Myths about psychotherapy
In this part of the article, we would like to mention the most common myths about psychotherapy that we have encountered in our own practice.
Myth No. 1. Psychotherapy should be free
From time to time we are asked a question that sounds like this: “Is your help free?” And we have always wondered why many people associate psychological help with something for which they do not have to pay. Why, when people go to a hairdresser or cosmetologist, the question of whether it’s free most often does not arise? If we contact a lawyer or notary, we often assume that this will be a paid service. Why should this be any different in the field of mental health care?
We think this is related to what we discussed above. Many people, not understanding the essence of psychotherapeutic help and having no experience of receiving it, assume that this is no different from what happens during everyday communication. And since this communication is free, the idea of paying for it seems pointless. Previously, we determined how these types of communication differ and therefore we will not dwell on this.
It is important to note that not paying for psychotherapy violates its boundaries. Indeed, in the perception of a person who seeks help, this transfers it from the framework of professional work to the mode of everyday communication
And the attitude towards psychological help, involuntarily, arises accordingly. The situation is similar to the one that arises with. There is no sense of value and therefore no motivation to invest in this process. Which significantly reduces efficiency or even prevents the achievement of results. And this has been proven both in our experience and in the experience of our colleagues.
You may say that there are free helplines or psychological consultations within social services. That's right, but they are not free. Or rather, the end user does not pay for them, but the organizations that provide them are financed from outside. This may be public money that is collected through taxes. Or charitable donations made by various people to support social projects.
Myth No. 2. A psychotherapist is a “superman” who sees right through everyone
You also have to deal with a similar myth from time to time. According to him, a psychologist or psychotherapist is someone who:
- has no problems in life
- always beams with happiness and spreads only “positive vibrations” into the world
- is practically a saint and does not experience any emotions, especially negative ones
- sees everyone’s complexes and problems around them
- and gives them special psychological diagnoses
- ready at any time of the day or night to treat everyone to whom he has diagnosed, so that everyone around them also begins to exude happiness and positivity
In reality, a psychotherapist is an ordinary person who has his own difficulties and problems. Yes, he received a special education, where he learned to help other people find a way out of life's dead ends. Sometimes this knowledge helps you avoid getting into such dead ends. But sometimes he still falls into them. And then he turns to his colleagues for help.
A psychotherapist is not someone who skillfully masters masking his feelings. On the contrary, in the process of his training, a specialist learns to recognize his feelings and meet them, give them the opportunity to be, and not suppress. And he teaches this to his clients. Therefore, in life, specialists sometimes show emotions quite clearly, including negative ones. And this often leads to great confusion for those who do not know this and rely on mythical ideas.
A psychotherapist does not need to have some kind of “mystical vision” to help his clients. It is enough to be curious and show this curiosity about the lives of other people and your own.
We like the metaphor where a good psychotherapist is compared to an alien who has flown to Earth and is trying to understand what is happening here and how everything works. And for this purpose there is no need to have special abilities. All you need to do is communicate and ask questions. Including about those things that seem obvious and beyond doubt. Thus, instead of myth, man can discover reality for the first time.
History of the development of psychotherapy
Perhaps in an attempt to answer questions like these, people discovered psychotherapy. Have you noticed that sometimes when communicating with some person you felt better, your mood improved, and the desire to act appeared? And sometimes everything happened exactly the opposite. I think that observant people already noticed this in the distant past, and the most curious tried to understand the mechanisms that increase the effectiveness of one person’s influence, through communication, on the state of another person. But all this knowledge existed within the framework of medicine or religious and philosophical teachings. And only at the end of the 19th century a separate direction arose, which aimed to help a person cope with difficulties through specially structured communication.
A Brief History of the Term Psychotherapy
The word “psychotherapy” was first used at the end of the 19th century. Its author was the English psychiatrist Daniel Hack Tuke. In 1872, he published the book Illustrations of the Influence of the Mind upon the Body. One of the chapters of his book was called “Psychotherapy” (English: Psychotherapeutics). With this word he referred to the therapeutic effect that the patient’s spirit could have on the patient’s body due to the influence of the doctor []. Tuke described a mechanism by which "imagination" could be used as an intermediary between mind and body. And the doctor-patient relationship is emphasized as a key part of the process[].
Freud and his teachings
However, perhaps the most important person in the development and popularization of psychotherapy was Sigmund Freud. His doctrine of the unconscious and psychoanalysis as a method of working with it at one time produced a revolutionary effect
He had a significant influence on psychology, medicine, sociology, anthropology, literature and art of the 20th century. Despite criticism and the fact that modern research calls many of the ideas of his theory into question, for many psychotherapy is still associated with psychoanalysis.
There is no mistake in the name Freud. An incorrect transcription that sounds like Freud has taken hold in the Russian-speaking space. The correct transcription is Freud []; since in German Sigmund Freud is pronounced: .
Freud's teachings generated many followers and supporters who continued to develop his ideas. This led to the development of the psychodynamic approach or depth psychology.
