Topic: basic theories of mental development. Concepts of child mental development

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………1

1. Cultural-historical concept of L. S. Vygotsky………………….2

2. Laws of mental development of a child according to L.S. Vygotsky………………4

3.Theoretical and practical significance of the phenomenon “Zone of closest

development" .................................................... ........................................................ .....5

4. Further steps along the path opened by L.S. Vygotsky……………….....8

5. The concept of periodization of mental development by D. B. Elkonin...10

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………13

List of references………………………………………………………14

Introduction

The science of mental development originated as a branch of comparative psychology at the end of the 19th century. The starting point for systematic research into child psychology is the book of the German Darwinist scientist W. Preyer, “The Soul of a Child.” According to the unanimous recognition of psychologists, he is considered the founder of child psychology.

There is practically not a single outstanding psychologist who has dealt with problems of general psychology who would not at the same time, in one way or another, deal with problems of mental development.

Such world-famous scientists as V. Stern, K. Levin, Z. Freud, E. Spranger, J. Piaget, S. L. Rubinstein, L. S. Vygotsky, A. R. Luria, A. worked in this area. N. Leontyev, P. Ya. Galperin, D. B. Elkonin and others.

Development, first of all, is characterized by qualitative changes, the emergence of new formations, new mechanisms, new processes, new structures. L. S. Vygotsky and other psychologists described the main signs of development. The most important among them are: differentiation, the dismemberment of a previously unified element; the emergence of new sides, new elements in development itself; restructuring of connections between the sides of an object. Each of these processes meets the listed development criteria.

At first, the task of developmental psychology was to accumulate facts and arrange them in time sequence. This task corresponded to an observation strategy, which led to the accumulation of various facts that needed to be brought into the system, to highlight stages and stages of development, in order to then identify the main trends and general patterns of the development process itself and, ultimately, understand its cause. To solve these problems, psychologists used the strategy of a natural science ascertaining experiment, which makes it possible to establish the presence or absence of the phenomenon under study under certain controlled conditions, measure its quantitative characteristics and give a qualitative description.

Currently, a new research strategy is being intensively developed - the strategy of forming mental processes, active intervention, constructing a process with given properties, which we owe to L. S. Vygotsky. Today there are several ideas for implementing this strategy, which can be summarized as follows:

The cultural-historical concept of L. S. Vygotsky, according to which the interpsychic becomes intrapsychic. The genesis of higher mental functions is associated with the use of a sign by two people in the process of their communication; without fulfilling this role, a sign cannot become a means of individual mental activity.

The concept of educational activity is the research of D. B. Elkonin, in which a strategy for personality formation was developed not in laboratory conditions, but in real life - through the creation of experimental schools.

1. The cultural and historical concept of L. S. Vygotsky.

All of L.S. Vygotsky’s scientific activities were aimed at ensuring that psychology could move “from a purely descriptive, empirical and phenomenological study of phenomena to the revelation of their essence.” He introduced a new experimental-genetic method for studying mental phenomena, since he believed that “the problem of the method is the beginning and basis, the alpha and omega of the entire history of the cultural development of the child.” L.S. Vygotsky developed the doctrine of age as a unit of analysis of child development. He proposed a different understanding of the course, conditions, source, form, specificity and driving forces of the child’s mental development; described the eras, stages and phases of child development, as well as transitions between them during ontogenesis; he identified and formulated the basic laws of the child’s mental development.

L.S. Vygotsky defined the area of ​​his research as “apex psychology” (psychology of consciousness), which opposes the other two – “superficial” (theory of behavior) and “deep” (psychoanalysis). He viewed consciousness as a "problem of the structure of behavior."

Today we can say that three spheres of human existence: feelings, intelligence and behavior are studied in the largest psychological concepts - psychoanalysis, theory of intelligence and behaviorism. The priority in the development of “apex psychology,” or the psychology of the development of consciousness, belongs to Soviet science.

It can rightfully be said that L.S. Vygotsky accomplished the task of restructuring psychology on the basis of deep philosophical analysis. For L.S. Vygotsky, the following questions were important: How does a person in his development go beyond the limits of his “animal” nature? How does he develop as a cultural and working being in the course of his social life? According to L.S. Vygotsky, man, in the process of his historical development, rose to the point of creating new driving forces of his behavior; Only in the process of man’s social life did his new needs arise, take shape and develop, and man’s natural needs themselves underwent profound changes in the process of his historical development.

According to L.S. Vygotsky, higher mental functions arise initially as a form of collective behavior of the child, as a form of cooperation with other people, and only subsequently do they become individual functions of the child himself. So, for example, at first speech is a means of communication between people, but in the course of development it becomes internal and begins to perform an intellectual function.

L.S. Vygotsky emphasized that the attitude towards the environment changes with age, and, consequently, the role of the environment in development also changes. He emphasized that the environment should be considered not absolutely, but relatively, since the influence of the environment is determined by the child’s experiences. L.S. Vygotsky introduced the concept of key experience. As L.I. Bozhovich rightly pointed out later, “the concept of experience, introduced by L.S. Vygotsky, singled out and designated that most important psychological reality, with the study of which it is necessary to begin the analysis of the role of the environment in the development of the child; experience is, as it were, a node in which are tied to the diverse influences of various external and internal circumstances."

2. Laws of mental development of a child according to L.S. Vygotsky.

Modern ideas about the relationship between the biological and the social, accepted in Russian psychology, are mainly based on the provisions of L.S. Vygotsky.

L.S. Vygotsky emphasized the unity of hereditary and social aspects in the development process. Heredity is present in the development of all mental functions of a child, but has a different specific weight. Elementary functions (starting with sensations and perception) are more determined by heredity than higher ones (voluntary memory, logical thinking, speech).

Vygotsky formulated the LAWS OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT:

1) child development has a complex organization in time: the rhythm of development does not coincide with the rhythm of time. The rhythm of development changes at different age periods;

2) unevenness (in the development of a child, stable periods are replaced by critical periods);

3) sensitivity (in the development of a child there are the most sensitive periods when the psyche is able to perceive external influences; 1-3 years - speech, preschooler - memory, 3-4 years - correction of speech defects);

4) compensation (manifests itself in the ability of the psyche to compensate for the lack of some functions at the expense of the development of others; for example, in blind people other qualities become more acute - hearing, tactile sensations, smell)

Vygotsky identified 2 levels (zones) of mental development:

1) Zone of actual development (ZAR) - those ZUN, actions that exist in the child’s psyche today; something that a child can do independently.

2) Zone of proximal development (ZPD) - tasks that today a child can perform with the help of an adult, and tomorrow - independently. Markova identified the third level of development - the level of self-development (self-learning)

TRAINING should be based on the ZPD. Training, according to L.S. Vygotsky, leads development and “pulls” him along. But it should not, at the same time, be divorced from the child’s development. A significant gap, artificially running ahead without taking into account the child’s capabilities will, at best, lead to coaching, but will not have a developmental effect.

Child development has a complex organization in time: its own rhythm, which does not coincide with the rhythm of time, and its own rhythm, which changes in different years of life. Thus, a year of life in infancy is not equal to a year of life in adolescence.

The law of metamorphosis in child development: development is a chain of qualitative changes. A child is not just a small adult who knows less or can do less, but a being with a qualitatively different psyche.

The law of uneven child development: each side in the child’s psyche has its own optimal period of development. L.S. Vygotsky’s hypothesis about the systemic and semantic structure of consciousness is connected with this law.

The law of development of higher mental functions. Higher mental functions arise initially as a form of collective behavior, as a form of cooperation with other people, and only subsequently do they become internal individual (forms) of functions of the child himself. Distinctive features of higher mental functions: indirectness, awareness, arbitrariness, systematicity; they are formed intravitally; they are formed as a result of mastering special tools, means developed during the historical development of society; the development of external mental functions is associated with learning in the broad sense of the word; it cannot occur otherwise than in the form of assimilation of given patterns, therefore this development goes through a number of stages.

Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

Federal Agency for Education

State Educational Institution of Higher Professional Education "Tobolsk State Social and Pedagogical Academy"

named after D.I. Mendeleev".

