Psychology of Personality. Lecture 1. Personality in psychology (Group of authors, 2016)

Essence and concept

In psychology, the term “personality” is understood as a person who has a set of psychological characteristics that have a direct impact on actions and their significance in society. Each person is individual and therefore always different from the other.

There are also other scientific definitions of personality. For example, his role in society, experience and knowledge. This is a person who bears full responsibility for his life, controls his choices and has a sense of responsibility for his actions.

Thus, personality is a set of habits that have been developed over the years and a person’s preferences, his emotional mood and vitality, sociocultural experience and knowledge accumulated over many years of life. This is a unique set of human traits and characteristics at the psychological and physiological levels. It is also a human archetype that defines everyday behavior and the connection between society and the natural world. In addition, the personality is identified in terms of the manifestation of “behavioral masks” created for different life situations and groups of social interaction.

Personality is a relatively stable system of individual behavior, the core of which is self-esteem, created on the basis of the value judgments of other people and a person’s assessment of his environment.

The concept of personality does not have strict boundaries or frameworks: in everyday life it is understood, for example, as the character of the entire person as a whole

The term “personality” is inextricably linked with two more psychological concepts - individual and individuality. The first is understood as an individual person who has a set of qualities, both innate and acquired. Individuality is a system of characteristics and exclusive traits by which one person can be distinguished from another. It is on this, internal uniqueness, that personal uniqueness and the makeup of the human psyche depend.

Despite the similarity of definitions, they cannot be identified or equated with each other, because both terms describe individual aspects of human life. At the same time, it would also be wrong to excessively distance the concepts from each other. After all, each person is multifaceted, it is impossible to consider him exclusively from one side, like the visible side of the Moon.

The impact of the individual on society

The role of the individual in the development of society is also high. Let's look at an example of how a person influences society:

A.V. Suvorov is a famous Russian commander, enjoyed great respect among the soldiers. He managed to win many battles in which the enemy army was several times larger than the Russian one. The soldiers loved and respected Suvorov so much that they went into any battle without fear, under his leadership. Thus, thanks to the personal qualities of a military leader, Russia won victories in many wars.
The famous inventor Henry Ford created an assembly line production of cars, thanks to which the car became an affordable means of transportation for many Americans.
Nicolaus Copernicus was the first to reject the idea that the Earth is stationary, suggesting that it rotates around the Sun and on its own axis. His works subsequently led to many different discoveries.

Thus, the influence of the individual on society and society on the individual are interconnected.

Personality structure

Both the concept itself and the structure of personality have raised questions and disputes among researchers and scientists over many years of the development of psychological science. Some psychologists are convinced that the term cannot be structurized or rationalized at all. At the same time, other specialists do not tire of searching for and discovering new theories of personality structure. However, today there are some clearly defined parameters that make it possible to understand the structure of personality. There are several such systems. Depending on objective and subjective social properties, personal structure is based on such approaches as:

activity, culture, memory, value orientations, culture, roles and statuses

Biological and social structures of personality have 4 levels:

1. Lower - a substructure that combines age and gender properties of the psyche, innate characteristics of the nervous system, aspects of temperament.

2. The second is individual manifestations of memory and perception, thinking and abilities, sensations. These characteristics depend both on innate factors and on acquired experience - training, development and improvement.

3. The third is social experience based on knowledge and skills, habits and abilities.

4. The highest level represents the orientation of the individual. It consists of drives and desires, inclinations and views, interests and ideals, beliefs and worldview.

People differ significantly from each other: each substructure of a particular personality has differences in beliefs and interests, experience and knowledge, abilities and skills, character and temperament. That is why it can be difficult to understand another person by the example of oneself; it is not easy to understand contradictions and discrepancies in opinions, the nature of conflicts between people. For a deeper understanding of yourself and others, you cannot do without certain knowledge and natural observation.

Key components of personality: temperament, character, abilities, emotions and will, motives and needs, orientation

Strong-willed traits of people

Adjusting behavioral factors associated with overcoming internal and external discomfort makes it possible to determine personal qualities: the level of effort and plans for taking actions, concentration in a given direction. Will manifests itself in the following properties:

willpower - the level of effort to achieve the desired result;
perseverance – the ability to mobilize to overcome troubles;
endurance - the ability to limit feelings, thinking and actions.

Courage, self-control, commitment are the personal qualities of strong-willed people. They are classified into simple and complex acts. In a simple case, incentives to action flow into execution automatically. Complex acts are carried out on the basis of motivation, drawing up a plan and taking into account the consequences.

Basic personality types

One of the most popular personality typologies was developed by Swiss analytical psychologist Carl Gustav Jung. In his work as a practicing psychologist, Jung distinguishes two main personality types: extroverts and introverts. The typology differs depending on what a person is more focused on during his life: on external objects or on internal experiences. One can often mistakenly classify oneself as the opposite type due to the existing special tendency, which aims to compensate for one-sided actions.

One should also take into account the fact that each person contains the qualities of both an extrovert and an introvert, a certain combination of which represents a specific personality type. “Life is determined by consciousness” - this is exactly what can be said in the case of an extroverted personality type. “Consciousness determines life” is a more relevant principle for introverts.

It would be logical to strive to balance both types, but in real life this does not happen: there is always a certain “skew” in worldview and self-identification. As a result, a certain type is distinguished according to the method of predominance of one or another mechanism of interaction with the outside world.

Practical and theoretical abilities

Practical abilities are understood as the ability of an individual to pose and solve problems that require action in certain situations.

Theoretical abilities determine abstract and logical thinking, the ability to solve theoretical problems.

Academic and creative abilities

Learning abilities mean how well a person learns new things, acquires knowledge, and acquires skills.

Creative abilities determine an individual’s ability to generate new ideas and produce spiritual and material values.

