Article by B.S. Bratus
The cardinal changes taking place in our country in the field of politics, economics, ideology, public morality attract the close attention of scientists of various specialties. Opinions and discussions of leading economists, lawyers, historians, and sociologists are widely known. At the same time, the psychological aspect is still obscured, the analysis of what consequences the past years have brought in the internal organization of the personality, why positive changes, the emergence of new opportunities and freedoms have simultaneously led to confusion, loss of orientation, an increase in the number of mental depressions and neuroses, a sharp increase in the level of aggressiveness, fear of the future, mass emigration from the country, etc. The lack of a serious (and at the same time quite accessible to the general public) psychological analysis of what is happening is due to many reasons, of which we will name only two main ones.
Firstly, this is the objective complexity of psychological changes, their non-obviousness, «profoundness», i.e., the performance of behavior beyond the surface that is outwardly observed or realized by the actor himself. The public demand for psychology has not yet been formed, as it were. It seems that people are not up to psychology when the store shelves are empty. The economic devastation is immediately evident, the psychological devastation of the individual can be successfully camouflaged with loud phrases, the brightness of external attributes, etc. Another reason is connected with the state of psychological science itself. The bureaucratic-command style of management has perverted many concepts, the very climate of the scientific community. Instead of scientific schools, «teams», «mafias» appeared, instead of scientific leaders — «administrators with connections», busy with holding «heights», eliminating «strangers» and promoting, placing «ours». How often have you heard the question about this or that psychologist: “Whose person is this?” (not “What kind of person is this?”, Not “What is he like as a scientist or teacher, what does he do”, etc., namely “Whose person is this?”), i.e. the head or heads of which clan he serves . The analogy, at best, with serfdom, at worst, with a bandit gang is obvious. Having then established themselves in science, or rather, in scientific and educational institutions, these «someone’s people» implanted the style they had adopted, producing new «teams», becoming their «bosses». The consequences of this decay, this psychological «hazing» will be felt in our community for a long time to come. Powerful ideological pressure and censorship did not weaken for a moment. If this yoke could probably not be felt in psychophysiology, in the study of visual perception, activity, memory, or even thinking, then in the field of personality psychology its effect was extremely detrimental, often, in fact, blocking the possibility of open research into many fundamental realities of a person’s inner life. .
For many years in psychology such topics as faith, spirituality, the meaning of life, conscience, etc. were actually forbidden (I remember how in 1984 the editor decisively crossed out the word “sin” from my book — “It is impossible, it can remind you of religion ”- and immediately told a “terrible” story about what a scolding one of the editors received “from above” for missing several such words in print.)
But now the situation is gradually changing. There is a growing understanding in society that no economic doctrines, no legally verified laws will work until the prevailing psychology of individual people is understood and taken into account. For too long, it has been propagated that everything in a person is built from below, from the material, that “being determines consciousness”, forgetting and, thereby, ignoring the power and reality of the opposite, when consciousness determines being, forms, slows down or changes it. Laws and doctrines may run ahead or lag behind, but history and culture ultimately move at the pace of the steps of specific people who make up a people, a country, a society. Therefore, the turn has come for psychology to have its say, to contribute to the understanding of the ongoing crisis and ways out of it.
The effect of the second inhibitory cause has also changed. Extremely slowly, but still, the psychological community is being transformed; in contrast to rigid administrative forms, the first free associations and associations of psychologists appear. In many ways, external censorship on the study of the realities of the soul has been removed, and the concepts of conscience, humanity, mercy, and spirituality are returning to psychology. However, one must be aware that they are by no means returning full-blooded, but sick, repeatedly slandered and renamed: over the years, humanism has become Soviet and class, mercy has become identified with medicine, spirituality is understood as attending symphony concerts and reading fiction, etc. To cure these concepts, to restore their true meaning and purpose, to bring them into line with modern life is a problem as complex as it is urgent. It is clear that the participation of scientific psychology in its development is absolutely necessary.
So, the task of understanding what happened to a particular person in our country from a professional standpoint, to understand as a terrible experiment, test, a lesson given not only to us as a lesson, but to the whole world, is becoming more and more clear before domestic psychology. I would even say that this is not a task, but a duty, because no one but ourselves, who grew up in this system and, hopefully, overcome it, will be able to fulfill this. In turn, an understanding of what has happened will provide a psychological basis for forecasts of development, forecasts of the consequences of choosing one or another specific method of moving from a society with a perverted, mutilated psychology to a society with a full-blooded, normally human psychology.
