The concept of academic, applied and practical psychology. Household and professional psychological practice

Psychology is a set of scientific knowledge about the processes and patterns of human psychological activity. This science is at the intersection of philosophy and medicine, religion and physiology, as it is closely connected with both natural and human sciences.

Its objects are:

Significance of psychology

Often, the term "soul" is used to refer to the object of this science. The term "psychology" itself was introduced at the end of the 16th century by the neoscholastic R. Goklenius to denote "the science of the human soul." Psychology studies both the conscious part of the psyche and its unconscious area. This is a science that causes a huge amount of controversy. There are people who completely deny its "scientific character", calling psychologists charlatans. Some of the theories of leading scientists are perceived as absurd. For example, many laymen and some scientists are negatively disposed towards Freud's psychoanalysis with his conclusion about libido (sexual energy) as the main driving force of personality development. However, the results of the practical activities of psychologists are undeniable: for example, we can take the psychological training of intelligence agents or a successful training in the theory of sales.

Psychology emerged as a separate science around the middle of the 19th century. Prior to that, psychological problems were considered in the context of philosophy and religion. At the end of the 19th century, there was some bias towards a physiological approach to the study of the psychological aspects of personality, but at the moment this science perceives a person's personality as a harmonious combination of physiological and spiritual principles.

Today, psychology is recognized as an official science, the conclusions of psychologists are important in raising children in educational institutions, vocational guidance for young people, in court proceedings, in jurisprudence in assessing the sanity of an individual and the legality of his actions. The help of psychotherapists is recommended for solving personal problems in building a career, achieving maximum sports results, and solving family problems.

Without psychology, psychiatry (a branch of medicine dealing with the treatment of mental disorders) and psychotherapy (dealing with the problems of a healthy psyche, creating psychological comfort) are inconceivable. Psychological processes are closely related to physiological ones. For example, when frightened, palms sweat, when embarrassed, cheeks turn pink. Such processes are called psychosomatic. It is believed that psychological problems that have not been resolved for a long time become the cause of body diseases. This theory is developed in his books by the French author Liz Bourbeau.

Methods

The methods of psychological science are:

a set of empirical techniques (observation of an object, including self-observation - introspection, questioning, tests, experiments, restoration of biographical facts);
statistical (mass surveys and studies that allow you to establish average statistical indicators in order to identify deviations from the norm);
psychological impact (stress experiment, discussion, trainings, suggestion, relaxation);
physiological - using technical devices (encephalograph, tomograph, "lie detector" - polygraph, etc.).

Modern psychology is divided into academic (fundamental) and practical (applied). Accordingly, the first part studies the phenomena and processes of the human psyche, and the second one applies this knowledge in practice.

Academic psychology

The tasks of academic psychology are:

theoretical study of the psyche, the creation of theories about its laws;
definition of norm and pathology;
creation of a methodological base for practical (applied) science, as well as related areas of science - pedagogy, ethology, etc.

A huge contribution to fundamental psychology was made by such scientists as Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, Erich Fromm, J. Watson (behaviorism), Karen Horney, A.H. Maslow, E.L. Berne, Dale Carnegie, M. Wertheimer and K. Koffka (Gestalt psychology), as well as many others. Even with a cursory acquaintance with the theories of these scientists, it becomes clear that they often have a different approach to the object of psychology. The psychoanalyst will explore the unconscious, the behaviorist - human behavior.

Applied psychology

There are such branches of applied psychology:

legal;
pedagogical;
differential (studies the differences between groups of people - different classes, ethnic groups, etc.);
(describes the relationship of an individual in a group);
clinical (an extensive section, including both the study of obvious mental deviations and mild deviations, as well as psychosomatics);
developmental psychology (consists of child and youth, pre- and perinatal psychology, as well as other changes associated with the aging process - gerontopsychology);
sports psychology;
a lot others.

Interest in psychology is absolutely normal for comprehensively developed people, because any attempt to understand their own feelings is psychoanalysis. Knowledge of the basics of psychology will help to understand one's own problems, in relations with others, without it the proper upbringing of children is impossible. Sometimes the help of a specialist is required to overcome an internal or external conflict, but in many cases self-education is enough. We hope that the articles on our site will help to identify the causes of problems and solve life's difficulties.

Psychology as a science and practice was differentiated into academic, applied and practical directions, which is typical for all developed sciences. This differentiation of scientific activity is due to the difference in the goals, means, methods and results of scientific activity in one direction or another, as well as the implementation of scientific knowledge.

Academic research aimed at studying unknown objects and their properties. This is the area of the mysterious phenomena of nature, society, man and endless forms of life and the existence of matter. Cognitive activity is the main content of academic science. Non-specificity is disclosed in the relevant purposes, means, methods and results (products).

aim academic psychology is knowledge of the laws of mental activity , formation and functioning of human psychology. This goal also contains the main motivation of "academicians", associated with curiosity and curiosity, the desire to learn something new about the unknown. This is knowledge for the sake of knowledge. The pragmatic motives of a person professionally engaged in academic psychology, in this case, are associated with a career as a scientist.

