We can identify the main 4 conditions necessary for the normal development of a child, formulated by A.R. Luria.

The first most important condition- “normal functioning of the brain and its cortex”; in the presence of pathological conditions arising as a result of various pathogenic influences, the normal ratio of irritable and inhibitory processes is disrupted, and the implementation of complex forms of analysis and synthesis of incoming information is difficult; the interaction between brain blocks responsible for various aspects of human mental activity is disrupted.

Second condition- “the normal physical development of the child and the associated preservation of normal performance, normal tone of nervous processes.”

Third condition- “preservation of the sense organs that ensure the child’s normal communication with the outside world.”

Fourth condition- systematic and consistent education of the child in the family, in kindergarten and in secondary school.

19. Causes of deviations in mental development.

divided by endogenous (hereditary) And exogenous (environmental).

During the period of intrauterine development, the fetus can be affected by diseases of the mother (viral infections, rubella, toxoplasmosis, etc. Etiological factors also include cardiovascular and endocrine diseases, toxicosis of pregnancy, immunological incompatibility of the blood of the mother and fetus, emotional stress, overheating, hypothermia, the effects of vibration, radiation, certain medications, use of alcohol, tobacco, drugs, etc. during pregnancy. Birth injuries and asphyxia can also cause developmental abnormalities in early childhood.

socio-psychological determination. Separation of a child from his mother, lack of emotional warmth, a sensory-poor environment, callous and cruel treatment can act as causes of various disorders of psychogenesis.

20. Cause-and-effect relationships between pathogenic factors and impaired development.

There is a complex nature of the relationship between the etiological factor and deviant development. Clinical studies show that the same cause sometimes leads to completely different developmental disorders. pathogenic conditions that differ in nature can cause the same forms of disorders. The final effect of the pathogenic factor, that is, the specific form of impaired development, will depend not only on itself, but also on various combinations of mediating variables. These variables include the predominant localization of the harmful effect, the influence of which is most often selective, as a result of which a variety of structures, organs and systems may be affected.

The strength of the pathogenic factor directly determines its final effect, the severity of a particular disorder. In addition to the above, a very significant variable is exposure and duration of exposure. Even if the adverse effect is short-term and fairly weak, if it is repeated frequently, a cumulative effect is likely that can lead to serious developmental disorders.

The smaller the child, the worse the possible consequences of various harms for him.

The final effect of destructive conditions is largely determined by how quickly and effectively the victim will be provided with qualified assistance, including psychological and pedagogical assistance. A pathogenic effect, as a rule, does not lead to the formation of the phenomenon of impaired development itself, but only to the appearance of anatomical and physiological prerequisites - relatively stable disorders of the central nervous system.

Under to compensation refers to the process of compensation for underdeveloped or impaired functions by using preserved or restructuring partially impaired ones.

Functional systems have high plasticity and the ability to be rebuilt. It is this ability that underlies the mechanisms of compensation for restructuring.

Traditionally, there are two types of restructuring of impaired functions - intrasystem and intersystem.

Compensatory processes occur under constant control and with the participation of higher nervous activity; they go through several phases (stages).

The first phase is the detection of one or another disturbance in the functioning of the body.

The second phase is assessing the parameters of the disorder, its location and depth (severity).

The third phase is the formation of a program for the sequence and composition of compensatory processes and mobilization of the individual’s neuropsychic resources.

The inclusion of this program necessarily requires tracking the process of its implementation - the content of the fourth phase.

the fifth, final phase is associated with stopping the compensatory mechanism and consolidating its results.

Compensatory processes, unfolding over time, are carried out at different levels of their organization. Usually there are four such levels.

First - biological or bodily level.

Second - psychological level significantly expands the capabilities of compensatory mechanisms, overcoming the limitations of the first.

Third - social. The content of this level is associated with the macrosocial scale of human existence.

Rehabilitation is defined as “a system of state, socio-economic, medical, professional, pedagogical, psychological and other measures aimed at preventing the development of pathological processes leading to temporary or permanent loss of ability to work, at the effective and early return of sick and disabled people (children and adults) to society and to socially useful work.

Habilitation literally translated - granting rights. activities should be understood as a system of early intervention in the child’s development process in order to achieve his maximum adaptability to the external conditions of existence, taking into account the individual characteristics of existing disorders.

Correction- the process of correcting certain impaired functions. Correction is always a certain influence on a person in order to correct something; it is an external process in relation to the individual, as opposed to compensation.

22. Classifications of children with mental retardation.

Children with mental retardation are children with special needs in psychophysical development.

Classification of children with OPFR:

- Children with sensory impairments (hearing, vision).

Children with speech disorders.

Children with musculoskeletal disorders.

Children with intellectual disabilities.

Children with complex disabilities.

Children with distorted development.

Children with disabilities who, as a result of mental and physical disabilities, have learning difficulties: deaf children and the hard of hearing; blind and visually impaired; children with mental retardation; mentally retarded children; autistic children; children with severe speech impairments, with musculoskeletal disorders, with complex (combined) disorders, etc.

Children with OPFR (features of psycho-physical development) are divided into the following categories:

Children with learning difficulties

Disabled children

Children studying in integration classes

Children in need of psychological and pedagogical assistance.

Young, inexperienced parents raising their first child, literally after the first month, begin to actively seek answers to the following questions: when does he start talking, how to develop fine motor skills, what should be the conditions for a child’s development in the family for him to develop correctly? And many others. And if suddenly something happens behind (or ahead) of generally accepted norms, they begin to worry. In most cases, it is not difficult to avoid this; it is enough to create the necessary conditions for this. Let's talk about this.

What should be the conditions for the development of young children?

Creating conditions for the normal development of a child is actually not difficult. Just to begin with, let’s define what it is to talk about the same things. Specialists under favorable conditions conditions of child development in the family understand the organization of the baby’s living space that will stimulate its development. But this is in theory, but what about in practice?

We create conditions for the normal development of a child 0-6 months

The first thing that needs to be ensured is the availability of as many items as varied in shape, color, material and texture as possible. Naturally, they all must be safe. Even if the baby cannot reach most of them yet, he can and should be helped. Place him on the floor more often and give him a little help to reach this or that toy.

Such activities can be combined with hardening. No matter how high-quality and modern a disposable diaper is (more details: ), it still prevents the skin from breathing. Do not dress him, air baths will only benefit the child.

Such placements on the stomach will significantly expand the baby’s view and allow him to see how much interesting things there are around. By the way, it is not necessary to surround him only with toys. In most cases, children love to play with some household objects. So a glasses case or a strainer can keep your little one occupied for 30 minutes.

We create conditions for the normal development of a child 6-12 months old

After six months, a new period begins in the child’s development. Now he has an increased need for physical activity and mastering new movements. So, the main rule for creating favorable conditions for the development of young children is: do not limit.

Reduce the time spent in the playpen or crib; it would be better if the child spends more time on the floor. This way he can quickly learn to crawl, sit down, roll over, and stand up while holding onto something. Of course, at first you will have to constantly help and support him, but the baby learns quickly. It seems like only yesterday he was making his first attempts to stand on his feet, but today he is confidently walking along the wall.

Have you noticed that the baby scatters everything that comes to hand? This is normal, it means it develops with age. A period of destruction must be present, because at this time the child’s thinking is actively developing. He learns to compare, establishes cause-and-effect relationships (I threw it - my mother picked it up).

Instead of restricting your child and punishing him for another damaged thing, offer him games related to destruction. Build towers from cubes and let them break them, let them tear old newspaper into pieces. Tie the toys you take for a walk with strings so they don’t fall into the mud. As a result, the child will get what he wants, and you will make do with minimal losses or no losses at all.

Favorable conditions for the development of a young child in the family help to outgrow many problems. For example, at a certain stage of growing up, a baby begins to poke his fingers into various holes, greatly frightening his parents. So, to prevent such behavior from developing into an obsession (for example, sticking your finger in a socket), you need to create conditions that help you outgrow it faster. So make sure you have the appropriate toys or come up with something at hand.

In one article, it is difficult to consider all aspects of creating conditions for the development of young children, but I hope the main idea is clear. You can obtain additional information from the following materials: and.

Prerequisites for mental development are things that have a certain influence on the individual, i.e. external and internal circumstances on which the characteristics and level of mental development depend.
They are external and internal. External prerequisites for mental development are the quality and characteristics of a person’s upbringing; internal - activity and desire, as well as motives and goals that a person sets for himself in the interests of his improvement as an individual.

Man is a biosocial being. Therefore, in influencing his mental development, there are 2 main factors: biological, natural, and social - living conditions, training and education organized by society.
Biological conditions are hereditary and congenital properties of the body that create anatomical and physiological prerequisites (inclinations, type of GNI) for the formation of various types of mental activity.
Social conditions - none of the specific human qualities (logical thinking, creative imagination, volitional regulation of actions, etc.) can arise only through the ripening of organic inclinations; certain conditions of training and education are required (the example of Mowgli).
However, neither environment nor heredity can influence a person outside of his own activity.

There are prerequisites for normal mental development. They are determined by various factors: body size and shape, growth and maturation rates, health status and many others. The embryo and fetus are particularly sensitive to the influence of these factors. Some causes of serious disturbances in the development of the embryo and fetus are known, namely: incorrect division of chromosomes, placental insufficiency, viral and primary infectious diseases of the fetus, metabolic disorders resulting from maternal diseases, Rh conflict, the influence of ionizing rays, the influence of certain medications, toxic drugs, which directly affects the psychosomatic development of the child in the future.
Condition for mental development The child can be considered the reality surrounding him (family, social and living conditions, etc.). Conditions are determined by social and biological factors. What is meant by the term social factors is associated with the direct influences to which the organism is exposed during development (from birth to full maturity) and on which the implementation of heredity depends. The following conditions are not the best conditions for the development of the fetus: the age of the expectant mother is too young, micro- and macrotraumas during pregnancy, changes in pressure, for example, while traveling by plane, noise that continues for a long time, the consequences of infertility treatment. Children born with disorders are born to women who smoke and drink a lot. All these children are included in the so-called risk group. Malnutrition during pregnancy and lack of vitamins, especially A and B2, can also cause disturbances in fetal development. Thus, the mother’s nutrition and her lifestyle affect the development of the fetus. If a woman is pregnant, she should not smoke or drink alcohol. Negative effects on the developing fetus, mainly on the nervous system, are negative emotions of the pregnant woman, worries, and nervousness. Family conflicts are extremely undesirable, as the pregnant woman may develop a feeling of fear.
Social conditions for a child under three years of age are most often limited to the parental home. Among social factors, the main role is given to the family. As research shows, the negative influence of the family associated with the development of a child leads not only to disturbances in the child’s mental development, but also to serious difficulties in adapting to the environment, which usually manifests itself only in the second decade of life.
In addition, the psychological development of a child cannot be normal if the basic needs for a sense of security, love, respect, mutual understanding, and a sense of connection with parents are not met. The baby should feel that he is a gifted and beloved child. These are necessary for the normal development of the child as well as appropriate nutrition, fresh air or vaccinations and hygiene. The educational influence of parents is closely related to the implementation of the child’s basic needs. Both excessive indulgence and excessive severity or inconsistency in the actions and actions of parents have a bad effect on the psychosomatic development of the baby.
According to most modern psychologists, the following combinations are extremely negative for the normal development of a child: an aggressive and despotic mother and a compliant father who is not interested in the child; a fearful mother and a stern, strict father; an overly caring mother and a cold or aggressive father.
The development of a child is negatively affected by the pedagogical incompetence of parents, reluctance to engage with the child, and psychological and physical neglect of the child. If there is no corresponding encouragement on the part of adults, if the child, figuratively speaking, is not taken by the hand and is not led forward in the right direction, development does not occur. Let’s say that if a child is not forced to speak and he does not speak before the age of seven, then his speech will never develop. Neglect leads to developmental delays. The child learns only some basic, primitive skills. A personality is formed, which, most likely, will subsequently take revenge on loved ones who neglected its development, and at the same time on the entire society.
Delayed mental development is also caused by excessive pressure and overprotection. It hinders the natural development of the child, leads to delayed mental development, mental retardation, borderline behavior, and emotional deficiency. As a rule, sooner or later a child becomes aggressive towards someone who held back his development.
It has also been proven that for the normal development of the psyche, the motor system, the harmonious development of individual systems, including the central nervous system, physical activity, recreational exercises in the fresh air and hardening are of great importance. The development of the motor sphere in general, and fine motor skills in particular, is the most important condition for the mental development of a child. Fine motor skills are the basis of development, a kind of locomotive, of all mental processes, including attention, memory, perception, thinking and speech.
Unfavorable conditions for raising a child in a family can hinder the realization of his genetic inclinations. So that the baby can show all the best properties of his nature, both physical and mental. Parents must live his life, must provide him with maximum attention, show love for the baby, interest in his affairs, watch him, talk to him, ensure that the child acquires the necessary experience and at the same time teach self-control, endurance, and faith in one’s own strengths. The influence of these factors on the psychosomatic development of a child has been scientifically proven. Parents need to protect their baby from the negative influence of factors associated with modern civilization, big chemistry, poisoning and pollution of the environment and a number of others that take place in modern life (television, restriction of physical activity, etc.).
Thus, the mental development of children depends on heredity, family environment and upbringing, as well as the external environment with the diversity of its social and biological influences. All these influences act in a single complex, which can determine both the strengthening and the leveling of the influence of each of the factors. In general, the influence of environment and biological factors is more intense the younger the organism. This applies to both positive and negative influences. Of decisive importance is the health of the mother (age, absence of infectious and viral diseases, bad habits), healthy heredity, favorable course of pregnancy and childbirth (absence of micro-macrotrauma), normal functioning of the placenta, absence of adverse environmental influences (toxic drugs, medications, radiation) , as well as the psycho-emotional state of the pregnant woman and her good nutrition. The most important condition for a child’s mental development is the development of the motor sphere in general, and fine motor skills in particular. For the normal mental development of a child, it is extremely necessary to ensure his basic needs for a sense of security, love, respect, mutual understanding, and a feeling of connection with his parents.

