In psychological science, the category “personality” is one of the basic concepts. However, the concept of personality is not purely psychological and is studied by all social sciences, including philosophy, sociology, and pedagogy. From the position of psychological science, a personality is a specific person, taken in the system of his stable socially conditioned psychological characteristics, which manifest themselves in social connections and relationships, determine his moral actions and are of significant importance for himself and those around him.
It should be noted that in psychological science there is no unambiguous answer to the question of the relationship between the biological and the social in personality, since there is no consensus on how much the biological principle influences the development of the personality as a whole. Therefore, when solving practical problems of psychological support for the activities of military personnel, both personal and individual psychological characteristics should be taken into account.
Another, no less controversial issue is the question of personality structure. When considering personality structure, it usually includes abilities, temperament, character, motivation and social attitudes.
Abilities are individually stable properties of a person that determine his success in various activities. Temperament includes qualities that influence a person's reactions to other people and social circumstances. Character contains qualities that determine a person’s actions towards other people. Motivation is a set of motivations for activity, and social attitudes are people’s beliefs and attitudes. In addition, a number of authors include concepts such as will and emotions in the personality structure.
Personality formation is carried out in the processes of socialization of individuals and directed education: their mastery of social norms and functions (social roles) through mastery of diverse types and forms of activity. The wealth of which determines the wealth of the individual. The alienation of certain types and forms of activity inherent in an integral generic person (due to the social division of labor, fixed in a class-antagonistic society by its social structure) determines the formation of a one-sidedly developed personality, which perceives its own activity as unfree, imposed from the outside, alien. On the contrary, the appropriation of the entire integrity of historically established types and forms of activity by each individual in a society devoid of class-antagonistic contradictions is an indispensable prerequisite for the comprehensive and harmonious development of the individual. In addition to social ones, personality acquires traits arising from the specific living conditions of special social communities of which individuals are members, i.e. class, socio-professional, national-ethnic, socio-territorial and gender and age. Mastering the traits inherent in these diverse communities, as well as the social roles performed by individuals in group and collective activities, on the one hand, is expressed in socially typical manifestations of behavior and consciousness, and on the other hand, gives the individual a unique individuality, since these socially conditioned qualities are structured into a stable integrity based on the psychophysical properties of the subject. As a subject of social relations, a person is characterized by active creative activity, which, however, becomes possible and productive thanks to the mastery of the culture inherited from previous generations.
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In the book by A.N. Leontyev “Activity. Consciousness. Personality” are beautiful lines about personality - “this highest unity of a person, changeable like life itself, and at the same time maintaining its constancy. Indeed, regardless of the experience a person accumulates, of events that change his life situation, and finally, regardless of his physical changes, he as a person remains the same in the eyes of other people and for himself.”
A person always acts as a member of society, as a performer of certain social functions or, as they also say, social roles.
A social role is a program of human action developed by society in certain circumstances.
The study of personality as a condition of activity and its product constitutes a special, although not a “separate” psychological problem. This problem is one of the most difficult. Serious difficulties arise even when trying to figure out what kind of reality is described in scientific psychology by the term “personality”.
Personality is not only a subject of psychology, but also a subject of philosophical, social and historical knowledge.
Let us briefly characterize the features of understanding the personality of A.N. Leontyev.
Personality, in his opinion, is a psychological formation of a special type generated by a person’s life in society.
The subordination of various activities creates the basis of personality, the formation of which occurs in ontogenesis during life. It is interesting to note those features that A.N. Leontiev did not attribute to personality, primarily the genotypically determined characteristics of a person: physical constitution, type of nervous system, temperament, dynamic forces of biological needs, affectivity, natural inclinations, as well as acquired skills, knowledge, skills, including professional ones. This constitutes the individual properties of a person.
The concept of individual, according to A.N. Leontiev, expresses, firstly, the integrity and indivisibility of an individual individual of a given biological species, and secondly, the characteristics of a particular representative of the species that distinguish it from other representatives of this species. Individual properties, including genotypically determined ones, can change in many ways during a person’s life, but this does not make them personal. Personality is not an individual enriched by previous experience. The properties of an individual do not transform into personality properties. Although transformed, they remain individual properties, not defining the emerging personality, but constituting the prerequisites and conditions for its formation. Personality, like the individual, is a product of the integration of processes that carry out the life relations of the subject.
The general approach to understanding the problem of personality, outlined by A.N. Leontiev, found its development in the works of A.V. Petrovsky and V.A. Petrovsky.
A.V. Petrovsky gives the following definition of personality: “Personality in psychology denotes a systemic social quality acquired by an individual in objective activity and communication and characterizing the level and quality of representation of social relations in the individual.”
What is personality as a special social quality of an individual? All domestic psychologists deny the identity of the concepts “individual” and “personality”. The concepts of personality and individual are not the same thing.
Personality is a special quality that is acquired by an individual in society, and a special “supersensible” quality. A personality is inseparable from the system of social connections in which it is included. Now we need to clarify why personality is spoken of as a “supersensible” quality of an individual. It is obvious that the individual has properties accessible to sensory perception: physicality, individual characteristics of behavior, speech, facial expressions, gestures, in general, is characterized by his behavior and appearance, etc. Personality embodies a system of relations, social in nature, which fit into the sphere of existence of the individual as his systemic (internally divided, complex) quality. Only an analysis of the “individual-society” relationship makes it possible to reveal the foundations of the properties of a person as an individual. To understand the basis on which certain personality traits are formed, it is necessary to consider her life in society, her movement in the system of social relations.