Facilities cognitive activity in academic psychology are developed by the scientists themselves, who build them according to their theoretical constructs, i.e. ideas about the phenomenon being studied. In this sense, E. Boring's statement is indicative: "Intelligence is what intelligence tests measure", i.e. the researcher studies not so much the phenomenon as his own idea of it. Therefore, in psychology, there are many methods aimed at studying the same phenomena, but these phenomena are considered from a different angle. Tools of knowledge in psychological science are often named after their inventors. For example, Rorschach Spots, Cattell's 16-factor personality questionnaire, Osgood's Semantic Differential, Kelly's Repertory Grid Test, etc. They are replicated and modified in various methodological procedures. Each of the methods requires a toolkit. Working with research tools in academic science turns into a special activity "methodological experiment", aimed at the invention, testing and validation of methodological tools.

Ways research activities are comprehended as a methodology of scientific knowledge, which is objectified in the methods and technologies of cognitive activity. They constitute the content of the research process as a sequence of cognitive actions, operations and techniques. All this determines the essence of research procedures.

Product academic knowledge is knowledge system about the subject area of a particular science. In psychology, these are psychological facts, patterns of mental activity, ideas about mental organization, concepts and theories. The whole ego belongs to the fundamental problems of psychological science. In the process of their comprehension, new possibilities and methods for solving practical problems naturally open up. Academic research expands the stock of scientific knowledge needed for practical inventions and developments. The validity and evidence of scientific knowledge is the experimental method. Its penetration into psychological knowledge predetermined the emergence of psychological science in a number of other sciences (physical, biological, social).

Wilhelm Wundt can be considered the founder of academic psychology, who in 1879 organized a laboratory of experimental psychology, where systematic studies of the functions of mental reflection were carried out by an experimental method, and began special training for psychologists at the University of Leipzig.

Applied Research should resolve issues optimization of human activity in specific conditions. Applied research uses the achievements of academic research, but in relation to certain human activities. The emphasis in them is on the functions of a particular human activity.

aim applied psychology is rationalization of people's behavior and activities for maximum efficiency.

G. M. Andreeva writes that the goal of any applied research is the direct solution of a practical problem, the more or less rapid implementation of the results of this research to improve some aspects of the material or spiritual activity of society. This is what makes applied research special.

Facilities applied psychology are created specifically for individual cases of rationalized activity and behavior. These are most often modifications of the means of academic science, although there may be original inventions.

Ways applied psychology are modeling conditions, functional dependencies, human relations, motives and all other components of the human mental organization, objectified in specific activity models which is supposed to be optimized.

Products applied research are concrete optimal interaction models in the systems "man - objective world" and "man - man".

Among the founders of applied psychology, X. Munsterberg should be singled out, who at the beginning of the 20th century. laid the theoretical foundations of technological solutions in applied research of professional activity.

Practical psychology is transformed into a professional activity to provide psychological assistance to a specific person or group of people to overcome various kinds of psychological problems, to provide psychological support and support.

aim practical psychology is recreating a holistic and mentally healthy personality through psychological assistance at the request of clients.

Facilities psychological assistance are concentrated in psychotherapeutic abilities psychologist. He himself is the main instrument of his professional activity, where special knowledge, psychological talent, insight and intuition are realized in means of communication with the client.

Ways practical psychology technologies of communication and influence on clients. In form, these are psychological conversations and counseling, trainings. An important way to find targets (client problems) is psychodiagnostics. A large number of problems gives rise to many private technologies of psychotherapeutic influence. Moreover, the use of this or that technology is associated with three factors: the specifics of the client's problem, his subjective characteristics, as well as the skills of using this or that technology by a practical psychologist.

Products practical help is psychological adequacy and social adaptation of the individual.

The founder of this area of psychological science and practice can be considered Sigmund Freud, who not only developed

the basic technological principles of psychoanalysis, but also the scientific and theoretical basis of psychotherapy as a special area of medical practice. In the future, his followers, as well as representatives of the humanistic direction, in particular Carl Rogers, expanded the psychologist's practical activities to the area of interaction with clients who are not suspected of mental and personality disorders, within the framework of psychological counseling.

Andreeva G. M. Social Psychology. M., 2014.

Academic psychology- this is a system of theories, methods and research recognized by the majority of the scientific community and approved as a standard by the expert community of the state academy or other scientific specialized industry parent organization. Academic psychology is published in special Vakov journals, authoritative references, the possibility of defending dissertations and other status points are important in it. Non-academic psychology - not accepted into the academic environment or not striving to get there.

Fundamental science is science for the sake of science. It is part of a research and development activity without specific commercial or other practical purposes. applied Science- this is a science aimed at obtaining a specific scientific result that can actually or potentially be used to meet private or public needs.

Theoretical psychology studies psychological laws and, at best, develops practical general recommendations for applied specialists. Practical psychology- psychology, aimed at practice and focused on working with the population: engaged in educational work, providing the population with psychological services and psychological goods: books, consultations and trainings.

Psychological assistance can be household and professional.

