These questions will be the main points of our further movement, the ultimate goal of which is to answer the main question: what is a person?
So, the first private question. I concretize it as follows: 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 direct 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) can be based on a spontaneously formed hierarchy of motives, and even “spontaneous morality”: a person may not be aware of what exactly 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.
For more details, see the article Criteria of a formed personality
Let us turn to a more detailed consideration of the process of personality formation.
Let us first imagine the most general picture of it. According to the view of Soviet psychology, personality, like everything that is specifically human in the human psyche, is formed through the assimilation, or appropriation, of socially developed experience by the individual.
Experience that is directly related to the individual is a system of ideas about the norms and values of a person’s life: about his general orientation, behavior, attitudes towards other people, towards himself, towards society as a whole. They are fixed in very different forms — in philosophical and ethical views, in works of literature and art, in codes of laws, in systems of public rewards, rewards and punishments, in traditions, public opinions … up to parental instructions to the child about «what is good «and» what is bad.
It is clear that in different cultures, in different historical times, these systems of norms, requirements, values were different and sometimes differed very much. However, their meaning did not change from this. It can be expressed with the help of such concepts as «objective existence» or «social plans» (programs) of the individual.
The society organizes special activities aimed at the implementation of these «plans». But in the person of each individual it meets by no means a passive being. The activity of society meets the activity of the subject. The processes that are played out in this case constitute the most important, sometimes dramatic, events in the course of the formation and life of a personality.
Although the formation of personality is a process of mastering a special sphere of social experience, it is a completely special process. It differs from the assimilation of knowledge, skills, methods of action. After all, here we are talking about such development, which results in the formation of new motives and needs, their transformation, their subordination. And all this cannot be achieved by mere assimilation. An assimilated motive is, at best, a motive known, but not really acting, i.e., the motive is untrue. To know what one should do, what one should strive for, does not mean wanting to do it, really striving for it. New needs and motives, as well as their subordination, arise not in the process of assimilation, but in the process of experiencing, or living. This process always occurs only in the real life of a person. It is always emotionally rich, often subjectively creative.
Consider the stages of personality formation. Let’s dwell on the most important and very large stages. According to the figurative expression of A.N. Leontiev, a person is “born” twice.
Its first birth refers to the preschool age and is marked by the establishment of the first hierarchical relations of motives, the first subordination of direct motives to social norms. In other words, what is reflected in the first criterion of personality is born here.
A. N. Leontiev illustrates this event with an example that is widely known as the “bittersweet effect” [57, p. 187-188].
A preschooler receives an almost impossible task from the experimenter: to get the removed thing without getting up from the chair. The experimenter leaves, continuing to observe the child from the next room. After unsuccessful attempts, the child gets up, takes the object that attracts him and returns to his place. The experimenter enters, praises him, and offers him a candy as a reward. The child refuses it, and after repeated offers, he begins to cry quietly. The candy turns out to be «bitter» for him.
What does this fact say? Analysis of events shows that the child was placed in a situation of conflict of motives. One of his motives is to take the thing of interest (immediate motivation); the other is to fulfill the adult’s condition (the «social» motive). In the absence of an adult, immediate impulse took over. However, with the arrival of the experimenter, the second motive became actual, the significance of which was further enhanced by the undeserved reward. The refusal and tears of the child are evidence that the process of assimilation of social norms and subordination of motives has already begun, although it has not yet reached the end.
The fact that it is in the presence of an adult that a child’s experiences begin to be determined by a social motive is very significant. It serves as a vivid confirmation of the general position that the «knots» of the personality are tied in interpersonal relationships [57, p. 187] and only then become elements of the internal structure of the personality. It can be said that there is an early stage of «tying» such knots.
The second birth of a personality begins in adolescence and is expressed in the emergence of the desire and ability to realize one’s motives, as well as to carry out active work on their subordination and resubordination. Note that this ability for self-awareness, self-guidance, self-education is reflected in the second sign of personality, discussed above.
By the way, its obligation is fixed in such a legal category as criminal liability for the actions taken. This responsibility, as you know, rests with every mentally healthy person who has reached the age of majority.
Leaving temporarily the topic of the functions and forms of manifestation of self-consciousness (I will return to it later), we will continue the discussion of the question of the formation of personality. Let us now approach it not from the side of its stages, but from the side of its mechanisms.
Despite the extreme importance of this issue both for the theory of personality and for the practice of education, it is still far from sufficiently developed. Nevertheless, a number of important mechanisms in psychology have been identified and described.
I will dwell first of all on those that can be called spontaneous mechanisms of personality formation. These include a fairly general mechanism for shifting a motive to a goal, as well as more specific mechanisms for identifying and mastering social roles. These are spontaneous mechanisms, because the subject, being exposed to their action, is not fully aware of them and, in any case, does not consciously control them. They dominate in childhood, until adolescence, although then they also continue to participate in the development of the personality, along with conscious forms of «self-construction».
First of all, it must be said that all these mechanisms, to the extent that they relate to the development of the individual, operate in line with the general, general process of objectifying the need for communication.