Department of Psychology

Theories of mental development

The abstract was completed by:

Student of group 21

Faculty of Foreign Languages

Krasnova Yu.Yu.

Checked by: Ph.D.

Bostandzhieva T.M.

Tobolsk 2010

Introduction

The main theories of mental development received their form in the psychology of the twentieth century, which is directly related to the methodological crisis of psychology at the beginning of that century. The search for objective research methods has exposed the problem of the ultimate goal of psychological research. Scientific discussions have revealed differences in the understanding of mental development, as well as the patterns and conditions of its occurrence. The difference in approaches gave rise to the construction of different concepts about the role of biological and social factors, about the importance of heredity and environment in the development of personality. At the same time, the emergence of various scientific schools in developmental psychology contributed to the further accumulation and systematization of empirical data on human development in different periods of life. The construction of theories of mental development made it possible to explain the characteristics of behavior and identify the mechanisms of formation of certain mental qualities of the individual.

In Western psychology, human mental development is traditionally considered in line with the established schools of psychoanalysis, behaviorism, Gestalt psychology, genetic and humanistic psychology.

Psychoanalytic theory

Already at the beginning of the century, the Viennese psychiatrist and psychologist S. Freud proposed his interpretation of human personality, which had a huge impact not only on psychological science and psychotherapeutic practice, but also on culture in general throughout the world.

Discussions related to the analysis and assessment of Freud's ideas lasted for decades. According to Freud's views, shared by a significant number of his followers, human activity depends on instinctive impulses, primarily the sexual instinct and the instinct of self-preservation. However, in society, instincts cannot reveal themselves as freely as in the animal world; society imposes many restrictions on a person, subjects his instincts, or drives, to “censorship,” which forces a person to suppress and inhibit them.

Instinctive drives thus turn out to be repressed from the conscious life of the individual as shameful, unacceptable, compromising and pass into the sphere of the unconscious, “go underground”, but do not disappear. While maintaining their energy charge, their activity, they gradually, from the sphere of the unconscious, continue to control the behavior of the individual, reincarnating (sublimating) into various forms of human culture and products of human activity.

In the sphere of the unconscious, instinctual drives are combined, depending on their origin, into various complexes, which, according to Freud, are the true cause of personality activity. Accordingly, one of the tasks of psychology is to identify unconscious complexes and promote awareness of them, which leads to overcoming internal conflicts of the individual (method of psychoanalysis). Among such motivating reasons, for example, was the Oedipus complex.

Its essence is that in early childhood, every child is expected to experience a dramatic situation that resembles the conflict that forms the main content of the tragedy of the ancient Greek playwright “Oedipus Rex” by the ancient Greek playwright: out of ignorance, the incestuous love of a son for his mother and the murder of his father.

According to Freud, the erotic attraction of a boy at the age of four to his mother and the desire for the death of his father (Oedipus complex) collides with another force - the fear of terrible punishment for incestuous sexual impulses (catastrophe complex). Freud's desire to derive all personality activity from sexual impulses alone (then the “death instinct” was added to them) met with objections from many psychologists, which became one of the reasons for the emergence of neo-Freudianism (K. Horney and others), which is characterized by a combination of classical Freudianism with certain deviations from it. In understanding personality, neo-Freudians abandon the priority of sexual drives and move away from the biologization of man.

The dependence of the individual on the environment comes to the fore. In this case, the personality acts as a projection of the social environment, by which the personality is supposedly automatically determined.

The environment projects its most important qualities onto the individual, they become forms of activity of this individual (for example, the search for love and approval, the pursuit of power, prestige and possession, the desire to submit and accept the opinion of a group of authority figures, flight from society).

K. Horney connects the main motivation of human behavior with a “feeling of fundamental anxiety” - anxiety, explaining it with the impressions of early childhood, the helplessness and defenselessness that a child experiences when faced with the outside world. "Root anxiety" stimulates actions that can ensure safety. Thus, the leading motivation of the individual is formed, on which his behavior is based.

Psychoanalysis is characterized by the idea of ​​recognizing the unconscious as a factor determining behavior, often the opposite of conscious goals. Recognizing that "things are not what they seem" and that human behavior and consciousness are highly determined by unconscious motives that can arouse seemingly irrational feelings and behavior.

Explanation by the continuing influence of the specific treatment of significant others in very early childhood on the nature of the adult's experiences. In this view, early life experiences lead to the formation of stable internal worlds that emotionally charge the construction of external worlds and their emotional experience. Inner worlds are created in very early childhood and represent the constructed foundations of the passage of life - mental reality.

Statement of psychological defense aimed at overcoming internal anxiety as the main regulator of an individual’s mental life. Almost all schools of psychoanalysis recognize that consciousness and our internal versions of the world - established in childhood - are systematically changed in order to avoid anxiety. Psychological defense aims to create internal versions of the world that reduce anxiety and make life more bearable. Since psychological defense often manifests itself unconsciously, it is with the action of its mechanisms that many of our irrational actions and ideas are associated.

The nature of human difficulties is associated with the resolution of the basic conflict between the Self and the Super-Ego, that is, the demands of the individual and the demands of society, which gives rise to anxiety. To cope with anxiety, a person turns on psychological defenses. However, such inclusion sometimes leads to incomplete personality development. A person is not what he really is. And what he should be like for those around him (usually those rigid patterns of behavior that were laid down in early childhood).

Main method: analysis of free associations, which is used in the analysis of errors, misreadings, slips of the tongue, slips of the tongue, random or symptomatic actions, analysis of the client's dreams, self-analysis, transference analysis, interpretation of resistance, emotional retraining.

The goal is to bring repressed, affectively charged material of the unconscious into the light of consciousness, with the aim of including its energy in vital activities. What is possible, according to S. Freud, with emotional response (catharsis).

Advantages of psychoanalytic personality theory:

Research into the sphere of the unconscious, the use of clinical methods, non-traditional insights, methods of therapeutic practice, the study of the client’s real experiences and problems.

Flaws:

Social learning theory

Personality theories from a social learning perspective are primarily learning theories. At the beginning of its development, the theory of social learning attached extreme importance to the ideas of reinforcement, but the modern theory has acquired a clearly expressed cognitive character. The importance of reinforcement was taken into account in concepts describing a thinking and cognitive person who has expectations and ideas.

Socialization is a process that allows a child to take his place in society; it is the advancement of a newborn from an asocial humanoid state to life as a full-fledged member of society. How does socialization happen? All newborns are similar to each other, but after two or three years they are different children. This means, say proponents of social learning theory, that these differences are the result of learning, they are not innate. There are different concepts of learning. In classical conditioning of the Pavlovian type, subjects begin to give the same response to different stimuli. In Skinner's operant conditioning, a behavioral act is formed due to the presence or absence of reinforcement for one of many possible responses. Both of these concepts do not explain how new behavior arises.

A departure from classical behaviorism. In the late 30s, N. Miller, J. Dollard, R. Sears, J. Whiting and other young scientists at Yale University made an attempt to translate the most important concepts of psychoanalytic personality theory into the language of K. Hull's learning theory. They outlined the main lines of research: social learning in the process of raising a child, cross-cultural analysis - the study of the upbringing and development of a child in different cultures, personality development. In 1941 N. Miller and J. Dollard introduced the term “social learning” into scientific use.

The roots of modern social learning theory can be traced to the views of theorists such as Kurt Lewin and Edward Tolman. Regarding the social and interpersonal aspects of this theory, the works of George Herbert Mead and Harry Stack Sullivan.

Some of the most influential social learning theorists today include Julian Rotter, Albert Bandura, and Walter Mischel. Even Hans Eysenck and Joseph Wolpe are sometimes included among social learning theorists because of the nature of their therapies derived from the learning model.

Let's take Julian Rotter's theory as an example:

Rotter's theory has several important features. Firstly, Rotter accepts the view. on theory as a construct. This means that he is not interested in the reconstruction of reality through theory, but in the development of a system of concepts that would have predictable utility. Secondly, he pays great attention to the language of description. This was expressed in the search for such formulations of concepts that would be free from uncertainty and ambiguity. Third, he puts a lot of effort into using operational definitions that establish real measurement operations for each concept.

