, we find the dominant orientation of interests in the sphere of professional activity, for others - for families, for others - for leisure (hobbies), etc.

The highest level of the dispositional system is formed by the system of value orientations towards the goals of life and the means of achieving them. It is formed on the basis of the higher social needs of the individual (the need for inclusion in the social environment) and in accordance with the lifestyle in which social and individual values ​​of the individual can be realized. It is this level that plays a decisive role in self-regulation of behavior.

All elements and levels of the dispositional system are not isolated from each other. On the contrary, they closely interact with each other, and the mechanism of interconnection, according to V. A. Yadov, should be considered as “a motivation mechanism that ensures the expedient control of the personality’s behavior, its self-regulation.”

The most important function of the dispositional system is to regulate the social behavior of the individual. The behavior itself is a complex structure, within which several hierarchically arranged levels can be distinguished.

The first level is behavioral acts, reactions of the subject to the current objective situation. Their expediency is determined by the need to establish adaptive relations between the environment and the individual.

The next level of behavior is a habitual action or deed, which is formed from a number of behavioral acts. An act is an elementary socially significant unit of behavior, the purpose of which is to establish a correspondence between a social situation and a social need.

A purposeful sequence of actions forms behavior in a particular area of ​​activity, which seems to be the most significant for a person. For example, a pronounced professional behavior that realizes itself in the style of professional activity.

Finally, the integrity of behavior in various spheres of human life is the actual manifestation of activity in its entirety. Goal setting at this level is a kind of "life plan".

Completing the characterization of his concept of personality, V. A. Yadov emphasizes that “dispositional regulation of social behavior is at the same time dispositional motivation, that is, a mechanism that ensures the expediency of forming various states of readiness for behavior. At the same time, the regulation of social behavior must be interpreted in the context of the entire dispositional system of the individual.

The life path of the individual as a space for the development of the individual.

One of the main principles of psychology is traditionally the principle of development, which singles out its variability as the main characteristic of the personality. Talking about the variability of personality and its constant development is becoming more and more relevant due to the increasing variability of the modern world. Technological and social changes that took decades in past centuries can now occur in a matter of months or even weeks. The acceleration and complication of all aspects of human life sharply exacerbates the contradictions between the personality and the conditions of its existence. In a situation where traditional guidelines for personal development and moral norms are being lost all over the world, in a situation of vague social priorities, a person himself must decide what to strive for, what to consider important in his life, and what is secondary. These decisions are often determined not so much by the general characteristics of age as by the experience of experiencing the eventful, key moments of a person's individual history. That is why it is necessary to identify the properties of the life path in connection with the problem of personality and its development..

Personal life path

To study personality development in the context of a person's individual history, or life path, in Soviet psychology one of the first to suggest S.L. Rubinstein .

It was he who spoke for the first time about a person as a subject of the life path - a person who is able to consciously, actively and independently determine his own destiny. At the same time, the development of consciousness, according to Rubinstein, is mediated by practical reality. He writes that "through the appropriate organization of individual practice, society forms both the content and the form of the individual consciousness of a person." But there is also an inverse dependence of activity on the properties of the subject, for example, on hereditary prerequisites and, of course, on the needs, abilities and character traits that have developed in the history of the individual.

This position led Rubinstein to his famous formula: "external through internal." Then, in order to understand exactly what characteristics of activity can be expected from a particular subject in a particular situation, it is important to study the purely individual life history that this subject has. Thus, we will not only study the characteristics of the individual's activity, but also understand him. essential personality characteristics. The scientist emphasizes that the human personality "finds its final expression in the fact that it not only develops like any organism, but also has its own history."

In a report at the All-Union Conference on Pedagogical Sciences (April, 1941) S.L. Rubinshtein develops the idea that "the effect that a teacher observes after any pedagogical event ... is never the result of an isolated pedagogical influence; it is always a product of the entire development of the child, due to some extent to his entire life path" . With this example, Rubinstein shows how the principle of "external through internal" is embodied in pedagogical practice. In this sense, events ("accidental" or someone planned) become significant precisely depending on the "internal" conditions of the individual, including the history of the entire personal development, on the significance that this event has personally for a particular person.

According to Rubinstein, "due to the fact that external causes act only through internal conditions, the external conditioning of personality development is naturally combined with its "spontaneity." Everything in the psychology of an emerging personality is somehow externally conditioned, but nothing in its development can be derived directly from outside influences." It is precisely in this connection that Rubinshtein does not agree with Vygotsky's theory of interiorization, objecting to "the transformation of a person into a teacher's creature." However, this criticism seems to us not entirely appropriate, since two other ideas are closely connected with the idea of ​​internalization in Vygotsky's theory: about the social situation of development and about the zones of actual and immediate development. After all, it is precisely these theoretical provisions of L.S. Vygotsky emphasizes that the impact of external conditions on a person is always mediated by his internal attitude towards them.