One of the main problems arising in this context is the discussion of the place of personality psychology, its various paradigms in the modern scientific, and, more broadly, in the social world. Let’s start from the concept of «social biography of science», introduced by A. G. Asmolov. Let me remind you, simplifying somewhat, the essence of it: the emerging social situation often dictates the course of science, causing one or another of its turns, one or another of its biography. This idea has too much confirmation in our sad history to try to dispute it. But I would like to ask the question, what determines this oppressive social situation itself, what determines the forceful social field in which, like iron filings in the field of a magnet, the lines of social and scientific movements begin to line up: This is by no means an idle question, but one of the key ones for self-awareness scientist, especially in critical times, like the present. Speech, ogu.e.ya, can go about two paradigms of building the world and a person in it, in the limit — about two paradigms of the universe, world-building, world-building. One can be reduced to the formula «in the beginning there was a deed», the second — to the formula «in the beginning there was a word». The first formula is most vividly embodied in Russian psychology in the theory of activity. I remember how, at lectures and in conversations with colleagues, A. N. Leontiev did not get tired of repeating: “In the beginning, it was the case, and that’s the whole point.” The universe, human creation was presented as a chain of activities that give rise to themselves, have no other beginning but in themselves, do not have, as in the Möbius strip, clearly expressed external and internal, external and internal smoothly pass from one to another. According to this paradigm, a person fell, plunged into this stream, into this host of drive belts, one way or another becoming a producer, worker, creator of the world. It is no accident for A.N. Leontiev’s concept of personality arises, is derived from activity, personality is the subject of activity. He writes in one place even more narrowly and clearly — this is the “moment of activity” [2; 159]. Drive belt torque. Of course, this is a definition of the essence, but it is now necessary in order to clearly identify, to reveal the contours of the problem.
The second formula — «in the beginning was the word» — was not seriously considered in the theory of activity, as in the materialist tradition in general. Materialism rejected this formula primarily because it was firmly connected in consciousness with the following gospel construction: “The Word was with God. The Word was God. It was in the beginning with God. Everything came into being through Him, without Him nothing came into being that came into being” (Jo 1:1-3). The red rag was that the Word was written here with a capital letter and directly identified with God, also written with a capital letter. But if we use the old postulate about the similarity of the micro- and macrocosm and bring it down to a concrete, earthly, social being, then the formula can be spelled out with a “word” with a small letter and considered, tested as a certain model of ideas about a person. According to this model, the matter arises not from itself, but from the word, idea, sound that precedes it, which then enter the matter, essentially determining its course. If, according to Leontiev, a person is a subject, a moment of activity, then here it can be considered as a subject, a moment of creation of a life-giving word, thereby joining, by the way, in the creation, comprehension, more precisely, the Word with a capital letter. If considered as a moment of activity, it somehow remains in the created world, arising and dying depending on the movement or stoppage of activity processes, then through the creative word it becomes attached to the creative world.
Having separated these two formulas, let us now try to conjugate them. This conjugation can be made through the introduction of the concept of two planes of human development — horizontal and vertical. Horizontal — the movement of activity and time, activity in time. And vertical — the semantic axis of relations to the world, penetrating time and action. The theory of activity was occupied with horizontal connections, more precisely, with the mechanisms of these connections, religion with vertical ones. Of course, both approaches involved both types of connections, but one was a figure, and the other was a background and a consequence. Religion spoke of the need for worthy, conscientious activity, but the main sacrament and life were accomplished in the depths of the heart, vertical connections, a ladder, a ladder to God. A.N. Leontiev wrote about personal meaning, expressed many important statements about it, but nevertheless considered it, in essence, as a phenomenon attributed to, closed in activity, serving it.
Meanwhile, the meeting of vertical and horizontal movements occurs at every moment of life. Life at any given moment, in fact, is this crossing, crossover, the possibility of exit, departure, flight, development both in one and in another dimension. Thus, the question of what is «in the beginning» is removed: at the beginning there is a cross, which is necessarily formed by two components — vertical and horizontal. A new beginning can be formed by shifting both vertically and horizontally. Moreover, each such displacement implies its replenishment in the adjacent area (which was beautifully shown in the works of D. B. Elkonin).