Mukhina V. Developmental psychology. Phenomenology of development

CHAPTER I. FACTORS DETERMINING MENTAL DEVELOPMENT
§ 1. CONDITIONS OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT

Section I Phenomenology of development

Developmental psychology as a branch of psychological knowledge studies the facts and patterns of development of the human psyche, as well as the development of his personality at different stages of ontogenesis. In accordance with this, child, adolescent, youth psychology, adult psychology, as well as gerontopsychology are distinguished. Each age stage is characterized by a set of specific patterns of development - main achievements, accompanying formations and new formations that determine the features of a specific stage of mental development, including features of the development of self-awareness.
Before we begin discussing the patterns of development themselves, let us turn to age periodization. From the point of view of developmental psychology, the criteria for age classification are determined primarily by the specific historical, socio-economic conditions of upbringing and development, which correlate with different types of activities. The classification criteria also correlate with age-related physiology, with the maturation of mental functions, which determine the development itself and the principles of learning.
Thus, L. S. Vygotsky considered mental neoplasms, characteristic of a specific stage of development. He identified “stable” and “unstable” (critical) periods of development. He attached decisive importance to the period of crisis - the time when a qualitative restructuring of the child’s functions and relationships occurs. During these same periods, significant changes are observed in the development of the child’s personality. According to L. S. Vygotsky, the transition from one age to another occurs in a revolutionary way.
The criterion for age periodization by A. N. Leontyev is leading activities. The development of leading activity determines the most important changes in the mental processes and psychological characteristics of the child’s personality at a given stage of development. “The fact is that, like every new generation, every individual person belonging to a given generation finds certain living conditions already ready. They make possible this or that content of his activity.”1
The age periodization of D. B. Elkonin is based on leading activities that determine the emergence of psychological new formations at a specific stage of development. The relationship between productive activity and communication activity is considered.
A.V. Petrovsky identifies for each age period three phases of entering the reference community: adaptation, individualization and integration, in which the development and restructuring of the personality structure occurs2.
In reality, the age periodization of each individual person depends on the conditions of his development, on the characteristics of the maturation of morphological structures responsible for development, as well as on the internal position of the person himself, which determines development at later stages of ontogenesis. Each age has its own specific “social situation”, its own “leading mental functions” (L. S. Vygotsky) and its own leading activity (A. N. Leontiev, D. B. Elkonin)3. The relationship between external social conditions and internal conditions for the maturation of higher mental functions determines the general movement of development. At each age stage, selective sensitivity is detected, susceptibility to external influences - sensitivity. L. S. Vygotsky attached decisive importance to sensitive periods, believing that training that is premature or delayed in relation to this period is not effective enough.
The objective, historically determined realities of human existence influence him in their own way at different stages of ontogenesis, depending on through which previously developed mental functions they are refracted. At the same time, the child “borrows only what suits him, proudly passes by what exceeds the level of his thinking”4.
It is known that the passport age and the age of “actual development” do not necessarily coincide. A child can be ahead, behind and correspond to the passport age. Each child has his own path of development, and this should be considered his individual characteristic.
Within the framework of the textbook, periods should be identified that represent age-related achievements in mental development within the most typical limits. We will focus on the following age periodization:
I. Childhood.
Infancy (from 0 to 12-14 months).
Early age (1 to 3 years).
Preschool age (3 to 6-7 years).
Junior school age (from 6-7 to 10-11 years).
II. Adolescence (from 11-12 to 15-16 years).
Age periodization allows us to describe the facts of a child’s mental life in the context of age limits and interpret the patterns of achievements and negative formations in specific periods of development.
Before we move on to describing the age-related characteristics of mental development, we should discuss all the components that determine this development: the conditions and prerequisites for mental development, as well as the significance of the internal position of the developing person himself. In the same section, we should specifically consider the dual nature of man as a social unit and a unique personality, as well as the mechanisms that determine the development of the psyche and the human personality itself.