General and special abilities

General abilities are understood as those abilities that every person has (general mental, motor). But they are developed differently for everyone. And success in certain areas depends on this.

Special abilities can be defined as specific abilities that not every individual has. As a rule, they require innate abilities. This could be musical, acting or literary abilities.

Personality qualities

Personality traits in psychology are understood as a unique set of traits and characteristics that are inherent to a person. They are purely personal in nature and express aspects of character, behavioral patterns in society or the surrounding world.

Personal qualities are characterized by dynamism and stability. They influence all aspects of human life, be it the choice of clothes for going out or career preferences and ambitions in professional activities.

Personality traits are classified into several types, for example:

Socio-psychological. Basic and secondary properties, a set of traits and features in the structure of an individual.

Strong-willed. For example, purposefulness, independence, determination, endurance.

Moral. These properties are adjusted by life under the influence of a combination of factors: position in the family; the influence of an educational institution or a yard company; relations in society; individual life experience, etc. Each aspect operates according to specific moral rules. They form the individual’s attitude towards himself and his environment. Based on the values inherent in the inner world, moral qualities are classified into humanistic, nationalistic, racial, religious-fanatical.

Professional, for example:

verbality - language skills, excellent connections between words and concepts love and mastery of numbers - the ability to perform standard arithmetic operations with maximum accuracy and efficiency correction of numbers, three-dimensional understanding of objects detailing of objects and graphics motor coordination by the movement of limbs and eyes, coordination of signals dexterity and color perception general intelligence - a predisposition to learn, the ability to draw correct conclusions from assigned tasks

Traits of people that characterize their temperament

The innate qualities of a person shape him as a social being. Behavioral factors, type of activity and social circle are taken into account. The category is divided into 4 concepts: sanguine, melancholic, choleric and phlegmatic.

A sanguine person is a strong and balanced person who easily adapts to a new environment and overcomes obstacles. Sociability, responsiveness, openness, cheerfulness and leadership are the main personality traits.
A melancholic person is a weak and sedentary person. Under the influence of strong stimuli, behavioral disturbances occur, manifested by a passive attitude towards any activity. Isolation, pessimism, anxiety, tendency to reason and resentment are characteristic features of melancholic people.
Cholerics are strong, unbalanced, energetic personality traits. They are quick-tempered and unrestrained. Touchiness, impulsiveness, emotionality and instability are clear indicators of a restless temperament.
A phlegmatic person is a balanced, inert and slow person, not prone to change. Personal indicators show how to easily overcome negative factors. Reliability, goodwill, peacefulness and prudence are the hallmarks of calm people.

Personality Traits and Properties

Personality traits or properties refer to human characteristics that denote the deep (internal) characteristics of a particular individual. This applies to both behavior in society and the ability to communicate, as well as a special response to various life situations in the aspect of long-term contacts. The nature of personality traits is both biological (innate) and situational (depending on circumstances).

Personality traits cannot be called physical qualities, social characteristics and titles, or temporary states. Conclusions based on a subjective attitude towards the personality of another person cannot be perceived as personal properties.

Creating a complete and, especially, correct list of personality traits is impossible. Firstly, because it can be infinite, like the number of people on the planet. Secondly, the arbitrary nature of personal properties is always possible. Personality properties from the point of view of visibility are manifested in different ways: through character traits and temperament, interests and habits, developed abilities and style of activity of a particular person.

Temperament, as an important personality trait, describes how a person does something (not what he does). Temperament is determined by the type of higher nervous activity. Depending on its structure, experts distinguish 4 main types of temperament.

Choleric is fast, loud speech, impetuosity of movements, well-expressed facial expressions. A sanguine person has the same traits, but in a less pronounced form. Representatives of these two types are usually optimists in life.

A phlegmatic person needs a long time to respond. Representatives of this type of temperament tolerate monotonous loads well (work on a conveyor belt). It has been established that phlegmatic people in marriage are compatible with all temperaments. A melancholic person can be recognized from a whole crowd of people by the expression of sadness and grief on their face (popularly called the “Pierrot” mask). Melancholic people are eternal and incorrigible pessimists.

With age, in all temperaments, the share of melancholy increases (all people, as they grow older and accumulate life experience, become pessimists)

Temperament is the physiological basis of character. Character is an acquired quality. Character is described through a system of a person’s relationships to 4 structures:

towards oneself (selfishness, egocentrism) towards people (sociability, aggressiveness) towards activities (hard work, laziness) towards things (greed, accuracy)

The core of character is will - the human ability to force oneself to do what is needed in a life situation.

Abilities are those individual psychological characteristics that distinguish one person from another and allow one to quickly and easily perform a certain type of activity. The foundation of abilities is the ratio of hereditary and social. Abilities are formed and developed in the process of human activity. Abilities can be general - thinking, speech, etc. And also special (mathematical, musical, creative, etc.).

Emotions. Why is it so important to understand and know your emotions? The answer is simple: in order to manage them! After all, experiencing emotions and knowing them are not identical concepts. Experiencing emotions does not provide the key to managing them, while knowing them allows you to understand yourself. In order to manage emotions, a person must know how they are structured, as a result of what acts of the soul they appear and continue to exist, despite obvious attempts to hide them.

Individual character traits

Character is a set of individual traits that manifest themselves in different types of activity, communication and relationships with people. The development of personal qualities is formed against the background of life processes and the type of activity of people. To more accurately assess the character of people, behavioral factors in specific circumstances should be studied in detail.

Types of character:

cycloid – mood swings;
hyperthymic accentuation consists of high activity and failure to complete tasks;
asthenic – capricious and depressive personal qualities;
sensitive – timid personality;
hysterical - the makings of leadership and vanity;
dysthymic – focused on the negative side of current events.