Thus, the theoretical positions of S.L. Rubinstein reveal their enormous fruitfulness by emphasizing the "internal" factors of development, due to the conditionality of these factors by individual history, which also has its own "events" - the key moments of the individual's life, and also due to the understanding of the individual as the subject of his life path.

The concept of S. L. Rubinstein about the personality as a subject of the life path developed further in Soviet psychology B. G. Ananiev. Deserve, in particular, attention to his ideas about the transformation of the individual into the subject of his own development through the formation of a life plan in the mind of a person. This life plan is a certain system of personal dispositions, which is the logical conclusion of personality development in puberty / transitional age, and includes a set of value orientations that characterize the complex system of a young man's relationship to himself, to the natural and social world, to his future. The content of adolescence is precisely the process of forming one's individual life plan, which often has an intimate personal meaning for a young man.

Independence, subjectness in personal development, of course, depends, paradoxically as it may be formulated, on the social situation in which a person finds himself. The dialectic of the relationship between personality and environment B.G. Ananiev is shown through the existing connection between the interindividual structure to which the personality belongs and the intro-individual structure of the personality itself: In turn, complexes of personal properties that have formed and become stable formations regulate the volume and measure of activity of social contacts of the individual, influence the formation of one's own development environment.The restriction or, moreover, the rupture of the social ties of the individual disrupt the normal course of human life and may be one of the causes of neurosis.". Thus, the structure of personality, according to Ananiev, is the result of social development, "the effect of a person's entire life path."

L.I. Antsyferova, K.A. Abulkhanova-Slavskaya, N.A. Loginov and others.

So, L.I. Antsyferova, discussing the methodological problems of developmental psychology, indicates that the development of the personality is the main way of its being, which, consequently, the personality "constantly extrapolates itself into its future, and projects its distant future onto its present." She also notes that the process of personality development is accompanied (among other changes) by the expansion of "the value-semantic relations of a person to the world, realized in his creative activity, communication, aesthetic experience ...".

These value-semantic relations are dynamic in nature. And even being in a latent form, when for a sufficiently long period of time they are not exposed to the changed circumstances of life, they “function, so to speak, at a subdominant level. They are characterized by functional development with their own microphases and microstages, passing at a certain stage into structural development. Note that this description partly reveals the mechanism of the personogenic situation of development. After all, before the emergence of a personogenic event, many personal formations function and mature at a “subdominant” level, that is, in a hidden form. The changed situation drastically changes the “balance of personal forces” and previously unclaimed personality traits that were, so to speak, in the shadows, come to the fore.

In works K. A. Abulkhanova-Slavskaya it is noted that the integral structures of the personality (character, talent, orientation, life experience) are formed and manifested in the life of a person. The need to introduce the concept of "life activity" is substantiated due to the fact that "in order to reveal the specifics of personality development, in contrast to a simple change, an analysis of its "movement" in life activity is required. The latter is that" space "and that scale of personality analysis in which it is actually captured development; life activity is also the "time" in which personality changes are carried out, there is a division into "present", "past" and "future". This time line of the implementation of life activity is characterized by a continuous reverse influence of the results of the previous stage on the next. And such reverse the impact of life's achievements on a personality, as K.A. Abulkhanova-Slavskaya formulates, "the multiplication of life's achievements by its own increasing possibilities" are already secondary conditions for its development. where the head is).

A kind of quintessence of the "Soviet" theories of personality development in the context of the life path is the work ON THE. Loginova"Personal development and its life path". And as a result of the discussion of this group of theories, we offer the logic of personality development, which the author presented in the above article.

Briefly, it looks like this:

Life path - the history of individual development; this development is possible only in society;

Society determines the essential moments of the life path and is the macro-environment of human development;

The characteristic of society is the way of life; through the way of life, direct connections of the individual with the macro environment are carried out;

The way of life develops as a result of the actions of the individual; its individualization goes along with the creation by the personality of its own development environment;

Personal development is determined by the way of life not directly, but indirectly - through the psychological style of the individual's life;

The subjective side of changes in the environment, that is, changes in their significance for the development of the individual, is fixed in the concept of “the social situation of development” (according to L.S. Vygotsky);

The individual lifestyle is stable, but there are such turning points in the biography of a person that cause significant changes in lifestyle; these moments are biographical events;

An event is the basic unit of a person's biography, an event is a moment of life, although it may have a preparatory phase and long-term consequences; the event is discrete, limited in time compared to the evolving circumstances of life;

The immediate psychological consequences of events arise in the form of mental states that reflect the subjective content of the events and correspond to the character of the person;

There is a close relationship between states and character: mental states cumulate, become characteristic; in this is the remote effect of a life event;

Man develops in the direction of increasing the subjectivity of life; it is a product of biography, because biographical events have objective consequences and may, in their origin, not depend on a person, but at the same time, as the personality develops, its role in its own destiny increases; it has been proved that in the course of the life path the "proportion" of biographical events associated with the individual's own activity grows.