Some followers disagreed with Freud and began to criticize psychoanalysis. This is how new directions of psychotherapy appeared, which were often based on certain ideas borrowed from analytical therapy.
As psychotherapy developed, other directions began to appear that had less and less connection with psychoanalysis, but were based on other ideas about the structure of the psyche.
Gestalt psychology
Gestalt psychology is a branch of Western psychology of the twentieth century that studied the psyche from the point of view of holistic structures (gestalts).
Among the founders of this direction are Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Keller and Kurt Koffka. Kurt Lewin also made a significant contribution to the development of Gestalt theory. Based on Gestalt psychology, Friedrich Perls created a new direction of psychotherapy - Gestalt therapy.
Gestalt psychology: M. Wertheimer, K. Koffka, W. Keller, K. Levin
Representatives of this direction believed that the principles of the division of consciousness are incorrect, just as perception is not a simple set of feelings. Gestalt psychologists focused their attention not on individual parts of phenomena, but on their integrity. Thus, they came to the conclusion that consciousness connects all components into a single whole, forming a gestalt.
Gestalt is the basic concept of Gestalt psychology; translated from German it means “structure”, “integral configuration”, i.e. a certain organized whole, the properties of which are not reducible to the properties of its parts.
Research by Gestalt psychologists made it possible to discover the laws of perception, as well as the principles of Gestalt : proximity, continuity, similarity, simplicity, figure-ground, etc.
Gestalt psychology originates from the discovery by M. Wertheimer of the phi phenomenon (the illusion of moving two alternately switched on light sources), which proved that perception is not reduced to the sum of individual sensations.
Further contributions were made by K. Koffka, who studied the development of perception in children and the perception of color by children. He came to the conclusion that the combination of figure and background against which an object is shown plays an important role in the development of perception. He also formulated the law of “transduction ,” which proved that children do not perceive the colors themselves, but their relationships.
V. Keller discovered the phenomenon of insight (inner illumination), proving that it is inherent not only in animals, but also in people. He also introduced the principle of isomorphism.
K. Lewin created the psychological field theory . He believed that the reason for human activity is intention, i.e. need. The objects that surround us create the psychological field in which a person finds himself and develops. By influencing a person, objects that have certain charges cause needs in him, and these, in turn, cause tension. Lewin called this tension quasi-need . In such a situation, a person strives for relaxation, i.e. satisfying this need.
Behaviorism
Under the influence of reflexology, a new direction is emerging, in which the subject of psychology is behavior as a set of body reactions caused by communication with the stimuli of the adaptive environment.
D. Watson is considered the founder of behaviorism. He completely abandoned the concept of subjective psychology of consciousness and promoted objectively observable reactions of living beings to various stimuli.
Definition 2
Behaviorism is called “psychology without the psyche.” The psyche in behaviorism is identical to consciousness. By eliminating consciousness, behaviorists did not seek to turn the body into a device devoid of mental qualities; they changed the idea of these qualities. They included in the field of study of psychology stimuli accessible to objective external observation and independent of human consciousness—relations of a reactive nature.
Prerequisites for the development of psychological schools
The more successful experimental work in psychology was, the wider the aura of the phenomena being studied became, the less satisfied everyone was with the version that the subject of psychology is consciousness, and the method of study is introspection.
Biology plays a huge role in the development of psychological schools. This science has radically changed the view of human mental functions. It made it possible to consider perception, memory, thinking, skills, feelings, attitudes as tools for life situations and tasks by the body.
The attitude towards consciousness as a closed inner world was gradually destroyed. Darwinian biology influenced the developmental view of mental processes.
At the beginning of its development for psychology, the main source of information about developmental processes was an adult who, under laboratory conditions, according to the instructions of the experimenter, was able to focus his inner gaze on direct experience. But the idea of development expanded the zones of knowledge and introduced specific objects into psychology. It was no longer possible to apply methods of introspective analysis to them.
New objects of psychological science required new objective methods. Only with their help could it be possible to reveal the levels of mental development that preceded the processes that were studied in laboratories. These processes could not be attributed to the primary facts of consciousness; they were followed by many different mental forms. Scientific data about them made it possible for psychologists to move from the laboratory to school, kindergarten, and psychiatric clinic.
The practice of research has changed the understanding of psychology as a science of consciousness. A new understanding of the subject of psychology has arrived. It was reflected in different ways in theoretical systems and views.
In all fields of knowledge there are competing schools and concepts. This fact is normal for the growth of science. At the same time, despite existing disagreements, common views on the subject of research are consolidated. It should be noted that in psychology at the beginning of the 20th century, clashes and divergences of positions were determined by differences in the subject.
Psychology of Wundt
Wilhelm Wundt's subject of study was consciousness. He defined it as something complex and used physiological methods to study it. Wundt created the first psychological laboratory and published the results in his own scientific journal.
The main aspect of the study was the brain’s ability to self-organize. Wundt's system was called voluntarism, which he defined as the ability of willpower to make thinking highly organized.