Rotter's choice of the term "social learning" is not accidental. He believes that most people. behavior is acquired or learned. More importantly, it happens in a personally meaningful environment, replete with social media. interactions with other people.

The main feature of this theory is that it involves two types of variables: motivational (reinforcement) and cognitive (expectancy). It is also distinguished by the use of the empirical law of effect. A reinforcer is anything that causes movement toward or away from a goal.

Finally, this theory places primary importance on the performance rather than the acquisition of behavior.

Basic concepts. Rotter's theory requires four concepts or variables to predict an individual's behavior. First of all, this is behavioral potential (BP). This variable characterizes the potential of any behavior in question to arise in a particular situation in connection with the pursuit of a particular reinforcer or set of reinforcers. In this case, behavior is defined broadly and includes motor acts, cognitive activity, verbalizations, emotional reactions, etc.

The second important variable is expectation (expectancy, E). It is an individual's assessment of the likelihood that a particular reinforcer will occur as a result of a specific behavior performed in a particular situation. Expectations are subjective and do not necessarily coincide with actuarial probability, which is calculated in an objective manner based on previous reinforcement. The individual's perceptions play a decisive role here.

The third important concept is reinforcement value (RV). It is defined as the degree of preference given by an individual to each of the reinforcers given hypothetically equal chances of their occurrence.

Finally, the psychologist herself. situation, according to social learning theory, serves as an important predictive factor. To accurately predict behavior in any situation, it is necessary to understand psychology. the significance of the situation in terms of its impact on both the value of reinforcers and expectations.

Problem solving expectations. In recent years, a large number of studies. was devoted to generalized expectations in the field of problem solving (problem-solving generalized expectancies). These cognitive variables are akin to attitudes, beliefs or mental. mental sets regarding how problem situations should be interpreted in order to facilitate their solution. People vary widely in these cognitions. The subject of these studies. steel, ch. arr., two types of generalized expectations: internal/external control of reinforcement (locus of control) and interpersonal trust. In the first case, people differ in their beliefs about whether the events that happen to them are caused by their own behavior and attitudes (internally) or are determined by luck, fate, chance or the will of other people (externally). In the case of interpersonal trust, there are people who rely on others to tell the truth, although there are also those who are convinced of the opposite. On the other hand, how people approach the problems they face will depend significantly on the nature of these generalized expectations.

Cognitive theory

The cognitive theory of personality is close to the humanistic one, but it has a number of significant differences. The founder is the American psychologist J. Kelly (1905-1967). In his opinion, the only thing a person wants to know in life is what happened to him and what will happen to him in the future.

The main source of personality development for Kelly is the environment, the social environment. Cognitive theory of personality emphasizes the influence of intellectual processes on human behavior. In this theory, any person is compared to a scientist who tests hypotheses about the nature of things and makes predictions about future events. Any event is open to multiple interpretations.

The main concept is “construct” (from the English construct - to build), which includes the features of all cognitive processes (perception, memory, thinking and speech). Thanks to constructs, a person not only understands the world, but also establishes interpersonal relationships. The constructs that underlie these relationships are called personality constructs (Francella F., Bannister D., 1987). A construct is a kind of classifier, a template for our perception of other people and ourselves.

Kelly discovered and described the main mechanisms of the functioning of personal constructs, and also formulated a fundamental postulate and 11 consequences.

The postulate states: personal processes are psychologically canalized in such a way as to provide a person with the maximum forecast of events. The consequences clarify the main postulate.

People differ not only in the number of constructs, but also in their location. Those constructs that are updated in consciousness faster are called superordinate, and those that are updated more slowly are called subordinate. For example, if, having met a person, you immediately evaluate him from the point of view of whether he is smart or stupid, and only then - kind or evil, then your “smart-stupid” construct is superordinate, and the “kind-stupid” construct evil" - subordinate.

Friendship, love and generally normal relationships between people are possible only when people have similar constructs. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a situation where two people communicate successfully, one of whom is dominated by the “decent-dishonest” construct, and the other has no such construct at all.

The structural system is not static, but constantly changes under the influence of experience, i.e. personality is formed and develops throughout life. The personality is predominantly dominated by the “conscious”. The unconscious can only relate to distant (subordinate) constructs, which a person rarely uses when interpreting perceived events.

Kelly believed that individuals have limited free will. The constructive system that a person has developed over the course of his life contains certain limitations. But he did not believe that human life is completely determined. In any situation, a person is able to construct alternative predictions. The outside world is neither evil nor good, but the way we construct it in our heads. Ultimately, according to cognitive scientists, a person's fate is in his hands. The inner world of a person is subjective and, according to cognitivists, is his own creation. Each person perceives and interprets external reality through his own inner world.

The main conceptual element is the personal “construct”. Each person has his own system of personal constructs, which is divided into 2 levels (blocks):

1. The block of “core” constructs is approximately 50 basic constructs that are at the top of the construct system, i.e. in the constant focus of operational consciousness. A person uses these constructs most often when interacting with other people.

2. The block of peripheral constructs is all other constructs. The number of these constructs is purely individual and can vary from hundreds to several thousand.

Holistic personality traits appear as a result of the joint functioning of both blocks, all constructs. There are two types of holistic personality:

cognitively complex personality with a large number of constructs

a cognitively simple personality with a small set of constructs.

A cognitively complex personality, compared to a cognitively simple one, is distinguished by the following characteristics:

1) has better mental health;

2) copes better with stress;

3) has a higher level of self-esteem;

4) more adaptive to new situations.

To assess personal constructs (their quality and quantity), there are special methods (“repertory grid test”) (Francella F., Bannister D., 1987).

The subject simultaneously compares triads with each other (the list and sequence of triads are compiled in advance from people who play an important role in the past or present life of a given subject) in order to identify such psychological characteristics that two of the three people being compared have, but are absent in the third person.

For example, you have to compare the teacher you love, your wife (or husband) and yourself. Suppose you think that you and your teacher have a common psychological quality - sociability, but your spouse does not have such a quality. Consequently, in your constructive system there is such a construct - “sociability-unsociability”. Thus, by comparing yourself and other people, you reveal the system of your own personal constructs.

Thus, according to cognitive theory, personality is a system of organized personal constructs in which a person’s personal experience is processed (perceived and interpreted). The structure of personality in this approach is considered as an individually unique hierarchy of constructs.

To the test question “Why are some people more aggressive than others?” Cognitive scientists answer: aggressive people have a special constructive personality system. They perceive and interpret the world differently, in particular, they better remember events associated with aggressive behavior.

As a result of the construction of psychoanalytic and other theories of personality, psychology has been enriched with a huge number of concepts, productive research methods and tests.

She owes them an appeal to the area of ​​the unconscious, the possibility of carrying out large-scale psychotherapeutic practice, strengthening connections between psychology and psychiatry, and other significant advances that have updated the face of modern psychology.

In the process of life, people often manifest themselves as social individuals, subject to a certain technology of society, the rules and norms that are imposed on them. But the system of prescriptions cannot provide for all specific options for situations or life events, and a person is forced to choose. Freedom of choice and responsibility for it are the criteria for the personal level of self-awareness.

Bibliography

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2. Personality psychology: Under. Ed. Yu.B. Hippenreiter. - M:, 1985

3. Leontyev A.N. Selected psychological works. Volume 3-2: - M; 1983.

The human psyche has always been, is and will be a product of development. There are many interpretations and understandings of development. There are two concepts expressed by V.I. Lenin, which sound like this:

• development is repetition;
• development is the unity of opposites, that is, the division of the whole into incompatible opposites and the relationship between them.

The first concept indicates that movement is the source and motive of development. The second one pays main attention precisely to the knowledge of the source of this movement.

The first concept tells us almost nothing; it is, one might say, dry, dead. And the second gives life. Only she is the key to the self-propulsion of all things.

Until now, the main concept in psychology has been the first concept; it can also be called evolutionist. This is the same evolutionary opinion, according to which psychological development is interpreted in the literal meaning of the word. Since development is depicted exclusively as a numerical increase in innate qualities, it occurs in stages, evolutionarily, there is no place in it for the appearance of new formations, leaps, revolutionary changes or interruptions. The main principle that guides supporters of the evolutionist concept is the relationship between continuity and succession.