This need has recently been given increasing importance in psychology. In its fundamental nature, it is equated with organic needs. It is just as vital as these latter, for its dissatisfaction leads to the deterioration of the physical condition of the infant, as well as the young of higher animals, and even to their death. Some authors consider this need to be innate. Others believe that it is formed in a child very early, since the satisfaction of all his organic needs occurs exclusively with the help of an adult, and the need for the latter becomes just as urgent as the need for food, security, bodily comfort, etc. Regardless of positions in this debatable issue, all authors recognize that the need for “another”, in contact with their own kind, in communication is the main driving force behind the formation and development of personality.
Let us turn to the first of these mechanisms—the shift of a motive to a goal—and trace its functioning at the earliest stages of the development of a child’s personality. In the early years, the upbringing of a child consists mainly of instilling in him norms of behavior.
How does this happen? Even before the age of one, the child learns what he can and should do and what not; what causes a smile and approval of the mother, and what — a strict face and the word «no.» And he “should”, for example, ask to go to the toilet, hungry — wait until food is cooked, use a spoon, instead of grabbing food with his hands; He “cannot” take a breaking glass, grab a knife, reach for the fire, that is, satisfy his natural impulses to explore new, bright, interesting objects.
Obviously, already with these first steps, the formation of what is called «mediated behavior» begins, that is, actions that are not directed by direct impulses, but by rules, requirements and norms.
As the child grows, the range of norms and rules that he must learn and which must mediate his behavior expands more and more. All preschool childhood is filled with such education, and it passes daily and hourly.
Especially here it is necessary to highlight the norms of behavior in relation to other people. Take a closer look at the everyday life of raising a preschooler. They are filled with demands and explanations of this kind: “say hello”, “don’t raise your hand first”, “say thank you”, “where is the magic word “please”?”, “turn away when you sneeze”, “don’t take it away”, “share ”,“ give way ”,“ do not offend the little one ”…
And with the right tone of the educator, friendly enough, but persistent, the child masters these norms, begins to behave in accordance with them. Of course, the range of results of upbringing is very large. There are children who are very ill-mannered and there are children who are very well-mannered. But on average, a child growing up in our culture demonstrates a lot of learned norms of behavior, education gives its results.
The question arises: are these results limited to the framework of external behavior, its, so to speak, training, or does upbringing also lead to internal changes, transformations in the child’s motivational sphere? The question is very important, one might say, fundamentally important.
The answer is obvious: no, the results of education are not limited to external behavior; Yes, there are changes in the motivational sphere of the child. Otherwise, for example, the child in the analyzed example of A. N. Leontiev would not cry, but would calmly take the candy. In everyday life, the same shifts are found in the fact that from a certain moment the child begins to enjoy himself when he does the “right thing”.
Thus, we are already ready to analyze the psychological mechanism that takes place here. However, first I want to especially emphasize one important circumstance, which I have already mentioned, but as if in passing, and you could not pay due attention to it.
Personal education bears fruit only if it takes place in the right emotional tone, if a parent or educator manages to combine exactingness and kindness — kindness is a must! This rule has long been intuitively found in pedagogical practice and recognized by many outstanding teachers. Nothing can be achieved by demands and punishments, «fear of punishment» is a poor helper in education. If we are talking about educating a personality, then this is a path that completely discredits itself. I will give one example.
At the end of the XNUMXth century, the Russian teacher and psychologist P. Lesgaft conducted a study of the characters (in fact, personalities) of schoolchildren and identified six different types. He also considered the conditions for raising children in families and found interesting correspondences between the type of personality of the child and the style of raising children in the family.
So, according to Lesgaft’s observations, the «normal» character of children (the author calls it «good-natured») is formed in families where there is an atmosphere of calmness, love and attention, but where the child is not pampered or pampered.
Among the «anomalous» he described, in particular, the «maliciously downtrodden» type, whose features are anger, gloating, indifference to the demands or censures of others. As it turned out, such children grow up in conditions of excessive severity, captiousness, and injustice [60].
So, in education, the role of reward and punishment turns out to be completely different, that is, (in scientific terms) positive and negative reinforcement. This may seem strange, because it is known from the physiology of higher nervous activity that a conditioned reflex can be developed with equal success on the basis of both positive (for example, food) and negative (for example, pain) reinforcement.
But the point is that the upbringing of a personality is not the development of conditioned reflexes, but something much more!
So, let us turn to the analysis of the discussed mechanism. What happens when a child is properly raised? I have already spoken about the need for communication, about its early appearance, its urgency and strength. The child wants to be with his mother — to talk about her, to play, to be surprised with her, to seek her protection and sympathy. But he does not have any immediate impulses to be polite, considerate to others, restrain himself, deny himself something, etc. However, the mother affectionately and persistently demands this. Her demands are illuminated for the child by personal meaning, for they are directly connected with the object of his need — contact with the mother. This, of course, is a positive meaning, since communication with her is a joy. Initially, he fulfills her demands in order to continue experiencing this joy.