Wundt also emphasized human experience. In his work he used the method of introspection, i.e. observing your own consciousness and checking the state of your own thinking. However, some researchers have criticized this method, believing that it can cause mental illness.
Finished works on a similar topic
Course work Psychological schools and theories in modern psychology 450 ₽ Abstract Psychological schools and theories in modern psychology 230 ₽ Test work Psychological schools and theories in modern psychology 190 ₽
Receive completed work or specialist advice on your educational project Find out the cost
Wilhelm Wundt is the “father” of modern psychology; he made an enormous contribution to its development.
Reflexology
A new look at the subject of psychology emerged as a result of the appearance of the works of I.P. Pavlov and V.M. Bekhterev. They studied the higher nerve centers of the brain - the organs that control behavior in the environment of the human whole organism. They approved a new subject of psychology - holistic behavior, instead of isolated consciousness. In this direction of psychology, reflex acts as the initial concept. Hence the name - reflexology.
Previously, a reflex was understood as a stereotypical, rigidly fixed reaction. Pavlov introduced the principle of conditionality into this concept and formulated a new term - conditioned reflex. This fact meant that the body acquires and transforms its program of actions under the influence of internal and external conditions.
Functionalism
The previous image of the subject of psychology, at the beginning of the 20th century, faded greatly. Consciousness and its phenomena were increasingly correlated with the vital activity of the organism and its motor activity.
Definition 1
At this time, the formation of functionalism took place. This direction rejected the analysis of internal experience and considered the main task of psychology to be to clarify the work of these structures in solving problems related to the actual needs of people
Thus, the subject area of psychological science expanded. It covered mental functions as internal operations performed by the body to satisfy its need to adapt to the environment.
In the USA, the origins of functionalism were William James, who was also the leader of pragmatism. He believed that a person’s internal experience is not a chain of elements, but a stream of consciousness, which is distinguished by personal selectivity. Exploring the problem of emotions, James proposed the concept according to which changes in the vascular and muscular systems of the body are primary, and the emotional states caused by them are secondary.
Separation into a separate science
The history of the emergence and development of psychology occupies a huge period of time, which lasts thousands of years. Psychology began to stand out as a separate science only in the second half of the 19th century. By this moment, a large amount of scattered psychological knowledge had accumulated, which needed to be systematized, separated from other teachings and directions.
The founder of psychological science was W. Wundt. His work “Fundamentals of Physiological Psychology,” which was written in 1873–1874, combined a lot of accumulated knowledge into a separate teaching. The scientist called it physiological psychology.
In 1879, Wundt founded an experimental psychological laboratory in Leipzig. Then the first experimental psychologists appeared. The main subject that novice specialists studied was the study of their own consciousness and behavior.
Another psychologist, W. James, spread the combined knowledge of Wundt throughout America. He subsequently became the first professor of this science at Harvard University.
Another famous scientist who contributed to the history of psychology is E. Titchener. He graduated from Oxford University and then worked for Wundt. Having adopted knowledge from his teacher, he returned to America and created a scientific school of experimental psychology at Cornwall University.
List of sources:
- “Psychotherapy” article from Wikipedia
- “Sigmund Freud” Wikipedia article
- “Empirical evidence” article from Wikipedia
- “A priori” article from Wikipedia
- Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct of the American Psychological Association
- What is supervision
- What is intervision
- Psychotherapy according to the American Psychological Association
- Psychotherapy as defined by the American Psychiatric Association
- Goals of psychoanalytic treatment
- “Psychoanalysis” Wikipedia article
- How does psychoanalytic treatment work?
- Main types of psychotherapy
- Goals of Gestalt Therapy
- “Cognitive psychotherapy” Wikipedia article
- Karvasarkiy B. D. Clinical psychology
- “Behavioral therapy” article from Wikipedia
- Recognition of the effectiveness of psychotherapy
Causes and essence of the crisis in psychological science
The history of psychology contains a fairly large number of dates and names that characterize its formation and development. We will dwell on the moment from which the formation of the main schools of modern psychology begins. This will to some extent illustrate our previous thesis about the pluralism of opinions in views on the subject of psychology. At the beginning of the 20th century. A crisis situation arises in psychology. There were several reasons:
- separation of psychology from practice;
- the almost impasse associated with many years of using introspection as the main method of scientific research, which turned out to be untenable;
- the inability to explain a number of fundamental problems of psychology itself, in particular the connection between mental phenomena and physiological phenomena and human behavior. (See additional illustrative material.)
At the same time, a significant gap emerged between theory and practice. Many of the theoretical constructs that psychology had at its disposal by that time were not well substantiated and confirmed by experimental data, and those that were cited as proof of the corresponding theories did not stand up to criticism from the point of view of statistical reliability. The provisions and postulates of introspective, atomistic (associative) psychology were very difficult to reconcile with new facts and transformation trends that appeared in various other areas of knowledge. By this time, exact and natural knowledge became the model of science. Psychology did not meet the corresponding requirements. The crisis led to the collapse of the established main trends in psychology. The attempts to overcome it were aimed at solving the problems formulated above. There were several such attempts, and the most famous of them were three, which soon formed into independent directions: behaviorism, Gestalt psychology and psychoanalysis (Freudianism). (See additional illustrative material.)