It is therefore difficult to say definitely what is the main thing in a person — how to say what is more important — the right or left wing of a bird. But if we turn to the concept, the postulation of a special personal space of human existence, then it is determined, more precisely, it is accomplished primarily in the plane of the vertical dimension. Activity can serve both memory, and attention, and thinking, and other processes that at the moment are not directly related to the individual. Only being permeated with a general semantic relationship, the activity acquires a personal connotation, the ability to reflect, to manifest a personality through itself. The personal is a vertical, realized, discovered, manifested through horizontal connections.
Based on the foregoing, the existing approaches and practices can be, albeit rather conditionally and gu.e., divided into semantic and behavioral-activity, behavioral. The former, for the most part, deal with the problem of relations to the world, with deep and apex vertical connections; the second, predominantly, with horizontal, instrumental connections. If for the former the main thing is to realize yourself in a new way, then for the latter it is to learn to live with the awareness that you have. If for the former the main value is a person and his inner world, then for the latter the initial value is the external world, already created, to which this individual must be adapted, adapted, included. It is easy to see that now in Russian psychology there is a process of shifting attention from the second to the first concepts. Behind this shift lies a more global trend in the understanding of man, which is observed in the modern world, in particular, in connection with the collapse of totalitarian ideologies — the transition from understanding a person as a cog, as a means, to understanding a person as an intrinsic value. This moment is extremely important for psychology, but at the same time conceals a certain danger.
In order to present the essence of this danger, let us return to the concept of the «social biography of science». According to this concept, science exists in a certain social force field, obeying its internal magnetic vectors. But this is based only on the position that “in the beginning there was a deed” and science falls into this “deed”, is involved like a child in the assistants of what is being done. Based on the “in the beginning was the word”, it is necessary to consider the social situation itself as a distant consequence of the word, words, conversations, signs. “Everything starts with boys talking,” A. I. Herzen wrote about the beginning of the revolutionary movement in Russia; it all started with G.V. Hegel, read to the holes in Stankevich’s circle, and burst out a century later with the bloody terror of Stalin. It all starts with a barely noticeable vertical snowstorm, which can turn into a snowstorm and a tornado. And throw these words thinkers, scientists. So science is not just a sufferer of situations, it produces their seeds, it scatters options for future change and social action. Ivan Karamazov utters a word, and Smerdyakov kills according to that word. And speaking of today’s situation, we should not take it for granted, as a frame that limits us and thus justifies us. Today we are participating in the creation of some variants of whirlwinds, which, if unfolded, can lead to the most serious consequences.
So, what dangers and problems for psychology can accompany the transition from understanding a person as a means to understanding a person as an intrinsic value. Perhaps the main thing seems to be the lack of development of the limiting categories, vectors of personality development. More precisely, these categories, vectors have been worked out, thought out, but in other areas than psychology. In theology, philosophy, ethics. And although the majority will now agree that psychology should not remain soulless and soulless, but real history tells a different story: the categories of spirit and soul have been developed separately from scientific psychology for a hundred years. Meanwhile, it is impossible to move further in research, education, correction of the personality without including these categories in the psychological apparatus. On the other hand, the choice, acceptance, connection of psychology to these categories should be considered an extremely responsible step, because these are just the words that, acquiring deeds, can lead to the most serious consequences.
To briefly illustrate this dependence on the choice of limiting categories and vectors of development, we use the following. When discussing the painting by N. Roerich “The Messenger”, L. N. Tolstoy, apparently, not so much about the painting itself, but as a parting word to the then young artist, said: “Has it happened in a boat to cross a fast-moving river? You must always rule above the place where you need it, otherwise it will blow you away. So in the field of moral requirements, one must always steer higher — life will blow everything away. Let your messenger hold the rudder very high, then he will swim” [4; 109]. Let us present what has been said in the form of a simple scheme: the river of life events with its drifting downstream, the subject © and the ultimate goal that he sets (A), towards which he directs his aspiration, against which he checks his path. But in reality, this goal is not achievable, in reality, he, demolished by being opposed to morality, will always find himself downstream at point “B”.