Professional psychological help it turns out only by specially trained professional psychologists or professional psychotherapists, psychiatrists, if they have undergone special psychological training. Professionally competent conduct of a conversation implies high-quality listening, the ability to pause, ask questions and answer questions from another person, and master the skills of sincere empathy for another. Be sure to need knowledge of the psychology of personality, communication, small groups, including families, as well as patterns and ways of mutual influence of people on each other. A professional psychologist is obliged to follow the principles of providing psychological assistance, which ensure the protection of the rights of people who turn to him for psychological assistance and, consequently, the high efficiency of the specialist. The meaning of professional psychological assistance is not limited to temporary relief of the client’s condition, but involves helping a person in his own assessment of difficult life circumstances and in independently choosing a strategy for solving his psychological difficulties, in expanding his psychological capabilities by increasing self-esteem and self-acceptance, increasing respect and acceptance by him. other people. If the client is psychologically ready, then the psychologist can together with him identify the origin of his psychological problems; will help to make sure of the inadequacy of the neurotic methods of interaction used by him with others; will help to acquire the skills of truly human, non-manipulative communication, which will allow the client to build really healthy relationships with his "I" and with other people in the future. Working with a psychologist can help the client use their own psychological resources more effectively.

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THEORETICAL STUDIES

PRACTICAL AND ACADEMIC PSYCHOLOGY: DIVISION OF COGNITIVE STRUCTURES WITHIN PROFESSIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS

A.M. ETKIND

For Soviet psychology of the 80s. the active formation of such applied branches as psychological service in secondary and higher schools, family counseling, psychological correction, and socio-psychological training is characteristic. Being essential components of the social sphere, these branches of applied psychology will become the subject of even more intensive development in the near future. Through these branches, psychological science can make a real contribution to solving the big problems of modern life - to the activation of the human factor, to the fight against alcoholism, drug addiction, psychosomatic diseases, to overcoming the lack of spirituality and social apathy of people, to the scientific substantiation and practical implementation of fundamental changes. in the social sphere.

Thanks to the efforts of such centers of practical psychology as the Faculty of Psychology of Moscow State University, the Leningrad Psychoneurological Research Institute named after V.M. Bekhterev, Scientific Research Institute of General and Pedagogical Psychology of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR, Tallinn Pedagogical Institute, qualified personnel were trained in the country, the first really functioning psychological assistance services were organized, a number of methods of psychological diagnostics, counseling, and training were developed. However, the development of practical psychology also faces considerable difficulties. The bureaucratic resistance faced by attempts to organize psychological services, including self-supporting ones, is well known. The low psychological culture of a significant part of the population is no secret to anyone, which can complicate practical work. The currently known factors that have recently hampered the development of other applied social sciences - pedagogy, sociology, and economics - have a negative effect on the development of practical psychology.

Along with these external difficulties, the development of practical psychology is complicated by unresolved and often unconscious problems of an internal, professional nature. This range of problems is not specific to our psychology; psychologists in other countries have experienced and are experiencing similar difficulties. However, in our opinion, these problems have not received sufficient study either in our or in foreign literature. The positions that have come across come down to such true but insufficient statements as the more emotional nature of practical work compared to research or the opposition of nomothetic and idiographic approaches. From our point of view, we are talking about deep cognitive differences between practical psychology and academic psychology, caused by the fundamental originality of approaches aimed at changing a person, in comparison with approaches aimed at studying him.

Correlating the cognitive structures of practical and academic psychology is, in our opinion, of interest not only for a psychologist, but also for a science expert. The interconnection of three categorical series describing, according to M.G. Yaroshevsky , the development of science - logical, social and psychological - in relation to this problem acquires a particularly significant and at the same time quite "transparent" character. The difference in social roles, which determines the specifics of the psychological skills of professional researchers and practitioners, gives rise to a deep logical originality of professional role "images of the world" . psychology soviet counseling training

In our opinion, these intuitive differences can be identified using the classical method of categorical analysis. We mean the search for specific forms of functioning in the professional mind of such general categories as space and time, causality and probability, subject and object; on this basis, characteristic ways of describing, generalizing, and explaining the data of experience can be singled out. This apparatus dating back at least to Kant was systematically developed by the Soviet science of culture (M.M. Bakhtin, D.S. Likhachev, A.Ya. Gurevich, Yu.M. Lotman, M.S. Kagan). In our psychology, this approach was used by L.M. Wecker and in the later works of A.N. Leontiev. We have previously used a similar categorical analysis to systematize psychodiagnostic approaches to the description of subjective reality. .

In the future, we will deliberately sharpen the differences that exist between the cognitive structures of a practicing psychologist and a research psychologist, referring to them as “ideal types” and temporarily abstracting from their numerous intersections, mutual influences and intermediate options. Such an approach, carried out in accordance with the principle of binary oppositions known in the methodology of the humanities , seems to be a necessary step towards the analysis of real interactions of the distinguished structures and towards "building bridges" between them.