Social relations are a part, side, aspect of personality as a social quality of an individual. The inclusion of an individual in certain communities determines the content and nature of the activities they perform, the circle and methods of communication with other people, i.e. features of his lifestyle, social existence. But the way of life of individual individuals, certain communities of people, as well as society as a whole is determined by the historically developing system of social relations. Psychology can solve this problem together with other social sciences. For an individual, society is not just some external environment. As a member of society, she is objectively and necessarily included in the system of social relations. Of course, the connection between social relations and the psychological properties of an individual is not direct. It is mediated by many factors and conditions that require special research. If we consider the life of an individual in society from a global perspective, then it must be said that the entire totality of social relations, their entire system as a whole, one way or another determines the social status of each specific individual and its development. But a more detailed analysis revealed that the ways of including specific individuals in different types of social relations are different; The degree of their implementation in the life of each individual also varies. The methods of inclusion and the degree of individual participation in different types of social relations are different; in them, the relationships between different forms of activity and communication are formed differently. In other words, the “space of relationships” of each individual is specific and very dynamic.
The concept of personality refers to certain properties belonging to an individual, and this also means the originality, uniqueness of the individual, i.e. individuality.
However, the concepts of individual, personality and individuality are not identical in content: each of them reveals a specific aspect of a person’s individual existence. Personality can only be understood in a system of stable interpersonal connections, mediated by the content, values, and meaning of the joint activities of each of the participants. These interpersonal connections are real, but supersensual in nature. They manifest themselves in specific individual properties and actions of people included in the team, but are not reducible to them.
Interpersonal connections that form a personality in a team appear externally in the form of communication or subject-subject relationship along with the subject-object relationship characteristic of objective activity. Upon deeper examination, it turns out that direct subject-subject connections exist not so much in themselves, but in mediation by some objects (material or ideal). This means that the relationship of an individual to another individual is mediated by the object of activity (subject-object-subject).
In turn, what outwardly looks like a direct act of an individual’s objective activity is in fact an act of mediation, and the mediating link for the individual is no longer the object of activity. Not its objective meaning, but the personality of another person, a participant in the activity, acting as a refractive device through which he can perceive, understand, feel the object of the activity.
All that has been said allows us to understand the personality as a subject of a relatively stable system of interindividual (subject-object - subjective and subject-subject - object) relationships that develop in activity and communication.
The personality of each person is endowed only with its own inherent combination of traits and characteristics that form its individuality - a combination of psychological characteristics of a person that make up his originality, his difference from other people. Individuality is manifested in character traits, temperament, habits, prevailing interests, in the qualities of cognitive processes, in abilities, and individual style of activity. Just as the concepts individual and personality are not identical, personality and individuality, in turn, form unity, but not identity. If personality traits are not represented in the system of interpersonal relationships, they turn out to be insignificant for assessing the individual’s personality and do not receive conditions for development, just as only individual traits that are most “involved” in the leading activity for a given social community act as personality traits. The individual characteristics of a person do not appear in any way until a certain time, until they become necessary in the system of interpersonal relations, the subject of which is the given person as an individual.
So, individuality is only one aspect of a person’s personality.
Rubinshtein S.L. believed that all mental processes, with the study of which the analysis of the mental content of human activity begins, occur in the individual, and each of them in its actual course depends on it.
The dependence of mental processes on personality as an individual is expressed, firstly, in individual differential differences. People, depending on the general makeup of their individuality, differ in the types of perception and observation, memory, attention (in the sense of switchability).
Individual differences are manifested in the very content of what is perceived and remembered, which is especially pronounced in the selective nature of remembering and forgetting.
The dependence of mental processes on personality is expressed, secondly, in the fact that, as analysis has shown, they, without having an independent line, depend on the general development of the personality.
The fact that a person’s mental processes are manifestations of personality is expressed, thirdly, in the fact that in a person they do not remain only processes that occur by themselves, but turn into consciously regulated actions or operations, which the personality seems to take possession of and which it directs to solving the problems facing her in life. Kovalev A.G. defined the concept of personality as a complex, multifaceted phenomenon of social life, a link in the system of social relations. A person is a product of socio-historical development, on the one hand, and a figure of social development, on the other.
None of the social sciences can abstract from personality as a social phenomenon. However, each social science has its own aspect of research. Thus, historical materialism mainly studies the individual as part of the masses, classes and society as a whole as a figure in social development.
Psychology focuses on the subjective world of the individual, its structure and patterns of formation and development. Only an outstanding person was recognized as a person as a separate individual acting according to his own will; the rest of the people, ordinary members of society, according to this idea, were not individuals. The individual is inseparable from society.
Human wealth is a product of social production.
Society shapes the individual in the interests of preserving and developing society.
The individual is the creator of social wealth. A person is a conscious being; he can choose one or another way of life from many possible ones: to humble himself or fight against injustice, to give all his strength to society or to live only by personal interests. All this depends not only on a person’s social status, but also on his level of awareness of the objective laws and needs of social development.
Asmolov A.G. considered personality from the point of view of the problem of the relationship between the biological and the social in man. Thus, based on all definitions of personality, by domestic psychologists we take as the initial approach the approach according to which personality is characterized as a special quality. Acquired by an individual in the totality of relations that are social in nature (A.N. Leontiev), an approach that characterizes the individual from the perspective of his connections with other individuals (A.V. Petrovsky), in communication with other people (M.I. Lisina).
So, the initial understanding of personality presupposes the specificity of the latter as generated (and in our understanding - realized) by a person’s involvement in social relations, in the system of relationships between people. Personality, according to W. James, arises as the interaction of instinctive and habitual facets of consciousness, as well as personal volitional aspects. Pathologies, personality differences, stages of development, self-actualization tendencies and everything else are a reorganization of the basic building blocks provided by nature and refined by evolution. G.W. Allport formulated a well-known definition of personality: “personality is the dynamic organization of those psychophysical systems in the individual that determine his behavior and thinking.” Thus, he viewed personality as a constantly changing dynamic system. He used the term “psychophysical” to show that personality is “neither something exclusively mental, nor something exclusively nervous.” By “organization” Allport understood the unity of the physical and mental in the individual. He believed that such a complex structure as personality includes determining tendencies that largely determine individual behavior.