Personality formation

Factors

The psychological development of a person is influenced by hereditary factors, on the one hand, and factors of the physical and social environment, on the other. Mental development, like psychological development, continues throughout a person’s life. The prerequisite for individuality, the root cause for the formation of human originality, is, first of all, the environment where the future personality grows. An important role is played by the associations accumulated by a person in childhood, the model of education that instills moral guidelines, the peculiarities of the family structure and the principles of treating a child.

There is an opinion among psychologists that individuals are born. They become a person. And uniqueness must be defended in the process of life

Genes control human development from birth, just as the lifestyle of the expectant mother affects the fetus. After birth, caring for the child supports his physical life, but at the same time directly affects the mental development of the future personality.

Different stages of a person’s life take into account certain tasks of mental development. Of course, successes occur regularly, but problems often arise. Psychological information is used to find solutions to any child's developmental problems - for example, in terms of language skills or schooling.

There are a number of opinions about which age periods of the individual are most important for the whole life. Psychology of life is the detailed study of human development at each stage of life. Individual development can be viewed through different methodologies and perspectives.

Stages of psychological development of personality, their features and connections with changes in physiology

Childhood. A child's first task is to learn that the world is a safe place and people can be trusted. That is why it is important that what is perceived and viewed by the baby during this period of life is appropriate for his age.

The children's sensory world, due to its immaturity, is still very small. Children under three years of age observe everything at a subconscious level of understanding. By school age, the boundaries of fairy tales and truth begin to be perceived visibly and tangibly.

Adolescence. The most important thing in adolescence is the formation of personality: who I am, how I behave. Today, thanks to technology such as social media, you can even get reactions to your own comments and photos. At the same time, it all becomes surprisingly fragile: feedback can become a problem if she is not resilient enough to accept it.

Youth. This is a period of active self-determination and self-searching. There is often a strong tendency to create idols and negative self-identification in order to strive for a feeling of personal irresistibility. At the end of this stage, people often come to independence and a clear definition of their future life path.

Youth, which lasts approximately from 20 to 25 years, has such characteristic features as the desire to create a family and personal attachments, including intimacy. In first place in importance comes such a feeling as love, a feeling of attachment to a loved one, caring for him.

Maturity is one of the longest periods of personal formation. During this time, a person who has already achieved certain successes in life no longer focuses on his own personality, but on others. He strives to share his accumulated experience, unique knowledge, skills, and finally, simply life wisdom.

Aging. During this phase of development, an active rethinking of one’s actions occurs. Therefore, it is very important for a feeling of happiness to be able to find joyful moments in the past and, of course, maintain physical health as much as possible.

Today, more and more people are able to live to a ripe old age. We need to work to make old age a meaningful and conscious stage of life.

The influence of society on personality

Personality and social environment are inextricably linked. Its future depends on the environment in which a personality is formed. Seeing bad examples and irresponsible behavior in front of him, the child perceives this as a model. After some time, he may begin to behave the same way as his friends and people close to him. He may start drinking, smoking, stealing, without knowing that such behavior is the result of formed views on the world, the bad influence of his immediate environment.

Sometimes a person can fall under the bad influence of the social environment despite his desire. A schoolboy begins to smoke, fearing the ridicule of his classmates, who have long been addicted to cigarettes. A teenager decides to steal because of his friends’ obsessive persuasion to get easy money. An employee deceives his superiors after much persuasion from his colleague.

The positive influence of the environment on personality development is also manifested. Seeing before him examples of successful, happy and respected people, the child strives to imitate them and copy their behavior. Therefore, at school a lot of time is devoted to studying the biographies of national heroes, patriots, and outstanding personalities. A good example becomes an inspiration for work, creative activity, and activity in society.

Different structures of society have varying degrees of influence on the individual.

Parents and close relatives have the greatest influence when raising a child from infancy.
Second in terms of influence are school teachers.
They are followed by friends, acquaintances, colleagues.
The media play an important role (mass media: Internet, television, print media).

In addition, the individual is influenced by the socio-cultural environment characteristic of the state and the area in which he lives. So in Russia, the USA, India, Israel - the conditions for the formation of a personality are significantly different. Thanks to this, individual peoples and the population of different countries have their own distinctive character traits and individual characteristics.

Basic theories of personality research

Sigmund Freud

According to Freud's psychological theory, a person's personality has three main components:

1. Id - “it”, i.e. all aspects inherent in nature and genetics, in particular, due to basic instincts.

2. Ego - a sense of one’s own “I”, which is in constant interaction with the outside world.

3. The superego appears as a kind of judge of activities and thoughts. Its functions are carried out by conscience, introspection and formed ideals.

Carl Gustav Jung

Jung in his medical practice was guided by an individual approach to each patient. Therefore, he began his work by establishing the patient’s character traits, the peculiarities of his psyche. He achieved this difficult goal with the help of a unique system - a typology of personalities. She served him as a map, helping to identify the specifics of the individual. Understand the prevailing psychological functions, what is the human relationship to the external world and to the internal world. Thus, Jung identified eight personality types and divided them into two groups - rational and irrational.

He considered the thinking and feeling types to be rational types. People belonging to it, in making decisions and making judgments, are guided by pre-formed views and beliefs, and perceive the world through the prism of attitudes of consciousness.

The scientist designated the sensing and the intuitive as irrational. People of these types are less guided by reason; they react to stimuli the way they react, without trying to squeeze into the framework of their own or others’ views. Direct experiences are important to them.

William James

The American pragmatic psychologist argued that man has continuous thinking and selective consciousness, emphasizing that life is the sum of various habits. He analyzed personality from three sides - the constituent elements (physical or material, social and spiritual), feelings and emotions (self-esteem), as well as actions caused by self-preservation and self-care.

James' personality formula states that cognition consists equally of attitude and behavior.