Space. The normative requirement in the methodology of science is the invariance of the scientific picture of the world to the frame of reference. The fundamental significance of this principle in the physical theory of relativity is known. Its equivalent in ethics is the concept of justice, which also implies the independence of judgment from the position of a particular person. The assumption that in any case there is a fair decision, the same for all interested parties, is similar to the assumption that the mass of any body is the same, no matter what frame of reference it is measured from. The ultimate formulation of this principle is the Kantian categorical imperative, which requires you to treat another in the same way as you would like him to treat you, and thereby affirming the norm of complete equality of ethical "frames of reference". Whether it is about mechanics or about ethics, the scientific picture of the world is built in a decentered space in which none of the individual points is privileged.

This principle is fully accepted by the methodology of psychological research. In the statistical processing of the results of a survey or experiment, equality prevails - data on all subjects receive the same weight, no one is privileged or deprived. The decentered space in which the research psychologist works is also manifested in the form of the final result of his work: averages, correlations, patterns refer to the entire sample as a whole and not to any individual subject. But the requirement of reproducibility of the experiment means the independence of its results from the one who conducts it. Science requires results from psychologists that are invariant to both subjects and researchers.

An example would be, say, a sociometric survey of a small group. The relationship diagram that is formed as a result of this survey describes the group as a whole. From whose point of view is this structure visible? The answer is clear - there is not and cannot be a member in the group who would give such a decentered picture. From the point of view of any member of the group (including a psychologist, if we are talking about a training group), the relationship scheme does not resemble an asterisk taken from somewhere above, but a bundle, the intertwined lines of which converge at one privileged point - in itself.

The concepts of centration and decentration of subjective space were introduced into psychology by J. Piaget. In well-known experiments, he proves that the development of cognitive structures is associated with the rejection of a personal point of view in favor of a universal, intersubjective one. However, this process is of absolute value only for science. Practical psychology is characterized by centricity of the cognitive space. In corrective or counseling work, the "world lines" of this space all converge on the client, who is its natural center. This applies in this context not only to client-centered therapy, so named by K. Rogers, but also to many other methods of psychological assistance. Of course, being centered on the client does not mean supporting his own egocentrism. Rather, on the contrary, the professional centering of the psychologist on the problems of the client gives the latter a positive model that allows him to establish decentered, equal relationships with others.

In the scientific picture of the world, such phenomena as neuroses or alcoholism, divorces or suicides turn out to be a natural outcome of the life path, the realization of certain personality traits, a reaction to general factors of the situation, etc. Like the subjects of famous socio-psychological experiments , research psychologists believe in a "just world" and see their task in revealing its underlying factors and mechanisms. For a practicing psychologist, such a decentered vision is unproductive. In uncovering the needs of his client or patient and striving to bring them into line with reality, he is more like a lawyer or prosecutor than an expert or judge. Understanding that, say, the suffering of a person in a crisis situation, as well as a drug addict in a state of withdrawal, can be fully deserved by them, should not stop a specialist in providing assistance that violates impersonal justice.

Characteristic in this regard is the situation when a client who has changed as a result of the psychologist's efforts finds himself at odds with his old environment, say, with his family. From the point of view of the researcher, this is inevitable: in a decentered world, the problem of the individual, for example, drunkenness, is a reflection of the problems of his microenvironment, and those are a reflection of even broader social problems. It is easy to see how such reasoning, for all its correctness, hinders practical action. Centering on the client allows you to untie the knots tied by the totality of the relationship of a person with his environment, without touching this environment itself. And although these solutions often turn out to be partial, their practical value both for the individual and for society is beyond doubt. The distortions that centering introduces into the image of the world turn out to be the conditions for the effectiveness of practical intervention.

Time. In the philosophy of science, time is sometimes recognized as its most difficult problem. An attempt to conceptualize time in the theory of relativity led to a logical equation of time and three spatial dimensions. However, the fourth dimension has a property that radically distinguishes it from the first three: it is irreversible. If in space you can move up and down, forward and backward, then in time you can only move forward. Another form of turning time into a reversible variable is the oscillatory models adopted in any natural science. Time in them does not create new and does not destroy the old, but, contrary to its essence, periodically returns everything to its place. In the humanities, the problem of time is often formulated as a contradiction between synchronic and diachronic, structural and historical descriptions. Without going into this most difficult question, we only note that the more scientistic, close to the ideals of science is this or that model in linguistics, ethnography, mythology, the more time freezes in the image of reality it constructs, the more this model abstracts from diachronic processes that occur in the structure fixed by it. A. Bergson singled out yet another method of “fighting against time” characteristic of science - “cinematic description”, in which development appears as a sequence of static frames and time is deprived of its continuous dynamic character.

The assumption of time reversibility is characteristic of many branches of experimental psychology. Psychodiagnostic methods are designed in such a way that the measurement results are as similar as possible at any given time. The measure of the inaccessibility of the test to the influence of time - reliability - in classical psychometry is equated in its value to the reliability of the test, its validity, and data changes over time are considered as random errors. In more modern approaches, it is assumed that it is possible to separate such indicators that do not depend on time at all (features), and indicators that change reversibly over time (states). Those socio-psychological experiments that demonstrate changes in certain elements of behavior, such as attitudes, would seem to lead to irreversible consequences. But even here it is usually assumed that with the help of the so-called debriefing (clarification of the tasks and the course of the experiment after it has been carried out), it is possible to return a person to his previous state, to turn time back. Only in stage theories of development, embodying the "cinematic" approach to time, does it retain its driving character. But here, too, only abrupt transitions from stage to stage are recognized as irreversible, while inside them time freezes.