Psychoanalytic direction
Psychoanalysis
No psychological movement has become as widely known outside of this science as Freudianism. 3. Freud called his teaching psychoanalysis - after the method he developed for diagnosing and treating neuroses. The second name is depth psychology - this direction was named after its subject of research, because concentrated its attention on the study of deep structures of the psyche.
Freud brought to the fore vital questions that will never cease to worry people, for example, about the complexity of a person’s inner world, about the mental conflicts he experiences, about the consequences of unsatisfied instincts, about the contradictions between “desired” and “ought.”
Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
Experiments with hypnosis have shown that feelings and aspirations can direct the behavior of the subject, even when they are not conscious of them. Further, Freud abandoned hypnosis as a method of psychotherapy in favor of the method of “free association” . He used “free association” to follow the train of thought of his patients, hidden not only from the doctor, but also from themselves.
Thus, Sigmund Freud came to some conclusions. From a structural point of view, the psyche contains, according to Freud, three formations: “I”, “Super-ego” and “It” . “I” is a secondary, superficial layer of the mental apparatus, usually called consciousness.
The last two systems are localized in the layer of the primary mental process - in the unconscious . “It” is the place where two groups of drives are concentrated: a) the drive to life, or eros, which includes sexual drives and the drive to self-preservation of the “I”; b) the attraction to death, to destruction - thanatos.
Jung's Analytical Psychology
S. Freud had a decisive influence on the scientific views of C. Jung. Jung, unlike Freud, argued that “not only the lowest, but also the highest in personality can be unconscious.” Disagreeing with Freud, Jung considered libido to be a generalized psychic energy that can take various forms.
Analytical psychology of Carl Jung
No less significant were the differences in the interpretation of dreams and associations. Freud believed that symbols are substitutes for other, repressed objects and drives. In contrast, Jung was sure that only a sign, consciously used by a person, replaces something else, and a symbol is an independent, living, dynamic unit. The symbol does not replace anything, but reflects the psychological state that a person is experiencing at the moment.
Therefore, Jung was against the symbolic interpretation of dreams or associations developed by Freud, believing that it was necessary to follow a person’s symbolism into the depths of his unconscious. In short, there was a lot of disagreement.
Jung expanded on Freud's model of the psyche. Along with the individual unconscious, he postulates the presence of a collective unconscious . In the collective unconscious, all human experience is recorded in the form of archetypes . Archetypes are inherited and are universal for all representatives of the human race.
Jung identified two types of psychological orientation of the individual: introverted (toward the inner world) and extroverted (toward the outer world) and created a doctrine of eight psychological types.
Adler's individual psychology
Alfred Adler became the founder of a new, socio-psychological direction. It was in the development of these new ideas that he diverged from Freud. His theory has very little connection with classical psychoanalysis and represents a holistic system of personality development.
Psychoanalytic direction: Z. Freud, K. G. Jung, A. Adler
Adler denied the positions of Freud and Jung about the dominance of individual unconscious instincts in a person’s personality and behavior, instincts that contrast a person with society and separate him from it. Not innate instincts, not innate archetypes, but a sense of community with people, stimulating social contacts and orientation toward other people, is the main force that determines human behavior and life, Adler believed.
A. Adler, generally accepting the structural model of the psyche developed by Z. Freud, replaces the extremely abstract driving forces of personality Eros and Thanatos with more concrete ones. He proposed that human life is determined by the struggle between two basic needs: the need for power and superiority and the need for affection and belonging to a social group . “compensation” became central to Adler’s concept .
Ethical standards for the activities of a practical psychologist
Psychology, like any other science, is divided into:
- fundamental
;
- applied
.
Both sciences are characterized by the desire to obtain new knowledge and generalize it. If the first is more interested in fundamental problems of the psyche, the theoretical aspect of considering these problems and their empirical testing (general psychology, psychophysiology, social psychology, developmental psychology, etc.), then in applied science priority is given to the study of mental phenomena in a natural setting and the use of those obtained in fundamental science. the science of knowledge in specific situations and conditions (ergonomics, advertising psychology, management psychology, organizational psychology, legal psychology, etc.). (See additional illustrative material.) Along with this, there is another area of activity of a psychologist - practical psychology
, in which specific problems are solved, and obtaining new knowledge is, as a rule, an optional application. Practical psychology is a special type of activity of a psychologist aimed at:
- solving a specific practical problem and involving obtaining psychological information about a specific person or group of people;
- analysis of the information received based on knowledge obtained in fundamental or applied psychology;
- development (planning) and implementation of influence (both psychological and non-psychological) on a specific person or group of people with the aim of changing them or changing their behavior. (See additional illustrative material.)