Alfred Adler

According to the principles of individual psychology of another scientist, an individual’s lifestyle is demonstrated through attitudes and behavior. At the same time, it is necessarily formed under the influence of society. According to Adler, personality has a single structure, and the fundamental factor in its development is the natural desire for superiority. Therefore, a person is divided into four main subtypes: socially useful, avoidant, receiving, managing.

Roberto Assagioli

In accordance with the psychosynthesis of this specialist, there are 8 zones in the basic structure of the human psyche. The lower unconscious begins the pyramid of substructures, and the subpersonality completes it. The meaning of the development of the psyche is to increase its unity.

Biological approach

The so-called type theory puts a key emphasis on the structure of the human body. For example, according to Kretschmer’s constitutional typology there is leptosomatic, alectic, picnic, dysplastic. And Sheldon classified personalities according to endo-, ecto- and mesomophic physiques.

Eduard Spranger

Another concept describes the human personality according to the form of knowledge of the world and spiritual values. This could be a theorist, economist, esthete, politician, and so on.

Gordon Allport

The opinion is based on the uniqueness of each individual in specific traits. The author of the theory believed that what is “own” in a person’s inner world is his unique distinguishing feature.

Kurt Lewin

The source of the driving forces of personality, according to Lewin, is hidden in the tandem of a person with a situation and is determined by his attitude to certain circumstances.

Phenomenological and humanistic theories

The main principle is a positive beginning in every person, the desire and realization of personal potential to the maximum. For example, one of the proponents of this approach, A. Maslow, put the human need for self-actualization in the first place.

Erich Fromm

Its adherents consider self-expression and manifestation of personal individuality to be the leading position in this concept.

Victor Frankl

The key points are freedom, responsibility, the meaning of life.

* * *

To sum up, we can confidently say that a person’s personality, both in the skeptical science of psychology and in the versatile practice of life, is multifaceted and unique, like the exclusive pattern of a tiny snowflake under a microscope. In our changing and far from ideal world, it is very important to preserve our own unique features and originality, values and priorities.

Whatever the external circumstances, it is important to remember one main truth: I am a person, the whole world, the Universe, the endless Cosmos. And a real person should not adapt to the changing world, as the famous song says, or try to imitate someone, even if this person is a real star.

To achieve success in any aspect of life, it is important to be aware of your desires and aspirations, understand yourself and adequately assess your abilities. No one else can take the place in the sun intended for a specific person. Because every individual is one of a kind. And therefore unique.

Will

Will is what allows an individual to control his actions and psyche. This is conscious control over one’s behavior, a conscious influence on the surrounding reality.

The following factors can be called signs of will:

making informed decisions,
achieving your goals, overcoming difficulties on the way to them,
self-restraint, when in order to achieve a goal an individual deprives himself of something that may seem attractive to him,
a clear action plan,
lack of emotional satisfaction from solving the task,
moral satisfaction associated with achieving and overcoming oneself.

Will is a person’s main assistant in achieving his goals, the quality that helps him develop and grow as a person. It is the will that helps a person overcome life’s difficulties, even when it seems that the goal is unattainable.

Afterword

Despite the fact that most scientists are of the opinion that individuals are made and not born, the question of whether all people are individuals continues to attract controversy and controversial opinions.

The question of whether a child can be considered a person is controversial, although humanistic pedagogy argues that, undoubtedly, it can and should be.
The understanding of a mentally ill person or a criminal as an individual is just as controversial.
Don’t the phrases “asocial personality” or “degraded personality” look ridiculous?

In the end, everyone chooses for themselves which side they belong to in these issues. In my opinion, each person (especially important for young children when raising) can be treated as a potential personality, that is, given a few points head start. However, this is possible until a person proves otherwise.

Research methods

Psychologists identify several effective methods for studying personality:

Observation is an old way of obtaining information about the behavior and habits of an individual. It can be everyday or scientific. During everyday observation, the researcher receives general information. In scientific observation, scientists analyze the data they receive.
Conversation - the researcher conducts an in-depth conversation with the subject so that he himself talks about his experiences, emotions, thoughts.
Interview - The researcher creates a list of questions for the subject to answer. They can be one-dimensional or multidimensional.
An experiment is a practical technique that allows you to obtain information about behavior and reactions. To do this, the researcher intervenes in the subject’s usual life and creates certain conditions for reactions to occur.

A separate group of studies is projective methods. The subject must describe changes in his state when interacting with various stimuli.

Difficulties in understanding a person as an individual

The difficulty of clearly representing and describing the phenomenon of personality lies in the ambiguity of the theory. The following problematic positions can be identified:

Often the personality is identified with the individual.
Sometimes a person refers to a part of the inner world or a feature of the mental structure.
Personality is regarded as a certain component that includes something given from birth, and some unattainable ideal, and a set of social relations.
As many sciences that study man as there are and researchers who ask this question, there are as many definitions of the term “personality.”

Personality is characterized by the system of its conscious relationships. Recently, it has become popular to talk not only about the influence of social and biological factors, but also about the role of the situation as a restraining element of the individual.

The concept of personality in psychology

The study of issues related to the concept of “personality” is studied not only by psychology, but also by many other sciences, for example, philosophy, pedagogy, sociology, criminology and others. In psychology itself, there is practically no area where there is not (explicitly or implicitly) a “personal view” of the problem.

Everyone understands that the processes of perception, memory, thinking, speech, and so on do not exist by themselves. And he perceives, and remembers, and thinks - a person. All these and more. mental processes are included in the personal context.

It is no coincidence that the outstanding Russian psychologist V.N. Myasishchev said that the psychology of impersonal processes should be replaced by the psychology of an active personality. It is only conditionally possible to consider these processes in isolation from their carrier – the individual.

We know that, depending on various personal attitudes, each person perceives the surrounding reality, including the people around him, in his own way. A person’s personal attitude towards this or that information influences the process of remembering it (and forgetting it too). Personal characteristics, attitudes, subjective attitude towards specific people directly influence a person’s behavior, his interaction and communication with other people, and so on.