This sequence of reasoning, while recognizing the dynamic nature of the life path, ignores, however, the same dynamic, often instantaneous, changes in the personality itself. In our opinion, this does not happen by chance: the fact is that the absence of a concept that adequately reflects a certain phenomenon leads to ignoring the phenomenon itself. In this case, in order to designate a node of phenomena in personal development, reflecting the scale, instantaneity, uniqueness, integrity and sociocultural nature of changes due to the sensitivity of the individual to them and the event of the life path, it is advisable to use the concept of "personogenic situation of development". After all, what is not named simply does not exist. Paraphrasing the well-known saying of L. Wittgenstein (“the boundaries of my language define the boundaries of my world”), we can state: the boundaries of psychological terminology determine the boundaries of psychological reality.

Among Western concepts First of all, attention is drawn to humanistic psychology, but in that part of it, in which the problems of personality development were studied in the context of her life path.

The most striking figure in this direction is Charlotte Buhler. Her first works were devoted to the study of the inner world of the personality of adolescents and young men on the basis of their diaries. Later, she declared the life of a person to be an individual history, the dynamics of which is the life path. One of the main works of S. Buhler is the monograph "The life path of a person as a psychological problem", written in 1933.

To determine the main factors influencing the development of the personality, she singled out a number of sides or aspects of life. The first line is a sequence of "external" events, it is a line of change in the objective circumstances of a person's life; the second line describes the dynamics of experiences, values, the changes of which are "internal" events; Buhler's third line of analysis is the results of human activity, the level of objectification of consciousness. The study of numerous biographies of various people allowed Buhler to put forward the idea of ​​the multi-phase life path of a person, of which, in accordance with her concept, there were five. The first phase covers the age from 16 to 20 years and is characterized by the presence in the inner world of a young man of plans and hopes, which are sketches of possible paths in later life.

The very process of choosing life goals and paths, according to Buhler, is often accompanied by confusion, uncertainty and, at the same time, a thirst for great things. In the second phase (from 16-20 to 25-30 years old), a person tries himself in different types of work, makes acquaintances in search of a life partner. The third phase comes after 30 years, when a person finds his vocation or just a permanent occupation. In the fourth phase, an aging person experiences a difficult age of biological decay, leaving work, reducing future life time. The path to self-realization ends, self-determination ceases to function. In the fifth phase (after 65-70 years old), old people live in the past, eke out an aimless existence, so Buhler does not classify the last stage of life as a life path proper.

Buhler's position is criticized in the literature, which defines a clear division of events into external and internal, since the lines of external and internal events stretch in parallel, without intersecting, and it is not possible to detect their connection. This explains the need and possibility of more specific research, which consists in establishing this connection, namely, the conditionality of changes in internal instances (which act as "internal" events) by "external" events (the establishment or destruction of friendships, the death of a loved one, conflicts with parents, with teachers, with loved ones, etc.)

Also, within the framework of humanistic psychology, a German psychologist developed his concept of personality development Hans Tome. This concept was called by him "a biographically based cognitive theory of personality". As a psychologist of a humanistic orientation, H. Tome notes that the uniqueness of a person "can be understood not at all within the framework of genetic programming, but based on the fact of an active "dialogue", the interaction of a child, adolescent or adult with the social world around him. Tome also discusses the problem of personality constancy and variability, which is important for developmental psychology, and states that changes in personality structure are more dependent on "those environmental factors that are the framework for the active interaction of the individual with his situation."

Very fruitful for describing ways of living life events is the theory of "thematic structuring" by Tome, which "sees a close connection between the motives and value orientations that dominate in a certain situation, on the one hand, and internal and external actions, on the other." That is, the peculiarities of the perception of real situations are largely due to the dominant "themes" of a person. The concept of "theme" Tome considers as a synonym for the concepts of "value" and "significance".

The next link in his theory is the idea of ​​"techniques" of being. Even Theophrastus in his "Characters", to which Thome refers, for the first time singled out different types of people according to the criterion of their dominant technologies of existence. By the way, both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche continued this method of analyzing people in their works. Techniques of "being" are forms of a person's reactions to life circumstances, his actions, which are able to change both the life situation, and himself, and even the direction of his own thoughts. At the same time, Tome emphasized that the meaning of each technique lies in the topic that it serves. A specific combination of "techniques" and "themes" form certain development styles.