This specificity of the work of a practical psychologist imposes serious obligations on him and predetermines his actions in accordance with ethical and moral principles. Let us list the most significant of them. 1. A practical psychologist ensures the confidentiality of personally significant information received from a client on the basis of personal trust. He is obliged to warn the subjects about who and for what can use the information received and what decisions can be made on its basis. 2. A practical psychologist bears moral responsibility for decisions made on the basis of the information provided to him, and prevents possible mistakes made by non-professionals in the field of psychology. 3. A practical psychologist must refrain from actions that worsen the client’s condition and cause harm to him, especially when working with sick people. (See additional illustrative material.)
Question 12. The concept of method and technique. Classification of psychology methods
Psychology methods are ways of obtaining information about the human psyche. Among them four groups can be distinguished:
- Organizational methods: comparative method (comparison of different groups by age, activity, etc.);
longitudinal method (multiple examinations of the same individuals over a long period of time); complex method (research of an object is carried out by specialists in various fields and using various means to establish connections and dependencies between phenomena of different types, for example, between the physiological, psychological and social development of an individual). 2. Empirical methods include observation and introspection, experimental methods; psychodiagnostic methods (tests, questionnaires, questionnaires, sociometry, interviews, conversation); analysis of activity products; biographical methods. 3. Data processing methods, including: quantitative (statistical) and qualitative (differentiation of material into groups, analysis) methods. 4. Methods of correction: auto-training, group training, methods of psychotherapeutic influence, training.
A methodology is a set of research methods, the order of their application and interpretation of the results obtained. It depends on the nature of the object of study, methodology, purpose of the study, methods developed, and the general level of qualifications of the researcher. Methodology is a broader concept than method. (for example: Methodology Climate (modified version of the method of B.D. Parygin - Purpose of the test
5 pages, 2454 words
Development of everyday activities in preschool age (from birth to 7 years)
... skills that will subsequently characterize his behavior. Let us emphasize the features of the development of everyday activities in infancy: in a newborn, sleep is separated from wakefulness... and try to explain, establish the simplest cause-and-effect relationships. Let us recall the features of the development of everyday activities at an early age: everyday processes contribute to the expansion of the sphere of self...
The technique is intended to clarify the conditions that ensure a favorable psychological climate in the team.)
Examples of similar educational works
Subject and methods of psychology. General concept of the psyche. Classification of mental phenomena
... Basic theoretical principles of psychology: 1) recognition of the determination of mental phenomena by material reality; 2) genetic approach to mental phenomena, study of their development; 3) the study of the human psyche in relation to...
The subject of general psychology and the development of its main directions
... development of anatomical and physiological knowledge and great discoveries of the XIV-XVI centuries. Rejection of the soul as a subject of study and an explanatory principle of bodily and mental phenomena. Introduction of the term “psychology” Problem: the human psyche was considered...
4-Definition of the psyche. Concept of mental reflection
... auxiliary means, speech signs created in the process of historical development. Human consciousness forms the unity of higher mental functions. The structure of the human psyche. The psyche is diverse and complex in its manifestations. Usually …
Features of human GNI. Development of speech in ontogenesis and its disorders
... and thus ensures the progress of culture. For the development of the second human signal system, the first 6 years of the brain are of decisive importance, partially analyzing it - determining the direction and distance of the sound source. This feature is provided...
Development of basic psychological approaches to research and creation of advertising
... in the form of goods. Suggestion is a process of influencing the human psyche, associated with a decrease in consciousness and criticality when... areas of application of the Gestalt approach in advertising: 1) psychology of form: ●The shape of the pictorial surface ●Simple geometric...
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis begins its development in parallel to behaviorism. He discovered layers of mental processes, forces, mechanisms behind consciousness that are unconscious to the individual. Psychoanalysis expanded the realm of the psyche beyond the phenomena experienced by the subject, about which he can give an account.
The founder of psychoanalysis was Sigmund Freud.
Freud revised his previous interpretation of consciousness. Its role in human behavior was not rejected, but was presented as radically different from traditional psychology. Thanks to understanding the causes of hidden complexes and suppressed drives, that is, the technique of psychoanalysis, it becomes possible to get rid of the mental trauma inflicted by them on a person’s personality.
The discovery of the objective psychodynamics and psychoenergetics of the motives of a person’s behavior, hidden “behind the scenes” of his consciousness, Freud transformed the previous understanding of the subject of psychology. The psychotherapeutic work done by him and many of his followers exposed the most important role of motivational factors as objective, therefore independent of what the “voice of self-consciousness” whispers, regulators of behavior. Freud had many students. Carl Jung and Alfred Adler created their own directions based on psychoanalysis. Jung called his psychology analytical, and Adler called it individual.
- 1. Crisis of psychology
- 2. Behaviorism
- 3. Psychoanalysis
- 4. Gestaltism
LECTURE No. 7. Basic psychological schools
1. Crisis of psychology
The more successful the experimental work in psychology was, the more extensive the field of phenomena it studied became, the more rapidly grew the dissatisfaction with the versions that the unique subject of this science is consciousness, and the method is introspection. This was exacerbated by the successes of new biology. She changed her view of all life functions, including mental ones. Perception and memory, skills and thinking, attitudes and feelings are now interpreted as “tools” that work to help the body solve problems that life situations confront it with.