The evolutionist concept has a whole chain of erroneous methodological conclusions that are deeply imprinted on most studies of modern genetic psychology. The entire line of development is represented by a homogeneous whole, which is determined by stable patterns. Those who accept this concept consider it acceptable to transfer the laws of one stage of development to all others. In most cases, this happens mechanically, by transferring them from bottom to top. Thus, having determined the mechanism of animal behavior, researchers establish personal patterns of human behavior. On this basis, reverse transfer is also possible - from top to bottom.

The dialectical-materialist concept of mental development is the opposite of the evolutionist one. The Marxist theory of development is built on two main principles. And the first is dialectical. It determines the meaning and place of development, its research in the general concept. The laws of all mental phenomena are considered only in their development. It also determines the interpretation of the development itself.

The development of the psyche from this position is considered as a process of change, when quantitative changes, accumulating, lead to the emergence of a qualitative new formation and a leap in development, a transition to the next stage.

The second principle of this concept is materialistic. The psyche was, is and will be a product of organic life. Therefore, its material foundations depend on organic life itself. It is the central nervous system that is the very material basis of the psyche in all its developed forms. Also, the psyche is directly related to humoral and chemical regulation.

The autonomic nervous system plays an important role in the psyche because it participates in the humoral regulation of the body’s life. In turn, this system interacts with the somatic one and produces its effect on behavior through the mediation of the central nervous system. Thus, the psyche is a function of the central nervous system, a function of the brain, and the brain, in turn, is an organ of the psyche. Based on this, human consciousness becomes the highest form of the psyche.

A person’s consciousness is established by his being, and being is the brain, the organism with its natural characteristics, the activity as a result of which a person develops historically, modifying the innate foundations of his existence.

If we consider the relationship of the psyche on its material basis, then it should be noted that these are two closely related, inseparable sides of a single whole. For biological and historical development, the issue of the relationship between the psyche and the material carrier (the brain) is resolved in different ways. The key point is a correct understanding of the formation of the psyche. The first point of such a correct understanding is the inseparability of structure and function in organic development. Such unity means that, moving to higher stages of development, the comparative independence of function from structure and the likelihood of a functional change in activity without changes in structure increases.

On the other hand, structure depends no less on function. After all, the body undergoes changes, restructuring, and progress in the process of functioning.

So, the human psyche and brain have a close relationship, they are interconnected with each other. Function and structure influence each other, but this dependence is not limited to functional changes. Lifestyle and adaptation determine both function and structure; this is the essence of consistent evolution.

Biogenetic concepts of mental development. The rapidly developing developmental psychology is acquiring three areas of research:

1. the actual field of child psychology;
2. comparative psychology, focused on identifying differences in the development of animals and humans;
3. psychology of peoples as a prototype of modern cultural-anthropological psychology.

At first, all three directions were aimed at identifying patterns of phylogeny. However, the opposite effect was also observed, according to which phylogeny allowed us to take a fresh look at ontogeny. This relationship between ontogeny and phylogeny was called by E. Haeckel the biogenetic law, which assumes the repetition of the history of phylogeny in ontogenesis in an abbreviated and condensed form (recapitulation theory). Thus, the emergence of scientific developmental psychology turned out to be closely connected with the biology of the 19th century.

The new directions of psychological research that have opened have attracted research forces. Thus, S. Hall (1846-1924) began work in America, whose name would later be associated with the founding of pedology - a comprehensive science about children, including pedagogy, psychology, physiology, etc. child.

W. Wundt's student S. Hall, directly responding to the needs of the American school, began giving a course of lectures on the psychology of childhood. But lecturing to teachers required a description of the actual content of the child’s psyche. To do this, S. Hall used not the experimental techniques he learned in Wundt’s laboratory, but questionnaires that were distributed to teachers in order to collect information about how children imagine the world around them. These questionnaires were soon expanded and standardized. They included questions in response to which schoolchildren had to report on their feelings (in particular, moral and religious), attitudes towards other people, early memories, etc. Then thousands of responses were statistically processed in order to present a holistic picture of the psychological characteristics of children of different ages.

Using the materials collected in this way, S. Hall wrote a number of works, of which “Youth” (1904) gained the greatest popularity. But for the history of child psychology, it is important that S. Hall put forward the idea of ​​​​creating a special comprehensive science about Children, which he called pedology.

Now we can already say that this project in its original form was built on insufficiently reliable methodological and methodological foundations. For example, studying the psyche of children with the help of questionnaires introduced techniques of introspective psychology into childhood psychology. S. Hall also had the idea of ​​constructing the ages of childhood based on the theory of recapitulation, according to which a child, in his individual development, briefly repeats the main stages of the history of the entire human race. This theory was modeled after the biogenetic law put forward by E. Haeckel, which stated that the history of the development of an individual organism concisely repeats the main stages of development of the entire series of previous forms.

But what is true for biology, as it turned out, is not true for the psychology of human development: S. Hall actually spoke about the biological determination of the child’s psyche, the formation of which was presented as a transition from one phase to another, taking place in accordance with the main direction of the evolutionary process. The nature of children's games, for example, was explained by the elimination of the hunting instincts of primitive people, and the games of adolescents were considered to be a reproduction of the way of life of Indian tribes.

At the beginning of our century, the biogenetic law in various versions became a generally accepted concept in child psychology, and along with the pedological ideas of S. Hall, new explanatory principles and generalizations appeared.

Many American and European psychologists expressed a critical attitude towards S. Hall's position. The technique of asking children about their own mental states was given a negative assessment, for example, by T. Ribot, who contrasted it with the nascent test method as objective, allowing judgments to be made about the mental development of children not on the basis of what they say about themselves, but on the basis of reality. the specially selected tasks they completed.

The earliest of the actual psychological theories of development is the concept of recapitulation, within the framework of which E. Haeckel formulated the biogenetic law in relation to embryogenesis (ontogenesis is a short and rapid repetition of phylogeny), and the American psychologist S. Hall transferred it to ontogeny: a child briefly repeats in its development development of the human race.

The theoretical inconsistency of the concept of recapitulation in psychology was revealed quite early, and this required the development of new ideas. S. Hall was the first to try to show that there is a connection between historical and individual development, which has not been sufficiently traced in modern psychology.

The recapitulation theory did not serve long as an explanatory principle, but S. Hall's ideas had a significant influence on child psychology through the research of two of his famous students - A.L. Gesell and L. Theremin. Modern psychology attributes their work to the development of a normative approach to development.

A. Gesell's theory of maturation. Psychology owes A. Gesell the introduction of the longitudinal (longitudinal) method, i.e. longitudinal study of the mental development of the same children from birth to adolescence, which he proposed to call “biographical-laboratory.” In addition, by studying monozygotic twins, he was one of the first to introduce the twin method into psychology to analyze the relationship between maturation and learning. And already in the last years of his life, A. Gesell studied the mental development of a blind child in order to more deeply understand the features of normal development.

The practical diagnostic system he developed used photo and film recording of age-related changes in motor activity, speech, adaptive reactions and social contacts of the child.

Summarizing the data from his observations of 165 (!) children, A. Gesell developed a theory of child development, according to which, starting from the moment of development, at strictly defined intervals, at a certain age, children develop specific forms of behavior that successively replace each other.

However, recognizing the important role of social factors, in his research A. Gesell limited himself to a purely quantitative study of comparative sections of child development (at 3, 6, 9, 12, 18, 24, 36 months, etc. up to 18 years), reducing development to simple increase, biological growth, maturation - “increase in behavior”, without analyzing qualitative transformations during the transition from one stage of development to another, emphasizing the dependence of development only on the maturation of the organism. Trying to formulate a general law of child development, A. Gesell drew attention to the decrease in the rate of development with age (or decrease in the “density” of development): the younger the child, the faster changes in his behavior occur.