So, on the basis of longitudinal studies, Tome revealed the following developmental styles for the period of youth (14-18 years old)::

a) increasing problematization, that is, constant searches and questions about the meaning of traditions, and so on;

b) increasing adaptation to the norms existing in society;

c) alternation of high problematization and good adaptation in different periods of development;

d) increasing dependence on artificial stimulation (for example, drug addiction, alcoholism).

Thus, the studies of H. Tome postulate the main parameters of personality development, which have a socio-historical conditionality. The most significant are such developmental parameters as "themes" ("significance", value orientations) and "techniques" of existence (ways of responding to changing life circumstances). Here the connection between the events of the life path of people and the actual system of their personal dispositions is quite obvious.

Among foreign theories stating the importance of the influence of past events in a person's life on his actual mental life, perhaps the most famous is psychoanalysis. However, in understanding the past events of a person's life as the only factors of his development, the activity of the personality itself is nullified. However, this did not prevent some scientists working in the mainstream of psychoanalysis from formulating positions valuable for the psychology of the life path. These scientists are primarily Eric Erickson. His theory describes the development of personality and the periodization of life from birth to old age (see more on this in section 2.2). The central theme in this theory of personality development is the study of identity, which Erickson considered as a psychological task of each age. For example, a young man who has acquired the ability to generalize is faced with the task of combining everything that he knows about himself as a schoolboy, son, sportsman, friend, boy scout, newspaper man, and so on. He must collect all these roles into a single whole, comprehend it, connect it with the past and project it into the future. (Recall the idea of ​​a poly-role personality structure outlined in Section 4.1.)

Also, according to Erickson's views, personal development is the constant overcoming of a crisis that is specific to a given age. At the same time, the crisis is not a catastrophe, but a critical point of increased vulnerability and at the same time expanding opportunities. The more crises on the path of life will be successfully overcome, the more successful will be the development of the individual.

Thus, we can conclude that the process of personality development in the aspect of the life path can be studied from different theoretical positions. It should be noted that the concepts of the life path of S.L. Rubinshtein and other scientists who developed it (B.G. Ananiev, N.A. Loginova, etc.). Very valuable are the views of S. Buhler, who noted that the unit of a person's life path is an event, H. Tome, who developed ideas about the "themes" of existence and "techniques" of responding to crisis events. The problems of self-determination, personal identity, discussed in the works of E. Erickson, make it possible to reveal the nature of many personal dispositions of a person. A more complete understanding of the development of the individual throughout the life path can be obtained by studying its significant events.

The concept of "life path" is key to the psychology of personality, if we understand personality as a historical entity. “With the help of this concept, we can understand the nature of the experience of those events that became decisive in his biography,” writes L. A. Pergamenshchik.

Life path events

The concept of "event" in psychology was transferred from everyday life and, since it was not subjected to rigorous analysis, still retains an element of an everyday concept.

This term is most often used within event-biographical approach, as well as situational approach.

A feature of the first theoretical direction is the recognition of the uniqueness of the life path of each person. This uniqueness is determined by the way events are experienced. The event-biographical concept emphasizes the multidirectionality and discontinuity of the life path.

A feature of the situational approach is the study of situational determinants (factors) of behavior. This direction was developed within the framework of interactionist psychology, which declared the description, classification and analysis of stimuli and situations, as well as the study of the interaction of the individual and the situation in behavior, as its main functions. In fact, the situational approach developed in polemics with "personologists" who defend the primacy of personality traits in predicting behavior. Recently, in the development of the situational approach, as noted by J. Forgas, two trends have emerged: first, the emphasis that was previously placed on the physical or ecological environment is now noticeably shifting to the social or cultural environment; secondly, if earlier in most theories situations were considered as objective, measurable entities, now the theories have become more cognitively and phenomenologically oriented, one of the main points in them was the emergence of a situation as a perceived phenomenon.

Nevertheless, a significant drawback of the situational approach continues to be the laboratory nature of the ongoing research, which makes it problematic to compare events in a person's real life and situations selected for research purposes.

The situational approach studies a situation (event) in the form of both a simple (stimulus) factor and an increasingly complex (situation, environment) phenomenon. "As the most complex and interesting concept on this continuum, the concept of "life situation" appears. When it is introduced, the subject of study of the situational approach merges with the subject of psychology of a person's life path. And already from the standpoint of this approach, active research work is being carried out both in domestic and foreign psychology.

In Soviet and post-Soviet psychology, these issues are studied within the framework of the direction known as the "life path of the individual" (S.L. Rubinshtein, B.G. Ananiev). The biographical method is used to study the life path (B.G. Ananiev). Within the framework of this method, the methods "Psychological autobiography", causometry, etc. have been developed. The main unit of analysis is the event, since it is considered as the simplest element of the life path.