CHAPTER I. FACTORS DETERMINING MENTAL DEVELOPMENT

§ 1. CONDITIONS OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT

Historically conditioned realities of human existence.
The condition for human development, in addition to the reality of Nature itself, is the reality of culture created by him. To understand the patterns of human mental development, it is necessary to define the space of human culture.
Culture is usually understood as the totality of the achievements of society in its material and spiritual development, used by society as a condition for the development and existence of a person at a specific historical moment. Culture is a collective phenomenon, historically conditioned, concentrated primarily in sign-symbolic form.
Each individual person enters into culture, appropriating its material and spiritual embodiment in the surrounding cultural and historical space.
Developmental psychology as a science that analyzes the conditions of human development at different stages of ontogenesis requires identifying the connection between cultural conditions and individual achievements in development.
Determined by cultural development, the historically determined realities of human existence can be classified as follows: 1) the reality of the objective world; 2) the reality of figurative-sign systems; 3) the reality of social space; 4) natural reality. These realities at every historical moment have their own constants and their own metamorphoses. Therefore, the psychology of people of a certain era should be considered in the context of the culture of this era, in the context of the meanings and meanings attached to cultural realities at a specific historical moment.
At the same time, each historical moment should be considered in terms of the development of those activities that introduce a person into the space of his contemporary culture. These activities, on the one hand, are components and heritage of culture, on the other hand, they act as a condition for human development at different stages of ontogenesis, a condition for his everyday life.
A. N. Leontyev defined activity in a narrow sense, i.e. at the psychological level, as a unit of “life mediated by mental reflection, the real function of which is that it orients the subject in the objective world”5. Activity is considered in psychology as a system that has a structure, internal connections and realizes itself in development.
Psychology studies the activities of specific people, which take place in the conditions of an existing (given) culture in two forms: 1) “in conditions of open collectivity - among the people around them, together with them and in interaction with them”; 2) “eye to eye with the surrounding objective world”6.
Let us turn to a more detailed discussion of the historically determined realities of human existence and the activities that determine the nature of a person’s entry into these realities, his development and existence.
7. The reality of the objective world. An object or thing7 in human consciousness is a unit, a part of existence, everything that has a set of properties, occupies a volume in space and is in relationship with other units of existence. We will consider the material objective world, which has relative independence and stability of existence. The reality of the objective world includes natural and man-made objects, which man created in the process of his historical development. But man not only learned to create, use and preserve objects (tools and objects for other purposes), he formed a system of relationships to the subject. These attitudes to the subject are reflected in language, mythology, philosophy and human behavior.
In language, the category “object” has a special designation. In most cases in natural languages, it is a noun, a part of speech that denotes the reality of the existence of an object.
In philosophy, the category “object”, “thing” has its own hypostases: “thing in itself” and “thing for us”. “Thing in itself” means the existence of a thing in itself (or “in itself”). “A thing for us” means a thing as it is revealed in the process of cognition and practical activity of a person.
In the ordinary consciousness of people, objects and things exist a priori - as a given, as natural phenomena and as an integral part of culture.
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At the same time, they exist for a person as objects that are created and destroyed in the process of objective, instrumental, human activity of the person himself. Only at certain moments does a person think about the Kantian question about the “thing in itself” - about the knowability of a thing, about the penetration of human knowledge “into the interior of nature”8.
In practical objective activity, a person does not doubt the knowability of a “thing.” In work, in simple manipulation, he deals with the material essence of an object and is constantly convinced of the presence of its properties that are amenable to change and knowledge.
Man creates things and masters their functional properties. In this sense, F. Engels was right when he argued that “if we can prove the correctness of our understanding of a given natural phenomenon by the fact that we ourselves produce it, call it out of conditions, and force it, moreover, to serve our purposes, then Kant’s elusive “thing” in oneself” comes to an end.”9.
In reality, Kant’s idea of ​​a “thing in itself” turns out for a person not into practical unknowability, but into the psychological nature of human self-awareness. A thing, along with its functional features, often considered by a person from the point of view of its consumption, in other situations takes on the features of the person himself. It is characteristic of man not only to alienate a thing for its use, but also to spiritualize a thing, giving it those properties that he himself possesses, identifying with this thing as akin to the human spirit. Here we are talking about anthropomorphism - endowing natural and man-made objects with human properties10.
The entire natural and man-made world, in the process of human development, acquired anthropomorphic features due to the development in the reality of social space of the necessary mechanism that determines the existence of a person among other people - identification.
Anthropomorphism is realized in myths about the origin of the sun (solar myths), the month, the moon (lunar myths), stars (astral myths), the universe (cosmogonic myths) and man (anthropological myths). There are myths about the reincarnation of one creature into another: about the origin of animals from people or people from animals. Ideas about natural ancestors were widespread in the world. Among the peoples of the North, for example, these ideas are still present in their self-awareness today. Myths about the transformation of people into animals, plants and objects are known to numerous peoples of the globe. The ancient Greek myths about hyacinth, narcissus, cypress, and laurel tree are widely known. No less famous is the biblical myth about the transformation of a woman into a pillar of salt.
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The category of objects with which a person is identified includes natural and man-made objects; they are given the meaning of a totem - an object that is in a supernatural relationship with a group of people (clan or family)11. This may include plants, animals, as well as inanimate objects (skulls of totem animals - a bear, a walrus, as well as a crow, stones, parts of dried plants).
Animating the objective world is not only the destiny of the ancient culture of mankind with a mythological consciousness. Animation is an integral part of human presence in the world. And today in language and in the figurative systems of human consciousness we find an evaluative attitude towards a thing as having or not having a soul. There are ideas that unalienated labor creates a “warm” thing into which the soul has been invested, and alienated labor produces a “cold” thing, a thing without a soul. Of course, the “animation” of a thing by modern man differs from how it happened in the distant past. But we should not rush to conclusions about a fundamental change in the nature of the human psyche.
The distinction between things “with soul” and things “without soul” reflects human psychology is his ability to empathize, identify himself with a thing and the ability to alienate himself from it. A person creates a thing, admires it, sharing his joy with other people; he destroys, destroys the thing, reduces it to dust, sharing his alienation with his accomplices.
In turn, a thing represents a person in the world: the presence of certain things that are prestigious for a particular culture is an indicator of a person’s place among people; the absence of things is an indicator of a person’s low status.
A thing can take place fetish. In the beginning, natural things to which supernatural meanings were attributed became fetishes. The sacralization of objects through traditional rituals gave them those properties that protected a person or group of people and gave them a certain place among others. Thus, from ancient times, social regulation of relations between people took place through a thing. In developed societies, products of human activity become fetishes. In fact, many objects can become fetishes: the power of the state is personified by the gold fund, the development and multiplicity of technology12, in particular weapons, minerals, water resources, the ecological purity of nature, the standard of living determined by the consumer basket, housing, etc.
The place of an individual person among other people is really determined not only by his personal qualities, but also by the things that serve him, which represent him in social relations
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(house, apartment, land and other things that are prestigious at a particular moment in the cultural development of society). The material, objective world is a specifically human condition of human existence and development in the process of his life.
Naturalistic-objective and symbolic existence of a thing. G. Hegel considered it possible to distinguish between the naturalistic-objective existence of a thing and its symbolic definiteness13. It is reasonable to recognize this classification as correct.
The naturalistic-objective existence of a thing is a world created by man for work, for arranging his everyday life - a home, a place of work, recreation and spiritual life. The history of culture is also the history of things that accompanied a person in his life. Ethnographers, archaeologists, and cultural researchers provide us with enormous material about the development and movement of things in the historical process.
The naturalistic-objective existence of a thing, having become a sign of man’s transition from the level of evolutionary development to the level of historical development, became an instrument that transforms nature and man himself - it determined not only the existence of man, but also his mental development, the development of his personality.
In our time, along with the world of “tamed objects” mastered and adapted to humans, new generations of things appear: from microelements, mechanisms and elementary objects that participate directly in the life of the human body, replacing its natural organs, to high-speed airliners, space rockets, nuclear power plants, creating completely different conditions for human life.
Today it is generally accepted that the naturalistic-objective existence of a thing develops according to its own laws, which are increasingly difficult for humans to control. A new idea has appeared in the modern cultural consciousness of people: the intensive multiplication of objects, the developing industry of the object world, in addition to objects symbolizing the progress of mankind, create a flow of objects for the needs of mass culture. This flow standardizes a person, turning him into a victim of the development of the objective world. And symbols of progress appear in the minds of many people as destroyers of human nature.
In the minds of modern man there is mythologization an expanded and developed objective world, which becomes a “thing in itself” and a “thing for itself.” However, the object rapes the human psyche insofar as the person himself allows this violence.
At the same time, the objective world created by man today clearly appeals to the mental potential of man.
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Encouraging the power of a thing. The naturalistic-objective existence of a thing has a well-known pattern of development: it not only increases its representation in the world, but also changes the objective environment in its functional characteristics, in the speed of performing actions of objects and in the requirements addressed to a person.
A person gives birth to a new objective world, which begins to test the strength of his psychophysiology, his social qualities. Problems arise in designing a “man-machine” system based on the principles of increasing human capabilities, overcoming the “conservatism” of the human psyche, protecting the health of a healthy person in conditions of interaction with super-subjects.
But didn’t the first tools that man created make the same demands on him? Wasn’t a person required, to the limit of his mental capabilities, to overcome the natural conservatism of the psyche in spite of the protective reflexes protecting him? The creation of a new generation of things and human dependence on their motivating force is an obvious trend in the development of society.
The mythologization of the objective world of the new generation is a person’s latent attitude towards a thing as a “thing in itself,” as an object that has independent “inner power”14.
Modern man carries within himself an eternal property - the ability to anthropomorphize a thing, to give it spirituality. An anthropomorphic thing is a source of eternal fear of it. And this is not just a haunted house or a brownie, it is a certain internal essence that a person gives to a thing.
Thus, human psychology itself translates the naturalistic-objective existence of a thing into its symbolic existence. It is this symbolic domination of a thing over a person that determines that human relations, as K. Marx showed, are mediated by a certain connection: person - thing - person. Pointing to the dominance of things over people, K. Marx especially emphasized the dominance of the earth over man: “There is the appearance of a more intimate relationship between the owner and the land than the bonds of simply material wealth. A plot of land is individualized together with its owner, has his title... his privileges, his jurisdiction, his political position, etc.”15.
In human culture, things arise that appear in different meanings and meanings. This may include things-signs, for example, signs of power, social status (crown, scepter, throne, etc. down the layers of society); things-symbols, that unite people (banners, flags), and much more.
A special fetishization of things is the attitude towards money. The dominance of money reaches its most striking form where the natural
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and the social definition of the object, where paper signs acquire the meaning of a fetish and totem.
In the history of mankind, the opposite situations also occur, when a person himself, in the eyes of others, acquires the status of an “animate object.” Thus, the slave acted as an “animate instrument”, as a “thing for another.” And today, in situations of military conflicts, one person in the eyes of another may lose anthropomorphic properties: complete alienation from human essence leads to the destruction of identification between people.
With all the diversity of human understanding of the essence of things, with all the diversity of attitudes towards things, they - historically determined reality of human existence.
The history of mankind began with the “appropriation” and accumulation of things: first of all, with the creation and preservation of tools, as well as with the transfer to subsequent generations of methods for making tools and operating with them.
The use of even the simplest hand tools, not to mention machines, not only increases the natural strength of a person, but also gives him the opportunity to perform various actions that are generally inaccessible to the naked hand. Tools become like artificial human organs, which he places between himself and nature. Tools make a person stronger, more powerful and freer. But at the same time, things that are born in human culture, serving a person, making his existence easier, can also act as a fetish that enslaves a person. The cult of things that mediates human relations can determine the price of a person.
In the history of the human race, periods arose when certain layers of humanity, protesting against the fetishization of things, denied the things themselves. Thus, the Cynics rejected all values ​​created by human labor and representing the material culture of mankind (it is known that Diogenes wore rags and slept in a barrel). However, a person who denies the value and significance of the material world essentially becomes dependent on it, but on the opposite side in comparison with a money-grubber who greedily accumulates money and property.
The world of things is the world of the human spirit: the world of his needs, his feelings, his way of thinking and way of life. The production and consumption of things created man himself and the environment of his existence. With the help of tools and other objects that serve everyday life, humanity has created a special world - the material conditions of human existence. Man, creating the world of things, psychologically entered into it with all the ensuing consequences: the world of things is the human environment - the condition of his existence, a means of satisfaction.
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meeting his needs and the condition of mental development and personality development in ontogenesis.
2. Reality figurative-sign systems. In its history, humanity gave birth to a special reality that developed along with the objective world - the reality of figurative-sign systems.
A sign is any material, sensually perceived element of reality, acting in a certain meaning and used to store and transmit some ideal information about what lies beyond the boundaries of this material formation. The sign is included in the cognitive and creative activity of a person, in the communication of people.
Man has created systems of signs that influence internal mental activity, determining it, and at the same time determine the creation of new objects in the real world.
Modern sign systems are divided into linguistic and non-linguistic.
Language is a system of signs that serves as a means of human thinking, self-expression and communication. With the help of language, a person understands the world around him. Language, acting as a tool of mental activity, changes a person’s mental functions and develops his reflexive abilities. As linguist A. A. Potebnya writes, a word is “an intentional invention and Divine creation of language.” “The word is initially a symbol, an ideal, the word condenses thoughts.”6. Language objectifies a person’s self-awareness, forming it in accordance with those meanings and meanings that determine value orientations on the culture of language, behavior, relationships between people, and patterns of a person’s personal qualities.” 7.
Each natural language evolved in the history of an ethnos, reflecting the path of mastering the reality of the objective world, the world of things created by people, the path of mastering labor and interpersonal relationships. Language always participates in the process of objective perception, becomes an instrument of mental functions in a specifically human (mediated, symbolic) form, acts means of identification objects, feelings, behavior, etc.
Language develops due to the social nature of man. In turn, language developing in history influences the social nature of man. I. P. Pavlov attached decisive importance to the word in the regulation of human behavior, domination over behavior. The grandiose signaling of speech acts for a person as a new regulatory sign of mastery of behavior"8.
The word has a decisive significance for thought and for mental life in general. A. A. Potebnya points out that the word “is an organ of thought and an indispensable condition for all later development of understanding of the world and oneself.” However, as you use it, as you acquire