Practical psychology, on the contrary, all exists in time. This is not about the form of work, in which time also plays a huge role, but about its content. What happened, happened and will not come back. What happened must be accepted and appreciated, be responsible for it and move on. Thus, the time of practical psychology is irreversible. Recognition of the irreversibility of losses, the inevitability of change, the irreversibility of growth is the subject of a significant part of psychological work with family conflicts, educational difficulties, and crises.

The tragic irreversibility of time is the central existential problem. It is no coincidence that the opportunity to stop a beautiful moment turned out to be the most valuable and most inconceivable gift of the devil for Goethe. The rigid and creative nature of time is a reality whose resistance creates innumerable personal problems; its true acceptance leads to maturity.

The feeling of the irreversibility of time is the logical basis for the perception of those changes that psychological intervention causes in a person as stable, genuine and necessary. Belief in the seriousness of these changes is an essential feature of the practical psychologist's professional makeup—a feature not often shared by his scientifically oriented colleagues. In many works in which the effectiveness of psychotherapy and other types of psychological assistance was tried to be evaluated using scientific methods, it was often noted that, for example, a significant proportion of neurotic disorders are cured with the help of psychoanalysis, but a considerable proportion of them disappear with time and without any therapy. We do not think that such a result (contrary to the opinion of such authorities as H. Eysenck, who laid the foundation for these studies using control groups) means the ineffectiveness of psychoanalysis. From our point of view, it means the efficiency of time. The best psychotherapist, K. Horney wrote, is life itself. Time, which "heals everything," is a natural ally of the practical psychologist.

Causality. Causal explanation is one of the most important tasks of science. In the social sciences and the humanities, the ideal of scientific explanation, its strategic goal, is to reveal the causal role of objective actions that are uncontrollable by the subject and circumstances that are not conscious of him. Of course, subjective factors are also taken into account, but still science is the more science, the more rigorous, deep and general, independent of someone's will and choice of determinants it discovers. Discoveries in the field of sociology of culture, behavioral psychology of learning or biological psychiatry are major milestones in their respective fields of knowledge, illuminating objectively scientific patterns in what was considered the element of arbitrary decisions and subjectively motivated actions.

But the explanation of subjective phenomena by objective circumstances cannot satisfy social practice. How to encourage children to diligence, if their attention is determined by the existing system of reinforcements? How to inspire people for social transformations, if they are determined by the stage of economic development? How to treat patients if their illness is possibly determined by biological mechanisms, which we are currently unable to influence? It is no coincidence, of course, that it is precisely with this topic that “eternal questions” are connected, to which there is no unequivocal answer - questions about free will, about the role of the individual in the historical process, about the role of the unconscious.

In reality, it is the subjective factors that are given paramount importance whenever change is required from the subjects of the action. The practice of social or psychological intervention requires attributing existing problems, difficulties, symptoms not to objective, but to dispositional reasons controlled by the subject. For practice, unlike science, it is not so important what actually causes the phenomenon; it is much more important to find ways to influence him. If the causes of the phenomenon are completely objective, then the psychologist has nothing to do with it; to the extent that they are subjective, potentially controlled by the subject, they are also subject to our influence. Since in reality subjective and objective factors are most often intertwined and mixed in unknown proportions, a cognitive strategy that attributes key problems to subjective variables turns out to be pragmatically effective.

It is this strategy that is characteristic of practical psychology. In any state of a person, there are parameters that can be effectively controlled by him with qualified assistance. This is true even for the most severe somatic and mental illnesses - cancer, schizophrenia, etc. (which is the basis for the organization of psychological services in the respective clinics). This is all the more true in those cases where the very nature of the disease includes a large, but, as a rule, indefinite share of psychogenic conditioning, as, for example, in cases of neuroses, alcoholism, psychosomatic diseases. This also applies to those cases in which dispositional variables interact with factors of the social and economic situation, as in the vast majority of personal, family and pedagogical difficulties.

In causal terms, the strategy of psychological assistance can be described as a systematic reversal of the client's attributions. The latter most often explains his problems by uncontrollable factors of the situation, while the psychologist shows that these problems are actually caused by the client's own dispositions, feelings and actions, which he himself is able to change if he is aware of them. In response to the typical “I can’t”, the psychologist says: “You don’t want to…”. Of course, reattribution will be the more effective, the more it is adequate to the real reasons for what is happening, but in real conditions of uncertainty, such a strategy is optimal.

For example, school phobias in a modern school certainly have a considerable component of situational determination. The psychologist, however, cannot change the work of the teacher, the work of the school, or the work of the larger social systems which all bear their share of responsibility for the child's distressing experiences. But he is able to reattribute these experiences and create a new subjective context for them. By showing the child and his parents that the fear of school is a manifestation of his more general anxieties that manifest themselves in the family, and even here, in a psychological consultation, the psychologist will help him feel his fear as something coming from himself, and not from the teacher or classmates. Further work may allow attributing this fear to pedagogical errors or personal problems of parents.