The number of causal relationships in which life events are included determines the significance of the event. But the last fact is undeniable, since there are other types of relationships between events (and not just causal ones), as there is a significant event that has little to do with others.

In psychiatric sources, one can also find a description of the results obtained using the biographical method, since the clinical history is the most common form of autobiography. But here the emphasis is on the role of various life events in the onset and course of the disease.

A significant number of works that exist on the problems of the impact of events on personal development are characterized by specificity. So, in the study of life situations, the greatest attention is paid to stressful life events and ways to cope with them. Concept " coping strategy"(coping) is understood as a process of constructive adaptation," as a result of which the given person is able to cope with the requirements presented in such a way that difficulties are overcome and a feeling of growth of one's own capabilities arises. A change in the scale of values, a quick demolition of stereotypes, a crisis of self-awareness fit into an extremely significant characteristic for building an image of the world - instability of the social situation. New realities require not only adaptation to it, but coping with it, that is, the creation of appropriate patterns of behavior.

The process of overcoming difficulties proceeds as follows: a) there is a "primary assessment" of the situation - a cognitive process with emotional components; b) evaluate their own capabilities, including possible support from others; c) on the basis of failures or new information, one can come to a tertiary assessment of the problem, including a new formulation of the problem and new alternatives of behavior.

We note here that coping with a difficult event may require a restructuring of the personal system or some of its levels. The rigidity of this structure cannot lead to effective adaptation. Therefore, in research on constructive coping strategies, one could do emphasis on the relationship of overcoming and development.

And already relying on this approach, we can distinguish three options for the consequences of a person’s collision with a difficult life event:

Consolidation of attitudes, beliefs and value orientations that justified themselves, which stabilize in the face of new requirements (in the internal dialogue, this can be represented as follows: "I was right");

Further development of existing dispositions, personality traits, caused by the insufficiency of the current level of personal structure ( “It turns out that life is richer than I thought about it!”);

Destruction of programs of behavior, especially in the case of completely unusual, completely new or very difficult requirements, which can be felt as "losing yourself", "losing the meaning of life" ("I'm good for nothing") when the results of previous stages of personal development are depreciated ( “When I figured out what I can really achieve in this life, I realized what little things I have been doing all this time”).

The destructive impact can be so great that the process of destruction becomes irreversible, leading to pathology, to accentuation. K. Leonhard, and then A.E. Lichko in his studies showed that personality accentuations can develop under the influence of a special kind of mental trauma or difficult situations in life that place increased demands on the most vulnerable place in the character.

This, however, is an extreme option. As a rule, having felt the beginning of this process, the person performs hard work, which could be called the process of "finding oneself." This attitude to life's trials was recorded by F. Nietzsche: "That which does not kill me will make me stronger."

The main contradiction that the personality faces is the contradiction between the motivational sphere and the changed "external" factors, which, given the existing regulatory system (the existing personal potential), it cannot resolve. That is, first of all, attitudes, value orientations, the entire dispositional system, which "served" the regulatory mechanism of the individual's life, are put under attack. As a result of resolving this contradiction, a person can switch to a qualitatively new way of life: that which served as an occasion and reason for experiencing, is reincarnated as a result of the reaction of overcoming into an internal experience, the awareness of which will regulate further principles, create new values ​​and a program of life activity.

Obviously, in this sense, M.K. Mamardashvili wrote about a person that he is "the only creature in the world that is in a state of constant rebirth ...", and M.M. Bakhtin formulates the idea of ​​incompleteness, incompleteness of a person, his non-coincidence with himself. Calling a person an "infinite function", the author emphasizes the constant movement in which a person is, the "fluidity" of the phenomena of his inner world.

Numerous studies of psychological stress adjoin the group of theories of overcoming (coping). From the physiological understanding of stress as a non-specific (that is, the same, regardless of the stimulus) reaction of the body to any external influence, they are now moving to the recognition of the specificity of the reaction in the sense that it is carried out to a significant stimulus. It is with the help of the concept of "significance" that one can explain the differences in the effects on different people of similar events. That is, a person is involved in the experience of an event through its meaning.

Stress theories assess the relationship between major life changes and the extent to which they affect the body. T. Holmes and R. Rahe created a scale-questionnaire of recent experience, which is widely used at the present time. This scale contains a list of 38 life changes (events) in health, work, family, personal life, financial sphere (see Table 5.1). Events here can be both with an emphasis on objective circumstances (change of place of study, place of residence), and on subjective ones (changes in personal habits, making important decisions related to the future). The subjects evaluated the events in points corresponding to the severity of the stressfulness of the events, using the “marriage” event as a sample, which had a pre-score of 500 points. After that, the points obtained for each event were divided by 10 and called them "life change units" (life change units (LCU)). The total score will serve as an indicator of the severity of life stress. Similar “thermometers” for determining the level of stress were also developed by other researchers.