A. Gesell was guided by the biological model of development, in which cycles of renewal, integration, and equilibrium alternate, and within the framework of this approach to understanding development, he was unable to answer the question of what is hidden behind the change in the pace of development. This is understandable, because the consequence of the cross-sectional (transverse and longitudinal) research methods he used was the identification of development and growth.

The normative approach of L. Theremin. Like A. Gesell, L. Theremin carried out one of the longest longitudinal studies in psychology - it lasted for 50 (!) years. In 1921, L. Theremin selected 1,500 gifted children whose IQ was 140 or higher, and carefully monitored their development. The research continued until the mid-70s. and ended after the death of L. Theremin. Unfortunately, such a large-scale work, contrary to expectations, did not provide grounds for broad generalizations and serious conclusions: according to L. Theremin, “genius” is associated with better health, higher mental talent and higher educational achievements than other members of the population .

The contribution of A. Gesell and L. Theremin to child psychology, although their concepts were based on the role of the hereditary factor in explaining age-related changes, is that they laid the foundation for its establishment as a normative discipline describing the achievements of the child in the process of growth and development.

The normative approach to the study of child development is, in essence, the classical American direction in the study of childhood. This is where research into the problems of “role acceptance” and “personal growth” began, since it was within its framework that studies of such important developmental conditions as the child’s gender and birth order were first conducted. In the 40-50s. XX century normative studies of emotional reactions in children were begun (A. Jersild et al.). In the 70s XX century on the same basis, E. Maccoby and K. Jacqueline studied the characteristics of the mental development of children of different sexes. The research of J. Piaget, J. Bruner, J. Flavell and others was partially oriented towards the normative approach.

But already in the 60s. XX century Qualitative changes began to emerge in normative studies. If earlier psychology was focused on describing how a child behaves, now the emphasis has been shifted to why he behaves this way, under what conditions, what are the consequences of this or that type of development. The formulation of new problems led psychologists to launch new empirical research, which in turn made it possible to reveal new phenomena in child development. Thus, at this time, individual variations in the sequence of appearance of behavioral acts, the phenomena of visual attention in newborns and infants, the role of stimulation in increasing and slowing cognitive activity were described, the deep relationship between mother and baby, etc. was studied.

The theory of three stages of development by K. Bühler. Researchers in European countries were more interested in analyzing the qualitative features of the development process. They were interested in the stages or stages of behavioral development in phylogeny and ontogenesis. Thus, the Austrian psychologist K. Buhler proposed a theory of three stages of development: instinct, training, intelligence. K. Bühler associated these stages and their occurrence not only with the maturation of the brain and the complication of relationships with the environment, but also with the development of affective processes, with the development of the experience of pleasure associated with action. During the evolution of behavior, there is a transition of pleasure “from the end to the beginning.” In his opinion, the first stage - instincts - are characterized by the fact that pleasure occurs as a result of satisfying an instinctive need, that is, after performing an action. At the skill level, pleasure is transferred to the very process of performing the action. The concept “functional pleasure” appeared. But there is also anticipatory pleasure that appears at the stage of intellectual problem solving. Thus, the transition of pleasure “from the end to the beginning,” according to K. Buhler, is the main driving force in the development of behavior. K. Bühler transferred this scheme to ontogeny. Conducting experiments on children, K. Bühler noticed the similarity of the primitive use of tools in anthropoid apes and a child, and therefore he called the very period of manifestation of primary forms of thinking in a child the chimpanzee-like age. Studying a child using a zoopsychological experiment was an important step towards the creation of child psychology as a science. Let us note that shortly before this, W. Wundt wrote that child psychology is generally impossible, since self-observation is inaccessible to a child.

K. Bühler never considered himself a biogeneticist. In his works one can even find criticism of the biogenetic concept. However, his views are an even deeper manifestation of the concept of recapitulation, since the stages of child development are identified with the stages of animal development. As emphasized by L.S. Vygotsky, K. Buhler tried to bring the facts of biological and sociocultural development to one denominator and ignored the fundamental uniqueness of child development. K. Bühler shared with almost all of his contemporary child psychology a one-sided and erroneous view of mental development as a single and, moreover, biological process in nature.

Much later, a critical analysis of K. Bühler's concept was given by K. Lorenz. He pointed out that K. Bühler’s idea of ​​a superstructure in the process of phylogenesis of higher levels of behavior over lower ones contradicts the truth. According to K. Lorenz, these are three independent lines of development that arise at a certain stage of the animal kingdom. Instinct does not prepare training, training does not precede intelligence. Developing the thoughts of K. Lorenz, D.B. Elkonin emphasized that there is no impassable line between the stage of intelligence and the stage of training. A skill is a form of existence of intellectually acquired behavior, therefore there may be a different sequence of behavior development: first intelligence, and then skill. If this is true for animals, then it is even more true for a child. In the development of a child, conditioned reflexes arise in the second or third week of life. You cannot call a child an instinctive animal - the child must even be taught to suck!

K. Bühler is deeper than St. Hall, stands on the position of the biogenetic approach, as he extends it to the entire animal world. And although K. Bühler’s theory no longer has supporters today, its significance is that, as D.B. rightly emphasized. Elkonin, poses the problem of the history of childhood, the history of postnatal development.

The origins of humanity are lost, and the history of childhood is also lost. Cultural monuments are poor in relation to children. True, the fact that peoples develop unevenly can serve as material for research. Currently, there are tribes and peoples that are at a low level of development. This opens up the possibility of conducting comparative studies to study the patterns of child mental development.

Learning theory I.P. Pavlov and J. Watson.

Another approach to analyzing the problem of development, which has a rather long history, is associated with the general principles of behaviorism. This direction has deep roots in empirical philosophy and is most consistent with American ideas about man: a person is what his surroundings, his environment, make of him. This is a direction in American psychology for which the concept of development is identified with the concept of learning, acquiring new experience. The development of this concept was greatly influenced by the ideas of I.P. Pavlova. American psychologists accepted the teachings of I.P. Pavlov's idea that adaptive activity is characteristic of all living things. It is usually emphasized that in American psychology the Pavlovian principle of the conditioned reflex was assimilated, which served as the impetus for J. Watson to develop a new concept of psychology. This is too general an idea. The very idea of ​​conducting a rigorous scientific experiment, created by I.P., entered American psychology. Pavlov also to study the digestive system. The first description of I.P. Pavlov carried out such an experiment in 1897, and the first publication of J. Watson was in 1913.

Already in the first experiments I.P. Pavlov with the salivary gland brought out, the idea of ​​​​connecting dependent and independent variables was realized, which runs through all American studies of behavior and its genesis not only in animals, but also in humans. Such an experiment has all the advantages of real natural science research, which is still so highly valued in American psychology: objectivity, accuracy (control of all conditions), accessibility for measurement. It is known that I.P. Pavlov persistently rejected any attempts to explain the results of experiments with conditioned reflexes by reference to the subjective state of the animal. J. Watson began his scientific revolution by putting forward the slogan “Stop studying what a person thinks; let us study what man does!”

American scientists perceived the phenomenon of the conditioned reflex as a kind of elementary phenomenon, accessible to analysis, something like a building block, from many of which a complex system of our behavior can be built. The genius of I.P. Pavlov's achievement, according to his American colleagues, was that he was able to show how simple elements could be isolated, analyzed and controlled in laboratory conditions. Development of ideas by I.P. Pavlova's work in American psychology took several decades, and each time the researchers faced one of the aspects of this simple, but at the same time not yet exhausted phenomenon in American psychology - the phenomenon of the conditioned reflex.

In the earliest studies of learning, the idea of ​​combining stimulus and response, conditioned and unconditioned stimuli, came to the fore: the time parameter of this connection was highlighted. This is how the associationist concept of learning arose (J. Watson, E. Ghazri). When the attention of researchers was drawn to the functions of the unconditioned stimulus in establishing a new associative stimulus-reactive connection, the concept of learning arose, in which the main emphasis was placed on the value of reinforcement. These were the concepts of E. Thorndike and B. Skinner. The search for answers to the question of whether learning, that is, the establishment of a connection between stimulus and response, depends on such states of the subject as hunger, thirst, pain, which in American psychology were called drive, led to more complex theoretical concepts of learning - the concepts of N. Miller and K. Hull. The latter two concepts raised American learning theory to such a degree of maturity that it was ready to assimilate new European ideas from the fields of Gestalt psychology, field theory, and psychoanalysis. It was here that there was a turn from a strict behavioral experiment of the Pavlovian type to the study of motivation and cognitive development of the child.