In “hormic psychology” V. McDougall, in psychoanalysis Z. Freud, A. Adler, personality was interpreted as an ensemble of irrational unconscious drives.
Behaviorism actually removed the problem of personality, which had no place in the mechanistic scheme “s - p” (“stimulus - response”). The concepts of K. Levin, A. Maslow, K. Rogers are very productive in terms of specific methodological solutions, which reveal a certain limitation that manifests itself in physicalism, the transfer of the laws of mechanics to the analysis of personality manifestations.
American psychologist W. James wrote that personality “in the broadest sense is the general result of what a person can call his own. Those. not only his own body and his own mental powers, but also his house, wife, children, ancestors, friends, his good fame and creative works, land property, horses, yacht and current account.
Hence, according to James, the loss of at least part of property is considered as a derogation of the dignity of the individual himself. With the loss of accumulated gold, with the loss of property, James writes, not only does there arise “a feeling of diminishment of our personality, the transformation of a part of us into nothing. Through this we are immediately identified with the poor people, whom we have hitherto treated with contempt, we are separated more than before from the fortunate ones who rule over the land, and the seas, and people, enjoying what wealth and power can give.”
According to Z. Freud, personality is a biological individuality closed in itself, living in society and experiencing its influence, but opposing it. It turns out that the source of personality activity is subconscious drives: sexual and death drives, which manifest themselves in a fatal way. Accordingly, the meaning of life lies in the satisfaction of these original biological drives. Social development, civilization with its numerous moral prohibitions, according to Freud, turn out to harm the normal development of the human personality and are the sources of its neuroses. Hence, both directly and indirectly, unbridled sexuality and wars, violence as a means of satisfying the death drive are justified. Freud's concept is thus a sharpened concept of biological individualism of the individual.
Neo-Freudians (Horney, Fromm) are trying to smooth out the biological understanding of personality given by Freud. They seek to update Freudianism by downplaying the importance of sexuality in human life, recognizing the positive role of culture (Horney) and social conditions in general (Fromm). According to Fromm, social development leads to increasing individualization and personal freedom. Fromm distinguishes between positive and negative freedom: the first is the power of man over nature; the second is the loneliness of a person due to the struggle of people with each other. Thus, Freudianism and neo-Freudianism remains a reactionary, unscientific concept of personality, serving to justify the existing capitalist system and the difficult position of the individual in it. Freudianism takes the individual away from solving social problems into the world of mysterious psychological phenomena and internal mental conflicts; it recommends seeking relief from suffering through self-analysis with the help of psychoanalysis.
Personality, according to Jung, includes three main systems: the Ego, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious.
The ego is the center of consciousness, which is a part of the soul (personality), including feelings, sensations, memories, thoughts and everything that allows a person to feel his integrity and realize his identity.
The personal unconscious is a structure that, like Freud, includes repressed memories, feelings, and experiences. However, according to Jung’s ideas, the personal unconscious also includes complexes (for example, the mother complex, the power complex, etc.). In this case, the complex can seize control over the personality and control its behavior.
The collective unconscious, according to Jung, is represented by archetypes, which are universal human models of perception containing a significant emotional element.
Jung first proposed two psychological attitudes, or personality orientations: extraversion and introversion. Each person has both attitudes, but one of them is dominant.
Extraversion is an outward orientation, towards the outside world, towards other people.
Introversion is a focus on oneself, into one’s inner world.
Personality development, or individuation, according to Jung, is a process of integration of many intrapersonal functions and tendencies. In its ultimate realization, the process of individuation involves bringing the archetype of the Self to the center of the personality. In the process of individuation, self-realization can occur, according to Jung, but, unfortunately, it is not available to all people, but only to highly educated and highly moral people.
During the development of personality the following are realized:
The principle of causality makes the development of personality dependent on past experience.
The principle of teleology (goal setting) makes the development of personality dependent on the predicted goal, i.e. in this case, development is determined not only by the past, but also by the future.
The principle of synchrony applies to events that occur simultaneously, but are not related by cause and effect.
The principle of inheritance, according to Jung, is that heredity includes not only biological instincts, but also ancestral “experiences” in the Form of archetypes - racial memories, due to their repetition in many generations.
The principle of progression is based on progressive development directed forward towards improvement.
The principle of regression is based on the cessation of development, on the switching of energy towards earlier stages of development, which can also be adaptive in nature.
Individual manifestations and personality traits.
Basic approaches to the problem of the relationship between the biological and the social in personality.
In the history of science, almost all possible formal and logical connections between the concepts of mental, social, and biological have been sorted out.
Mental development was interpreted as a completely spontaneous process, independent of either the biological or the social; and as a derivative only from the biological. Either only from social development, or as a result of their parallel action on the individual or interaction. In the concepts of spontaneous mental development, it is considered as completely determined by its internal laws. The question of the biological and social simply does not exist for these concepts: the human body here, at best, is assigned the role of a kind of “container” of mental activity, external to it. In biologization concepts, mental development is considered as a linear function of the development of the organism, as something that unambiguously follows this development; Here they try to derive all the features of mental processes, states and properties of a person from biological laws. In this case, laws discovered in the study of animals are often used, which do not take into account the specifics of the development of the human body. Often in these concepts, to explain mental development, the basic biogenetic law (recapitulation) is invoked, according to which in the development of an individual the evolution of the species to which this individual belongs is reproduced in its main features; they try to find in the mental development of an individual a repetition of the stages of the evolutionary process as a whole, or at least the main stages of the development of the species.