The orientation of a personality is a set of stable motives, attitudes, beliefs, needs and aspirations that orient a person to certain behavior and activities, the achievement of relatively complex life goals. Orientation is always socially conditioned and is formed in ontogeny in the process of education and upbringing, acts as a personality trait, manifested in a worldview, professional orientation, in activities related to personal passion, doing something in their free time from their main activity (for example, fine art, exercise, fishing, sports, etc.). In all these types of human activity, the orientation is manifested in the peculiarities of the interests of the individual: the goals that a person sets for himself, needs, predilections and attitudes, carried out in drives, desires, inclinations, ideals, etc.:

Attraction - an insufficiently complete conscious desire to achieve

Anything. Often the basis of attraction is the biological needs of the individual;

Propensity is a manifestation of the need-motivational sphere of personality,

Expressed in the emotional preference for a particular type of activity or value;

Ideal (from the Greek idea, prototype) - an image that is the embodiment

Perfection and a model of the highest goal in the aspirations of the individual. The ideal can be the personality of a scientist, writer, athlete, politician, as well as the morphological characteristics of a particular person or traits of his personality;

Worldview - a system of views and ideas about the world, on the attitude

Man to society, nature, himself. The worldview of each person is determined by his social existence and is evaluated in a comparative comparison of the moral views and ideological views adopted in society. The combination of thinking and will, manifested in the behavior and actions of a person, leads to the transition of a worldview into beliefs:

Persuasion is the highest form of personality orientation, manifested in a conscious need to act in accordance with one's value

Orientations against the background of emotional experiences and volitional aspirations;

Installation - the readiness of the individual for a certain activity,

Updated in the current situation. It manifests itself in a stable

Predispositions to a certain perception, understanding and behavior of the individual. The attitude expresses the position of a person, his views, value orientations in relation to various facts of everyday life, social life and professional activity. It can be positive, negative or neutral. With a positive attitude, phenomena, events and properties of objects are perceived benevolently and with confidence. When negative, these same signs are perceived distortedly, with distrust or as alien, harmful and unacceptable to a given person.

The setting mediates the influence of external influences and balances the personality with the environment, and its knowledge of the content of these influences makes it possible to predict behavior in appropriate situations with a certain degree of certainty;

Position - a stable system of human relations to certain

The sides of reality, manifested in the corresponding behavior. It includes a set of motives, needs, attitudes and attitudes that the individual is guided by in his actions. The system of factors that determine a person's specific position also includes his claims to a certain position in the social and professional hierarchy of roles and the degree of his satisfaction in this system of relations;

Goal - the desired and imagined result of a particular activity

A person or a group of people. It can be close, situational or distant, socially valuable or harmful, altruistic or selfish. A person or a group of people sets a goal based on needs, interests and opportunities to achieve it.

In goal-setting, an important role is played by information about the state of the issue, thought processes, emotional state and motives of the proposed activity. Target fulfillment consists of a system of actions aimed at achieving the expected result. Orientation is formed in ontogenesis, in the process of training and education of young people, in preparing them for life, professional and socially useful activities, serving their homeland. Here it is important that the younger generation learn that their personal and family well-being, achievements in various fields of activity and social status are interconnected with their readiness to serve their people and the state in which they live. There are three main types of personality orientation: personal, collectivistic and business.

Personal orientation - created by the predominance of motives of one's own

Welfare, the desire for personal superiority, prestige. Such a person most often happens to be busy with himself, his feelings and experiences and reacts little to the needs of the people around him: he ignores the interests of employees or the work that he must do. In work, he sees, first of all, an opportunity to satisfy his claims, regardless of the interests of other employees. Orientation to mutual actions - takes place when a person's actions are determined by the need for communication, the desire to maintain good

Relationships with colleagues at work and school. Such a person shows interest in joint activities, although he may not contribute to the successful completion of the task, often his actions even make it difficult to complete the group task, and his actual help may be minimal.

Business orientation - reflects the predominance of motives generated by the activity itself, passion for the process of activity, disinterested desire for knowledge, mastering new skills and abilities. Typically, such a person seeks cooperation and achieves the greatest productivity of the group, and therefore tries to prove a point of view that he considers useful for the task.
It has been established that persons with a focus on themselves have the following character traits:
more preoccupied with themselves and their feelings, problems
make unreasonable and hasty conclusions and assumptions about others
people also behave in discussions
trying to impose their will on the group
those around them do not feel free in their presence
Reciprocal people:
avoid direct problem solving
succumb to group pressure
do not express original ideas and it is not easy to understand what kind of person
wants to express
do not take the lead when it comes to choosing tasks
Business people:
help individual group members express their thoughts
support the group to achieve the set goal
easily and clearly express their thoughts and considerations
take the lead when it comes to task selection
do not shy away from addressing the problem directly.