Psychological science solves the problem of personality from the standpoint of understanding the social essence of man, which is the totality of all social relations.

Only in the system of social relations does a person acquire his social essence. He cannot exist and develop as a person outside of this system. The peculiarities of society, one way or another, are reflected in the psychological characteristics of specific people.

Consequently, in order to deeply understand the origins of certain characteristics of a person, his behavior, attitude to work, his functional responsibilities, it is necessary to comprehensively study the system of his connections with other people, both in the past and in the present.

It is necessary to take into account the influence of both the wider social environment and the immediate environment - family, educational, production team, spontaneously formed micro group, and so on. The broad social environment influences the individual through the immediate environment, which can strengthen or weaken this influence and distort it.

However, psychological characteristics are determined not only by the social system. Man also acts as a natural being. Its biological nature remains a necessary condition for its existence and development, the formation of socially conditioned psychological properties and qualities.

Biological in a person is the state of health, level of physical development, physique, height, weight, muscle strength, lung capacity and others. indicators. They need to be known and taken into account by a manager when working with people. A person’s physical data to a large extent determines his success in educational and work activities, influences his mental state, mood, performance, and the development of individual personality traits.

Consequently, a person is a being that includes two interconnected sides - biological and social. The biological in a person acts as a material basis, genetically specified conditions for the formation and development of personality. Social in a person is the system of his personal properties and qualities.

Along with the concept of “personality,” science often uses such concepts as “man,” “individual,” and “individuality.”

Man is a generic concept denoting a social being, representing the highest level of life on earth. He has articulate speech and consciousness, the ability to create tools and use them in the process of social labor aimed at satisfying needs.

Individual is a concept that designates a specific person as a unit of society. However, not every individual is a person, a bearer of socially determined psychological properties and qualities. A born child is an individual, but not yet a person. An adult with pathology in his development can also be called an individual, but not a personality.

Personality is a social phenomenon, a product of the development of society, an object and subject of the historical process, social relations.

Personality acts as a quality of a person, and a person is the bearer of this quality: the quality of being a person is inherent in a person as a social being.

The biological characteristics of a person, constituting the material basis for the formation of this quality, are not directly included in the structure of the personality. “The anthropological properties of an individual do not act as defining personality or included in its structure, but as genetically specified conditions for the formation of personality...”

The personality problem is a complex problem. It is studied by philosophy, sociology, psychology, pedagogy, history, legal and other sciences. Each of them explores certain aspects of this complex social phenomenon.

What is personality from a psychological point of view? What are its most important distinguishing features?

In psychology, personality is understood as a system of socially conditioned psychological properties and qualities of a person who is aware of his attitude to the environment, engaged in a specific type of activity and has individual characteristics.

Distinctive psychological characteristics of personality are:

1. formation of psychological properties and qualities;

2. consciousness, that is, a person’s ability to consciously reflect the world around him and the events occurring in it;

3. self-awareness – the ability to be aware of oneself;

4. self-regulation, that is, managing one’s behavior and activities.

One of the signs of personality is activity, manifested in specific activities. This activity can be of great social importance, and a person who achieves high results in it is spoken of as a fully developed or even outstanding personality. But activities can also be antisocial in nature (theft, corruption, etc.) Then such a person is called a flawed, asocial person. In legal psychology, for example, the personality of the criminal is studied.

An important distinguishing feature of a person is individuality, that is, a unique combination of psychological characteristics that determine a person’s social appearance and distinguish one person from another. In other words, a person has his own face, his own “I”, his own style of thinking, activity and behavior.

Let's try, based on the approaches considered, to imagine the features of the human mental world:

the space of the mental world, like a field on which a person’s mental life unfolds;
dynamics of movement of mental processes, states in time, psychological time;
the content that fills the mental space (information, signals, symbolism);
individualization of the mental world - is realized in the processes of experiencing;
attitude towards oneself and another person, the entry of another person’s mental world into my mental world;
an energetic charge that activates my mental world.

Now let’s take a closer look at each component of the human mental world.

The space of the mental world consists, as it were, of two planes - the conscious and the unconscious. 3. Freud was the first to draw attention to the enormous role of the unconscious in a person’s mental life. Previously, it was believed that only physiological processes occur in the unconscious, and everything mental is the sphere of the conscious. 3. Freud showed that consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg, rising above the greater foundation of the unconscious.

The role of consciousness, according to Freud, is to organize the unconscious, to distinguish the possible from the impossible, the desired from the actual, the present from the past and future, the real from the unreal.

In the unconscious, unlike the conscious, the perceived world merges with a person’s experiences, his attitude to this world, which makes it impossible to control actions and evaluate their results. In the unconscious, the past, present and future can be intricately intertwined (for example, in a dream)

What concerns the sphere of the unconscious:

the supraconscious is the pinnacle of the creative process, creative intuition, thanks to which sudden insight occurs,
unconscious motives and semantic attitudes determined by the desired future that has personal meaning;
regulation of automated and involuntary actions, based on past experience of behavior in similar situations (walking skills, writing, etc.);
mental phenomena that are at a subthreshold level of sensitivity.

There are deep genetic roots in the unconscious. C. Jung believed that there are deep formations, which he called archetypes. Archetypes - universal human prototypes - underlie the symbolism of creativity, various rituals, dreams and complexes. Archetypes capture the inherited experience of previous generations.

So, in psychic space the conscious and unconscious are intricately intertwined. This is reflected in the division of the mental space of the individual into three interconnected areas, or, as Z. Freud wrote, into three kingdoms - “Super Ego ”, “I” and “It”.

“It” is an unconscious system based on subjective needs of a biological or emotional order. “It” is governed by the pleasure principle; it is inherent in the original desire for pleasure.