The view of consciousness as a closed inner world collapsed. The influence of Darwinian biology was also reflected in the fact that mental processes began to be studied from a developmental point of view.
At the dawn of psychology, the main source of information about these processes was the adult individual, who was able in the laboratory, following the instructions of the experimenter, to focus his “inner gaze” on the facts of “direct experience.” The expansion of the zone of cognition introduced special objects into psychology. It was impossible to apply the method of introspective analysis to them. These were the facts of the behavior of animals, children, and the mentally ill.
New objects required new objective methods. Only they could reveal those levels of mental development that preceded the processes studied in laboratories. From now on it was no longer possible to classify these processes as primary facts of consciousness. Behind them branched a great tree of successive psychic forms. Scientific information about them allowed psychologists to move from a university laboratory to a kindergarten, school, and psychiatric clinic.
The practice of real research work has shaken the view of psychology as a science of consciousness to the core. A new understanding of its subject was maturing.
In any field of knowledge there are competing concepts and schools. This situation is normal for the growth of science. However, despite all the disagreements, these directions consolidate common views on the subject under study. In psychology, at the beginning of the 20th century, the divergence and clash of positions were determined by the fact that each of the schools defended its own subject that was different from the others. Behind the visible disintegration were processes of a more in-depth development of real mental life, various aspects of which were reflected in new theoretical constructs. Their development is associated with revolutionary changes across the entire front of psychological research.
At the beginning of the 20th century. the previous image of the subject of psychology, as it developed during the period of its self-assertion in the family of other sciences, has greatly faded. Although most psychologists still believed that they were studying consciousness and its phenomena, these phenomena were increasingly correlated with the vital activity of the organism, with its motor activity. Only a very few continued to believe that they were called to search for the building material of direct experience and its structures.
Functionalism opposed structuralism. This direction considered the main task of psychology to be to find out how these structures work when solving problems related to the actual needs of people. Thus, the subject area of psychology expanded, covering mental functions that are produced not by a disembodied subject, but by an organism in order to satisfy its need to adapt to the environment.
William James was at the origins of functionalism in the USA.
(1842–1910). He is also known as a leader of the philosophy of pragmatism, which evaluates ideas and theories based on how they work in practice to benefit the individual.
In his “Principles of Psychology” (1890), James wrote that a person’s internal experience is not a “chain of elements,” but a “stream of consciousness.” He is distinguished by personal selectivity.
Discussing the problem of emotions, James proposed the concept according to which changes in the muscular and vascular systems of the body (i.e., changes in autonomic functions) are primary, and the emotional states caused by them are secondary.
Although James did not create either an integral system or a school, his views on the service role of consciousness in the interaction of the organism with the environment, calling for practical decisions and actions, became firmly entrenched in the ideological fabric of American psychology. Until recently, based on what was brilliantly written at the end of the 19th century. James's book was studied in American colleges.
2. Behaviorism
At the beginning of the 20th century. a powerful trend emerged that established behavior as the subject of psychology, understood as a set of reactions of the organism, conditioned by its communication with the stimuli of the environment to which it adapts. The credo of the movement was captured by the term “behavior,” and it itself was called behaviorism.
His “father” is considered to be J. Watson,
whose article “Psychology as the Behaviorist Sees It” (1913) outlined the manifesto of the new school. It required “to throw overboard as a relic of alchemy and astrology all the concepts of the subjective psychology of consciousness and translate them into the language of objectively observable reactions of living beings to stimuli.” Behaviorism began to be called “psychology without the psyche.” This turn assumed that the psyche is identical to consciousness. Meanwhile, by demanding the elimination of consciousness, behaviorists did not at all turn the body into a device devoid of mental qualities. They changed the idea of these qualities. The real contribution of the new direction was the dramatic expansion of the field studied by psychology. From now on it included a stimulus accessible to external objective observation, independent of consciousness - reactive relationships.
The designs of psychological experiments have changed. They were performed mainly on animals - white rats. Various types of labyrinths were invented as experimental devices in which animals learned to find a way out of them.
The theme of learning, acquiring skills through trial and error, has become central to this school.
Having excluded consciousness, behaviorism inevitably turned out to be a one-sided direction. At the same time, he introduced into the scientific apparatus of psychology the category of action as not only an internal, spiritual, but also an external, bodily reality. Behaviorism changed the general structure of psychological cognition; its subject now covered the construction and change of real bodily actions in response to a wide range of external challenges.
Proponents of this direction hoped that, based on experimental data, it would be possible to explain any natural forms of human behavior. The basis of everything is the laws of learning.
3. Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis undermined the psychology of consciousness to its core. He revealed behind the veil of consciousness powerful layers of psychic forces, processes and mechanisms that were not realized by the subject. Psychoanalysis turned the area of the unconscious into a scientific subject. This is what the Austrian doctor called his teaching 3. Freud
(1856–1939). He spent many years studying the central nervous system, gaining a solid reputation as an expert in this field.
Having become a doctor and starting to treat patients with mental disorders, he initially tried to explain their symptoms by the dynamics of nervous processes.
The more he delved into this area, the more acutely he felt dissatisfaction. In search of a way out, he turned from the analysis of consciousness to the analysis of the hidden, deep layers of the mental activity of the individual. Before Freud they were not a subject of psychology, but after him they became an integral part of it.
The first impetus for their study came from the use of hypnosis. The true reasons are hidden from consciousness, but they are the ones that govern behavior. Freud and his followers began to analyze these forces. They created one of the most powerful and influential areas in modern human science. Using various methods for interpreting mental manifestations, they developed a complex and branched network of concepts, using which they captured the deep “volcanic” processes hidden behind conscious phenomena in the “mirror” of introspection.
The main one among these processes was recognized as the energy of attraction of a sexual nature. It was called the word “libido”. Experiencing various transformations, it is suppressed, repressed and, nevertheless, breaks through the “censorship” of consciousness along roundabout paths, discharging itself in various symptoms, including pathological ones (disorders of movement, perception, memory, etc.).
This view led to a revision of the previous interpretation of consciousness. Its active role in behavior was not rejected, but was presented as significantly different than in traditional psychology.
Only through awareness of the causes of suppressed drives and hidden complexes is it possible (with the help of psychoanalytic techniques) to get rid of the mental trauma that they inflicted on the individual. Having discovered the objective psychodynamics and psychoenergetics of the motives of a person’s behavior, hidden “behind the scenes” of his consciousness, Freud transformed the previous understanding of the subject of psychology. The psychotherapeutic work done by him and many of his followers revealed the most important role of motivational factors as objective regulators of behavior and, therefore, independent of what the “voice of self-consciousness” whispers.
Freud was surrounded by many students. The most original of them, who created their own directions, were C. Jung
(1875–1961) and
A. Adler
(1870–1937).
The first called his psychology analytical, the second - individual. Jung's first innovation was the concept of the “collective unconscious.” If, according to Freud, phenomena repressed from consciousness can enter the unconscious psyche of an individual, then Jung considered it saturated with forms that can never be individually acquired, but are a gift from distant ancestors. Analysis allows us to determine the structure of this gift, formed by several archetypes.
Archetypes are found in dreams, fantasies, hallucinations, and cultural creations. Jung’s division of human types into extroverted (outward-facing, keen on social activity) and introverted (inward-facing, focused on one’s own drives, which Jung, following Freud, gave the name “libido”, but considered it unlawful to identify with the sexual instinct) became very popular.
Adler, modifying the original doctrine of psychoanalysis, identified as a factor in personality development the feeling of inferiority generated by bodily defects. As a reaction to this feeling, there arises a desire to compensate and overcompensate in order to achieve superiority over others. The source of neuroses is hidden in the “inferiority complex”.
The psychoanalytic movement spread widely in various countries. New options arose for the explanation and treatment of neuroses by the dynamics of unconscious drives, complexes, and mental traumas. Freud's own ideas about the structure and dynamics of personality also changed. Its organization appeared in the form of a model, the components of which are: “it” (blind irrational drives), “I” (ego) and “super-ego” (the level of moral norms and prohibitions).
From the tension under which the “I” finds itself due to pressure on it, on the one hand, blind desires, on the other – moral prohibitions, a person is saved by protective mechanisms: repression (eliminating thoughts and feelings into the unconscious), sublimation (switching sexual energy for creativity), etc.
4. Gestaltism
Psychoanalysis was built on the postulate that a person and his social world are in a state of secret, eternal enmity. A different understanding of the relationship between the individual and the social environment was established in French psychology. Personality, its actions and functions were explained by the context that created them, the interaction of people. In this “crucible” the inner world of the subject is melted with all its unique features, which the previous psychology of consciousness took as initially given.
This line of thought, popular among French researchers, was most consistently developed by P. Janet (1859–1947). His first works as a psychiatrist concerned personality diseases that arise when, due to a drop in “mental tension” (Janet proposed calling this phenomenon “psychosthenia”), a dissociation of ideas and tendencies occurs, and a break in the connections between them. The fabric of mental life is splitting apart. Several personalities begin to live in one organism. Janet subsequently takes communication as cooperation as the key explanatory principle of human behavior. In its depths various mental functions are born: will, memory, thinking, etc.
In the holistic process of cooperation, a division of acts occurs: one individual performs the first part of the action, the second - the other part. One commands, the other obeys. Then the subject performs in relation to himself the action to which he previously forced the other.
He learns to cooperate with himself, to obey his own commands, acting as the author of an action, as a person with his own will.
Many concepts took will to be a special force rooted in the consciousness of the subject. Now its secondary nature was being proven, its derivative from an objective process in which another person is certainly represented.