Interestingly, clients' defensive attributions often match those that a research scientist would give to their problems. In both cases, the main direction of the causal explanation is the objective factors of the situation independent of the subject.

In social psychology, the fundamental attribution error is known, which generalizes various data on the differences between the explanations that they themselves give to people's behavior and those explanations that social psychologists give him on the basis of their experimental models. According to L. Ross, the fundamental mistake is that people systematically overestimate the dispositional causes of behavior and underestimate the situational factors that influence it. But if we accept as truth those ideas that are explicitly or implicitly shared by practical psychologists on the basis of their experience, then typical attribution errors will turn out to be exactly the opposite; from this point of view, people tend to systematically underestimate the dispositional causes of behavior and refer too often to situational factors. It turns out that the “naive subjects” maintain by no means a naive balance between the alternative versions presented by scientific psychology, which emphasizes the objective, situational causes of behavior, and practical psychology, which attaches primary importance to its dispositional, subjective factors. Since both variants of professional psychological consciousness perform real functions that in their primitive, "amateurish" form face each person in his communication with other people, the intermediate forms of ordinary psychological consciousness are, apparently, a compromise optimal for its functioning.

Probability. The probabilistic structure characterizes the models created within such different disciplines as physics and genetics, economics and ethnography. In such models, only processes occurring at the mass, population level matter. What happens to a single electron, a single gene or a single ruble is beyond the scope of science. Billions of electrons, hundreds of genes, millions of rubles - only at this level is a meaningful description, explanation, prediction possible.

Research psychologists, as a rule, also construct their subject as a mass sample. The statistical apparatus allows you to build models that characterize the entire sample as a whole, but apply to each subject only with a certain probability. Naturally, those branches of psychology whose task is the scientific understanding of the individual face methodological difficulties.

For example, the best tests for social competence have a validity in the range of 0.5-0.7. In accordance with elementary statistics, this means that they give a deliberately correct assessment in 25-49% of the subjects, and in relation to the rest they give a random assessment, that is, sometimes correct, sometimes not. How can we determine in relation to which individual our characterization is true, and in relation to which it is incorrect? It is impossible to do this without going beyond the scope of this test. But when a psychologist writes a conclusion, he seems to forget about the probabilistic nature of his methods and makes a decision for which he is 100% responsible. From a strict statistical point of view, such confidence is unfounded. However, it is necessary and can hardly be disputed by statistics - after all, we are talking here about practical psychology.

In contrast to the stochastic nature of the professional consciousness of psychologists-researchers, the attitude of a practicing psychologist to the problems of probability and chance can be characterized as hyperdeterminism. In the world that is constructed in a psychotherapeutic session, in a training group, or even in a psychodiagnostic conclusion, there is no place for accidents. The phenomena here have a certain meaning, an exact explanation, a rigid coupling with each other. Value can be given to everything - the person's response and silence, big events in his life and instantaneous changes in facial expression, slips of the tongue and deceptions, lateness and arrivals before the appointed time, dreams and test data, what the client feels, and what how he sits. This superficially indiscriminate attempt to interpret single responses in terms of cognitive schemas of indeterminate validity makes a terrifying impression on the scientist-minded specialist. Is it possible to attach serious clinical significance to one answer if more than one generation has already been working to learn how to extract meaning from 566 answers of a clinical questionnaire?

Differences in cognitive strategies also lead to differences in value orientations and norms of professional behavior. If among practical psychologists the most respected by colleagues is the one who can find the deepest meaning in the smallest detail, then among academic psychologists, professionalism, on the contrary, is seen as the ability to collect the largest amount of data in order to find the most modest, most cautious pattern in them.

In this context, the source of endless disputes around the validity of diagnostic methods used in practical work, such as projective tests, becomes clear. Hundreds of papers on attempts at psychometric validation of the Rorschach test have yielded conflicting, mostly negative results. Supporters of strict scientific methods deny the reliability of such tests and the possibility of their use in psychodiagnostics. Practitioners, on the other hand, believe in the information they receive through their methods and continue to use them. Discussions of this kind were held in the United States, and in Western Europe, and in the USSR, and nowhere did the parties manage to convince each other. These problems of psychodiagnostics convincingly illustrate the difficulties of dialogue between representatives of science and practice in psychology, the deep divergence between their positions. But the difficulties of mutual understanding do not mean its impossibility or meaninglessness. Psychodiagnostics knows many examples of the productive use of methods that have a purely scientific origin in practical work, as well as the fruitful use of the ideas of clinical psychology in the development of psychometric tests.

Generalization form. In various areas of scientific psychology - psychophysics, psychometrics, attribution theory - the idea was expressed that the empirical results of psychological research fit into a data matrix like "people x stimuli", "people x tests", "people x situations". Summarizing, we can call this matrix subject-object. Different people form the rows of this matrix, different objects form its columns, and the cells contain the results of measurements or the answers of the subjects. Data processing accepted in experimental psychology consists in analyzing data matrices by their columns: correlations between different scales are calculated; a factorial classification of test questions is built; the effects of the influence of different levels of the independent variable are clarified. In all these cases, the rows of the data matrix describing different subjects are averaged, abstracted, and disappear from the final result of the study, which is formed in terms of relations between its object columns. There is an inter-subject generalization of data, there is a search for trans-individual invariants of human behavior.

