For Aleksey Nikolaevich Leontiev, personality is a special quality «which is acquired by an individual in society in the totality of relations, social in nature, in which the individual is involved.» To comprehend a person’s personality “means to conduct a study of his place, position in the system, which is a system of social relations, communications that open up to him; this is a study of what, for what and how a person uses what is innate to him and acquired by him (even temperament traits and, of course, acquired knowledge, skills, skills … thinking)”.
Personality in ontogeny
“In the pedagogical and psychological literature, either the younger preschool or adolescence is constantly indicated as a turning point in this regard. Personality is indeed born twice: the first time — when the child manifests in obvious forms the polymotivation and subordination of his actions (recall the phenomenon of «bitter candy» and others like it), the second time — when his conscious personality arises.
The first birth coincides with the crisis of three years, when for the first time there is a hierarchization and subordination of actions, a delay in satisfaction. The second birth — with adolescence crisis, when there is a mastery of one’s own behavior through awareness, mediation. It can be said that these two «births of the personality» represent the critical points of the progressive emancipation of the personality from symbiotic ties. The “first birth of the personality” is the operational emancipation of the personality, when the child feels himself as a kind of autonomous unit; “second birth” is a semantic emancipation, awareness of oneself as a semantic unit, when a teenager’s worldview becomes individual, ceases to coincide with the semantic field in which he was formed (Leontiev D.A., 2002).
Personality in phylogenesis
“From “acting to satisfy your natural needs and inclinations” to “satisfying your needs in order to act, do your life’s work, fulfill your life human goal” (Leontiev, 1994, p. 198). The causal structure is reversed: first, actions for the sake of needs, then needs for the sake of actions.
Someone lives to eat, and someone is to live — and act! Only the second person is a personality according to Leontiev. According to N.I. Kozlov, this is a Man, as opposed to a healthy animal. See →