Most recently, American scientists turned to the analysis of the orientation reflex as a necessary condition for the development of a new nervous connection and new behavioral acts. In the 50s - 60s, these studies were significantly influenced by the work of Soviet psychologists, and especially the studies of E.N. Sokolov and A.V. Zaporozhets. Of great interest was the study of such stimulus properties as intensity, complexity, novelty, color, uncertainty, etc., carried out by the Canadian psychologist D. Berlyne. However, D. Berlyne, like many other scientists, considered the orientation reflex precisely as a reflex - in connection with the problems of neurophysiology of the brain, and not from the standpoint of the organization and functioning of mental activity, from the standpoint of orientation-research activity.

Another idea of ​​Pavlov’s experiment was refracted in a special way in the minds of American psychologists - the idea of ​​constructing a new behavioral act in the laboratory, in front of the experimenter. It resulted in the idea of ​​“technology of behavior”, its construction on the basis of positive reinforcement of any behavioral act chosen by the experimenter (B. Skinner). Such a mechanistic approach to behavior completely ignored the need to orient the subject in the conditions of his own action.

Theories of E. Thorndike and B. Skinner. When the attention of researchers was drawn to the functions of the unconditioned stimulus in establishing a new associative stimulus-reactive connection, the concept of learning arose, in which the main emphasis was placed on the value of reinforcement. These were the concepts of E. Thorndike and B. Skinner. Pavlov's idea of ​​constructing a new behavioral act in an animal directly in laboratory conditions resulted in B. Skinner's idea of ​​“technology of behavior,” according to which any type of behavior can be formed with the help of reinforcement.

B. Skinner identifies development with learning, pointing out only their only difference: if learning covers short periods of time, then development covers relatively long periods. In other words, development is the sum of learning extended over large time distances. According to B. Skinner, behavior is entirely determined by the influence of the external environment and, just like the behavior of animals, can be “made” and controlled.

B. Skinner's main concept is reinforcement, i.e. an increase or decrease in the likelihood that a given behavior will occur again. Reinforcement can be positive or negative. Positive reinforcement in the case of children's behavior is the approval of adults, expressed in any form, negative reinforcement is the dissatisfaction of parents, fear of their aggression.

B. Skinner distinguishes between positive reinforcement and reward, encouragement, as well as negative reinforcement and punishment, using the division of reinforcement into primary and conditional. Primary reinforcement is food, water, extreme cold or heat, etc. Conditioned reinforcement - initially neutral stimuli that acquired a reinforcing function due to combination with primary forms of reinforcement (the sight of a drill in the dentist's office, sweets, etc.). Punishment can remove positive reinforcement or provide negative reinforcement. Rewards do not always reinforce behavior. In principle, B. Skinner is against punishment, preferring positive reinforcement. Punishment has a quick but short-lived effect, while children are more willing to behave correctly if their behavior is noticed and approved by Parents.

Such a mechanistic approach to human behavior completely ignored the need for the subject to orient himself in the conditions of his own actions. That is why B. Skinner’s theory can only be considered a private explanatory principle in teaching. In the experiments of E. Thorndike (study of acquired forms of behavior), in the studies of I.P. Pavlov (studying the physiological mechanisms of learning) emphasized the possibility of the emergence of new forms of behavior on an instinctive basis. It has been shown that, under the influence of the environment, hereditary forms of behavior acquire acquired skills and abilities. As a result of these studies, confidence emerged that everything in human behavior can be created, as long as there are appropriate conditions for this. However, here the old problem arises again: what in behavior is from biology, from instinct, from heredity and what from the environment, from living conditions? The philosophical dispute between nativists (“there are innate ideas”) and empiricists (“man is a blank slate”) is related to the solution of this problem.

The mechanistic interpretation of human behavior, taken to its logical conclusion in B. Skinner's concept, could not but cause violent indignation among many humanistic-minded scientists.

A well-known representative of humanistic psychology, C. Rogers, opposed his position to B. Skinner, emphasizing that freedom is the awareness that a person can live on his own, “here and now,” according to his own choice. This is the courage that makes a person capable of entering into the uncertainty of the unknown, which he chooses himself. This is understanding the meaning within oneself. According to Rogers, a person who expresses himself deeply and boldly acquires his own uniqueness and responsibly “chooses himself.” He may have the happiness of choosing among a hundred external alternatives, or the misfortune of having nothing. But in all cases, his freedom nevertheless exists.

The attack on behaviorism and, especially, on those aspects of it that are closest to developmental psychology, which began in American science in the 60s, took place in several directions. One of them concerned the question of how experimental material should be collected. The fact is that B. Skinner’s experiments were often performed on one or several subjects. In modern psychology, many researchers believed that patterns of behavior could only be obtained by sifting through individual differences and random variation. This can only be achieved by averaging the behavior of many subjects. This attitude led to an even greater expansion of the scope of research, the development of special techniques for quantitative data analysis, and the search for new ways to study learning, and with it the study of development.

Development theory by S. Bijou and D. Baer. The traditions of B. Skinner were continued by S. Bijou and D. Baer, ​​who also used the concepts of behavior and reinforcement. Behavior can be reactive (responsive) or operant. Stimuli can be physical, chemical, organismal or social. They can elicit response behavior or enhance operant behavior. Instead of individual stimuli, entire complexes often act. Particular attention is paid to differentiation stimuli, which are setting and perform the function of intermediate variables that change the influence of the main stimulus.

The distinction between response and operant behavior is of particular importance for developmental psychology. Operant behavior creates stimuli that, in turn, significantly influence response behavior. In this case, 3 groups of influences are possible:

1. environment (incentives);
2. an individual (organism) with its formed habits;
3. changing influences of the individual on the influencing environment.

Trying to explain what causes the changes that occur with a person throughout his life, S. Bijou and D. Baer essentially introduce the concept of interaction. Despite the wide range of variables that determine the learning process, they note the homogeneity of the course of development for different individuals. It is, in their opinion, the result of:

1. identical biological boundary conditions;
2. relative homogeneity of the social environment;
3. difficulties in mastering different forms of behavior;
4. prerequisite relationships (for example, walking precedes running).

According to S. Bijou and D. Baer, ​​individual development includes the following stages:

1. basic stage (also called universal or infantile): satisfaction of biological needs through primary conditioning; the predominance of reactive as well as exploratory behavior; ends with the emergence of speech behavior;
2. main stage: increasing liberation from bodily limitations (the need for sleep decreases, muscle strength and agility increase); the emergence of speech as a second signaling system; expanding the circle of relationships from biologically significant persons in the immediate environment to the whole family. This stage is divided:
   • on early childhood, family socialization, first independence;
   • for middle childhood: socialization in primary school, development of social, intellectual and motor skills;
   • on adolescence: heterosexual socialization.
3. social stage (more often called cultural): adult life, divided by:
   • for maturity: stability of behavior; professional, marital and public socialization (continues until the onset of involutionary processes);
   • for old age: involution of social, intellectual and motor abilities and the construction of compensatory behavior.

Thus, in classical behaviorism the problem of development was not specifically emphasized - it only dealt with the problem of learning based on the presence or absence of reinforcement under the influence of environmental influences. But transferring the model of relations between the organism and the environment to human social behavior is not easy. American psychologists tried to overcome the difficulties of transferring learning theory to social behavior on the basis of a synthesis of behaviorism and psychoanalysis.

The search for answers to the question of whether learning (i.e., establishing a connection between stimulus and response) depends on such states of the subject as hunger, thirst, pain, which were called drive in American psychology, led to more complex theoretical concepts of learning developed N. Miller and K. Hull. Their ideas raised American learning theory to such a degree of maturity that it was ready to assimilate new European ideas from the fields of Gestalt psychology, field theory and psychoanalysis. It was here that there was a turn from a strict behavioral experiment of the Pavlovian type to the study of motivation and cognitive development of the child.