Let us now compare, with the help of this scheme, some paradigms of personal existence in order to show how this or that choice is not indifferent to the fate of psychology.
The humanistic paradigm considers a person as a self-valuable and self-justified being. The source of development is located in the subject itself, the initial analogy is that of an acorn, a grain. The grain will grow where and how it needs to in the presence of appropriate soil, moisture, air. A person will grow in the direction that is best for him in the presence of attention, acceptance, empathy, etc.
The theological paradigm decisively brings the source outside. If we use the metaphor of grain, then a person is not like a grain, from which, when watered and fertilized, everything will grow by itself, but the soil, on which the grains of the Divine word must still fall (the parable of the sower), and if they do not fall, they will be filled with others, it is possible — demonic. As for the movement from oneself, then, apart from filth, a person cannot give birth to anything from oneself. Let us quote a modern Orthodox theologian: “The Christian view of man is based on the assertion of two positions that are equally unacceptable to humanistic and secular consciousness: the “given” god-like greatness of man (Genesis 5,1:3) and the “given” by such a deep fall that God himself needed to come, in order to resurrect the image that has fallen before” [57; XNUMX]. A normal person, a “new person”, the embodied truth of a person is Christ, while an “ordinary” person, who is obviously spiritually flawed and sick, can become a normal, genuine person only by believing and partaking in the life of Christ, “imitating” Him. The latter circumstance is extremely important, because if for all positive knowledge the question of questions is “WHAT is truth?”, then for religious consciousness this question sounds like “WHO is truth?”, WHO is the truth, and through turning and joining to WHOM life will become true. , will become Life, but not death.
How does the cultural-historical tradition correlate with these approaches? In terms of its construction, its structurally meaningless moment, it (no matter how it may seem, perhaps strange) is much closer to the theological view, since, firstly, the source of development here is also taken outward; secondly, the real carrier of this source is, for the most part, another person. What is to be assimilated, perceived, lies outside the subject itself, more precisely, between the subject and the teaching principle, forming a living connection, a voltaic arc about two poles. Every function is initially a function of two people, emphasized L.S. Vygotsky. “The principle of shaping the soul is the principle of shaping the inner life from the outside, from another consciousness…,” wrote M.M. Bakhtin [1; 88].
Let’s get back to the diagram. From the humanistic paradigm (acorn, grain, correspondence to nature, “everything in a person”, “everything from a person”, etc.) it follows that the destination, the goal of the movement will be determined, correspond to each given person, his situation, try on, correlate with it, grow out of it. This, it would seem, is the only possible, true, humane, if not for one circumstance. The structure of life is such that its course carries it much lower. There are too many examples of how human worship turns into misanthropy. Hence the need to bring out samples, standards, which, as we noted, unites both theological and cultural-historical paradigms. True, in the latter case, psychologically, one can only speak so far about the experience of organizing the assimilation, the formation of certain individual social and cultural signs, concepts, skills, etc. In the theological paradigm, we are talking about a supracultural, absolute sphere, about a holistic life , about the need to establish a psychological connection with supra-personal principles that are based outside of me and obviously not achievable by me, because only then does the necessary angle appear, the edge to the flow of life, which, of course, will inevitably “destroy”, but one can hope that it will not distort to the end the meaning of human existence.
The principle of personality correction that follows from the theological paradigm can, of course, be very conditionally represented with the help of the following analogy (the idea of which was suggested by I. Ya. Rozovsky). Imagine a sphere, a globe. The lower pole — symbolizes the starting point of growth, the birth of a person, which comes out, carries a certain plan, potentiality and promise of proper embodiment. Then life often goes far aside, leading to one or another deviation, perversion, anomaly. Each such perversion is not just a deviation from a certain model, but its own special natural path, driven by a special logic and psychology. What is needed, therefore, is not a therapy of symptoms, an adaptation to the present, etc., but a therapy of movement, of paths. The latter is possible from theological ideas only if there is a living image of the proper path, with which personal feedback will be established (one of the interpretations of the term «religion»: from «ligas» — connection, «re» — feedback), when it is chosen, accepted, believe — WHO is the truth, in contrast to the cold-rational WHAT is the truth, which does not give strength (feedback personal connection) to overcome the blowing current of life. Hence, not any self-realization is good at all, but only one whose path in the final perspective is turned, directed towards the original (in two meanings — as the beginning and end) design and meaning. And just as the meridians, leaving one point and even diverging as much as possible at the equator, nevertheless converge again at the other pole, so the life of a person, despite all deviations, must turn around, strive towards unity with the plan, with the source from which it comes and which man lives in his spiritual reality.