In practical psychological work, the database is also ascertained and used. Despite all the dissimilarity of these data and the methods of obtaining them from those accepted in scientific research, it would be a big mistake to assume that reliable psychological data are not needed in practical work, that they are collected unsystematically, or that their generalization is absent here. Databases in practical work are, of course, more intuitive, loose and formless than in scientific research. However, they are also formed by peculiarly ordered columns and rows. Lines are different people with whom the psychologist works. The columns are of a less familiar nature. Each professional develops a set of questions, reactions, and even whole situations drawn from tradition and personal experience. Their core is to some extent repeated from client to client. Undoubtedly, the identity of these samples is many orders of magnitude lower than the reproducibility of the conditions of a psychological experiment, but it is also of considerable importance for professional work.

The psychologist observes the client in one subjective situation, in another, third, creating these situations together with him. In the process of this work, the psychologist is looking for something in common that the client shows in different situations, that he himself does not notice and that can be revealed and realized only through such a systematic comparison. It is this goal that is pursued by such characteristic actions of a psychologist as questions like “Remember, in what other circumstances did you experience a similar feeling?” or interpretations like "Do you treat me the way you treated your father?"

This is also a generalization, but a generalization of subjective situations, and not a generalization of individual subjects, generalization by rows, not by columns of a conditional data matrix. In practical work, there is a search for trans-situational invariants of behavior. Interpretation is the opening of the trans-situational invariant. Working through it, the psychologist shows the client meaningfulness, an unconscious sequence of behavior that includes both its part and the key problem of the client. Having passed the path of collecting data and generalizing them, having a new understanding of his feelings and actions, a person gets the opportunity to change his internal invariants.

description methods. For a psychologist working in science, the only possible way of description seems to be measuring the values of certain variables, such as extraversion or intelligence in describing personality, positivity or intensity in describing attitudes, etc. For each area of study, a multidimensional space is constructed, its axes are scaled, measurement procedures are introduced, and, finally, any specific object belonging to a given area can be characterized by a group of numerical values corresponding to its coordinates in this space.

Such a parametric method of description is of little use in practical work with people. It's not even that the parametric description is too complicated or inaccessible for a non-professional. People easily and skillfully operate with metric scales in certain areas of interaction, for example, in commodity-money relations. However, in psychological work we are constantly confronted with the inability of the human cognitive apparatus to scale feelings and relationships. The reverse side of this is the inability of psychological scales to the tasks of communication and regulation of these phenomena. The unevenness of the possibilities of subjective scaling in relation to different areas of experience is an interesting question for research. In interpersonal perception, for example, experiments show a much greater importance of qualitative processes (reference to prototypes, binary or ternary classification, etc.) than quantitative ones (rankings, and even more so metric scales).

Practical experience indicates the presence of non-metric codes designed for internal and external communication of subjective experience and representing an effective alternative to quantitative scales. "You treat your husband like a child." In an effort to help a woman feel the real nature of her relationship to her husband, the psychologist likens two different objects, two relationships. This is a metaphor. Attempts to parametrically describe the relationship to her husband (for example: “You consider him a weak person”, “You care too much about him”, etc.), grasping his different sides, turn out to be less integral and expressive.

The multidimensionality and uncertainty of the subjective space makes the description of its points as intersections of independent parameters difficult. But along with orientation by azimuths, there is orientation by reference points. Instead of determining the “cardinal directions” and calculating deviations from them, a practical psychologist prefers to focus on the key points of the subjective space and tie the desired, problematic objects to these “anchors”. Metaphorically equating the problem area of the subjective space with the one about which there is a priori agreement with the client, the psychologist builds into this space a new "bearing structure" that can change the meaning of the problem area and affect the nature of its awareness.

So, the codes used in practical work, in contrast to the parametric codes of psychological research, are metaphorical. With their help, one can designate any, including directly non-verbalized, area of subjective space, while avoiding its scaling. The possibilities of metaphorical coding demonstrate the semantic differential and other diagnostic methods that use the language of metaphors as a natural way of expressing subjective phenomena. Outside of psychology, the universal possibilities of metaphors in the communication of emotional experience are illustrated by the practice of art. Metaphors of various sensory modalities - literary, pictorial, musical - are here the usual means of familiarizing people with the inner experience of the artist.

The nature of the metaphors used in the work of a practical psychologist is also varied. The symbols involved can have a zoological, mythological, or simply everyday character; they may be based on age or gender roles; may be general or idiosyncratic for a given group, family, or individual. An essential source of metaphors are the subjective reactions of the psychologist himself, arising in communication with this person. Since the client's problems have arisen and must be solved in communication with third parties, the psychologist's experiences here are symbolic, instrumental in nature, being a means of identifying and visually embodying the client's unconscious feelings and actions. Equally metaphorical are the transfer experiences addressed to the psychologist and embodying the client's life problems.