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meanings and meanings, the word “is deprived of its concreteness and imagery.” This is a very important idea, which is confirmed by the practice of tongue movement. Words not only unite and become exhausted, but also, having lost their original meanings and meanings, turn into garbage, which pollutes modern language. Discussing the problem of social thinking of people in their everyday life, M. Mamar-dashvili wrote about the problem of language: “We live in a space in which a monstrous mass of waste from the production of thought and language has accumulated”19. Indeed, in language as an integral phenomenon, as the basis of human culture, along with words-signs that appear in certain meanings and senses, in the process of historical development, fragments of obsolete and obsolete signs appear. These “waste products” are natural for any living and developing phenomenon, not only for language.
About the essence of linguistic reality, the French philosopher, sociologist and ethnographer L. Lévy-Bruhl wrote: “Representations called collective, if defined only in general terms, without deepening the question of their essence, they can be recognized by the following characteristics inherent in all members of a given social group: they are passed on from generation to generation. They are imposed on individuals, inciting in them, according to the circumstances, feelings of respect, fear, worship, etc. in relation to their objects, they do not depend for their existence on an individual person. This is not because representations presuppose a collective subject distinct from the individuals composing a social group, but because they exhibit features that cannot be conceptualized and understood by merely considering the individual as such. So, for example, language, although it exists, strictly speaking, only in the minds of the individuals who speak it, it is nevertheless an undoubted social reality based on a set of collective ideas... Language imposes itself on each of these personalities, it precedes it and survives it.”(italics mine. - V.M.)20. This is a very important explanation of the fact that first culture contains the linguistic matter of a system of signs - “precedes” the individual, and then “language imposes itself” and is appropriated by man.
And yet, language is the main condition for the development of the human psyche. Thanks to language and other sign systems, man has acquired a means for mental and spiritual life, a means of deep reflective communication. Of course, language is a special reality in which a person develops, becomes, realizes and exists.
Language acts as a means of cultural development; in addition, it is the source of the formation of deep-seated attitudes toward a value-based attitude towards the surrounding world: people, nature, the objective world, language itself. Emotional-value attitude, feeling
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There are many verbal analogues to language, but first, in the many linguistic signs there is contained something that only then becomes the attitude of a specific person. Language is the concentration of collective representations, identifications and alienations of a person’s ancestors and his contemporaries.
In ontogenesis, by appropriating language with its historically determined meanings and meanings, with its relationship to cultural phenomena embodied in the realities that determine human existence, the child becomes a contemporary and bearer of the culture within which the language is formed.
Distinguish natural languages(speech, facial expressions and pantomime) and artificial(in computer science, logic, mathematics, etc.).
Non-linguistic sign systems: sign-signs, copy-signs, autonomous signs, symbol-signs, etc.
Signs-signs- mark, mark, difference, distinction, everything by which something is recognized. This is the external detection of something, a sign of the presence of a specific object or phenomenon.
A sign signals an object, a phenomenon. Signs-attributes constitute the content of a person’s experience in life; they are the simplest and primary in relation to the sign culture of a person.
In ancient times, people already identified signs that helped them navigate natural phenomena (smoke means fire;
scarlet evening dawn - tomorrow the wind; lightning - thunder). Through signs, signs, expressed by external expressive manifestations of different emotional states, people learned reflection from each other. Later they mastered more subtle signs and signs.
Signs are the richest area of ​​human culture, which is present in it not only in the sphere of objects, not only in the sphere of human relations with the world, but also in the sphere of language.
Copy signs(iconic signs - iconic signs) are reproductions that carry elements of similarity with the signified. These are the results of human visual activity - graphic and pictorial images, sculpture, photographs, diagrams, geographical and astronomical maps, etc. Copy signs reproduce in their material structure the most important sensory properties of an object - shape, color, proportions, etc.
In tribal culture, copy signs most often depicted totem animals - a wolf, bear, deer, fox, raven, horse, rooster, or anthropomorphic spirits, idols. Natural elements - the sun, the month, fire, plants, water - also have their expression in copy signs used in ritual actions, and then became elements of folk visual culture (ornaments in house construction, embroidery of towels, bedspreads, clothes, as well as all the diversity amulet).
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A separate independent culture of iconic signs is revealed dolls, which conceal particularly profound possibilities for influencing the psyche of adults and children.
A doll is an iconic sign of a person or animal, invented for rituals (made of wood, clay, cereal stems, herbs, etc.).
In human culture, the doll had many meanings.
The doll initially possessed the properties of a living person as an anthropomorphic creature and helped him as an intermediary, taking part in rituals. The ritual doll was usually beautifully dressed up. The following expressions remain in the language: “doll-doll” (about a dapper but stupid woman), “doll” (affection, praise). In the language there is evidence of the previously possible animation of the doll. We say “doll” - belonging to a doll, we give the dolls a name - a sign of its exceptional position in the human world.
The doll, being initially inanimate, but identical in appearance to a person (or animal), had the ability to appropriate other people's souls, coming to life due to the death of the person himself. In this meaning, the doll was a representative of black power. The archaic expression remains in Russian speech: “Good: a doll before the devil.” The category of abuse included the expression “Damn doll!” like a danger sign. In modern folklore, there are many stories when a doll becomes hostile and dangerous to a person.
The doll occupies the space of children's play activities and is endowed with anthropomorphic properties.
A doll is an active character in a puppet theater.
The doll is a symbolic sign and anthropomorphic subject in doll therapy.
Copy signs became participants in complex magical actions when attempts were made to free themselves from the evil spells of a sorcerer, witch, or demons. In the cultures of many peoples of the world, it is known to make effigies, which are signs-copies of frightening creatures for their ritual burning in order to free themselves from real danger. The doll has a multi-component effect on mental development.
In the process of historical development of human culture, it was iconic signs that acquired the exclusive space of fine art.
Autonomous signs- This is a specific form of existence of individual signs, which is created by an individual (or group of people) according to the psychological laws of creative creative activity. Autonomous signs are subjectively free from stereotypes of social expectations of representatives of the same culture as the creator. Each new direction in art was born by pioneers who discovered a new vision, a new representation.
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the reality of the real world in the system of new iconic signs and signs-symbols. Through the struggle of new meanings and meanings, the system embedded in new signs was either affirmed and accepted by culture as truly necessary, or faded into oblivion and became interesting only to specialists - representatives of sciences interested in tracking the history of changing sign systems21.
Signs-symbols- these are signs denoting the relations of peoples, segments of society or groups that affirm something. Thus, coats of arms are distinctive signs of a state, class, city - materially represented symbols, the images of which are located on flags, banknotes, seals, etc.
Signs-symbols include insignia (orders, medals), insignia (badges, stripes, shoulder straps, buttonholes on uniforms, used to indicate rank, type of service or department). This also includes mottos and emblems.
Signs-symbols also include the so-called conventional signs (mathematical, astronomical, musical notes, hieroglyphs, proof marks, factory marks, brand marks, quality marks); objects of nature and man-made objects, which in the context of the culture itself acquired the meaning of an exceptional sign reflecting the worldview of people belonging to the social space of this culture.
Signs-symbols appeared in the same way as other signs in the tribal culture. Totems, amulets, and amulets have become signs-symbols that protect people from the dangers lurking in the world around them. Man attached symbolic meaning to everything natural and actually existing.
The presence of signs and symbols in human culture is countless; they create the realities of the sign space in which a person lives, determine the specifics of a person’s mental development and the psychology of his behavior in his contemporary society.
One of the most archaic forms of signs is totems. Totems have been preserved to this day among certain ethnic groups not only in Africa, Latin America, but also in the North of Russia.
In the culture of tribal beliefs, the symbolic reincarnation of a person with the help of a special symbolic means - a mask - is of particular importance.
A mask is a special overlay with the image of an animal muzzle, a human face, etc., worn by a person. Being a guise, a mask disguises a person’s face and helps create a new image. Transformation is carried out not only by a mask, but also by a corresponding costume, the elements of which are designed to “cover up tracks.” Each mask has its own unique movements, rhythm, and dances. The magic of the mask is to facilitate the identification of a person
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century with the face it denotes. A mask can be a way to put on someone else's disguises and a way to show your true properties.
Liberation from the restraining principle of normativity is expressed in the symbols of human laughter culture, as well as in various forms and genres of familiar vulgar speech (swearing, blasphemy, oath, whim), which also take on symbolic functions.
Laughter, being a form of manifestation of human feelings, also acts as a sign in human relationships. As the researcher of laughter culture M. M. Bakhtin shows, laughter is associated “with freedom of spirit and freedom of speech”22. Of course, such freedom appears in a person who can and wants to overcome the controlling canonization of established signs (linguistic and non-linguistic).
Swearing in indecent language, swearing, and obscene words has a special meaning in speech culture. Mat carries its own symbolism and reflects social prohibitions, which in different layers of culture are overcome by swearing in everyday life or are included in the culture of poetry (A. I. Polezhaev, A. S. Pushkin). A fearless, free and frank word appears in human culture not only in the meaning of reducing another, but also in the meaning of a person’s symbolic liberation of himself from the context of relations of a culture of social dependence. The context of swearing has meaning within the language with which it was accompanied in history23.
Gestures have always been of particular importance among signs and symbols.
Gestures are body movements, mainly with the hand, accompanying or replacing speech, representing specific signs. In ancestral cultures, gestures were used as a language in ritual activities and for communicative purposes.
C. Darwin explained most gestures and expressions used involuntarily by a person by three principles: 1) the principle of useful associated habits; 2) the principle of antithesis; 3) the principle of direct action of the nervous system24. In addition to the gestures themselves, consistent with biological nature, humanity is developing a social culture of gestures. Natural and social gestures of a person are “read” by other people, representatives of the same ethnic group, state and social circle.
Gesture culture is very specific among different peoples. Thus, a Cuban, Russian and Japanese may not only not understand each other, but also cause moral damage when trying to reflect each other’s gestures. Signs of gestures within one culture, but in different social and age groups also have their own characteristics (gestures of teenagers25, delinquents, seminary students).
Another group of structured symbols is the tattoo.
Tattoos are symbolic protective and intimidating signs applied to a person’s face and body by pricking the skin and
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introducing paint into them. Tattoos are an invention of the tribal man26, which retains its vitality and is widespread in different subcultures (sailors, criminals27, etc.). Modern youth from different countries have become fashionable for tattoos of their subculture.
The language of tattoos has its own meanings and meanings. In a criminal environment, a tattoo sign shows the place of a criminal in his world: a sign can “raise” and “lower” a person, demonstrating a strictly hierarchical place in his environment.
Each era has its own symbols that reflect human ideology, worldview as a set of ideas and views, people’s attitude to the world: to the surrounding nature, the objective world, to each other. Symbols serve to stabilize or change social relations.
The symbols of an era, expressed in objects, reflect the symbolic actions and psychology of a person belonging to that era. Thus, in many cultures, an object that signifies the valor, strength, and courage of a warrior - a sword - had a special meaning. Yu. M. Lotman writes: “The sword is also nothing more than an object. As a thing, it can be forged or broken... but... the sword symbolizes a free person and is a “sign of freedom”; it already appears as a symbol and belongs to culture”28.
The area of ​​culture is always a symbolic area. Thus, in its various incarnations, a sword as a symbol can be both a weapon and a symbol, but it can only become a symbol when a special sword is made for parades, which excludes practical use, actually becoming an image (iconic sign) of a weapon. The symbolic function of weapons was also reflected in ancient Russian legislation (“Russian Truth”). The compensation that the attacker had to pay to the victim was proportional not only to material, but also to moral damage:
a wound (even a serious one) inflicted by the sharp part of a sword entails less vira (fine, compensation) than less dangerous blows with a naked weapon or the hilt of a sword, a cup at a feast, or the back of a fist. As Yu. M. Lotman writes: “The morality of the military class is being formed, and the concept of honor is being developed. A wound inflicted by the sharp (combat) part of a bladed weapon is painful, but not dishonorable. Moreover, it is even honorable, since they fight only with equals. It is no coincidence that in the everyday life of Western European knighthood, initiation, i.e. the transformation of the “lower” into the “higher” required a real, and subsequently a symbolic blow with a sword. Anyone who was recognized as worthy of a wound (later - a significant blow) was simultaneously recognized as socially equal. A blow with an unsheathed sword, hilt, stick - not a weapon at all - is dishonorable, since this is how one beats a slave.”29
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Let us remember that, along with physical reprisals against participants in the noble December movement of 1825 (by hanging), many nobles underwent the test of a shameful symbolic (civil) execution, when a sword was broken over their heads, after which they were exiled to hard labor and settlement.
N. G. Chernyshevsky also suffered a humiliating rite of civil execution on May 19, 1864, after which he was sent to hard labor in Kadaya.
Weapons in all the versatility of their use as a symbol included in the worldview system of a certain culture shows how complex the sign system of a culture is.
Signs and symbols of a particular culture have material expression in objects, language, etc. Signs always have a time-appropriate meaning and serve as a means of conveying deep cultural meanings. Signs-symbols, just like iconic signs, constitute the matter of art.
The classification of signs into copy signs and symbol signs is quite arbitrary. These signs in many cases have quite pronounced reversibility. Thus, copy signs can acquire the meaning of a sign-symbol - the statue of the Motherland in Volgograd, in Kyiv, the Statue of Liberty in New York, etc.
It is not easy to determine the specifics of signs in a new to us, so-called virtual reality, which involves many different “worlds”, which are iconic signs and new symbols transformed by it in a new way.
The convention of copy signs and symbol signs reveals itself in the context of special signs, which are considered in science as standards.
Standard signs. In human culture, there are standard signs of color, shape, musical sounds, and oral speech. Some of these signs can be conditionally classified as copy signs (standards of color, shape), others - as symbol signs (notes, letters). At the same time, these signs fall under a general definition - standards.
Standards have two meanings: 1) an exemplary measure, an exemplary measuring device, used to reproduce, store and transmit units of any quantities with the greatest accuracy (standard meter, standard kilogram); 2) measure, standard, sample for comparison.
A special place here is occupied by the so-called sensory standards.
Sensory standards are visual representations of the main patterns of external properties of objects. They were created in the process of cognitive and labor activity of mankind - gradually people isolated and systematized various properties of the objective world for practical and then scientific purposes. They identify sensory standards of color, shape, sound, etc.
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In human speech, the standards are the phoneme, i.e. patterns of sounds, considered as a means of distinguishing the meanings of words and morphemes (parts of a word: root, suffix or prefix), on which the meaning of spoken and heard words depends. Each language has its own set of phonemes that differ from each other in certain ways. Like other sensory standards, phonemes were identified in the language gradually, through a painful search for means of their standardization.
Today we can observe a great differentiation of standards already sufficiently mastered by mankind. The world of sign systems increasingly differentiates natural and man-made (historical) realities,
Of particular importance is a word that can simultaneously use several sensory modalities in a work of art or description. A novelist who refers the reader to color and sound, to smells and touches, usually manages to achieve greater expressiveness in describing the plot of an entire work or a separate episode.
Non-linguistic signs do not exist on their own; they are included in the context of linguistic signs. All types of signs that have developed in the history of human culture create a very complex reality of figurative-sign systems, which for humans is omnipresent and all-pervasive.
It is precisely this that fills the space of culture, becoming its material basis, its property and at the same time a condition for the development of the psyche of an individual person. Signs become special tools of mental activity that transform a person’s mental functions and determine the development of his personality.
L. S. Vygotsky wrote: “The invention and use of signs as auxiliary means in solving any psychological task facing a person (remember, compare something, report, choose, etc.), with psychological side represents b one point analogy with the invention and use of tools”30. The sign initially acquires instrumental function, they call him instrument(“Language is a tool of thinking”). However, one should not erase the deepest difference between an object-tool and a sign-tool.
L. S. Vygotsky proposed a diagram depicting the relationship between the use of signs and the use of tools:

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In the diagram, both types of adaptation are presented as diverging lines of mediating activity. The deep content of this scheme lies in the fundamental difference between a sign and a tool-object.
“The most significant difference between a sign and a weapon and the basis for the real divergence of both lines is the different orientation of both. A tool is intended to serve as a conductor of human influence on the object of his activity, it is directed outward, it must cause certain changes in the object, it is a means of external human activity aimed at conquering nature. A sign... is a means of psychological influence on behavior - someone else’s or one’s own, a means of internal activity aimed at mastering the person himself; the sign is directed inward. Both activities are so different that the nature of the means used cannot be the same in both cases.”31 The use of the sign marks a departure from the limits of organic activity that exists for each mental function.
Signs as specific auxiliary means introduce a person into a special reality that determines the transformation of mental operations and expands the system of activity of mental functions, which, thanks to language, become higher.
The space of sign culture transforms not only words, but also ideas and feelings into signs that reflect the achievements of human development and transform meanings and meanings in the historical extent of human culture. The sign, “without changing anything in the very object of the psychological operation” (L. S. Vygotsky), at the same time determines the change in the object of the psychological operation in a person’s self-awareness - not only language is a human tool, but also a person is a language tool. In the history of human culture, the human spirit, there is a continuous rooting of the objective, natural and social world in the context of the reality of figurative and sign systems.
The reality of figurative-sign systems, defining the space of human culture and acting as a person’s habitat, gives him, on the one hand, the means of mental influence on other people, and on the other, the means of transforming his own psyche. In turn, a person who reflects the conditions of development and existence in the reality of figurative-sign systems becomes capable of creating and introducing new types of signs. This is how the forward movement of humanity is carried out. The reality of figurative-sign systems acts as a condition for the mental development and existence of a person at all his age stages.
3. Natural reality. Natural reality in all its guises in human consciousness enters into the reality of the objective world and into the reality of figurative-sign systems of culture.
We know that man came out of nature and to the extent that he can restore his historical path, he, by the “sweat of his brow,” extracts
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he gave himself food from the fruits of nature, created tools from the matter of nature and, influencing nature, created a new world of things that had not yet existed on Earth - a man-made world.
Natural reality for man has always been the condition and source of his life and vital activity. Man introduced nature itself and its elements into the reality content of the figurative-sign system he created and formed an attitude towards it as to the source of life, the condition of development, knowledge and poetry.
Nature is represented in the consciousness of an ordinary person as something invariably living, reproducing and bestowing - as a source of life. In annual cycles, plants bore fruits, seeds, roots, and animals bore offspring, and rivers bore fish. Nature provided materials for housing and clothing; its depths, rivers and the sun are matter for thermal energy. Man exercised his intellect to take more and more effectively, from his point of view, from nature.
As a result of the development of a huge human civilization, the natural conditions of human existence are undergoing dramatic changes. For several decades, environmentalists have been seriously warning:
The problem of ecological imbalance on our planet has arisen. These violations, accumulating gradually, imperceptibly, as a consequence of seemingly economically justified human economic actions, threaten catastrophe in the near future. The stress of the environmental crisis is also increasing due to the increase in human population. According to UN estimates, by 2025 there will be 93 cities in the world with a population of more than 5 million people (in 1985 there were 34 cities with a population of over 5 million people). Such settlements determine the special conditions for the formation of man - cut off from natural nature, he is clearly urbanizing, his attitude towards nature is becoming more and more alienated. This alienation contributes to the fact that man is constantly “increasing” his impact on nature, pursuing seemingly justifiable goals: obtaining food, natural raw materials, work that provides a means of subsistence. Due to the discrepancy between the growing number of people and the fertility of the land, today the multi-million population of vast territories is chronically hungry. According to UNESCO, children in many countries are starving. Globally, half of children under six years of age are malnourished. Children from three continents primarily suffer from severe or partial lack of protein in their diet: Latin America, Africa and Asia.
Starvation results in increased infant mortality. In addition, protein hunger leads children to the so-called general insanity, which is expressed in complete apathy and immobility of the child, loss of contact with the outside world.
Smoke, an integral part of the atmosphere of large cities, leads to the development of anemia and pulmonary diseases. Accidents at nuclear power plants
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trostantsiya lead to dysfunction of the thyroid gland. Urbanization leads to extreme stress on the human psyche.
By violating the environmental laws that determine the sustainable functioning of all parts of the biosphere, a person is alienated from the need to take these laws into account and protect nature. As a result, consciously or unconsciously, the problem of preserving the biosphere becomes secondary.
Despite all the rationality in relation to the theoretical understanding of existence, man actually consumes nature with the egoism of a child.
In the history of mankind, the concept of “Earth” has acquired many meanings and meanings.
Earth is a planet revolving around the Sun, Earth is our world, the globe on which we live, an element among other elements (fire, air, water, earth). The human body is called Earth (dust)32. Land is a country, a space occupied by people, a state. The concept of “earth” is identified with the concept of “nature”. Nature is nature, everything material, the universe, the entire universe, everything visible, subject to the five senses, but more so our world. Earth.
In relation to nature, man places himself in a special place.
Let us turn to the meanings and meanings of the reality of nature, reflected in the human sign system. This will allow us to get closer to understanding the relationship of man to nature.
In the process of historical development, man in his relationship to nature gradually passed from adapting to it through giving it anthropomorphic properties to possess it, which is expressed in a well-known iconic image "Man is the king of nature." The king is always the supreme ruler of the land, people or state. King of the earth. The function of a king is to rule; to be a king is to rule the kingdom. But the king subordinates those around him to his influence, his will, his command. The king has an unlimited autocratic form of government; he rules over everyone.
The development of a figurative-sign system in a person’s relationship to himself gradually placed him at the head of all things. An example is the Bible.
On the last, sixth day of the creation of His Existence, God created man in His image and likeness and gave man the right to rule over everyone: “...and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the beasts, and over the livestock, and over the whole Earth, and over all the reptiles that creep on the Earth. And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him;
male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the Earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the wild animals, and over the birds of the air, and over every livestock, and over all the Earth, and over every living creature. , reptiles on the Earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed that is on all the earth, and every tree that has fruit yielding seed; - this will be food for you; and to every green beast, and to every bird of the air, and to every creeping thing that moves on the earth, in which there is a living soul,
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I gave all the green herbs for food. And so it became. And God saw everything that He had created, and behold, it was very good.”33
Man is ordained to have dominion. In the structure of sign systems that form the meanings and meanings of dominion, God, the King and man in general are represented. This connection is very strongly represented in proverbs.
King of Heaven (God). The king of the earth (the monarch who rules the country). The king of earth walks under the king of heaven (under God). The king who reigns (God) has many kings. The king is a bailiff from God. Without God, the light does not stand; without a king, the earth cannot be ruled. Where there is a king, there is truth.
The books of kingdoms, the books of the Old Testament, the history of kings and the people of God are reference books for enlightened Christians. The second millennium has begun in Russia, as the images of the Bible dominate human self-awareness - after all, the entire Russian culture came out of Christianity, just like other peoples of the world have their predecessors.
Nature itself in the existing sign systems is expressed by images of three kingdoms: animals - plants - fossils. But the king over all nature is Man. In all sign systems reflecting the concepts of “reign” and “reign”, man has given himself a very significant place, calling himself “Homo sapiens”, “King of Nature”. But the word “reign” means not only to rule, but also to rule, to manage one’s kingdom. The ordinary consciousness of man has picked up, first of all, a meaning that does not assign responsibility for the existence of nature. Man in relation to nature has become a source of aggression: he has developed three principles of attitude towards nature: “take”, “neglect”, “forget”, which demonstrate complete alienation from nature.
Nature was the first and only source of knowledge of ancient man. The entire space of figurative-sign systems is filled with objects and natural phenomena. It is difficult to list all the sciences that are aimed at understanding nature, because the original sciences give birth to daughter sciences, then they differentiate again.
Science is the most important element of spiritual culture, the highest form of human knowledge. Science strives to systematize facts, establish patterns of development of natural matter, and classify nature. Sign systems, a special language that each science builds on its own foundations, are of particular importance for the development of science. The language of science, or thesaurus, is a system of concepts that reflect the basic vision of the subject of science and the prevailing theories in science. Therefore, science can be represented as a system of concepts about the phenomena and laws of nature, as well as human existence.
The knowledge of nature, starting with the practical life of man and moving in the history of mankind to the level of production of tools and other objects, required theoretical understanding
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nature. Natural science has two goals: 1) to reveal the essence of natural phenomena, to know their laws and to foresee new phenomena on their basis; 2) indicate the possibilities of using the known laws of nature in practice.
B. M. Kedrov, a Russian philosopher and historian of science, wrote: “Through science, humanity exercises its dominance over the forces of nature, develops material production, and transforms social relations”34.
The fact that science for a long time exercised “domination” and “correct exploitation of nature” and was not sufficiently focused on the deep laws of natural science is a natural course of development of human consciousness. Only in the 20th century. - in the century of rapid development of technical production, a new problem of humanity arises and is realized: to consider nature in the context of the existence of the Earth in the Universe35. New sciences are emerging that connect nature and society into a single system36. Hopes are emerging to prevent the threat of destruction of the entire human community and nature.
In the 70s and 80s, many scientists around the world united and appealed to human reason. Thus, A. Newman wrote: “We hope that the 80s of our century will go down in history as a decade of scientific education in the field of environmental protection, as a time of awakening of global environmental thinking and a clear awareness of man’s role in the Universe”37. Indeed, social consciousness, being the totality of the social psychology of people, today should include such concepts as “ecological thinking”, “ecological consciousness”, on the basis of which a person creates a new system of images and signs that allow him to move from knowledge and domination over the forces of nature to knowledge of nature and a value-based attitude towards it, to understanding the need for careful treatment and reconstruction. Scientists around the world have been calling on humanity for many decades to move to a new psychology and new thinking aimed at saving the human community through the search for a new ethics of attitude towards existence in general and nature in particular.
Thanks to the sciences, man began to build his relationship with nature as a subject with an object. He established himself as the subject and nature as the object. But for a person’s harmonious existence in nature, it is necessary not only to be able to alienate himself from it, but also to maintain the ability to identify with it. Maintaining the ability to relate to natural objects as a “significant other”38 is fundamental to the development of the human spirit. A person, being one on one with nature, can experience a special feeling of unity with it. Of course, a person cannot free himself from the cultural acquisition of the heritage of sign systems, but, identifying with nature through its contemplation, through dissolution in
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it, he can perceive it in a halo of various meanings (“Nature is the source of life”, “Man is part of nature”, “Nature is the source of poetry”, etc.). Treating nature as an object is the basis for alienation from it; attitude towards nature as a subject is the basis for identification with it.
Natural reality exists and is revealed to man in the context of his consciousness. Being the original condition of human existence, nature, together with the development of his consciousness, assumes diverse functions that are attributed to it by people.
It is very important for the development of human spirituality not to forget about the possibility of giving nature a variety of meanings that have developed in the history of culture: from its idealization to demonization;
from the position of the subject to the position of the object, from the image to the meaning.
Analyzing image and meaning as the main components of art, the famous linguist A. A. Potebnya pointed out the polysemantic nature of language and introduced the so-called poetic formula, where A - image, X- meaning. Formula for poetry [A< Х\ asserts the inequality of the number of images with the set of their possible meanings and elevates this inequality to the specificity of art39. Expanding the meaning of nature in human self-awareness is the basis of his development as a natural and social existence. This should not be forgotten when organizing the conditions for education and personal development.
4. The reality of social space. Social space should be called the entire material and spiritual side of human existence, along with communication, human activities and the system of rights and responsibilities. This should include all the realities of human existence. However, we will highlight and specifically consider the independent realities of the objective world, figurative-sign systems and nature, which is completely legitimate.
Further, the subject of our discussion will be such realities of social space as communication, the diversity of human activities, as well as the reality of human responsibilities and rights in society.
Communication - mutual relations between people. In Russian psychology, communication is considered as one of the types of activity.
A person is immersed in a society that ensures his life and development through communication with his own kind. This maintenance is carried out due to the stability of the communication system in the community and “the stability of the system of personal in the form of existence, social in the nature of relations or relationships realized in communication”40.
The content of relationships and relationships is reflected primarily in language, in the linguistic sign. A linguistic sign is a tool of communication, a means of cognition and the core of personal meaning for a person.
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As a tool of communication, language maintains balance in the social relations of people, fulfilling the social needs of the latter in mastering information that is meaningful to everyone.
At the same time, language is a means of cognition - by exchanging words, people exchange meanings and meanings. Meaning is the content side of language4". The system of verbal signs that form a language appears in meanings understandable to native speakers and corresponding to a specific historical moment in its development.
In logic, logical semantics and the science of language, the term “meaning” is used as a synonym for “meaning”. Meaning serves to designate that mental content, that information that is associated with a specific linguistic expression, which is the proper name of an object. A name is a language expression denoting an object (proper name) or a set of objects (common name).
The concept of “meaning”, in addition to philosophy, logic and linguistics, is used in psychology in the context of discussing personal meaning.
Language as the core of personal meaning gives special significance to the figurative and sign systems of each individual person. Having many meanings and socially significant meanings, each sign carries its own individual meaning for an individual, which is formed through the individual experience of entering the reality of social space, thanks to complex individual associations and individual integrative connections that arise in the cerebral cortex. A. N. Leontiev wrote about the relationship between meanings and personal meanings in the context of human activity and the motives that motivate it: “Unlike meanings, personal meanings... do not have their own “supra-individual”, their “non-psychological” existence. If external sensuality connects meanings in the consciousness of the subject with the reality of the objective world, then personal meaning connects them with the reality of his very life in this world, with its motives. Personal meaning creates the partiality of human consciousness”42.
The reality of social space develops in the process of the historical movement of mankind: the language of signs becomes an increasingly developed and increasingly diverse system reflecting objective reality that determines human existence. The language system determines the nature of communication between people, the context that allows communicating representatives of the same linguistic culture to establish the meanings and meanings of words, phrases and understand each other.
Language has its own characteristics: 1) in individual psychological existence, expressed in personal meanings; 2) in the subjective difficulty of conveying states, feelings and thoughts.
Psychologically, i.e. in the system of consciousness, meanings exist through communication and various activities in line with a person’s personal meaning. Personal meaning is a person’s subjective attitude to what he expresses with the help of linguistic signs. “The embodiment of meaning in meanings is a deeply intimate, psychologically meaningful, and by no means automatic and instantaneous process”43.
It is the personal meanings that transform the signs of language in the individual consciousness that represent a person as a unique native speaker of the language. Communication therefore becomes not only an action of com-
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communication, not only an activity associated with other types of activity, but also a poetic, creative activity that brings “the joy of communication” (Saint-Exupery) from a person’s perception of new meanings and meanings, hitherto unknown to him, from the lips of another person.
In informal communication, moments may arise when it is difficult for a person to express what seemed to him to be completely mature and have certain linguistic meanings. “It’s difficult to find words” is usually the name for a state when consciousness is ready to formulate emerging images into words, but at the same time a person experiences difficulty in realizing his impulses (remember Fyodor Tyutchev: “I forgot the word, what I wanted to say, and the thought the ethereal one will return to the palace of shadows"). There is also a state when the selected and spoken words are perceived by the speaker as “not at all the same.” Let us remember Fyodor Tyutchev’s poem “Silentium!”44.
... How can the heart express itself? How can someone else understand you? Will he understand what you live for? A spoken thought is a lie. By exploding, you will disturb the keys, - Feed on them - and be silent!..
Of course, this poem has its own meanings and meanings, but in an expanded interpretation it is perfect as an illustration of the problem under discussion.
The reality of social space in the sphere of communication appears to an individual through a unique set of embodiments of meanings in an individual combination of meanings that are significant to him, which represent him in the world as, firstly, a special person, different from others; secondly, as a person similar to others and thereby capable of understanding (or approaching understanding) the general cultural meanings and individual meanings of other people.
The reality of social space is also mastered when a person, in his individual development, goes through tests by different types of activities. Of particular importance are the activities that a person has to go through from birth to adulthood.
Activities that determine the child’s entry into human reality. In the process of human historical development, labor and educational activities emerged from the syncretic activity of creating the simplest tools and imitative reproduction according to a model. These types of activities were accompanied by play actions, which, having biological prerequisites in the physical activity of developing cubs and young anthropoid ancestors and gradually changing, began to represent a playful reproduction of relationships and symbolic instrumental actions.