Let us note one more similarity between theological and activity, cultural-historical approaches — the postulate of an active, overcoming obstacles and temptations of movement towards the formative principle. We emphasize that the analysis of the internal activity of the individual, his internal growth is undoubtedly a strong, winning side of the humanistic paradigm in psychology, which reveals here many beautiful and racing patterns and phenomena. However, at the same time, activity is absolutized according to the principle “movement is everything, the goal is nothing.” The main thing is self-disclosure, and what is revealed in this case is obscured. If the cultural-historical paradigm, for the most part, takes, works out in a concrete psychological plan the component, the line of the externalization of the source of development, the outsideness of its subject, then the humanistic one emphasizes the internal component, the movement from within, without indicating the source of life, or rather, dubiously placing this source in the most isolated entity. Theological, in fact, connects, elevates and transforms these two lines — internal growth and external source.
Of course, the noted similarity between the theological and cultural-historical paradigms is by no means unconditional, like the two already mentioned above — the very removal of the principle guiding development outside and its positing in another. In fact, these similarities can only be discovered by comparing the structurally meaningless schemes of development. Their specific content in either paradigm is simply incomparable.
In activity psychology, as in psychology in general, the value aspect of development, the problem of the ultimate goals of education, and the existence of the individual in general, have not been developed at all. Where and what to ultimately lead the individual to, no one will answer plainly, and moreover, many will consider the very formulation of such a question as unscientific, biased, biased subjective, etc., to be in bad taste. was called upon to lead a personality in Soviet psychology, which was supposed to be due, we find that these values did not even reach the level of morality, the requirements of the Kantian imperative “act in such a way that the maxim of your behavior can become the rule for all mankind.” The Soviet maxim sounded — act in such a way that it satisfies the collective, the party, «personally comrade …». It was not about the formation of morality, but of class, group, party morality. The internal logic of such a development is well known: when the class is placed above the individual, this leads to totalitarianism. When a nation becomes higher than a person, this leads to fascism. (The inevitability of this logic, this psychology of the path has been repeatedly confirmed by the passing century, and one can only be amazed at the irresponsibility of those who even now provoke new repetitions of deliberately harmful movements.)
Nothing can stand above a person from earthly institutions and communities, but the paradox, the antinomy is that at the same time only that which is outside and above a person is worthy of him and can move his development. That is why the initial task of personality psychology is the conscious choice of these guidelines, and then the study of the mechanisms and patterns of ways to achieve them, as well as the mechanisms and patterns of deviations from these paths. One is drawn to remembering the traditional crossroads from Russian fairy tales, a young man standing in thought in front of a stone with an inscription: if you go to the right, you will lose your horse, to the left … bear full responsibility to society and people. It’s time to stop being a blind (at best, half-sighted) guide of the blind, but to determine your place, your worldview position and the consequences that will follow from this position. This task seems to be perhaps the most important and significant for today. Its solution can form the subject of a new area of psychological knowledge — the axiopsychology of personality. If we single out the problem of ultimate goals, the outcomes of development, then its development as a special branch can be called eschatological psychology.
Once again, we note that such problems could not even be seriously posed until recently by the open scientific press in our country, since the basic postulates of the human problem were rigidly set and controlled by ideology, and particular sciences had to proceed from some prescribed model, more precisely, coordinate, adjust to her (consciously or unconsciously) her data. Now, when the most important process of de-ideologization of science is taking place, we can finally renounce the pressure of lifeless schemes, but this does not mean, however, that the original spiritual space of the being of a person can turn out to be completely free, empty. A holy place is never empty. Whether we like it or not, it will turn out to be invariably filled, and each filling option will entail quite definite (and, apparently, fairly visible in number) options for being and the fate of personal development. Hence, a special task arises — to reflect, to realize new initial realities and their possible consequences for different levels of mental life. At the same time, we are not talking about a purely ideological, philosophical solution (although the role of philosophical culture is unusually significant here), but, in a certain sense, about an applied solution that can be applied to various particular problems of personality psychology.