Prominent Russian psychologist B.F. Lomov, developing a systematic approach to understanding the essence of personality, tries to reveal all the complexity and ambiguity of solving the problem of the relationship between the social and biological in personality. His views on this problem boil down to the following main points.
When studying the development of an individual, psychology is, of course, not limited to analyzing only individual mental functions and states. She is primarily interested in the formation and development of a person’s personality. In this regard, the problem of the relationship between the biological and the social appears primarily as a problem of the organism and the personality. One of these concepts was formed in the context of biological sciences, the other - social sciences, but both of them relate to the individual as a representative of the species “homo sapiens” and as a member of society. At the same time, in each of these concepts different systems of human properties are recorded: in the concept of organism - the structure of the human individual as a biological system, in the concept of personality - his involvement in the life of society. As already noted, when studying the formation and development of personality, domestic psychology proceeds from the Marxist position on personality as a social quality of the individual. Outside of society, this quality of the individual does not exist, and therefore, without analyzing the relationship between the individual and society, it cannot be understood. The objective basis of an individual’s personal properties is the system of social relations in which he lives and develops.
Globally, the formation and development of an individual can be considered as his assimilation of social programs that have developed in a given society at a given historical stage.
From all that has been said, we can conclude: the determination of an individual’s development is systemic in nature and is highly dynamic. It necessarily includes both social and biological determinants.
The sociogenetic concept considers personality development as a result of direct influences of the surrounding social environment. Sociogeneticists assign to man the passive role of a creature adapting to the environment.
Personality structure.
In Russian psychology, there are a number of attempts to present the structure of personality (A.G. Kovalev, V.S. Merlin, K.K. Platonov, V.A. Krutetsky, A.I. Shcherbakov). The most substantiated and developed personality structure was proposed by K.K. Platonov. The dynamic functional structure of personality he proposed contains both coordination (relationships between personality substructures at one hierarchical level) and subordination (relationships between personality substructures represented at different levels) principles of construction. Based on the criterion of the relationship between social and biological in personality qualities, four hierarchically correlated substructures are identified in its structure: 1) personality orientation; 2) experience; 3) individual characteristics of mental processes; 4) includes biopsychic properties.
In addition, the personality structure has two general integrative substructures (character and abilities), which, unlike hierarchical substructures, permeate all four levels of the hierarchy, absorbing qualities from the substructures of each identified level. At the same time, each of the general substructures reflects a certain aspect of the study of individual behavior: the stability of the manifestation of traits in various types of activity (then we are talking about the character of the individual) or in some specific type of activity (we are talking about the individual’s abilities for a given type of activity);
- 1) the substructure of personality, called “personality orientation,” combines the qualities of orientation and personality attitudes, manifested as moral traits. The personality traits included in this substructure, in their overwhelming majority, do not have direct innate inclinations (excluding drives and inclinations), but reflect individually refracted social consciousness. The orientation of a personality includes such forms as drives, desires, interests, inclinations, ideals, beliefs, and worldviews. In these forms of personality orientation, relationships and moral qualities of the individual, and various needs are manifested. This substructure is formed through education.
- 2) the substructure of personality, called “experience”, combines knowledge, skills, abilities, habits acquired in personal experience through learning, but with a noticeable influence and biologically and even genetically determined personality properties. This substructure is sometimes called individual culture, or readiness.
- 3) the personality substructure, called “features of mental processes,” combines the individual characteristics of individual mental processes. Or mental functions, understood as forms of mental reflection: memory, emotions, sensations, thinking, perception, feelings, will.
- 4) the substructure of the personality, called “biopsychic properties,” combines the properties of temperament, age-related properties of the personality and its pathological ones.
The personality traits included in this substructure are incomparably more dependent.
From the physiological characteristics of the brain, and social influences only subordinate and compensate for them. The activity of this substructure is determined by the basic properties of the nervous system.
A.V. Petrovsky and V.A. Petrovsky understood the structure of personality when it is considered as a “supersensible” systemic quality of an individual. Considering personality in the system of subjective relations, they identify three types of attribution (attribution, endowment) of the individual’s personal existence (or three aspects of the interpretation of personality). The first aspect of consideration is intra-individual personal attribution: personality is interpreted as a property inherent in the subject himself: personal is immersed in the internal space of the individual’s existence.
The second aspect is interindividual personal attribution as a way of understanding personality, when the sphere of its definition and existence becomes the “space of interindividual connections.”
The third aspect of consideration is meta-individual personal attribution. Here attention is drawn to the impact that, voluntarily or unwittingly, an individual has with his activities (individual and joint) on other people. Personality is perceived from a new angle: its most important characteristics, which were tried to be seen as an individual, are proposed to be looked for not only in himself, but also in other people. In this case, personality acts as the ideal representation of the individual in other people, his otherness in them, his personalization. The essence of this ideal representation is in those real effective changes in the intellectual and affective-need sphere of another person that are produced by the activity of the subject or his participation in joint activities. The “otherness” of an individual in other people is not a static imprint. We are talking about an active process, a kind of continuation of oneself in another, as a result of which the personality finds a second life in other people. Continuing in other people, with the death of the individual the personality does not completely die. The individual, as the bearer of personality, passes away, but personalized in other people continues to live. There is no mysticism or metaphor in the words “he lives in us even after death”; it is a statement of the fact of the ideal representation of the individual after his material disappearance. Thus, a person can be characterized only in the unity of all three proposed aspects of consideration.
Personality orientation.
Despite the differences in interpretations of personality that exist in Russian psychology, in all approaches its orientation is highlighted as its leading characteristic. In different concepts, this characteristic is revealed in different ways: as a “dynamic tendency” (S.L. Rubinshtein), “meaning-forming motive” (A.N. Leontiev), “dominant attitude” (V.N. Myasishchev), “main life direction" (B.G. Ananyev), dynamic organization of the essential forces of man" (A.S. Prangishvili). It is one way or another revealed in the study of the entire system of mental properties and states of the individual: needs, interests, inclinations, motivational sphere, ideals, value orientations, beliefs.