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In the individual ontogenesis of a modern person, society provides him with the opportunity to travel the path to adulthood and self-determination through the so-called leading activities that have historically developed and are taken for granted today. In human ontogeny, they appear in the following order.
Game activity. In play activity (in its developing part), there is, first of all, a search for objects - substitutes for the depicted objects and a symbolic image of object (instrumental and related) actions that demonstrate the nature of relationships between people, etc. Game activity trains the sign function: substitution with signs and sign actions; it arises after manipulation and objective activity and becomes a condition that determines the child’s mental development. Play activity today is the subject of theoretical and practical comprehension for organizing the conditions for the development of a child before school.
Educational activities. The subject of educational activity is the person himself, who seeks to change himself. When primitive man sought to imitate his fellow tribesman, who had mastered the production of simple tools, he learned to produce the same tools as his more successful brother.
Educational activity is always doing, changing oneself. But in order for each new generation to carry out learning effectively, in accordance with the new achievements of progress, a special category of people was required to transfer the means of learning to the new generation. These are scientists who develop the theoretical foundations of methods that promote learning; methodologists who empirically test the effectiveness of methods; teachers who set ways of performing mental and practical actions that contribute to the development of students.
Educational activity determines potential changes occurring in the cognitive and personal sphere of a person.
Labor activity arose as a purposeful activity, thanks to which the development of natural and social forces occurred, is occurring and will continue to occur to satisfy the historically established needs of the individual and society.
Labor activity is the determining force of social development; labor is the main form of life activity of human society, the initial condition of human existence. It was thanks to the creation and preservation of tools that humanity stood out from nature, creating a man-made world of objects - the second nature of human existence. Labor became the basis of all aspects of social life.
Labor activity is a consciously carried out impact on the object of labor with a tool, as a result of which the object of labor is transformed into the result of labor.
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Labor activity was initially associated with the developing consciousness of man, which originated and was formed in work, in the relationships between people regarding the tools and subject of labor. A certain image of the result of labor and an image of what labor actions can achieve this result were built in a person’s mind. The production and use of tools constitutes “a specific characteristic feature of the human labor process...”45.
Tools of labor are artificial human organs through which he acts on the object of labor. At the same time, the form and functions of tools and objects of labor embody historically developed generalized methods of labor and objective actions of people, expressed in the signs of language.
In modern conditions, the degree of indirect interaction between a person and the subject of labor has increased significantly. Science penetrates into work activity and into all its parameters: into the process of production of tools and consumer goods, as well as into the organizational culture of work.
The organizational culture of work reveals the system of relations and conditions of existence of the work collective, i.e. something that significantly determines the success of the functioning and survival of an organization (team) in the long term.
The bearers of organizational culture are people. However, in teams with an established organizational culture, the latter seems to be separated from the people and becomes an attribute of the social atmosphere of the team, which has an active impact on its members. The culture of an organization is a complex interaction of management philosophy and ideology, the mythology of the organization, value orientations, beliefs, expectations and norms. The organizational culture of work activity exists in the system of linguistic signs and in the “spirit” of the team, reflecting the latter’s readiness to develop, to accept symbols through which value orientations are “transmitted” to team members. The production relations into which people enter determine the nature of their work activity, the nature of communication regarding the content of work activity, and mediate the style of communication. Labor activity is focused on the final product, as well as on receiving the monetary equivalent for work. But the work activity itself contains the conditions for human self-development. Every person, involved motivationally in the work itself, strives to be a professional and a creator.
Thus, the main types of human activity - communication, play, learning, work - constitute the reality of social space.
The relationships of people in the sphere of communication, work, study and play are mediated by the rules established in society, which in society are presented in the form of duties and rights.
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Responsibilities and human rights. The reality of social space has a person’s organizing behavior, his way of thinking and motives, which is expressed in a system of duties and rights. Each person will only feel sufficiently protected in the reality of social space if he accepts the existing system of duties and rights as the basis of his existence. Of course, the meanings of duties and rights have the same pulsating mobility in the social consciousness of people in the process of history, like any other meanings. But in the sphere of individual meanings, duties and rights can acquire key positions for a person’s life orientation.
At one time, Charles Darwin wrote: “Man is a social animal. Everyone will agree that man is a social animal. We see this in his dislike of solitude and in his desire for society...”46 Man depends on society and cannot do without it. As a social being, man has developed in his historical development a powerful feeling - a regulator of his social behavior, it is summarized in the short but powerful word “should”, so full of high meaning. “We see in it the noblest of all qualities of man, which compels him, without the slightest hesitation, to risk his life for his fellow man, or, after due deliberation, to sacrifice his life for some great purpose, simply by virtue of a deep consciousness of duty or justice.”47 Here C. Darwin refers to I. Kant, who wrote: “A sense of duty! A wonderful concept, acting on the soul through fascinating arguments of flattery or threats, but with the sole force of an unvarnished, immutable law and therefore always inspiring respect, if not always obedience...”
The social quality of a person - a sense of duty - was formed in the process of building ideals and implementing social control.
An ideal is a norm, a certain image of how a person should manifest himself in life in order to be recognized by society. However, this image is very syncretic and difficult to verbalize. I. Kant at one time spoke very clearly: “...We must, however, admit that human reason contains not only ideas, but also ideals(italics mine. - V. M.), which... have practical force (as regulative principles) and underlie the possibility of perfection of certain actions... Virtue and with it human wisdom in all their purity are the essence of ideas. But the sage (of the Stoics) is an ideal, i.e. a person who exists only in thought, but who completely coincides with the idea of ​​wisdom. Just as an idea gives rules, so the ideal serves in this case as a prototype for the complete determination of its copies; and we have no other standard for our actions than the behavior of this divine man in us, with
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with which we compare ourselves, evaluate ourselves and thanks to this we improve, but never, however, being able to equal him. Although the objective reality (existence) of these ideals cannot be assumed, nevertheless, they cannot be considered chimeras on this basis: they provide the necessary measure of reason, which needs the concept of what is perfect in its own way in order to evaluate and measure the degree and shortcomings of imperfect"48. Humanity, when creating and mastering the reality of social space through its thinkers, has always strived to create a moral ideal.
A moral ideal is an idea of ​​a universal norm, a model of human behavior and relationships between people. The moral ideal grows and develops in close connection with social, political and aesthetic ideals. At every historical moment, depending on the ideology that arises in society, on the direction of movement of society, the moral ideal changes its shades. However, universal human values, developed over centuries, remain unchanged in their nominal part. In the individual consciousness of people, they appear in a feeling called conscience and determine human behavior in everyday life.
The moral ideal is focused on a large number of external components: laws, the constitution, duties that are immutable for a particular institution where a person studies or works, rules of living in the family, in public places, and much more. At the same time, the moral ideal has an individual orientation in each individual person and acquires a unique meaning for him.
The reality of social space is the entire indissoluble complex of sign systems of the objective and natural world, as well as human relations and values. It is into the reality of human existence, as a condition that determines individual development and individual human destiny, that every person enters from the moment of his birth and remains in it during his earthly life.
§ 2.PREREQUISITES FOR PSYCHIC DEVELOPMENT
Biological background. The preconditions for the development of the psyche are usually called prerequisites for development. Prerequisites include the natural properties of the human body. A child undergoes a natural process of development on the basis of certain prerequisites created by the previous development of his ancestors over many generations.
In the second half of the 19th century. and in the first half XX V. The biogenetic law formulated by E. Haeckel (1866) captured the scientific consciousness of philosophers, biologists, and psychologists. According to this law, each organic form in its individual development
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(ontogenesis) to a certain extent repeats the features and characteristics of those forms from which it originated. The law reads like this: “Ontogeny is a short and rapid repetition of phylogenies”49. This means that in ontogenesis, each individual organism directly reproduces the path of phylogenetic development, i.e. the development of ancestors from the common root to which the given organism belongs is repeated.
According to E. Haeckel, the rapid repetition of phylogeny (recapitulation) is due to the physiological functions of heredity (reproduction) and adaptability (nutrition). In this case, the individual repeats the most important changes in form that its ancestors went through during slow and long paleontological development according to the laws of heredity and adaptation.
E. Haeckel followed Charles Darwin, who first posed the problem of the relationship between ontogenesis and phylogeny back in the “Essay of 1844.” He wrote: “The embryos of the now existing vertebrates reflect the structure of some of the adult forms of this large class that existed at earlier periods in the history of the earth.”50 However, Charles Darwin also noted facts reflecting the phenomena of heterochrony (changes in the time of appearance of characters), in particular cases when some characters appear in the ontogeny of descendants earlier than in the ontogenesis of ancestral forms.
The biogenetic law formulated by E. Haeckel was perceived by contemporaries and subsequent generations of scientists as immutable.
E. Haeckel analyzed the structure of the human body in the context of the entire evolution of the animal world. E. Haeckel considered the ontogeny of man and the history of his origin. Revealing the genealogy (phylogeny) of man, he wrote: “If countless plant and animal species were not created by a supernatural “miracle”, but “evolved” through natural transformation, then their “natural system” will be a family tree”52. Next, E. Haeckel moved on to describe the essence of the soul from the point of view of the psychology of peoples, ontogenetic psychology and phylogenetic psychology. “The individual raw material of a child’s soul,” he wrote, “is qualitatively already given in advance from parents and grandparents through heredity;
Education has the wonderful task of transforming this soul into a lush flower through intellectual training and moral education, i.e. by adaptation"53. At the same time, he gratefully refers to the work of V. Preiner on the soul of a child (1882), which analyzes the inclinations inherited by a child.
Following E. Haeckel, child psychologists began to design stages of ontogeny of individual development from the simplest forms to modern man (St. Hall, W. Stern, K. Bühler, etc.). So,
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K. Bühler pointed out that “individuals bring with them inclinations, and the plan for their implementation consists of the sum of laws”54. At the same time, K. Koffka, exploring the phenomenon of maturation in relation to learning, noted: “Growth and maturation are development processes, the course of which depends on the inherited characteristics of the individual, just like the morphological character completed at birth... Growth and maturation, however, is not completely independent of external influences..."55
Developing the ideas of E. Haeckel Ed. Klapered wrote that the essence of children’s nature “is the desire for further development,” while “the longer childhood, the longer the period of development”56.
In science, during the period of greatest dominance of a new idea, there is usually a shift in its direction. This happened with the basic principle of the biogenetic law - the principle of recapitulation (from lat. recapitulation - condensed repetition of what happened before). Thus, S. Hall tried to explain development from the point of view of recapitulation. He found numerous atavisms in the child’s behavior and development: instincts, fears. Traces from the ancient era - fear of individual objects, body parts, etc. “...The fear of eyes and teeth... is partly explained by atavistic remnants, echoes of those long eras when man fought for his existence with animals that had large or strange eyes and teeth, when then a long war of all against all within the human race was waged.” 57. S. Hall made risky analogies that were not confirmed by real ontogenesis. At the same time, his compatriot D. Baldwin explained the genesis of shyness in children from the same positions.
Many childhood psychologists named the stages through which a child must go through in the process of his ontogenetic development (S. Hall, W. Stern, K. Bühler).
F. Engels was also infected with the idea of ​​E. Haeckel, who also accepted ontogeny as a fact of the rapid passage of phylogeny in the field of the psyche.
In his own way, the power of biological prerequisites was understood by Z. Freud, who divided human self-consciousness into three spheres: “It”, “I” and “Super-ego”.
According to 3. Freud, “It” is a container of innate and repressed impulses, charged with psychic energy and requiring release. “It” is guided by the innate pleasure principle. If the “I” is the sphere of the conscious, the “Super-I” is the sphere of social control, expressed in the conscience of a person, then the “It”, being an innate gift, has a powerful influence on the other two spheres58.
The idea that innate characteristics and heredity are the key to a person’s earthly destiny is beginning to fill not only scientific treatises, but also the everyday consciousness of people.
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The place of the biological in development is one of the main problems of developmental psychology. This problem will still be studied in science. However, today we can speak quite confidently about many prerequisites.
Is it possible to become human without having a human brain?
As you know, our closest “relatives” in the animal world are apes. The most flexible and understanding of them are chimpanzees. Their gestures, facial expressions, and behavior are sometimes striking in their resemblance to humans. Chimpanzees, like other great apes, are characterized by inexhaustible curiosity. They can spend hours studying an object that falls into their hands, observing crawling insects, and monitoring human actions. Their imitation is highly developed. A monkey, imitating a person, can, for example, sweep the floor or wet a rag, wring it out and wipe the floor. Another thing is that the floor will almost certainly remain dirty after this - it will all end with garbage moving from place to place.
As observations show, chimpanzees use a large number of sounds in different situations, to which their relatives react. Under experimental conditions, many scientists have been able to get chimpanzees to solve quite complex practical problems that require thinking in action and even include the use of objects as simple tools. Thus, through a series of trials, monkeys built pyramids from boxes in order to get a banana suspended from the ceiling, mastered the ability to knock down a banana with a stick and even make one long stick out of two short ones for this purpose, open the lock of a box with bait, using for this purpose a “nag” of the required shape ( a stick with a triangular, round or square cross-section). And the chimpanzee brain, in its structure and the ratio of the sizes of individual parts, is closer to the human brain than the brain of other animals, although it is much inferior to it in weight and volume.
All this prompted the thought: what if we tried to give a baby chimpanzee a human upbringing? Will he be able to develop at least some human qualities? And such attempts were made repeatedly. Let's focus on one of them.
Domestic zoopsychologist N.N. Ladynina-Kote raised the little chimpanzee Ioni from one and a half to four years old in her family. The cub enjoyed complete freedom. He was provided with a wide variety of human things and toys, and the “foster mother” tried in every possible way to acquaint him with the use of these things and teach him to communicate using speech. The entire course of the monkey's development was carefully recorded in a diary.
Ten years later, Nadezhda Nikolaevna had a son, who was named Rudolf (Rudi). His development was also carefully monitored until the age of four. As a result,
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The book “The Chimpanzee Child and the Human Child” (1935) was published. What was it possible to establish by comparing the development of a monkey with the development of a child?
When observing both children, great similarities were revealed in many playful and emotional manifestations. But at the same time, a fundamental difference emerged. It turned out that a chimpanzee cannot master a vertical gait and free its hands from the function of walking on the ground. Although he imitates many human actions, this imitation does not lead to the correct assimilation and improvement of skills associated with the use of household items and tools: only the external pattern of the action is grasped, and not its meaning. So, Joni, imitating, often tried to hammer a nail. However, he either did not apply enough force, or did not hold the nail in a vertical position, or hit the nail with a hammer. As a result, despite much practice, Joni was never able to hammer a single nail. Games of a creative and constructive nature are also inaccessible to baby monkeys. Finally, he lacks any tendency to imitate speech sounds and master words, even with persistent special training. Approximately the same result was obtained by other “adoptive parents” of the baby monkey - the Kellogg spouses.
This means that without a human brain, human mental qualities cannot arise.
Another problem is the capabilities of the human brain outside the human conditions of life in society.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Indian psychologist Reed Singh received news that two mysterious creatures similar to people, but moving on all fours, were spotted near one village. They were tracked down. One day, Singh and a group of hunters hid near a wolf’s hole and saw a she-wolf taking her cubs out for a walk, among whom were two girls—one about eight years old, the other about one and a half years old. Singh took the girls with him and tried to raise them. They ran on all fours, got scared and tried to hide at the sight of people, snapped, howled like wolves at night. The youngest, Amala, died a year later. The eldest, Kamala, lived to be seventeen years old. Over the course of nine years, she was mostly weaned off her wolfish habits, but still, when she was in a hurry, she dropped to all fours. Kamala, in essence, never mastered speech - with great difficulty she learned to correctly use only 40 words. It turns out that the human psyche does not arise without human living conditions.
Thus, a certain structure of the brain, and certain living conditions and upbringing are necessary to become a person. However, their meaning is different. Examples with Joni and Kamala in this sense -
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le are very characteristic: a monkey raised by a man, and a child fed by a wolf. Joni grew up as a monkey with all the behavioral characteristics of a chimpanzee. Kamala grew up not as a human, but as a creature with typical wolf habits. Consequently, the traits of monkey behavior are largely embedded in the monkey’s brain and are predetermined hereditarily. There are no traits of human behavior, human mental qualities in the child’s brain. But there is something else - the opportunity to acquire what is given by living conditions, upbringing, even if it is the ability to howl at night.
Interaction of biological and social factors. The biological and the social in man are in fact so firmly reunited that it is only possible to separate these two lines theoretically.
L. S. Vygotsky, in his work devoted to the history of the development of higher mental functions, wrote: “The radical and fundamental difference between the historical development of mankind and the biological evolution of animal species is quite well known... we can... draw a completely clear and indisputable conclusion: how different the historical development of mankind from the biological evolution of animal species"59. The process of psychological development of a person himself, according to numerous studies by ethnologists and psychologists, occurs according to historical laws, and not according to biological ones. The main and all-determining difference between this process and the evolutionary one is that the development of higher mental functions occurs without changing the biological type of a person, which changes according to evolutionary laws.