Orientation of personality and its types

Experts identify three types of orientation that cover the main areas of human life, but along with them, there are other options. Let's consider both of them.

1. Personal orientation. This orientation is built on the motives of personal well-being, the desire for victory, superiority. Such a person has little interest in other people and their feelings, and all that interests him is to fulfill his needs and desires. Most often, they are characterized by such character traits as concentrating on themselves, attempts to impose their will on others, a tendency to make hasty and unjustified views about others.
2. Focus on mutual action. In this case, we are talking about a person whose actions are determined by the need for communication, the desire to maintain good relations with people. This person is interested in joint projects, relationships. Typically, this type of person avoids direct problem solving, succumbs to group pressure, refuses to express incomprehensible ideas, and does not seek leadership.
3. Business orientation. Such a person is easily carried away by the process of activity, strives for knowledge, mastering new skills. This person will definitely express his point of view if it is important for solving the problem. Usually this type of people helps others to formulate an idea, support the group, easily express their thoughts, and can lead if the solution of the problem requires it.
4. Emotional orientation of the personality. Such a person is focused on feelings and experiences, and possibly on his own, and possibly on the experiences of others. Such an orientation may correspond to the need for glory, and the need to help others, and the interest in the struggle and superiority. In addition, such people often like to solve all sorts of complex intellectual problems.
5. Social orientation of the individual. This type is inclined to serve the fatherland, the development of one science, etc., seeks to realize himself as much as possible, since this will benefit his country. Such people can be directed by the intellectual type (to discoveries, achievements), by the enterprising type (such people make excellent businessmen), etc.

Knowing what is meant by the orientation of the personality, and this simplest classification, you can easily determine the orientation of each of your acquaintances.

Features of personality orientation

There are additional aspects of orientation, each of which corresponds to any area of ​​​​life:

1. The morality of everyday behavior depends on the level of social value and the social significance of relationships for the individual.
2. The purposefulness of the individual depends on the diversity of the needs of the individual, the range of interests and the certainty of the central ones.
3. The integrity of the individual depends on the degree of stability of relationships, as well as consistency and adherence to principles.

Such features additionally characterize the general orientation of the personality and give certain character traits.

Orientation of personality and motivation of activity

In domestic psychology, many authors considered the orientation of the personality through the concept of activity motivation. At the same time, different authors understand the orientation of the personality in different ways:
- "dynamic tendency" by S. L. Rubinshtein,
- "meaning-forming motive" by A. N. Leontiev,
- "dominant attitude" in V. N. Myasishchev
- "the main life orientation" of B. G. Ananiev,
- "dynamic organization of the essential forces of man" by A. S. Prangishvili.
Nevertheless, all authors see in directionality one or another set of stable motives that guide the activity of the individual and are relatively independent of the current situation.

Forms of personality orientation

The orientation of the individual is always socially conditioned and is formed in the process of education. The orientation is greatly influenced by attitudes that have become personality traits and manifested in such forms as:

At the heart of all forms of personality orientation are the motives of activity.

attraction

Attraction is the most primitive and - in its essence - a biological form of orientation. From a psychological point of view, attraction is a mental state that expresses an undifferentiated, unconscious or insufficiently conscious need. Ordinarily, attraction is a transient phenomenon, as the need represented in it either fades away or is realized, turning into desire.

Wish

Desire is a conscious need and desire for something quite definite. Desire, being sufficiently conscious, has a driving force. It clarifies the goals of future action and the construction of a plan for this action.
Desire as a form of orientation is characterized by awareness not only of one's need, but also of possible ways to satisfy it.

Pursuit

Striving is desire backed by will. Striving is a well-defined motivation for activity.

Interest

Interest is a specific form of manifestation of a person's cognitive need. Interest ensures the focus of the individual on understanding the meaning and goals of the activity, thereby contributing to the orientation of the individual in the surrounding reality. The presence of interest largely explains the presence of a special ability in a person - the mind.
Subjectively, interest is found in the emotional tone that accompanies the process of cognition or attention to a particular object. One of the most essential characteristics of interest is that when it is satisfied, it does not fade away. As a rule, interest develops, evolves, generates new interests corresponding to a higher level of cognitive activity.
Interest is the most important motivating force to the knowledge of the surrounding reality. Distinguish:
- direct interest caused by the visual appeal of the object,
- mediated interest in the object as a means of achieving the goals of the activity.
Stability, breadth, content of interests is the most important personality trait, one of the cornerstones of a person's personality. Having said about the interests of a person, we thereby draw a fairly accurate psychological portrait of him.

inclination

In dynamics, interest breeds inclination. Interest is a relatively passive contemplation of an object of interest, propensity is an active contemplation, the desire to connect one's activity and one's life with this object.
In many ways, interest develops into a propensity due to the inclusion of a volitional component. Propensity - the orientation of the individual to a particular activity. The basis of propensity is a deep, stable need of an individual for a particular activity.
In a sense, we can say that the propensity is interest in activities.
Interest and inclinations are a factor in the rapid development of an individual's abilities.