With all the transformations that psychology has experienced, the concept of consciousness has largely retained its previous characteristics.
His views on his attitude to behavior, unconscious mental phenomena, and social influences changed. But new ideas about how this consciousness itself is organized first emerged with the appearance on the scientific scene of a school whose credo expressed the concept of gestalt (dynamic form, structure). In contrast to the interpretation of consciousness as “a structure made of bricks (sensations) and cement (associations),” the priority of an integral structure was asserted, on the general organization of which its individual components depend. According to the systems approach, any functioning system acquires properties that are not inherent in its components, the so-called system properties, which disappear when the system is decomposed into elements. From the standpoint of a new philosophical doctrine called emergent materialism (Margolis, 1986), consciousness is considered as an emergent property of brain processes, which is in a complex relationship with these processes.
Emerging as an emergent property of brain systems, consciousness acquires a unique ability to perform the function of top-down control over lower-level neural processes, subordinating their work to the tasks of mental activity and behavior.
Important facts concerning the integrity of perception, its irreducibility to sensations, flowed in from various laboratories.
Danish psychologist E. Rubin studied the interesting phenomenon of “figure and ground”. The figure of the object is perceived as a closed whole, and the background extends behind.
The idea that there is a general pattern at work here, requiring a new style of psychological thinking, united a group of young scientists: M. Wertheimer
(1880–1943),
V. Köhler
(1887–1967) and
K. Koffka
(1886–1941), who became the leaders of the direction called Gestalt psychology. It criticized not only the old introspective psychology, which was engaged in the search for the initial elements of consciousness, but also the young behaviorism. In experiments on animals, Gestaltists showed that by ignoring mental images - Gestalts - it is impossible to explain their motor behavior.
The behaviorist formula of “trial and error” was also criticized by Gestaltists. In contrast, experiments on apes revealed that they are able to find a way out of a problem situation not through random trials, but by instantly grasping the relationships between things. This perception of relationships was called insight. It arises due to the construction of a new gestalt, which is not the result of learning.
Köhler's work “Study of Intelligence in Anthropoids” aroused widespread interest.
Studying human thinking, Gestalt psychologists proved that mental operations when solving creative problems are subject to special principles of Gestalt organization (“grouping”, “centering”, etc.), and not to the rules of formal logic.
Consciousness was presented in Gestalt theory as an integrity created by the dynamics of cognitive structures that are transformed according to psychological laws.
A theory close to gestaltism, but in relation to motives of behavior rather than mental images (sensory and mental), was developed by K. Levin
(1890–1947). He called it "field theory".
The concept of “field” was borrowed by him, like other Hegdtaltists, from physics and was used as an analogue of Gestalt. Personality was depicted as a “system of tensions.” Lewin conducted many experiments to study the dynamics of motives. As a result of his experiments, he developed a phenomenon called the “Zeigarnik effect.” Its essence is that the energy of the motive created by the task, without exhausting itself (due to the fact that it was interrupted), was preserved and passed into the memory of it.
Another direction was the study of the level of aspirations. This concept denoted the degree of difficulty of the goal towards which the subject strives. He was presented with a scale of tasks of varying degrees of difficulty. After he chose and completed (or did not complete) one of them, he was asked: what task of difficulty would he choose next? This choice, after previous success (or failure), fixed the level of aspirations. Behind the chosen level there were hidden many life problems that a person faces every day - the success or failure he experiences, hopes, expectations, conflicts, claims, etc.
Over the course of several decades, the first shoots of a new discipline, appearing under the ancient name of psychology, transformed into a huge field of scientific knowledge. In terms of the wealth of theoretical ideas and empirical methods, it has taken a worthy place among other highly developed sciences.
The disintegration into schools, each of which claimed to appear to the world as the only true psychology, became the reason for assessing such an unusual situation for science as a crisis.
The real historical meaning of this collapse was that the focus of the research program of each school was the development of one of the blocks of the categorical apparatus of psychology. Each science operates with its own categories, that is, the most fundamental generalizations of thought that cannot be deduced from others. The concept of categories arose in the depths of philosophy (here, as in many other discoveries, the pioneer was Aristotle, who identified categories such as essence, quantity, quality, time, etc.). The categories form an internally connected system. It performs a working function in the cognitive process, therefore it can be called a thinking apparatus, through which the various depths of the reality under study are reflected, each object of which is perceived in its quantitative, qualitative, temporal and similar characteristics.
Along with the above-mentioned global philosophical categories (and inseparably with them), concrete science operates with its own categories. They do not present the world as a whole, but a subject area “cut out” from this world for the purpose of detailed study of its special, unique nature. One of these areas is the psyche, or, in the language of the Russian scientist N.N. Lange, psychosphere. Of course, it is also comprehended by scientific thought in the categories of quantity, quality, time, etc. But in order to know the nature of the psyche, the laws to which it is subject, and to master it in practice, we need a special categorical apparatus that gives a vision of mental reality as different from the physical , biological, social.
Table of contents