Thus, orientation acts as a system-forming property of a personality, determining its psychological make-up.
The set of stable motives that orient the activity of an individual and are relatively independent of existing situations is called the orientation of a person’s personality.
The orientation of the individual is always socially conditioned and formed through upbringing. Orientation is attitudes that have become personality traits.
Direction includes several hierarchically related forms: attraction, desire, aspiration, interest, inclination, ideal, worldview, belief. All forms of personality orientation are at the same time the motives of its activity.
Let us briefly characterize each of the identified forms of orientation:
drive is a poorly differentiated, vague desire aimed at some object or action as a result of one or another unexpressed need. Attraction is characterized by the absence of a clearly understood, conscious goal;
desire is a higher form of orientation in which a person realizes what he is striving for, that is, the goal of his striving;
desire - arises when a volitional component is included in the structure of desire;
interest is an even higher and more conscious form of focus on an object, but is only a desire for its knowledge;
inclination is a desire for a certain activity. Ideals are formed on the basis of interests and inclinations;
ideal - a form of orientation, embodied in a certain, specific image, which a person who has this ideal wants to resemble;
worldview is a system of views, ideas and concepts about the world, its laws, the phenomena surrounding a person, nature and society;
8) conviction - the highest form of personality orientation - is a system of personal motives that encourages it to act in accordance with its views, principles, and worldview.
Motives may be more or less conscious or not conscious at all. The main role of personality orientation belongs to conscious motives.
The need-motivational sphere characterizes the orientation of the individual only partially; it is, as it were, its initial link, its foundation. On this foundation, the life goals of the individual are formed. It is necessary to distinguish between the purpose of activity and life purpose. A person has to perform many different activities throughout his life, each of which realizes a specific goal. But the goal of any individual activity reveals only one side of the personality’s orientation, manifested in this activity. The life goal acts as a general integrator of all private goals associated with individual activities. The realization of each of them is at the same time a partial realization of the general life goal of the individual. The level of achievement of an individual is associated with life goals. In the life goals of the individual, the “concept of one’s own future”, which he recognizes, finds expression. A person’s awareness of not only the goal, but also the reality of its implementation is considered as a personal perspective. A state of frustration, depression, opposite to the experiences characteristic of a person aware of the prospect, is called frustration. It occurs in cases where a person, on the way to achieving a goal, encounters really insurmountable obstacles, barriers, or when they are perceived as such. Necessary signs of a frustrating situation are a pronounced motivation to achieve a goal (satisfying a need) and the emergence of an obstacle preventing this achievement. In such a situation, a person can overcome significant difficulties without falling into a state of frustration. But at critical moments, when difficulties are insurmountable, a state of frustration arises, which to a certain extent deforms a person’s goal-setting behavior. F.E. Vasilyuk identifies the following types of frustration behavior:
motor agitation - aimless and disordered reactions;
aggression and destruction;
stereotypy - the tendency to blindly repeat fixed behavior;
regression, which is understood either “as a return to behavioral models that were dominant in earlier periods of an individual’s life,” or as a “primitiviation” of behavior, manifested in a decline in the “constructiveness” of behavior.
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In psychological science, there are several concepts to designate a person: subject, individual, personality.
Firstly, psychology always considers a person as subject(participant, performer) of the historical and social process as a whole, subject specific activity, serving as a source of knowledge and transformation of objective reality. The activity itself in this case acts as a form of human activity, allowing him to improve the world around him and himself.
Secondly, psychology views a person as individual usually meaning that he:
- is a unique representative of other living beings, differing from animals in the specific phylo- and ontogenetic development of a special species;
- is a separate representative of the human community, having characteristics of the psyche and behavior inherent only to him.
Both meanings of the concept are interrelated and describe a person as a unique being. The most general characteristics of an individual are: the integrity and originality of his psychophysiological organization; sustainability of all his efforts in the process of interaction with the environment.
In everyday life, when they talk about a person’s individuality, they mean his originality. Usually in a word
“Individuality” defines any dominant feature of a particular person that makes him different from those around him. Each person is individual, but the individuality of some manifests itself very clearly, while of others it is barely noticeable.
Thirdly, psychological science considers man as a person. What stands out in a person is, first of all, his social essence. Outside of society, outside of a social and professional group, a person cannot become an individual, he will not develop a human appearance: i.e. Nature creates man, but society shapes him.
The personality of a person as a member of society is in the sphere of influence of various relationships that develop primarily in the process of production and consumption of material goods.
Personality is also in the sphere of political relations. The psychology of the individual depends on whether she is free or oppressed, has political rights or not, can actually vote or be elected, discuss issues of public life or be the executor of the will of the ruling class.
The personality is in the sphere of action of ideological relations. Ideology as a system of ideas about society has a huge impact on a person, largely shaping the content of his psychology, worldview, individual and social attitudes.
At the same time, the psychology of an individual is also influenced by the relationships of people in the group to which she belongs. In the process of interaction and communication, people mutually influence each other, as a result of which a commonality in views, social attitudes and other types of attitudes towards society, work, people, and their own qualities is formed. At the same time, in a group a person gains a certain authority, occupies a certain position, and plays certain roles.
The personality is not only an object of social relations, but also their subject, i.e. active link. By entering into relationships with people, individuals create history, but they create it not arbitrarily, but out of necessity, under the influence of objective social laws. However, historical necessity does not exclude either the originality of the individual or his responsibility for his behavior to society.
Thus, personality- this is a specific person who is a representative of a certain state, society
and groups (social, ethnic, religious, political, gender, age, etc.), aware of his relationship to the people around him and social reality, included in all relations of the latter and engaged in a unique type of activity and endowed with specific individual and socio-psychological characteristics.