At the end of the 30s. N. Miller, J. Dollard, R. Sears, J. Whiting and other young scientists at Yale University made an attempt to translate the most important concepts of psychoanalytic theory into the language of K. Hull's learning theory. They outlined the main lines of research: social learning in the process of raising a child, cross-cultural analysis - the study of the upbringing and development of a child in different cultures, personality development. In 1941, N. Miller and J. Dollard introduced the term “social learning” into scientific use.

On this basis, concepts of social learning have been developed for more than half a century, the central problem of which has become the Problem of Socialization.

Sociogenetic concepts of mental development. In the late 30s, N. Miller, J. Dollard, R. Sears, A. Bandura and other young scientists at Yale University made an attempt to translate the most important concepts of psychoanalytic personality theory into the language of K. Hull's learning theory. They outlined the main lines of research: social learning in the process of raising a child, cross-cultural analysis - the study of the upbringing and development of a child in different cultures, personality development. In 1941, N. Miller and J. Dollard introduced the term “social learning” into scientific use.

On this basis, concepts of social learning have been developed for more than half a century, the central problem of which has become the problem of socialization. Socialization is a process that allows a child to take his place in society; it is the advancement of a newborn from an asocial “humanoid” state to life as a full-fledged member of society. How does socialization happen? All newborns are alike, but after two or three years they are different children. This means, say proponents of social learning theory, that these differences are the result of learning, they are not innate.

There are different concepts of learning. In classical conditioning of the Pavlovian type, subjects begin to give the same response to different stimuli. In Skinner's operant conditioning, a behavioral act is formed due to the presence or absence of reinforcement for one of many possible responses. Both of these concepts do not explain how new behavior arises. A. Bandura believed that reward and punishment are not enough to teach new behavior. Children acquire new behavior through imitation of a model. Learning through observation, imitation and identification is the third form of learning. One of the manifestations of imitation is identification - a process in which a person borrows thoughts, feelings or actions from another person acting as a model. Imitation leads to the fact that the child can imagine himself in the place of the model, experience sympathy, complicity, and empathy for this person.

Let us briefly consider the contributions made to the concept of social learning by representatives of different generations of American scientists.

N. Miller and J. Dollard were the first to build a bridge between behaviorism and psychoanalytic theory. Following Z. Freud, they considered clinical material as a rich source of data; in their opinion, a psychopathological personality differs only quantitatively, and not qualitatively, from a normal person. Therefore, the study of neurotic behavior sheds light on universal principles of behavior that are more difficult to identify in normal people. In addition, neurotics are usually observed by psychologists for a long time, and this provides valuable material for long-term and dynamic changes in behavior under the influence of social correction.

On the other hand, Miller and Dollard are experimental psychologists who master precise laboratory methods, also turning to the mechanisms of behavior of animals studied through experiments.

Miller and Dollard share Freud's view of the role of motivation in behavior, believing that the behavior of both animals and humans is a consequence of such primary (innate) drives as hunger, thirst, pain, etc. All of them can be satisfied, but not extinguished. In the behaviorist tradition, Miller and Dollard quantify drive strength by measuring, for example, the time of deprivation. In addition to the primary ones, there are secondary urges, including anger, guilt, sexual preferences, the need for money and power, and many others. The most important among them are fear and anxiety caused by a previous, previously neutral stimulus. The conflict between fear and other important drives is the cause of neuroses.

Transforming Freudian ideas, Miller and Dollard replace the pleasure principle with the reinforcement principle. They define reinforcement as something that increases the tendency to repeat a previously occurring response. From their point of view, reinforcement is a reduction, removal of impulse or, using Freud's term, drive. Learning, according to Miller and Dollard, is the strengthening of the connection between a key stimulus and the response it evokes through reinforcement. If there is no corresponding reaction in the repertoire of human or animal behavior, then it can be acquired by observing the behavior of the model. Attaching great importance to the mechanism of learning through trial and error, Miller and Dollard draw attention to the possibility of using imitation to reduce the number of trials and errors and to get closer to the correct answer through observing the behavior of others.

Miller and Dollard's experiments examined conditions for imitation of a leader (with or without reinforcement). Experiments were carried out on rats and children, and in both cases similar results were obtained. The stronger the incentive, the more reinforcement strengthens the stimulus-response relationship. If there is no motivation, learning is impossible. Miller and Dollard believe that self-satisfied, complacent people make poor students.

Miller and Dollard draw on Freud's theory of childhood trauma. They view childhood as a period of transient neurosis, and the small child as disoriented, deceived, disinhibited, and incapable of higher mental processes. From their point of view, a happy child is a myth. Hence, the task of parents is to socialize their children and prepare them for life in society. Miller and Dollard share A. Adler's idea that the mother, who gives the child the first example of human relationships, plays a decisive role in socialization. In this process, in their opinion, the four most important life situations can serve as a source of conflict. These are feeding, toilet training, sexual identification, and the manifestation of aggressiveness in a child. Early conflicts are nonverbalized and therefore unconscious. To understand them, according to Miller and Dollar, it is necessary to use Freud's therapeutic technique. “Without understanding the past, it is impossible to change the future,” wrote Miller and Dollard.

Social learning concept. A. Bandura. And Bandura, the most famous representative of the second generation of social learning theorists, developed the ideas of Miller and Dollard about social learning. He criticized Freud's psychoanalysis and Skinner's behaviorism. Having adopted the ideas of the dyadic approach to the analysis of human behavior, Bandura focused on the phenomenon of learning through imitation. In his opinion, much of a person’s behavior arises from observing the behavior of others.

Unlike his predecessors, Bandura believes that the acquisition of new responses through imitation does not require reinforcement of the observer's actions or the model's actions; but reinforcement is necessary to strengthen and maintain the behavior formed through imitation. A. Bandura and R. Walters found that the visual learning procedure (that is, training in the absence of reinforcement or in the presence of indirect reinforcement of only one model) is especially effective for the acquisition of new social experience. Thanks to this procedure, the subject develops a “behavioral predisposition” to previously unlikely reactions.

Observational learning is important, according to Bandura, because it can be used to regulate and direct a child's behavior by providing him with the opportunity to imitate authoritative models.

Bandura conducted many laboratory and field studies on childhood and youth aggressiveness. For example, children were shown films that presented different patterns of adult behavior (aggressive and non-aggressive) that had different consequences (reward or punishment). As a result, aggressive behavior in children who watched the film was greater and manifested itself more often than in children who did not watch the film.

While a number of American scientists view Bandura's theory of social learning as a concept consisting of “clever hypotheses about the process of socialization,” other researchers note that the mechanism of imitation is insufficient to explain the emergence of many behavioral acts. It’s difficult to learn how to ride a bike just by watching someone ride a bike – you need practice.

Taking these objections into account, A. Bandura includes four intermediate processes in the “stimulus-response” diagram to explain how imitation of a model leads to the formation of a new behavioral act in the subject.

1. The child's attention to the action of the model. Requirements for the model are clarity, distinguishability, affective richness, and functional significance. The observer must have an appropriate level of sensory capabilities.
2. Memory that stores information about the influences of the model.
3. Motor skills that allow you to reproduce what the observer perceives.
4. Motivation that determines the child’s desire to accomplish what he sees.

Thus, Bandura recognizes the role of cognitive processes in the development and regulation of behavior based on imitation. This is a marked departure from Miller and Dollard's original position, which conceptualized imitation as modeling based on perceptions of the model's actions and expected reinforcement.

Bandura emphasizes the role of cognitive regulation of behavior. As a result of observing the behavior of the model, the child builds “internal models of the external world.” The subject observes or learns about a pattern of behavior, but does not reproduce it until the appropriate conditions arise. On the basis of these internal models of the external world, under certain circumstances, real behavior is built, in which the previously observed properties of the model are manifested and expressed. Cognitive regulation of behavior, however, is subject to the control of stimulus and reinforcement - the main variables of behaviorist learning theory.

Social learning theory recognizes that the influence of a model is determined by the information it contains. Whether this information will be fruitful depends on the cognitive development of the observer.