It has not yet been sufficiently clarified what the direct dependence of higher mental functions and forms of behavior is on the structure and functions of the nervous system. Neuropsychologists and neurophysiologists are still solving this difficult problem - after all, we are talking about studying the subtlest integrative connections of brain cells and manifestations of human mental activity.
Of course, each stage in the biological development of behavior coincides with changes in the structure and functions of the nervous system, each new step in the development of higher mental functions arises along with changes in the central nervous system. However, it still remains insufficiently clear what the direct dependence of higher forms of behavior, higher mental functions on the structure and function of the nervous system is.
Exploring primitive thinking, L. Levy-Bruhl wrote that higher mental functions come from lower ones. “In order to understand the higher types, it is necessary to turn to a relatively primitive type. In this case, a wide field opens up for productive research regarding mental functions...”60 Researching collective representations and meaning “by representation
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fact of cognition,” L. Lévy-Bruhl pointed to social development as determining the characteristics of mental functions. Obviously, this fact was noted by L. S. Vygotsky as an outstanding position of science:
“Compared by one of the most profound researchers of primitive thinking, the idea that higher mental functions cannot be understood without biological study, those. that they are a product not of biological, but of social development of behavior is not new. But only in In recent decades, it has received a solid factual basis in research on ethnic psychology and now can be considered an indisputable position of our science "6". This means that the development of higher mental functions can be carried out through collective consciousness, in the context of the collective ideas of people, i.e. it is determined by the socio-historical nature of man. L. Lévy-Bruhl points to a very important circumstance, which was already emphasized by many sociologists:
“In order to understand the mechanism of social institutions, one must get rid of the prejudice that consists in the belief that collective ideas generally obey the laws of psychology based on the analysis of the individual subject. Collective ideas have their own laws and lie in the social relations of people”62. These ideas led L. S. Vygotsky to a thought that became fundamental for Russian psychology: “The development of higher mental functions is one of the most important aspects of the cultural development of behavior.” And further: “When speaking about the cultural development of a child, we mean a process corresponding to the mental development that took place in the process of the historical development of mankind... But, a priori, it would be difficult for us to abandon the idea that a unique form of human adaptation to nature, radically distinguishes man from animals and makes it fundamentally impossible to simply transfer the laws of animal life (the struggle for existence) into the science of human society, that this new form of adaptation, which underlies the entire historical life of mankind, will be impossible without new forms of behavior, this basic mechanism balancing the body with the environment. A new form of relationship with the environment, which arose in the presence of certain biological prerequisites, but which itself grew beyond the boundaries of biology, could not but give rise to a fundamentally different, qualitatively different, differently organized system of behavior”63.
The use of tools made it possible for a person, breaking away from biological developing forms, to move to the level of higher forms of behavior.
In human ontogenesis, of course, both types of mental development are represented, which are isolated in phylogenesis: biological and
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historical (cultural) development. In ontogenesis, both processes have their analogues. In the light of the data of genetic psychology, it is possible to distinguish two lines of mental development of a child, corresponding to two lines of phylogenetic development. Pointing out this fact, L. S. Vygotsky limits his judgment “exclusively to one point: the presence of two lines of development in phylo- and ontogenesis, and does not rely on Haeckel’s phylogenetic law (“ontogeny is a brief repetition of phylogeny”),” which was widely used in biogenetic theories of V. Stern, Art. Hall, K. Buhler, etc.
According to L. S. Vygotsky, both processes, presented in a separate form in phylogeny and connected by the relationship of continuity and consistency, actually exist in a merged form and form a single process in ontogenesis. This is the greatest and most basic uniqueness of a child’s mental development.
“The growth of a normal child into civilization,” wrote L. S. Vygotsky, - usually represents a single alloy with processes of its organic maturation. Both plans of development - natural and cultural - coincide and merge with one another. Both series of changes interpenetrate one another and form, in essence, a single series of socio-biological formation of the child’s personality. Since organic development takes place in a cultural environment, it turns into a historically determined biological process. On the other hand, cultural development acquires a completely unique and incomparable character, since it occurs simultaneously and seamlessly with organic maturation, since its carrier is the growing, changing, maturing organism of the child”64. L. S. Vygotsky consistently develops his idea of ​​​​combining growing into civilization with organic maturation.
The idea of ​​maturation underlies the identification of special periods of increased response in the ontogenetic development of a child - sensitive periods.
Extreme plasticity and learning ability is one of the most important features of the human brain, distinguishing it from the brain of animals. In animals, most of the brain matter is “occupied” already at the time of birth - the mechanisms of instincts are fixed in it, i.e. forms of behavior that are inherited. In a child, a significant part of the brain turns out to be “clean”, ready to accept and consolidate what life and upbringing give him. Scientists have proven that the process of formation of an animal’s brain basically ends at the time of birth, while in humans it continues after birth and depends on the conditions in which the child’s development occurs. Consequently, these conditions not only fill the “blank pages” of the brain, but also affect its very structure.
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The laws of biological evolution have lost their force in relation to man. Natural selection - the survival of the strongest, most adapted to the environment - ceased to operate, because people themselves learned to adapt the environment to their needs. transform it with the help of tools and collective labor.
The human brain has not changed since the time of our ancestor, the Cro-Magnon man, who lived several tens of thousands of years ago. And if a person received his mental qualities from nature, we would still be huddled in caves, maintaining an unquenchable fire. In reality, everything is different.
If in the animal world the achieved level of development of behavior is transmitted from one generation to another in the same way as the structure of the body, through biological inheritance, then in humans the types of activities characteristic of him, and with them the corresponding knowledge, skills and mental qualities, are transmitted in a different way - through social inheritance.
Social inheritance. Each generation of people expresses their experience, their knowledge, skills, and mental qualities in the products of their labor. These include both objects of material culture (things around us, houses, cars) and works of spiritual culture (language, science, art). Each new generation receives from the previous ones everything that was created before and enters a world that has “absorbed” the activities of mankind.
Mastering this world of human culture, children gradually assimilate the social experience embedded in it, the knowledge, skills, and mental qualities that are characteristic of humans. This is social inheritance. Of course, a child is not able to decipher the achievements of human culture on his own. He does this with constant help and guidance from adults - in the process of education and training.
Tribes have survived on earth, leading a primitive way of life, not knowing not only television, but also metals, obtaining food using primitive stone tools. The study of representatives of such tribes suggests, at first glance, a significant difference between their psyche and the psyche of modern cultural people. But this difference is not at all a manifestation of any natural features. If you raise a child of such a backward tribe in a modern family, he will be no different from any of us.
The French ethnographer J. Villar went on an expedition to a remote region of Paraguay, where the Guayquil tribe lived. Very little was known about this tribe: that it leads a nomadic lifestyle, constantly moving from place to place in search of its main food - honey from wild bees, has a primitive language, and does not come into contact with other people. Villar, like many others before him, was not lucky enough to meet the Guayquils - they hastily left when the expedition approached. But at one of the abandoned sites an apparently posed
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a two-year-old girl who was in a hurry. Villar took her to France and entrusted her with raising her to his mother. Twenty years later, the young woman was already an ethnographer who spoke three languages.
The natural properties of a child, without giving rise to mental qualities, create the prerequisites for their formation. These qualities themselves arise due to social inheritance. Thus, one of the important mental qualities of a person is speech (phonemic) hearing, which makes it possible to distinguish and recognize the sounds of speech. No animal has it. It has been established that, when responding to verbal commands, animals capture only the length of the word and intonation; they do not distinguish the speech sounds themselves. By nature, the child receives the structure of the auditory apparatus and the corresponding parts of the nervous system, suitable for distinguishing speech sounds. But speech hearing itself develops only in the process of mastering a particular language under the guidance of adults.
A child does not from birth have any forms of behavior characteristic of an adult. But some of the simplest forms of behavior - unconditioned reflexes - are innate and absolutely necessary both for the child to survive and for further mental development. A child is born with a set of organic needs (for oxygen, a certain ambient temperature, food, etc.) and with reflex mechanisms aimed at satisfying these needs. Various environmental influences cause protective and indicative reflexes in the child. The latter are especially important for further mental development, since they constitute the natural basis for receiving and processing external impressions.
On the basis of unconditioned reflexes, the child begins to develop conditioned reflexes very early on, which lead to an expansion of reactions to external influences and to their complication. Elementary unconditional and conditioned reflex mechanisms provide the child’s initial connection with the outside world and create conditions for establishing contacts with adults and transitioning to the assimilation of various forms of social experience. Under its influence, the mental qualities and personality traits of the child subsequently develop.
In the process of assimilating social experience, individual reflex mechanisms are combined into complex forms - functional organs of the brain. Each such system works as a single whole, performs a new function, which differs from the functions of its constituent units: it provides speech hearing, musical hearing, logical thinking and other mental qualities characteristic of a person.
During childhood, the child’s body undergoes intensive maturation, in particular the maturation of its nervous system and brain. On pro-
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During the first seven years of life, the mass of the brain increases by approximately 3.5 times, its structure changes, and functions improve. Brain maturation is very important for mental development: thanks to it, the ability to master various actions increases, the child’s performance increases, and conditions are created that allow for more systematic and targeted training and education.
The progress of maturation depends on whether the child receives a sufficient number of external impressions and whether adults provide the educational conditions necessary for the active functioning of the brain. Science has proven that those parts of the brain that are not exercised cease to mature normally and may even atrophy (lose the ability to function). This is especially pronounced in the early stages of development.
A maturing organism provides the most fertile soil for education. It is known what impression the events that take place in childhood make on us, what influence they sometimes have on the rest of our lives. Education conducted in childhood is more important for the development of mental qualities than adult education.
Natural prerequisites - the structure of the body, its functions, its maturation - are necessary for mental development; Without them, development cannot occur, but they do not determine exactly what mental qualities appear in the child. This depends on the living conditions and upbringing, under the influence of which the child acquires social experience.
Social experience is the source of mental development, from which the child, through an intermediary (adult), receives material for the formation of mental qualities and personality traits. An adult himself uses social experience for the purpose of self-improvement.
Social conditions and age. Age stages of mental development are not identical to biological development. They have historical origins. Of course, childhood, understood in the sense of a person’s physical development, the time necessary for his growth, is a natural, natural phenomenon. But the duration of the childhood period when the child does not participate in social labor, but is only preparing for such participation, and the forms that this preparation takes depend on socio-historical conditions.
Data on how childhood passes among peoples at different stages of social development show that the lower this level, the earlier the growing person is involved in adult types of work. In a primitive culture, children literally
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When they begin to walk, they work together with adults. Childhood as we know it appeared only when the work of adults became inaccessible to the child and began to require a lot of preliminary preparation. It was identified by humanity as a period of preparation for life, for adult activity, during which the child must acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, mental qualities and personality traits. And each age stage is called upon to play its own special role in this preparation.
The role of the school is to give the child the knowledge and skills necessary for various types of specific human activities (work in different areas of social production, science, culture), and to develop the corresponding mental qualities. The significance of the period from birth to entry into school lies in the preparation of more general, initial human knowledge and skills, mental qualities and personality traits that every person needs to live in society. These include mastering speech, using household objects, developing orientation in space and time, developing human forms of perception, thinking, imagination, etc., forming the foundations of relationships with other people, and initial familiarization with works of literature and art.
In accordance with these tasks and capabilities of each age group, society assigns children a certain place among other people, develops a system of requirements for them, the range of their rights and responsibilities. Naturally, as children’s capabilities grow, these rights and responsibilities become more serious, in particular, the degree of independence assigned to the child and the degree of responsibility for their actions increase.
Adults organize the lives of children, build upbringing in accordance with the place allocated to the child by society. Society determines adults' ideas about what can be demanded and expected from a child at each age stage.
The child’s attitude to the world around him, the range of his responsibilities and interests are determined, in turn, by the place he occupies among other people, by the system of requirements, expectations and influences from adults. If a baby is characterized by the need for constant emotional communication with an adult, then this is explained by the fact that the baby’s whole life is entirely determined by an adult, and is determined not in any indirect way, but in the most direct and immediate way: here there is almost continuous physical contact when an adult swaddles child, feeds him, gives him a toy, supports him during his first attempts to walk, etc.
The need for cooperation with adults that arises in early childhood and interest in the immediate object environment are associated with
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the fact that, taking into account the growing capabilities of the child, adults change the nature of communication with him, moving on to communication about certain objects and actions. They begin to demand from the child a certain independence in caring for himself, which is impossible without mastering the ways of using objects.
The emerging needs to join the actions and relationships of adults, the expansion of interests beyond the immediate environment and at the same time their focus on the process of activity itself (and not on its result) are features that distinguish a preschooler and find expression in role-playing games. These features reflect the duality of the place occupied by preschool children among other people. On the one hand, the child is expected to understand human actions, distinguish between good and evil, and consciously follow the rules of behavior. On the other hand, all the child’s vital needs are satisfied by adults, he does not bear serious responsibilities, and adults do not make any significant demands on the results of his actions.
Entering school is a turning point in a child's life. The sphere of application of mental activity is changing - the game is being replaced by teaching. From the first day at school, new requirements are presented to the student that correspond to educational activities. According to these requirements, yesterday's preschooler must be organized and successful in acquiring knowledge; he must master the rights and responsibilities corresponding to his new position in society.
A distinctive feature of the student’s position is that his studies are a compulsory, socially significant activity. For this, the student must be responsible to the teacher, family, and himself. The life of a student is subject to a system of rules that are the same for all schoolchildren, the main of which is the acquisition of knowledge that he must learn for future use.
Modern living conditions - in an environment of socio-economic crisis - have created new problems: 1) economic, which at the schoolchildren level act as the problem “Children and money”; 2) worldview - the choice of positions in relation to religion, which at the level of childhood and adolescence act as the problem “Children and Religion”; 3) moral - instability of legal and moral criteria, which at the level of adolescence and youth act as problems “Children and AIDS”, “Early pregnancy”, etc.
Social conditions also determine the value orientations, occupation and emotional well-being of adults.
Patterns of development. Since the stages of mental development are mainly of a social historical nature, they are not
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may be unchanged. The stages listed above reflect the living conditions of children in modern society. All children of civilized countries undergo them in one form or another. However, the age limits of each stage and the onset of critical periods can vary significantly depending on the customs, traditions of raising children, and the characteristics of the education system of each country.
Those basic psychological traits that unite children at the same age stage of mental development, to a certain extent, determine their more specific mental characteristics. This allows us to talk, for example, about the typical features of attention, perception, thinking, imagination, feelings, and volitional control of behavior for a young child, or a preschooler, or a primary school student. However, such features can be changed and restructured when children's education changes.
Mental qualities do not arise by themselves; they are formed in the course of upbringing and training, based on the child’s activities. Therefore, it is impossible to give a general description of a child of a certain age without taking into account the conditions of his upbringing and education. Children at different stages of mental development differ from each other in the presence or absence of certain mental qualities under certain conditions of upbringing and education. The psychological characteristics of age consist, first of all, in identifying those mental qualities that at this age can and should be developed in a child, using existing needs, interests and activities.
The revealed capabilities of a child’s mental development encourage some psychologists, teachers and parents to artificially accelerate mental development and strive for enhanced formation in the child of such types of thinking that are more typical for schoolchildren. For example, attempts are being made to teach children to solve mental problems through abstract verbal reasoning. However, this path is incorrect, since it does not take into account the characteristics of the preschool stage of a child’s mental development with his characteristic interests and activities. It also does not take into account the sensitivity of preschoolers in relation to educational influences aimed at developing imaginative rather than abstract thinking. The main task of education at each age stage of mental development is not to accelerate this development, but to enrich it, to make maximum use of the opportunities that this particular stage provides.
The identification of stages of mental development is based on external conditions and internal laws of this development itself and constitutes psychological age periodization.