Personal development is determined by various factors. These usually include: the unique physiology of higher nervous activity, anatomical and physiological characteristics, the environment and society, socially useful activities. The effectiveness of a correct understanding of all individual and social actions and behavior of a person depends on how much we know them and take into account the specifics of their manifestation.
Peculiarities of the physiology of higher nervous activity personality is the specificity of the functioning of its nervous system, expressed in a wide variety of characteristics: the originality of the work of the entire nervous system, the relationship between the processes of excitation and inhibition in the cerebral cortex, the manifestation of temperament, emotions and feelings, behavior and actions, etc.
Anatomical and physiological features personality - these are its characteristics that depend on the anatomical and physiological structure of the human body, which has a serious impact on both his psyche and behavior, and on the latter’s susceptibility to the influences of circumstances and other people. For example, a person’s poor vision and hearing naturally affect his actions and actions and must be taken into account in the process of communication and interaction.
The anatomical and physiological characteristics are based on makings, representing the innate anatomical and physiological characteristics of the body that facilitate the development of abilities. Such, for example, is the inclination as a mobile nervous system, which leads to the development of many abilities in any type of activity associated with the need to adequately respond to changing situations, quickly adapt to new actions, change the pace and rhythm of work, and establish relationships with other people. Consequently, this can specifically manifest itself in the course of joint activities with them and, of course, should be taken into account.
The most important factors in the formation of personality are the environment and society. Outside of society, outside of a social and professional group, a person cannot become an individual, he will not develop a human appearance: i.e. Nature creates man, but society shapes him.
Usually isolated natural-geographical environment, which has a great influence on personal development. It is known, for example, that people who grew up in the Far North are more self-controlled, more organized, know how to value time and have a correct attitude towards what they are taught.
The natural characteristics of an individual are inherent in him from birth, including activity and emotionality. The activity of the individual is expressed in the desire for various types of activities, manifestation of oneself, the strength and speed of mental processes, motor reactions, i.e. acts as a social characteristic of human activity and can vary from high energy, swiftness in movements, work and speech to lethargy of behavior, passivity of mental activity, speech and gestures. Emotionality manifests itself in varying degrees of nervous excitability of an individual, the dynamics of his emotions and feelings that characterize his attitude to the world around him.
Macro environment, those. society, in the totality of all its manifestations, also has a great influence on the formation of personality. For example, a person who grew up in a totalitarian society is, as a rule, developed and raised differently than a representative of a democratic state.
Microenvironment, those. group, microgroup, family, etc., is also an important determinant of personality formation. It is in the microenvironment that the most important moral and moral-psychological characteristics of a person are laid down, which, on the one hand, must be taken into account, and on the other, improved or transformed in the process of training and education.
Socially useful activities, those. work, communication with other people, in the conditions in which a person develops, upbringing And self-education also form his most important personal qualities.
Factors in the formation of personality and the characteristics of an individual’s actions and deeds in society make it possible to compose it
psychological characteristics, those. describe the completeness of its content and show the specifics of the mutual influence of its individual and social qualities, which manifests itself in the process of communication, interaction and relationships with other people.
At the same time, one should keep in mind the uniqueness of the origin and development of psychological characteristics of the individual, formed in the process of socialization. This is necessary because, on the one hand, there is a direct connection between the specifics of the formation of certain human qualities and their functioning in the social environment *, on the other hand, there is also a certain correlation between the actual socio-psychological qualities of a person and the specific functioning of his individual psychological characteristics **.
The psychological characteristics of a personality as a description of the entire complex of characteristic features inherent in it has its own hierarchized internal structure, the main focus of which is focused on highlighting its mental properties and aspects and, on this basis, understanding all its features that have both individual and social origin.
Man is a very complex creature. We act this way and not otherwise, not at all because of instincts. Our motives are not always clear. To predict a person’s behavior, it is necessary to know his character, temperament and, of course, his personality traits. What is it? There is more than one definition of personality in psychology. This question is complex, which means there are enough opinions. in social psychology - this is what many outstanding psychologists have worked and are working with. This is the social side of a person, it is precisely what makes him a part of society.
The concept of personality in psychology
As already mentioned, scientists give very different answers to questions related to personality. It is not uncommon to observe strong differences of opinion. However, we note that all theories used today are scientifically based.
The concept of personality in psychology is largely based on the fact that a person is nothing more than a combination of various types of acquired, as well as purely social qualities. At the same time, great emphasis is placed on the fact that personal qualities do not include those that have a direct connection with physiology and are not associated with living in society.
Sometimes the concept of personality in psychology contains an indication that psychological ones also do not refer to personal qualities. We are talking about mental processes associated with cognitive processes,
The concept of personality in psychology is based on stable qualities that are formed only in society. That is, in the process of interaction and communication with other people. make it individual, unique, original.
Based on the foregoing, we can conclude that personality is a person considered in a system of mental characteristics that are socially conditioned and can only manifest themselves in social relations and connections. Such characteristics must be stable.
The concept of personality in psychology has a close connection with such concepts as “individuality”, “individual”, however, let us say right away that in no case can they be identified - there are enough differences.
If we consider a person as the totality of absolutely all available qualities (both social and natural), then this will be an individual. We can say that an individual is a single human being.
Individuality is a rather narrow concept. It refers to that combination of unique characteristics of a person that make him different from other people.
What does a person’s personality consist of? Of course, it has its own structure. Most often, psychologists include character, emotions, volitional qualities, temperament, motivation, and abilities. The latter are nothing more than stable individual human beings. Often they are the ones who determine our success when trying to realize ourselves in certain types of activities.