“I” is a conscious system that regulates the process of interaction with the outside world; often “I” goes deep into the unconscious, due to which the synthesis of deep unconscious drives and demands of society is carried out.

“Super Ego” is a kind of moral censorship, the content of which is the norms and prohibitions accepted by the individual - this is his conscience. The “Super Ego” also combines the conscious and the unconscious.

As Z. Freud wrote, we can say that the “I” in mental life represents common sense and prudence, and the “It” represents uncontrollable passions. Between “I” and “It” a relationship of constant tension is established. Freud compares the relationship between “I” and “Id” to the relationship between a rider and a horse. The horse provides the energy for movement, the rider has the advantage of determining the purpose and direction of movement of a strong animal. The relationship between “I” and “It” is far from ideal. A well-known saying warns against serving two masters. It is even harder for the poor “I”: it serves three strict rulers, trying to bring their claims and demands into agreement. These demands diverge all the time, sometimes seem incompatible - it is not surprising that the “I” often fails to cope with its task.

The three tyrants are: the external world, the “Super Ego” and the “It”. A person experiences the tension in the relationship between “I” and “It” as a state of anxiety and anxiety. If the “Super Ego” establishes that the “I” violates the requirements of society, the person experiences a feeling of guilt. Thus, a person’s mental life is accompanied by constant conflict states. It is the “I” that must soften and resolve these conflicts. Regulation occurs on the basis of the so-called “psychological defense mechanisms”, which are associated with the reorganization of the conscious and unconscious components of the value system.

Defense mechanisms are ways of organizing temporary mental balance necessary to deal with the difficulties of life.

Freud's psychological defense mechanisms include regression, isolation, projection, identification, sublimation, rationalization, and refusal.

Briefly about the essence of these protective mechanisms.

Regression is a mental synthesis of traumatic impressions based on deep childhood experiences. M. Zoshchenko in his book “The Tale of Reason” writes: “I lived through my memories with trepidation. With trepidation I remembered my youthful life. My first steps. My first love encounters. Yes, there is no doubt - I avoided the woman. I avoided and at the same time strived for her. I strove for her in order to escape from her, frightened by the expected retribution. Scenes from my infancy played out throughout my adult years. What scared me was what scared the baby. I remembered a murder scene I saw as a child...” Thanks to regression, emotional and psychological barriers are formed, which a person often overcomes with great difficulty, sometimes with the help of psychologists and psychotherapists.

Isolation - withdrawal from society, from other people, immersion deep into oneself; sometimes leads to a tragic ending.

Projection is the transfer of one’s emotional states to another person. They say: he took his anger out on someone or stuck to someone like a bath leaf.

Identification is identifying oneself with any person (psychotherapist, doctor...), it can often combine fear and love.

Sublimation is the transfer of rough, carnal desires into the sphere of feelings and sublime interests. Sublimation, according to Freud, contributes to the flow of energy into creative processes.

Rationalization is the search for a reasonable basis for behavior, justification for impulsive actions.

Refusal is an unconscious ignorance of events in the external or internal world. Sometimes this type of protection is called sensory or perceptual deafness. A person seems to stop hearing and seeing something that has a very strong emotional impact on him. It occurs quite often, especially in relations between managers and subordinates. The boss reprimands or reads long moral lectures, but the person is switched off and does not hear her, and turns on only when he shouts: “Are you deaf or something?” Yes, indeed, “I became deaf and blind,” but this is a way of psychological protection from the influence of another person.

Everything that happens in mental space is in constant, contradictory, dialectical movement and development, has a certain extent, that is, is characterized by time indicators.

Time in psychology is a multifaceted concept. What is it connected with? First of all, with the influence of biological rhythms on the dynamics of mental processes. The perception and evaluation of time intervals vary depending on the condition. For example, in an extreme situation, the perception of time is disrupted - sometimes it seems that it lasts forever, sometimes it flashes by instantly.

There are also personal and psychological characteristics of the perception of time. Thus, sanguine and choleric people underestimate time, they always lack it, they are constantly in a hurry and are still late. Phlegmatic people overestimate time, are in no hurry and take their time. Melancholic people most accurately assess time intervals, therefore they allocate their time more clearly.

At the socio-psychological level, there is a reflection of social time, specific to various social communities, cultural and historical conditions. On a historical scale, the patterns of a person’s awareness of the historical past and future are very important, as well as the relationship of this awareness with one’s own past and future, the possibility of overcoming the limitations of individual life in its various forms: belief in the immortality of the soul or understanding of one’s role and place in the development of humanity.

The latter is closely related to the concept of psychological time, that is, the reflection in the mental world of a person of a system of temporary relations between the events of his life path. What does psychological time include?:

· assessment of the sequence and speed of various life events;

· experiences of compression and elongation, limited and infinite time;

· belonging of life events to the present and remoteness to the past or future;

· awareness of age, idea of probable life expectancy.

Psychological time does not directly reflect the chronology of events in a person’s life, but is determined by a complex system of interdependent inter-event connections such as “cause-effect”, “goal-means”; changes occurring in the mental space of a person.

Let's talk a little about awareness of age, about the psychological time of the individual. The concept of “age” is multifaceted. There are four subtypes: chronological (passport), biological (functional), social (civil) and psychological. Psychological age is very closely related to the concept of psychological time and, above all, to how a person evaluates his age in the inner world.

Marietta Shaginyan wrote: “I was young at eighty-five years old. I was so young that I seemed younger than my previous twenty years.” Some young people find this statement very strange. But in fact, there is a certain pattern in how people of different age groups assess their age.

Thus, during the experiment, young people (from 20 to 40) and older people (from 40 to 60) assessed their age. It turned out that the younger a person is, the older he seems to be, and also, with an overestimation of age, he perceives others. A girl who didn’t get married at 23 considers herself an old maid, and 30-year-olds even more so old.