In the language of formulas, we can say that at first the child performs the required action (goal) for the sake of communicating with the mother (motive). Over time, an increasing number of positive experiences are “projected” onto this action, and together with their accumulation, the correct action acquires an independent motivating force (becomes a motive).
Thus, the process obeys the following general rule: that object (idea, goal), which has been saturated with positive emotions for a long time and steadfastly, turns into an independent motive. You already know that in such cases it is said that there has been a shift of the motive to the goal, or, in other words, the goal has acquired the status of a motive. Remember, to explain this mechanism in one of the last lectures, I suggested using the following: imagine that the object is illuminated from some source and glows with reflected light; but this object has a special property: as light accumulates, it begins to glow by itself!
Our “subject” is normative actions illuminated by the motive of communication. But in order for them to “light up” themselves, it is necessary that they receive exactly “light”, that is, positive emotions.
If communication with an adult goes badly, bleakly, brings grief, then the whole mechanism does not work, new motives do not arise in the child, the correct upbringing of the personality does not occur!
The considered mechanism operates at all stages of personality development. Only with age do those main motives of communication change and become more complicated, which “illuminate” the mastered actions. After all, as the child grows, the circle of his social contacts and connections becomes wider and wider. Parents, relatives and friends, kindergarten teachers and peers, primary school teachers and schoolmates, members of a yard company, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, contemporaries and even descendants — this is an approximate list of ever-expanding areas of communication in real and ideal plans.
Special studies, and even everyday observations, show that each stage of a real expansion of contacts is preceded by, and then it is accompanied by a pronounced motive for acceptance by others, recognition and approval in the corresponding social group.
It is worth remembering how a child dreams of putting on a school uniform and going to first grade, what importance a middle school age student attaches to his place and position in the class, how a young man cares about his future place in life.
Such motives, as shown very clearly in his work by DB Elkonin |132|. encourage not only direct actions: establishing contacts and relationships, taking a certain position, but also to actions, and then to deployed activities that provide the acquisition of the necessary skills, knowledge, skills, and craftsmanship. And this means that social motives (acceptance, recognition, affirmation) give rise to new motives — actually professional, and then ideal — aspirations for Truth, Beauty, Justice.
Let’s move on to the next mechanism.
Of course, not everything is passed on to the child in the form of directed educational influences. A large role in the transfer of «personal» experience belongs to indirect influences — through personal example, «infection», imitation. The corresponding mechanism is called the identification mechanism.
The first pronounced identifications occur in preschoolers with their parents. Children imitate their parents in everything: in manners, speech, intonations, clothes, activities. Their occupations are reproduced, of course, from a purely external side — they can sit at a desk, moving a pen over paper, «read» a newspaper or «wield» some tools. But at the same time, they learn the internal traits of their parents — their tastes, attitudes, ways of behaving and feeling.
This is very clearly manifested in the role-playing games of preschoolers, especially when playing «family». Kindergarten teachers unanimously say that children unwittingly betray their parents. It is enough to listen to how a girl playing the role of a mother reprimands a boy who plays the role of a father in order to understand what kind of character her mother has and from what family environment this tone is taken out.
A characteristic feature of the identification process is that it occurs, especially at first, independently of the consciousness of the child and is also not fully controlled by the parents. This imposes a special responsibility on educators — responsibility for the quality of their own personality.
I will cite very vivid and psychologically accurate words of A. S. Makarenko on this score.
“Don’t think that you bring up a child only when you talk to him, or teach him, or order him. You bring him up at every moment of your life, even when you are not at home. How you dress, how you talk to other people and about other people, how you are happy or sad, how you communicate with friends and enemies, how you laugh, read the newspaper — all this is of great importance for a child. The child sees or feels the slightest changes in tone, all turns of your thought reach him in invisible ways, you do not notice them.
And if at home you are gu.e., or boastful, or drunk, and even worse, if you insult your mother, you no longer need to think about upbringing: you are already raising your children, and raising them poorly, and no best advice and methods for you won’t help» [70, p. 12].
At later age stages, the circle of persons from which a sample is selected — the object of identification — is extremely expanded. They can be the leader of the company, a teacher, just a familiar adult, a literary hero, a hero of the Civil or Great Patriotic Wars, a famous contemporary or a hero of the past.
Analysis of subjective reports, observations and special studies show that the adoption of a personal standard, or model, has an extremely important psychological function. It facilitates the entry of a child, adolescent, young person into a new social position, the assimilation of new relationships, the formation of new personal structures.
Thus, it was found that those children who played little role-playing games at preschool age and thus reproduced the behavior of adults a little, adapt to social conditions worse.
It is probably unnecessary to say how much easier the inner life and development of the personality of a young and even an adult person, if he has a living role model in terms of seriousness, dedication, creative intensity, and a common life position.
Here is an excerpt from the essay of one tenth grader: “It is customary to say that youth does not recognize authorities. This is not true. Yes, youth is looking for independence, but this does not mean that there are no ideals for it. Youth not only recognizes, but also seeks authority.
The subjective importance of such «authority» — the object of worship or imitation — is also evidenced by the fact that its loss or disappointment in it is usually accompanied by acute feelings.