Temperament (mainly) determines the speed of our reaction to certain phenomena of the surrounding world. How we act in certain situations largely depends on character. It often underlies choice, decision-making, and so on. Volitional qualities determine how a person moves towards his goals, how he is determined to achieve certain achievements. Motivation and emotions are associated with the urge to activity, and social attitudes are how a person perceives life itself and other people.
Finally, we note that only people have personality. No other living organisms possess it. We also note that a child who grew up outside of society (Mowgli children) is not a person.
PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSONALITY
1. Definition of the concept of “personality”. Correlation of the concepts “person”, “individual”, “individuality” with the concept “personality”
The reality that is described by the concept of “personality” is already manifested in the etymology of this term. The word “personality” (persona) originally referred to acting masks (in the Roman theater, an actor’s mask was called a “guise” - a face facing the audience), which were assigned to certain types of actors. Then this word came to mean the actor himself and his role. Among the Romans, the word “persona” was always used to indicate a certain social function of the role (the personality of the father, the personality of the king, the personality of the judge). Thus, personality, by its original meaning, is a certain social role or function of a person.
Today, psychology interprets personality as a socio-psychological formation that is formed through a person’s life in society. A person as a social being acquires new (personal) qualities when he enters into relationships with other people and these relationships become “constitutive” of his personality. At the time of birth, the individual does not yet have these acquired (personal) qualities.
Because the personality is most often defined as a person in the totality of his social, acquired qualities, this means that personal characteristics do not include those characteristics of a person that are naturally conditioned and do not depend on his life in society. Personal qualities do not include the psychological qualities of a person that characterize his cognitive processes or individual style of activity, with the exception of those that manifest themselves in relationships with people in society. The concept of “personality” usually includes such properties that are more or less stable and indicate a person’s individuality, defining his traits and actions that are significant for people.
According to R.S. Nemov’s definition, personality - this is a person taken in the system of his psychological characteristics that are socially conditioned, manifest themselves in social connections and relationships by nature, are stable and determine the moral actions of a person that are of significant importance for himself and those around him.
Along with the concept of “personality,” the terms “person,” “individual,” and “individuality” are used. These concepts are substantively intertwined. That is why the analysis of each of these concepts, their relationship with the concept of “personality” will make it possible to more fully reveal the latter.
Human - this is a generic concept, indicating that a creature belongs to the highest stage of development of living nature - to the human race. The concept of “man” affirms the genetic predetermination of the development of actually human characteristics and qualities.
Specific human abilities and properties (speech, consciousness, work activity, etc.) are not transmitted to people in the order of biological heredity, but are formed during their lifetime, in the process of assimilating the culture created by previous generations. No personal experience of a person can lead him to independently form logical thinking and systems of concepts. By participating in work and various forms of social activity, people develop in themselves those specific human abilities that have already been formed in humanity. As a living being, man is subject to basic biological and physiological laws, and as a social being - to the laws of social development.
Individual - This is a single representative of the species "homo sapiens". As individuals, people differ from each other not only in morphological characteristics (such as height, bodily constitution and eye color), but also in psychological properties (abilities, temperament, emotionality).
Individuality - This is the unity of the unique personal properties of a particular person. This is the uniqueness of his psychophysiological structure (type of temperament, physical and mental characteristics, intelligence, worldview, life experience).
With all the versatility of the concept of “individuality,” it primarily denotes the spiritual qualities of a person. The essential definition of individuality is associated not so much with the concepts of “specialness”, “uniqueness”, but with the concepts of “integrity”, “unity”, “originality”, “authorship”, “own way of life”. The essence of individuality is associated with the originality of the individual, his ability to be himself, to be independent and self-reliant.
The relationship between individuality and personality is determined by the fact that these are two ways of being a person, two different definitions of him. The discrepancy between these concepts is manifested, in particular, in the fact that there are two different processes of formation of personality and individuality.
The formation of personality is the process of socialization of a person, which consists in his mastering his generic, social essence. This development is always carried out in the specific historical circumstances of a person’s life. The formation of personality is associated with the individual’s acceptance of social functions and roles developed in society, social norms and rules of behavior, and with the formation of skills to build relationships with other people. A formed personality is a subject of free, independent and responsible behavior in society.
The formation of individuality is the process of individualization of an object. Individualization is the process of self-determination and isolation of the individual, his separation from the community, the design of his individuality, uniqueness and originality. A person who has become an individual is an original person who actively and creatively manifests himself in life.
The concepts of “personality” and “individuality” capture different aspects, different dimensions of a person’s spiritual essence. The essence of this difference is well expressed in the language. With the word “personality” such epithets as “strong”, “energetic”, “independent” are usually used, thereby emphasizing its active representation in the eyes of others. About individuality, we more often say: “bright”, “unique”, “creative”, meaning the qualities of an independent essence.
2. Personality research: stages, scientific approaches
The study of personality has always been and continues to be one of the most intriguing mysteries and most difficult problems. In essence, all social psychological theories contribute to the understanding of personality: what shapes it, why individual differences exist, how it develops and changes throughout a person’s life. Since most areas of psychology are only minimally represented in modern theories of personality, this is proof that an adequate theory of personality has not yet been created.
The main problems of personality psychology in philosophical and literary period Its study included questions about the moral and social nature of man, about his actions and behavior. The first definitions of personality were quite broad and included everything that is in a person and that he can call his own.
IN clinical period the idea of personality as a special phenomenon was narrowed. Psychiatrists have focused on personality traits that can usually be found in a sick person. It was later found that these features are moderately expressed in almost all healthy people. Definitions of personality by psychiatrists were given in terms that can be used to describe a completely normal, pathological, or accentuated personality.
Experimental period characterized by the active introduction into psychology of experimental methods for studying mental phenomena. This was dictated by the need to get rid of speculativeness and subjectivism in the interpretation of mental phenomena and to make psychology a more accurate science (not only describing, but also explaining its findings).