After 40 years, the opposite trend is observed - people usually perceive themselves as younger than they actually are. And the older they get, the younger their soul becomes, but, unfortunately, biology reminds a person of his age.

Psychological age has some characteristic features:

· measured according to the “internal reference scale” of each individual;

· within certain limits, reversible, that is, a person can become younger and older due to an increase in the proportion of the psychological future or a decrease in the psychological past;

· may not coincide in different spheres of a person’s life (in his personal life, in the business sphere);

· may be accompanied by psychological crises at certain age periods.

Age crises are like “turning points,” psychological turning points in a person’s life path. At what chronological age are these fractures possible?

In childhood - 6-7 years; for teenagers - 12-14 years; for boys - 18-19 years old, 25-26 years old. And then fractures occur every decade - 30, 40, 50, and so on until 70, and then every 5 years. A separate line is the retirement crisis. A person, as it were, sums up his life over decades and makes plans for the future.

The psychological crisis in 40-year-olds is assessed as a mid-life crisis. The strength of this crisis is determined by how large the discrepancy is between the goals, ideas, plans set in youth, and how they are implemented. A midlife crisis helps a person rethink the part of his life he has lived and outline the prospects for life in such a way as to remain active and needed by people.

M. Zoshchenko in “The Tale of Reason” evaluates the case of a man who was in a car accident - his upper lip was cut and he was immediately taken to the hospital. A female surgeon, in the presence of a patient who could not speak due to injury, asked a friend accompanying him: “How old is he?” He replied: “40 or 50, what’s the difference?” The female doctor said. “If it’s 40, we’ll do plastic surgery, if it’s 50, then I’ll sew it up like that.”

The victim made negative gestures and showed four fingers (that he was 40). The patient underwent plastic surgery. Everything went well, the scar was small, but the moral shock was strong.

The man forgot that the car had hit him, his shock was elsewhere - he could not forget the surgeon’s words about fifty-year-old people whose lips can be sewn up the way mattresses are sometimes sewn up, by quilting with a coarse thread over the edge. This mental pain of an aging man remained with him for a long time.

Throughout his life, a person experiences five main periods: birth, maturation, maturity, aging and old age. Each age period has its own characteristics. They are studied in detail by developmental psychology and gerontology. We would like to dwell on just some of the problems.

In creative professional activity there are several phases: start, culmination (peak) and finish.

As studies by American and Soviet psychologists have shown, there are two professional peaks. The first peak occurs at the age of 30-35, when “minds are fresh”, a person makes discoveries, inventions, and offers something completely unknown to him. The second peak is associated with the wisdom and maturity of a person with extensive life experience - age 50-60 years; such a person is capable of generalizations, creating his own school, and can be a wise organizer and leader.

Man as an individual, personality, constantly develops, although some psychophysiological functions are subject to the aging process: vision, hearing, involuntary memory and attention, reaction time.

Any person must know the psychological characteristics of each age period: instability and maximalism of youth; high performance and professionalism of an adult; increased sensitivity, interest in communication, fatigue in older people.

What content is filled with mental space? First of all, this is the information that a person receives from the external and internal world. It is presented in the form of images, words, non-verbal signs. Information can be accumulated in a person’s long-term memory, and he relies on it in his life and activities, or it can be current or, as they say, operational, necessary to resolve suddenly arising situations and problems. Information is in motion, is involved in a person’s mental activity, and is transmitted to other people. A very important point is the organization of information in time and space.

In addition to information in its direct perception, a person has some products of information processing: signals, myths, codes, in which certain content is accumulated in a concentrated form in mental space. Symbolism plays an important role - signs that reflect the content fixed by traditions or relationships. The symbol most closely corresponds to the object being designated; its important property is its historically established content, which cannot simply be changed.

In psychoanalysis, the symbol is interpreted in connection with people’s inclinations towards myth-making, that is, the creation and assimilation of certain images that help to perceive and explain events occurring in the world. There is a universal, national, group symbolism, enshrined in conventional signs, rituals, traditions and customs. C. Jung connects symbolism with the manifestation and revelation through it of deep archetypes.

Thus, in our society, over the 75 years of its existence, a deep subconscious psychological content has developed, manifested in certain myths that cannot be quickly overcome. The mental content also includes the symbolism of behavior, or non-verbal behavior (gestures, facial expressions, postures), which we decipher when communicating with another person (more on this in another lecture).

Individualization of the mental world is the realization of a person’s individuality, his uniqueness, originality. All impressions affecting a person pass through his inner world, which has its own content, its own characteristics, in a word, subjective. The same event, a work of art, is assessed subjectively, which is quite natural and, conversely, the unnatural desire is to force all people to see and act in the same way, to fit everyone to the same standard.

We will talk in more detail about the individuality and psychological portrait of a person a little later. And now about the experience. Let's think about the word itself - experience. A person experiences any event, becomes involved in it, passes it through himself.

In psychology, experience is considered in several meanings:

· an emotionally charged state that arises in the human mental world under the influence of external and internal influences;

· the process of a person’s choice of motives and goals of activity, accompanied by the presence of aspirations and desires;

· a form of activity that arises when ideals and values collapse and manifests itself in a rethinking of one’s existence, sometimes leading to a psychological crisis.

Experiences help a person to find a personal meaning of current events; through them the process of individualization of a person’s mental world occurs. We can probably say that a person who has experienced grief and misfortune will better understand the troubles and sorrows of another. But at the same time, not every experience leaves a deep mark on a person’s soul.

A very important factor that activates a person’s mental life is an energy charge, psychic energy. 3. Freud wrote that there must be a special energy that must be used as the basis for mental processes. He himself considered the main type of stimulating energy to be libido, that is, sexual energy. Science has not yet found the main sources of psychic energy.

