Correspondence regarding the article “Man as an organism and man as a person”, interlocutors N.I. Kozlov and Oleg Ivanovich Motkov
O.I. Motkov:
Good evening! Man — it’s always! — whole. Both the body and the personality at the same time. Especially if by personality we understand the fundamental commanding, controlling part of the psyche and the organism as a whole (the psyche is a special organ of a living organism). We are all already born as human beings, with a built-in psyche and a part of it — a personality.
This is how I imagine the correlation of the organism, psyche and personality, from a natural-science point of view.
N.I. Kozlov:
Always glad to hear from you, Oleg Ivanovich!
Whether a person is born as a person or not is a debatable issue, and this article was not devoted to this. Let’s take an adult who has a «personality» — who can already be a personality. So, are there many among them who use this ability, who live as a person?
No.
Even if we were all born with an organ or the ability to be a person, if at the same time someone lives only as an organism, he does not live as a person. I wrote about the way of life, and not about what is built into a person. Not about what a person has, but how a person uses or does not use his capabilities.
I forgot who wrote this: “I cannot agree that man is a rational animal. Man is an animal predisposed to the use of the mind, but does so rarely. Jonathan Swift?
O.I. Motkov:
It’s nice to get a sensible answer. As a practitioner, you ask yourself the question more: “How and with what does a person live?” (which potentially everyone has). Those. move to the evaluative plane of consideration of the question of personality. In fact, after all, everyone uses the personality as a guide and organizer of their behavior, even animals and plants. Behind your reasoning, there is an implicit opinion that one of the types of use of the control apparatus of the personality is only a reactive organismic life (although in reality there is no such thing even in a dog), and this is not the life of a personality, but the setting of spiritual creative goals and their implementation can be called personal life .
This is a narrowing of the concept of «personality». Perhaps it would be more accurate to say this: some direct the efforts of the personality towards very simple vital desires (but they remain personalities!), and others towards more complex and greater goals. The whole question is in determining the direction: you think that the more it is in relation to the simple aspirations of the organism, the less the personality (or rather, the less the spiritual component in the direction of the personality).
It seems to me that it is more essential to consider a person as a kind of apparatus of the psyche, and not as a level of functioning of this apparatus. Bozhovich has his own criterion of this level, Neimark has his own, and A.N. Leontiev is another one. So psychology will never become a fundamental, natural science, which it should become in the future.
What is it to «live as a person»? Here is not only a question about the essence of the personality, but also about the level of her life, about the “volume” of the personality. And I wonder why some have a narrow set of aspirations, while others have a wider one? After all, many people who are well fulfilling the needs of the first four levels according to A. Maslow do not want to go to the level of self-actualization. This violates their stability, is fraught with risk, and so on. So the rulers of Russia are sitting in a field of inertia and are really moving away from development.
N.I. Kozlov:
I agree that it is more essential, ontologically and scientifically, to consider the personality (or, more precisely, the command part of the psyche) in this way. But from the point of view of practice, now there is a need to distinguish between two ways of life: reactive and proactive, through the satisfaction of needs or through setting goals, living in a stream of feelings or rationally arranging it. At the same time, in both psychological and general practice, these names already exist: either animal life (we live in order to eat, the life of an organism), or we manifest ourselves as a person (we eat in order to live, create and accomplish).
It is clear that terminological confusion arises. Then the question is, who will give way to whom?
I would really suggest that the command part of the psyche be called the command part of the psyche, and the word personality should be left to a special way of life. I think that in this case we will be well understood by psychologists and any normal people.
What is it to «live as a person»? Here is not only a question about the essence of the personality, but also about the level of her life, about the “volume” of the personality. And I wonder why some have a narrow set of aspirations, while others have a wider one? After all, many people who are well fulfilling the needs of the first four levels according to A. Maslow do not want to go to the level of self-actualization. This violates their stability, is fraught with risk, and so on. So the rulers of Russia are sitting in a field of inertia and are really moving away from development.
As one of the possible reasons, I see just that people are told only about satisfying needs, and not about setting goals, about serving themselves, and not about serving people. When psychologists, looking at people, see only organisms in them, sooner or later this hypnosis begins to work.
As a practitioner, I use the word personality as a powerful pedagogical tool that allows people to turn from organisms into individuals — into thinking, loving and responsible people.
O.I. Motkov:
Thanks, very interesting answers. Personality as a certain way of life… It seems to me that this is still a very narrow approach to personality. Although in terms of helping psychology, such a protrusion of one way of life as personal in order to stimulate self-expansion of the client’s everyday personality may be acceptable. Departure from a grounded personality and life to some great heights, to new spiritual needs (after all, both altruism and aesthetic perception are to a certain extent prescribed in the genotype). Of course I’m for it. You are doing great work.