The image of a person and the nature of discourse. For psychology, the most important parameter of the professional "image of the world" is the "image of a person". Therefore, the parameter that could sum up the analysis of the cognitive structures of the “two psychologies” is the specificity of generalized ideas about a person, which determines the nature of the ways of dealing with him and describing him.

Science as a professional form of cognitive activity turns a person into an object of knowledge. Applied branches of science, such as medicine, make a person at the same time an object of transformative activity. The ontological subjectivity of a person, being the subject of traditional interest on the part of scientific psychology, hardly fits into the forms of scientistic knowledge. Scientists such as M.M. Bakhtin or A.N. Leontiev, in many of their statements reflected the internal complexity of this contradictory situation.

The attitude of the scientist as a subject of science to the subject as to its object leads to monologues of scientific and psychological discourse. Scientific texts describe psychic reality as it is seen from any point of view, as it is always and everywhere, as it has become due to objective causes that manifest themselves in a sea of accidents. The representation of a person as an object and the monologue of his description, apparently, generalize the characteristics of scientific psychological knowledge identified earlier - decentered space and reversibility of time, attribution to uncontrolled variables, stochasticity, transindividual generalizations, parametric descriptions.

Practical psychology, in its search for alternative ways of seeing a person and dealing with him, also did not pass by the categories of subject and object. Some areas of practical psychology are characterized by a more or less conscious tension between the ultimate goal of help, which is to increase the self-sufficiency, freedom, subjectivity of a person, and the means of this help, in which this person is in the role of an object of influence. Other directions generally deny the usefulness of any means and methods in which a person is deprived of internal activity and the possibility of choice, and require the psychologist, first of all, to support the subjectivity of the client. The addressing of the actions of the subject-psychologist to the subject-client means the dialogic nature of these actions. Stylistic dialogicity is preserved in professional and educational literature on practical psychology.

The dialogical nature of psychological assistance, its addressing to the subject are its most important distinguishing features, in which its other characteristics are brought together. Centricity and irreversibility of space-time, attribution to subjective variables, hyperdeterminism, transsituation and metaphor - all these, in fact, are different aspects of the dialogic orientation to another subject, different ways of identifying and developing his subjectivity.

The description of the "images of the world" of practical and academic psychology was carried out by us from the position of a researcher. We sought to avoid identification with any of the professional roles by decentering the space in question; described the situation as something given, static and justified by objective social causes; considered the described phenomena to be mass-like, typical for all or most specialists in the relevant field; conducted the analysis in parametric terms. It is time, however, to look at the state of our science from a different, practical point of view.

Is the current situation normal? Are the distinguished differences not symptoms of a chronic illness, the essence of which can be seen in the deep splitting of professional consciousness and in the absence of adequate communication between the “halves” that diverge from it? Profischizia is the semi-serious name we would suggest for this disease. And, if the logical, social and psychological symptoms of proficiency in psychology are recognized as significant enough, what will be the ways of treating this syndrome?

In search of a hypothetical answer to the last question, we will attempt to shift the paradigm by taking the perspective of a practitioner seeking to develop a program of assistance. Despite the importance of the objective conditions for the divergence of the "two psychologies", subjective factors have played and are playing their role. Among them are insufficient and outdated forms of professional training of practical psychologists, on the one hand, and the lack of practical experience of most psychologists - researchers and teachers - on the other (the latter circumstance unfavorably distinguishes their professional path from that which the classics of Soviet psychological science went through ( see, for example, ). Mutual arrogance, misunderstanding of the meaning of each other's work, resistance to the recognition of intradisciplinary contradictions, avoidance of dialogue - these are some of these subjective factors. The condition for overcoming them is the development of a language in which comparative analysis can be understood and understood by representatives of both areas of the psychological profession. As with any subjective problem, a careful analysis of the present state of affairs is in itself a means of therapeutic help.

The development of psychological science and practice, apparently, does not follow the path of their competitive struggle, mutual absorption or leveling of differences between them. The condition for genuine and irreversible development is the formation of a dialogue between academic and practical psychology, in which these areas, while maintaining the deep originality of their social goals and cognitive structures, would gain the possibility of mutual understanding and complementarity. A metaphor for such a mutually necessary dialogue, which does not erase, but develops fundamental differences between partners, is the interaction of the hemispheres of the human brain.

Literature

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3. Leontiev A. I. Psychology of the image // Vestn. Moscow State University. Ser. 14. Psychology. 1979. No. 2. S. 3--13.

4. Etkind A. M. Description of subjective reality as a task for the study of individuality // Psychological problems of individuality: Nauchn. message To the seminar-conference. young scientists (Leningrad, May 14 - 17, 1984) / Editorial Board: B.F. Lomov and others. Issue. 3. M., 1984. S. 44--50.

5. Yaroshevsky M. G. History of psychology. M., 1976.

6. Yaroshevsky M. G. On the role of defectological research by L.S. Vygotsky in the development of his general psychological concept // Defectology. 1985. No. 6. S. 78--85.

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