Ideal

The ideal is the objective goal of the inclination of the individual, concretized in the image or representation. The ideal is what a person strives for, what he focuses on in the long term. Ideals are the basis, the "bricks" of a person's worldview. A person judges other people by his own ideals.
The ideal is one of the arguments in the function of a person's self-esteem.

outlook

Worldview - a model (picture) of the world. If, for example, interests, inclinations, or ideals may not be connected with each other, then the most important feature of a worldview is its integrity. A holistic worldview allows a person to live "smoothly": moving, for example, to a new area, he knows that the same laws of physics or chemistry will operate there, people in this area may differ slightly, but they will still be people (they talk, have physiological needs, etc.). A holistic worldview allows us to consider the world as a complex system of cause-and-effect relationships.
A worldview allows a person to plan his activities for many years ahead: he knows that a lot can change over the years, but the basic laws by which the world exists will remain unshakable.

Belief

Belief - a system of motives of the individual, prompting her to act in accordance with her views, principles, worldview. Beliefs are based on conscious needs that encourage a person to act, form her motivation for activity.

Characteristics of the motivational sphere

Motive - an incentive to activity associated with the satisfaction of the needs of the subject. Motive - the reason underlying the choice of actions and deeds, a set of external and internal conditions that cause the activity of the subject.
The motive is the fundamental "brick" of such a complex process as motivation. Motivation is the designation of a system of factors that determine behavior:
- needs,
- motives,
- goals,
- intentions
- aspirations, etc.
Motivation is also a characteristic of the process that stimulates and maintains behavioral activity at a certain level. Motivation is usually considered as a set of psychological causes that explain human behavior, its beginning, direction and activity.

The influence of orientation on the motivation of activity

Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

Internal (dispositional) and external (situational) motivation are interconnected. Dispositions can be updated under the influence of a certain situation, and the activation of certain dispositions (motives, needs) leads to a change in the subject's perception of the situation. Attention becomes selective, and the subject perceives and evaluates the situation in a biased way, based on current interests and needs.
Depending on the inclinations of a person, his worldview and other forms of orientation, he may be either more prone to internal motivation or external.

Awareness-unawareness of motives

A motive, in contrast to motivation, is something that belongs to the subject of behavior itself, is its stable personal property, which induces certain actions from within. Motives can be:
- conscious
- unconscious.
People with developed ideals, worldview, adequate beliefs, as a rule, are driven by conscious motives in their actions. The complexity of the inner world, the abundance of psychological defenses can lead to the fact that the main drivers will be unconscious motives.

Quantity and quality of needs, interests, inclinations

Plants that need only certain biochemical and physical conditions of existence have the least needs. A person has the most diverse needs, who, in addition to physical and organic needs, also has spiritual, social ones.
Social needs:
- human desire to live in society,
- the desire to interact with other people,
- the desire to benefit people, to participate in the division of labor,
- the desire to understand other people and social processes.
The more qualitatively different needs a person has, interests, inclinations, the more versatile and flexible his activity. A purely human quality is the ability to combine several different interests in one's activity at once.

Ability to set a goal

The goal is where the activity begins. The more versatile a person is, the more developed he is as a person, the more accurate and original he manages to set his goals.
The presence of bright ideals can encourage a person to set complex, far-reaching goals.
The goal is the main object of attention, which occupies a certain amount of short-term and operative memory; it is connected with the thought process unfolding at a given moment in time and most of all possible emotional experiences.

Having an ideal of achievement

If a person has an ideal of achievement, he will develop motivation to achieve results, he will love to set goals, will strive to achieve his goals, will learn from his own and others' mistakes.

Having an ideal of courage

A brave person, or at least one striving to be courageous, is not afraid of difficulties; The structure of the activity of a brave person is very different from the structure of the activity of a timid one: the first one usually looks forward, the second - back and to the sides. The first is not prone to self-justification, self-deception. The second one is constantly looking for reasons to shirk, prone to hypochondria and self-reflection.

Flexibility

Different aspects of a person's orientation (interests, inclinations, etc.) affect the flexibility of activity. For example one person inclined to bring everything to an ideal end (perfectionist), and therefore his work lacks flexibility.

Confidence

The feeling of confidence in the performance of activities is born from the clarity of the goal, the absence of doubt. The latter are taken from the insufficient hierarchization of a person's interests and inclinations, the lack of subordination between them, and the presence of many contradictions.