§3.INTERNAL POSITION AND DEVELOPMENT
The existence of social relations is reflected on the individual, as is known, through the appropriation of socially significant values ​​by a person, through the assimilation of social norms and attitudes. At the same time, both the needs and motives of each individual carry within themselves the socio-historical orientations of the culture in which a given person develops and acts. This means that a human being can rise in its development to the level of personality only in the conditions of a social environment, through interaction with this environment and the appropriation of the spiritual experience that has been accumulated by humanity. A person gradually, in the process of ontogenetic development, forms his own internal position through a system of personal meanings.
System of personal meanings. Psychology has identified a number of conditions that determine the basic patterns of mental development of the individual. The starting point in each personality is the level of mental development; This includes mental development and the ability to independently construct value orientations, and to choose a line of behavior that allows one to defend these orientations.
The individual existence of a person is formed through an internal position, the formation of personal meanings, on the basis of which a person builds his worldview, through the content side of self-awareness.
The system of personal meanings of each person determines the individual options for his value orientations. From the first years of life, a person assimilates and creates value orientations that shape his life experience. He projects these value orientations onto his future. This is why people’s value-orientation positions are so individual.
Modern society has risen to the stage of development at which the value of the personal element in a person is realized and the comprehensive development of the individual is highly valued.
A. N. Leontyev pointed out that personality is a special quality that an individual acquires in society, in the totality of relationships, social in nature, in which the individual is involved65. A person’s satisfaction of objective and material needs leads to their reduction only to the level of conditions, and not internal sources of personality development: a personality cannot develop within the framework of needs, its development involves a shift of needs to creation, which knows no boundaries. This conclusion is of fundamental importance.
Psychologists developing personality theory believe that a person as an individual is a relatively stable psychological system. According to L.I. Bozhovich, psychologically
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A mature personality is a person who is able to be guided by consciously set goals, which determines the active nature of his behavior. This ability is due to the development of three sides of the personality: rational, volitional, emotional66.
For a holistic, harmonious personality, the ability not only for conscious self-government, but also for the formation of motivating systems is undoubtedly important. Personality cannot be characterized by the development of any one aspect - rational, volitional or emotional. Personality is a kind of indissoluble integrity of all its sides.
V.V. Davydov rightfully pointed out that the socio-psychological maturity of an individual is determined not so much by the processes of organic growth as by the real place of the individual in society. He argues that in modern developmental psychology the question should be posed as follows: “How to form an integral human personality, how to help it, in the words of F. M. Dostoevsky, “stand out,” how to give the educational process the most accurate, socially justified direction.” 67.
Of course, this process should be structured in such a way that every child gets a chance to become a truly full-fledged, comprehensively developed personality. In order for a child to become an individual, it is necessary to formulate in him the need to be an individual. E.V. Ilyenkov wrote about this: “Do you want a person to become an individual? Then place him from the very beginning - from childhood - in such a relationship with another person (with all other people), within which he not only could, but would also be forced to become a person... It is a comprehensive, harmonious (and not ugly) one-sided) development of each person is the main condition for the birth of an individual who can independently determine the path of his life, his place in it, his own business, which is interesting and important for everyone, including himself”68.
Comprehensive development of the individual does not exclude the absence of conflicts of the individual himself. Motivation and consciousness of the individual determine the features of its development at all stages of ontogenesis, where unity and struggle of opposites inevitably arise in the self-awareness of the individual and its emotional, affective and rational manifestations69.
At the present stage of cultural and historical development of society, as a result of the identification of a special “place factor” in the system of social relations, the development of preschool children is determined in a special way. The entire system of preschool education is aimed at organizing the child’s effective “appropriation” of the spiritual culture created by humanity, forming in him a hierarchy of behavioral motives that is useful for society, and developing his consciousness and self-awareness.
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As for the child’s personality, which is in the process of development, in relation to it we are only talking about the formation of the prerequisites necessary to achieve comprehensive development. The prerequisites at each stage of mental development create personal formations that have enduring significance, determining the further development of the individual. It seems obvious to us that human development goes in the direction of improving personal qualities that provide the possibility of successful development of the individual’s individuality and at the same time in the direction of developing personal qualities that provide the possibility of the individual’s existence as a unit of society, as a member of a team.
Becoming a human means learning to express yourself towards other people as a human being should. When we talk about the “appropriation” of material and spiritual culture created by humanity, we mean not only the acquisition by a person of the ability to correctly use objects created by human labor and successfully communicate with other people, but also the development of his cognitive activity, consciousness, self-awareness and motives behavior. We mean the development of personality as an active, unique, individual being of social relations. At the same time, it is important to identify positive achievements and negative formations that arise at different stages of ontogenesis, to learn to manage the development of the child’s personality, understanding the patterns of this development.
Personal development is determined not only by innate characteristics (if we are talking about a healthy psyche), not only by social conditions, but also by the internal position - a certain attitude that already develops in a small child towards the world of people, to the world of things and to himself. These prerequisites and conditions of mental development deeply interact with each other, determining a person’s internal position in relation to himself and the people around him. But this does not mean that, having developed at a given level of development, this position is not susceptible to external influence at the subsequent stages of personality formation70.
At the first stage, a spontaneous formation of personality occurs, not guided by self-consciousness. This is the period of preparation for the birth of a self-conscious personality, when the child appears in obvious forms to be multimotivated and subordinate in his actions. The beginning of personality development is determined by the following events in the child’s life. First of all, he distinguishes himself as a person (this happens throughout early and preschool age), as the bearer of a certain name (proper name, the pronoun “I” and a certain physical appearance). Psychologically, the “I-image” is formed from an emotional (positive or negative) attitude
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attitude towards people and with the expression of one’s will (“I want”, “I myself”), which acts as a specific need of the child. Very soon a claim for recognition begins to appear (both positive and negative). At the same time, the child develops a sense of gender, which also determines the characteristics of personality development. Further, the child develops a sense of himself in time, he has a psychological past, present and future, he begins to relate to himself in a new way - the prospect of his own development opens up for him. The most important thing for the formation of a child’s personality is the understanding that a person among people must have responsibilities and rights.
Thus, self-awareness represents value orientations that form a system of personal meanings that make up the individual existence of a person. The system of personal meanings is organized into a structure of self-awareness, representing the unity of links developing according to certain patterns.
The structure of a person’s self-awareness is formed by identification with brow, proper name (value attitude towards the body and name);
self-esteem expressed in the context of a claim to recognition; presenting oneself as a member of a particular gender (gender identification); presenting oneself in the aspect of psychological time (individual past, present and future); self-assessment within the social space of the individual (rights and responsibilities in the context of a specific culture).
The structural links of self-consciousness are filled with signs that arose in the process of the historically determined reality of human existence. The system of signs of the culture to which a person belongs is a condition for his development and “movement” within this system. Each person assigns meanings and meanings to cultural signs in his own way. Therefore, in the consciousness of every person the objective-subjective realities of the objective world, figurative-sign systems, nature, and social space are represented.
It is this individualization of the meanings and meanings of cultural signs that makes each person a unique, unique individual. From here the need to appropriate the largest volume of culture naturally follows: the paradoxical representation of the universal in the individual - the greater the volume of cultural units represented in the self-consciousness of an individual, the more individual transformations of the meanings and meanings of social signs, the richer the individual’s individuality.
Of course, here we can only talk about a possible correlation between the volume of appropriation and the individualization of a person. Of course, there are many different conditions and prerequisites that make up the possibility of individualization of a person.