Criteria of a formed personality

Author: Yu.B. Gippenreiter

What are the necessary and sufficient criteria for a formed personality?

I will use the considerations on this subject of the author of a monograph on the development of personality in children, L. I. Bozhovich (16). Essentially, it highlights two main criteria.

First criterion: a person can be considered a person if there is a hierarchy in his motives in one certain sense, namely if he is able to overcome his own immediate impulses for the sake of something else. In such cases, the subject is said to be capable of mediated behavior. At the same time, it is assumed that the motives by which immediate motives are overcome are socially significant. They are social in origin and meaning, that is, they are set by society, brought up in a person.

The second necessary criterion of personality is the ability to consciously manage one’s own behavior. This leadership is carried out on the basis of conscious motives-goals and principles. The second criterion differs from the first one in that it presupposes precisely the conscious subordination of motives. Simply mediated behavior (the first criterion) may be based on a spontaneously formed hierarchy of motives, and even «spontaneous morality»: a person may not be aware of what? it made him act in a certain way, nevertheless act quite morally. So, although the second sign also refers to mediated behavior, it is precisely conscious mediation that is emphasized. It presupposes the existence of self-consciousness as a special instance of personality.

In order to better understand these criteria, let us examine for contrast one example — the appearance of a person (child) with a very strong delay in personality development.

This is a rather unique case, it concerns the famous (like our Olga Skorokhodova) deaf-blind-mute American Helen Keller. Adult Helen has become quite a cultured and very educated person. But at the age of 6, when the young teacher Anna Sullivan arrived at her parents’ house to begin teaching the girl, she was a completely unusual creature.

By this point, Helen was quite well mentally developed. Her parents were wealthy people, and Helen, their only child, was given every attention. As a result, she led an active life, was well-versed in the house, ran around the garden and garden, knew domestic animals, and knew how to use many household items. She was friends with a black girl, the daughter of a cook, and even communicated with her in a sign language that only they understood.

And at the same time, Helen’s behavior was a terrible picture. In the family, the girl was very sorry, they indulged her in everything and always yielded to her demands. As a result, she became the tyrant of the family. If she could not achieve something or even be simply understood, she became furious, began to kick, scratch and bite. By the time the teacher arrived, such attacks of rabies had already been repeated several times a day.

Anna Sullivan describes how their first meeting happened. The girl was waiting for her, as she was warned about the arrival of the guest. Hearing steps, or rather, feeling the vibration from the steps, she, bending her head, rushed to the attack. Anna tried to hug her, but with kicks and pinches, the girl freed herself from her. At dinner, the teacher was seated next to Helen. But the girl usually did not sit in her place, but went around the table, putting her hands into other people’s plates and choosing what she liked. When her hand was in the guest’s plate, she received a blow and was forcibly seated on a chair. Jumping off the chair, the girl rushed to her relatives, but found the chairs empty. The teacher firmly demanded Helen’s temporary separation from the family, which was completely subject to her whims. So the girl was given into the power of the «enemy», the fights with which continued for a long time. Any joint action — dressing, washing, etc. — provoked attacks of aggression in her. Once, with a blow to the face, she knocked out two front teeth from a teacher. There was no question of any training. “It was necessary first to curb her temper,” writes A. Sullivan (quoted in: 77, pp. 48-50).

So, using the ideas and signs analyzed above, we can say that until the age of 6, Helen Keller had almost no personality development, since her immediate impulses were not only not overcome, but were even cultivated to some extent by indulgent adults. The goal of the teacher — «to curb the temper» of the girl — and meant to begin the formation of her personality.