After a century of separation, a new meeting of psychology and philosophy must take place. It cannot take place on the same grounds, because psychology has come a long way, has accumulated a mass of important and diverse knowledge, which has found wide application in many areas of life. This is a serious independent science, but, we have to admit, a science that in its development has not come to dock with the general problems of being, ideas about the essence and purpose of man. The natural-science approach that dominates psychology, with all its undoubted successes, has shown, however, its obvious failure in the study of the «top», in the words of L. S. Vygotsky, phenomena and categories of psychological being, such as value formations, the meaning of life, etc. the dilemma is whether this happened because the naturally oriented apparatus of psychology was incorrectly applied and all new attempts in this direction must be continued, or the fact is that this apparatus cannot, in principle, be effective in this area. From all that has been said, it is clear enough that we strongly incline towards the latter. Such a conclusion may resemble a return to Spranger’s, Dilthe’s position of dividing psychology into the natural and the science of the spirit. The first can be studied experimentally, investigated experimentally, the second — only to comprehend, understand. However, history and the history of science, in particular, does not repeat itself, or, at least, if we recall the now forgotten dialectic, it develops in a spiral. And today’s call does not mean a return to an «understanding psychology», to the old ways of relating to philosophy, to humanitarian knowledge in general. Not «back» to philosophy and humanitarian approach, but «forward» to philosophy and humanitarian approach. Indeed, over the years of the existence of scientific psychology, with its orientation, mainly, to the natural paradigm, humanitarian knowledge has by no means stood still. Therefore, a thorough analysis of modern humanitarian thought and, first of all, the achievements of philosophy (including, of course, not only secular, but also religious) is necessary. On the other hand, philosophy, having “lost” psychology a hundred years ago, has largely lost its ground, support in its reasoning about man, which largely determines its lag, the loss of a real vision of man. A new meeting, therefore, will enrich both sciences, giving psychology a worldview meaning, and philosophy a real basis for understanding the phenomenon of man.
So, it is necessary to consistently develop a modern humanitarian paradigm for studying integral forms of mental life, which, in our opinion, implies the solution of a number of tasks: the introduction of the main humanitarian categories into the theoretical-psychological and concrete-applied contexts; development of humanitarian psychotechnics, psychologically substantiated and ethically justified ways of spiritual development, formation of psychological conditions for the fullness of human existence; building axiopsychology as a special branch aimed at studying the subjective-value sphere; development of psychological aspects of the category of ultimate goals of development, education and correction of personality or eschatological psychology; comparative analysis of different types of humanitarian paradigms, reflection of the psychological consequences of a particular choice of these paradigms, etc. The implementation of each such task (of which we briefly mentioned only a few in this article) can constitute one of the interrelated areas united by the common goal of creating the foundations of humanitarian psychology .
Let us specially note that despite the external terminological proximity, we are now talking not about humanistic psychology — an already established trend in world psychology (A. Maslow, K. Rogers and others) and its development on our domestic soil, but about a new and broader approach, in which other humanitarian paradigms can be correlated, i.e., having a unit, the scale of their analysis of a holistic person, paradigms. We are talking about the construction of such a common space of being of the individual, in which different psychological languages and objects would be correlated. Of course, everyone inevitably develops his own understanding of the personality, constructs his own space, but we must not forget that in the end and in the future it is not individual, but supra-individual. Only the place and way of human life in this space are individual, but not the space itself.
The relevance and significance of the proposed approach are obvious. The entire history of the outgoing century, and in particular the experience of our long-suffering country, gives grounds for the forecast that the coming XNUMXst century will be a humanitarian century, or it will not exist at all. To promote the former in word and deed and oppose the latter is the duty of a professional psychologist, but it is possible to fulfill it only if psychological science itself is consistently humanized.
Literature
- Bakhtin M.M. Aesthetics of verbal creativity. M., 1979.
- Leontiev A.N. Activity. Consciousness. Personality. M., 1977.
- Osipov A. Theological aspects of human rights // Zhurn. Moscow Patriarchy. 1984. No. 5.
- Roerich N. K. From the literary heritage. M., 1974.