A person is not alone in the world, he lives in society and constantly comes into contact with other people, therefore other people constantly enter the mental world of each of us, occupy a certain place there, create a good or bad mood for us.

The famous psychoanalyst K. Horney noted that people, interacting with each other, form a kind of socio-psychological field. Every person has a need for a certain amount of contacts aimed at realizing love, friendship, and comradely feelings.

K. Horney divided needs into three types: those directed towards people, against people and from people. For most people, one type of needs usually dominates, due to which psychological types of character also differ: in terms of contact, aggressiveness, isolation, openness. But a person can realize all these needs only in society and through other people. In some situations, a person is forced into constant communication and compliance, in others - into struggle and dominance, in others - into isolation.

Depending on how exactly the social balance is deformed, one of the elements of “basic anxiety” begins to intensify in it - fear, helplessness, hostility, a feeling of abandonment and loneliness.

K. Horney characterized three social types.

The compliant type is directed towards people, he is characterized by the desire to join a group, to a more influential, strong person; he suppresses his aggressive aspirations, but does not really like people.

The aggressive type is directed against people, has an idea of life as a struggle of all against all, other people are enemies for him. The main thing for him is victory and control over others, he does not trust anyone. Views attachments and sympathies as weaknesses.

The disconnected type is directed away from people and develops emotional barriers towards other people. Close contacts cause him anxiety; he tries to suppress his emotions and refrain from evaluating other people.

The founder of transactional analysis, E. Berne, tried to reveal the deep layers of human interaction in his teaching. The main idea of his theory is that inside each person there live, as it were, several people and each of them at one time or another controls the person’s behavior. These three human ego states are: “Parent” (P), “Adult” (C), “Child” (D).

“Parent” is a source of social continuity; it includes social attitudes of behavior learned from external sources, mainly from one’s parents and other authority figures. On the one hand, it is a set of useful, time-tested rules and guidelines, on the other, it is a repository of prejudices and prejudices.

“Adult” is the source of realistic, rational behavior; this condition, by the way, is not related to age (remember children growing up after some tragedy). Being focused on the objective collection of information and full responsibility for his actions, the “adult” acts in an organized, adaptive, reasonable manner, calmly assessing the likelihood of success and failure of these actions.

“Child” is the emotive principle in a person; this state of “I” includes all the impulses naturally inherent in a child: gullibility, tenderness, ingenuity, but also capriciousness, resentment, and so on. This also includes early childhood experience of interacting with others, ways of reacting and attitudes adopted in relation to oneself and others (“I am good, others find fault with me”, and so on). Outwardly, D is expressed, on the one hand, as a childish direct attitude to the world (creative enthusiasm, naivety of a genius), on the other hand, as archaic childish behavior (stubbornness, frivolity, etc.).

Any of the named ego states can situationally or constantly prevail in a person, and then he feels, thinks and acts within the framework of this state. He may suddenly begin to perceive his surroundings and act from the point of view of his childhood self-attitude (“I am a nice boy, everyone should admire me,” “I am a weak child, everyone offends me”) or look at the world through the eyes of his parents (“I need to help people ", "You can't trust anyone").

In a life perspective, the ego state develops in a person in the following sequence: in a newborn, on an emotional and sensory basis, a “childish” state of “I” immediately begins to form (tactile, visual and vocal contact with the child is important here as a form of recognition of the fact of his existence); then the “parental” state of the “I” develops on the basis of imitation of the behavior of parents and educators (the presence of observable behavioral models is important here, in particular, the behavior of parents visible from the outside in relation to brothers, sisters, other family members, other people and objects in general), including their inherent forms of recognition of the value of people and objects; finally, the “adult” state of the “I,” chronologically grounded in childhood, develops as the growing child searches for meaning in the surrounding reality, in the meanings of the scientific and practical paradigm that is characteristic of a given society, era and immediate social microenvironment.

Recognition of the “adult” in a person is carried out by society (but through its living representatives!) by endowing him with various symbols of social success, which open the way to the fulfillment of various official and professional roles.

The rigid predominance of one of the positions in a person has its disadvantages. Those in whom the “parent” prevails try to constantly give advice and instructions, pestering others with various instructions. In an “adult”, seriousness and objectivism can turn into some coldness and dryness. In a “child,” emotionality and instability give rise to self-indulgence, arrogance, and boastfulness. The optimal option is when a person has all three conditions in equal proportions, which is extremely rare.

The very presence of three states naturally affects people’s communications. When we come into contact with another person, we usually unconsciously choose one of three positions.

Thus, speaking from the “R” position, we begin to teach, criticize, guide, evaluate, reproach, condemn; we become people who know everything in the world and have our own point of view on everything. We do not doubt anything, we are responsible for everything, we demand from everyone, but at the same time we protect everyone, console everyone, and so on.

Speaking from position “B”, we think soberly, carefully weigh, analyze logically, do not give in to moods, do not have complexes, and the like.

When we operate within the D, we become unrestrained, unpredictable, rebellious, protesting, illogical, impulsive, obedient, deceitful, and the like. We can cry, laugh, get angry and even stomp our feet.

The ability to correctly recognize a communication partner’s position, choose and flexibly change your own allows you to achieve success in communications and grasp the hidden meaning of what is said.

Motivational-need sphere as the basis of personality

Needs are the driving force of a person’s activity.

Need is the body’s need for certain conditions, without which life is impossible.
Motive is an objectified need.
A set of motives aimed at a goal is motivation.

The need to understand the world is the most important for an individual. It frees a person from the captivity of fears, misunderstandings and superstitions, and allows him to be the creator of life.

Other spiritual needs are no less significant for the individual:

in aesthetic pleasure;
in labor;
in social activities;
in communication.

The development of needs (from lower to higher) is a condition for personality development.