Since the late 30s. In our century, active differentiation of research areas has begun in personality psychology. As a result, by the second half of our century, many different theories of personality had developed: behaviorist, Gestalt psychological, psychoanalytic, cognitive and humanistic.
In accordance with behaviorist theory of personality (the founder of which is the American scientist D. Watson) 1878-1958) psychology should deal not with mental phenomena that are inaccessible to scientific observation, but with behavior. D. Watson saw the task of psychology as learning to “calculate” and program the behavior of an individual.
Founders Gestalt psychological theory of personality T. Wertheimer, W. Köhler and K. Lewin put forward the idea of studying the psyche from the point of view of integral structures - gestalts (German gestalt - image). The construction of a mental image occurs as an instantaneous “grasping” of its structure.
Psychoanalytic theory of personality (S. Freud) analyzes the actions of an individual based not only on the sphere of consciousness, but also on the deep structure of the subconscious, highlighting needs as the factor driving his actions.
Cognitive theory of personality (U. Neisser, A. Paivio) assigns the main role in explaining individual behavior to knowledge (Latin cognito - knowledge).
Humanistic personality theory (G. Allport, K. Rogers, A. Maslow) explains the behavior of an individual based on a person’s desire for self-actualization, the realization of all his capabilities.
Among the theories considered, three practically non-overlapping orientations can be distinguished: biogenetic, sociogenetic and personological.
1. Biogenetic orientation proceeds from the fact that the development of a person, like any other organism, is ontogenesis (the process of individual development of an organism) with a phylogenetic (historically determined) program embedded in it, and therefore its basic patterns, stages and properties are the same. Sociocultural and situational factors only leave their mark on the form of their occurrence.
The most famous among the concepts of this orientation (and not only in psychology) was the theory developed by Z. Freud. S. Freud compared human self-awareness to the tip of the iceberg. He believed that only a small part of what actually happens in a person’s soul and characterizes him as a person is actually recognized by him. A person is able to correctly understand and explain only a small part of his actions. The main part of his experience and personality is outside the sphere of consciousness, and only special procedures developed in psychoanalysis allow one to penetrate into it.
The personality structure, according to S. Freud, consists of three components, or levels: “It”, “I”, “Super-ego”. “It” is the unconscious part of the psyche, a seething cauldron of biological innate instinctual drives. “It” is saturated with sexual energy - libido. A person is a closed energy system, and the amount of energy in each person is a constant value. Being unconscious and irrational, “It” obeys the pleasure principle, i.e. pleasure and happiness are the main goals in human life (the first principle of behavior). The second principle of behavior is homeostasis - the tendency to maintain internal balance.
"I" is represented by consciousness. This is, as a rule, a person’s self-awareness, his perception and assessment of his own personality and behavior. "I" is oriented towards reality.
The "super-ego" is represented at both the conscious and subconscious levels. The “super-ego” is guided by ideal ideas - moral norms and values accepted in society.
Unconscious drives coming from the “It” are most often in a state of conflict with what is contained in the “Super-I”, i.e. with social and moral standards of behavior. The conflict is resolved with the help of "I", i.e. consciousness, which, acting in accordance with the principles of reality and rationality, seeks to intelligently reconcile both sides in such a way that the drives of the “It” are satisfied to the maximum extent without violating moral norms.
2. Sociogenetic orientation puts the processes of socialization and learning in the broad sense of the word at the forefront, arguing that psychological age-related changes depend primarily on shifts in social status, the system of social roles, rights and responsibilities, in short, on the structure of the individual’s social activity.
According to behavioral theorists, the social roles of people and most forms of social behavior of an individual are formed as a result of observations of such social models that are set by parents, teachers, comrades and other members of society. Individual differences in human behavior are, according to social learning theory, the result of interactions and relationships with different people. Personality in this approach is the result of the interaction between an individual with his abilities, past experiences, expectations, etc. and its surrounding environment.
3. Personological (person-centered) orientation brings to the fore the consciousness and self-awareness of the subject, based on the fact that the basis for the development of personality is the creative process of formation and implementation of its own life goals and values. This direction is defined as humanistic and is associated with such names as K. Rogers, A. Maslow and others. The essence of the humanistic orientation in the study of personality is the rejection of the manipulative approach and the identification of personality as the highest social value. The humanistic approach helps to reveal the capabilities of the individual through the appropriate organization of interpersonal relationships. According to this approach, a person can show the originality and uniqueness of his own “I” only with complete openness in expressing his feelings and abandoning psychological defenses.
Since each of these models reflects real aspects of personality development, an “either-or” debate makes no sense. As a basis for integrating the previously mentioned approaches to understanding personality in domestic psychology, a historical-evolutionary approach is proposed, in which the anthropological properties of a person and the socio-historical way of life act as prerequisites and a result of personality development. In the context of this approach, the true basis and driving force for personal development is joint activity, thanks to which individualization occurs. The formation and development of this direction is the merit of L.S. Vygotsky (1836-1904) and A.N. Leontiev (1903-1979). This theory in Russian psychology is called activity theories .
In Russian psychology, a number of other theories can be identified.
Founders relationship theories - A.F. Lazursky (1874-1917), V.N. Myasishchev (1892-1973) - believed that the “core” of personality is the system of its relations to the outside world and to itself, which is formed under the influence of the person’s consciousness reflecting the surrounding reality .
According to communication theories - B.F. Lomov (1927-1989), A.A. Bodalev, K. Abulkhanova-Slavskaya - personality is formed and developed in the process of communication in the system of existing social connections and relationships.
Attitude theory - D.N. Uznadze (1886-1950), A.S. Prangishvili - develops the idea of an attitude as a person’s readiness to perceive future events in a certain direction of action, which is the basis of its expedient selective activity.