Thanks to the introduction of cognitive variables into the theory of social learning, according to American psychologists, it became possible to explain the following facts:

• replacing a visually perceived demonstration with verbal instructions (here, first of all, information is important, not the external properties of the model);

• the impossibility of developing most skills through imitation (hence, the child does not have the necessary components of behavior);

• less ability to imitate in infants compared to preschoolers (reason: weaker memory, fewer skills, unstable attention, etc.);

• the extreme limitation in animals of the ability to imitate new physical actions using visual observations.

Nevertheless, there are still unresolved questions.

Theory of R. Sears. The famous American psychologist R. Sears studied the relationship between parents and children, under the influence of psychoanalysis. As a student of K. Hull, he developed his own version of combining psychoanalytic theory with behaviorism. He focused on the study of external behavior that could be measured. In active behavior, he emphasized action and social interactions.

Action is caused by impulse. Like Miller and Dollard, Sears assumes that all actions are initially related to primary or innate impulses. The satisfaction or frustration that results from the behavior prompted by these primary drives leads the individual to learn new experiences. Constant reinforcement of specific actions leads to new, secondary impulses that arise as a consequence of social influences.

Sears introduced the dyadic principle of studying child development: since it occurs within a dyadic unit of behavior, adaptive behavior and its reinforcement in an individual should be studied taking into account the behavior of the other, the partner.

Considering psychoanalytic concepts (suppression, regression, projection, sublimation, etc.) in the context of learning theory, Sears focuses on the influence of parents on the development of the child.

Sears identifies three phases of child development:

1. rudimentary behavior phase - based on innate needs and learning in early infancy, in the first months of life;
2. phase of secondary motivational systems - based on learning within the family (the main phase of socialization);
3. phase of secondary motivational systems - based on learning outside the family (goes beyond an early age and is associated with entering school).

According to Sears, the newborn is in a state of autism, his delivery does not correspond to the social world. But already the child’s first innate needs, his internal motivations, serve as a source of learning. The first attempts to extinguish internal tension constitute the first learning experience. This period of rudimentary antisocial behavior precedes socialization.

Gradually, the baby begins to understand that the extinction of internal tension, for example, the reduction of pain, is associated with his actions, and the “crying-chest” connection leads to the satisfaction of hunger. His actions become part of a sequence of goal-directed behavior. Each new action that leads to the extinction of tension will be repeated again and built into a chain of goal-directed behavior when tension increases. Need satisfaction constitutes a positive experience for the infant.

Every child has a repertoire of actions that are necessarily replaced during development. Successful development is characterized by a decrease in autism and actions aimed only at satisfying innate needs, and an increase in dyadic social behavior.

According to Sears, the central component of learning is dependence. Reinforcement in dyadic systems always depends on contacts with others; it is already present in the earliest contacts between the child and mother, when the child, through trial and error, learns to satisfy his organic needs with the help of the mother. Dyadic relationships foster the child's dependence on the mother and reinforce it.

Psychological dependence manifests itself in the search for attention: the child asks the adult to pay attention to him, to look at what he is doing, he wants to be close to the adult, sit on his lap, etc. Dependence manifests itself in the fact that the child is afraid to be left alone. He learns to behave in such a way as to attract the attention of his parents. Here Sears is talking like a behaviorist: by showing attention to a child, we reinforce him, and this can be used to teach him something.

Failure to reinforce the addiction can lead to aggressive behavior. Sears views addiction as a complex motivational system that is not innate, but is formed during life.

The social environment in which a child is born influences his development. The concept of “social environment” includes: the gender of the child, his position in the family, the happiness of his mother, the social position of the family, level of education, etc. The mother sees her child through the prism of her ideas about raising children. She treats the child differently depending on his gender. In the early development of a child, the mother’s personality is revealed, her ability to love and regulate all the “dos and don’ts.” The mother's abilities are connected with her own self-esteem, her assessment of her father, and her attitude towards her own life. High scores on each of these factors correlate with high enthusiasm and warmth towards the child. Finally, the mother’s social status, her upbringing, and belonging to a certain culture predetermine the practice of education. The likelihood of a child's healthy development is higher if the mother is happy with her position in life.

Thus, the first phase of child development links the newborn's biological heredity with his social heritage. This phase introduces the infant to the environment and forms the basis for expanding his interaction with the outside world.

The second phase of child development lasts from the second half of the second year of life until entering school. As before, primary needs remain the motive of the child’s behavior, however, they are gradually restructured and turn into secondary motivations.

Summarizing the results of his research, Sears identified five forms of addictive behavior. They are all the product of different childhood experiences.

Sears made an attempt to identify a correlation between forms of dependent behavior and the child care practices of his parents - mother and father.

Studies have shown that neither the amount of reinforcement, nor the duration of breastfeeding, nor feeding by the hour, nor difficulties in weaning, nor other features of feeding practices have a significant impact on the manifestations of dependent behavior in preschool age. The most significant factor for the formation of dependent behavior is not oral reinforcement, but the participation of each parent in caring for the child.

1. “Negative negative attention seeking”: seeking attention through arguing, breaking up relationships, disobedience, or so-called oppositional behavior (resistance to direction, rules, order, and demands by ignoring, refusing, or acting in the opposite direction). This form of dependence is a direct consequence of low requirements and insufficient restrictions in relation to the child, that is, weak upbringing on the part of the mother and - especially in relation to the girl - strong participation in the upbringing of the father.

2. “Seeking constant reassurance”: apologizing, asking for over-promises, or seeking protection, comfort, consolation, help, or guidance. This form of dependent behavior is directly related to high demands for achievement on the part of both parents.

3. “Search for positive attention”: the search for praise, the desire to join the group due to the attractiveness of cooperative activity or, conversely, the desire to leave the group and interrupt this activity. This is a more “mature” form of addictive behavior and involves efforts to gain approval from others.

This is one of the forms of “immature”, passive manifestation in behavior of dependence that is positive in its direction.

5. Touch and hold. Sears mentions here behaviors such as non-aggressive touching, holding, and hugging others. This is a form of “immature” addictive behavior. Here, as in the case of staying nearby, there is an atmosphere of infantilization.

The success of any parenting method, Sears emphasizes, depends on the parents' ability to find a middle path. The rule should be: neither too strong nor too weak dependence; neither too strong nor too weak identification.

The theory of convergence of two factors. The debate between psychologists about what predetermines the process of child development - hereditary talent or the environment - led to the theory of the convergence of these two factors. Its founder is V. Stern. He believed that mental development is not a simple manifestation of innate properties and not a simple perception of external influences. This is the result of the convergence of internal inclinations with external living conditions. V. Stern wrote that one cannot ask about a single function or a single property: does it occur from the outside or from the inside? The only logical question is: what exactly is happening in it from the outside and what from the inside? Because in its manifestation both one and the other always act, only each time in different proportions.

The problem of the relationship between two factors that influence the process of a child’s mental development most often hides a preference for the factor of hereditary predetermination of development. But even when researchers emphasize the primacy of the environment over the hereditary factor, they cannot overcome the biologizing approach to development if the habitat and the entire development process are interpreted as a process of adaptation, adaptation to living conditions.

V. Stern, like his other contemporaries, was a supporter of the concept of recapitulation. His words are often mentioned that a child in the first months of infancy, with still unreflective reflexive and impulsive behavior, is at the stage of a mammal; in the second half of the year, thanks to the development of grasping objects and imitation, he reaches the stage of a higher mammal - a monkey; later, having mastered vertical gait and speech, the child reaches the initial stages of the human condition; for the first five years of games and fairy tales he stands on the level of primitive peoples; then follows admission to school, which is associated with the mastery of higher social responsibilities, which corresponds, according to V. Stern, to a person’s entry into culture with its state and economic organizations. The simple content of the ancient and Old Testament world is most adequate to the child's spirit in the first school years; the middle years bear the features of fanaticism of Christian culture, and only in the period of maturity is spiritual differentiation achieved, corresponding to the state of the culture of modern times. It is appropriate to remember that quite often puberty is called the age of enlightenment.

The desire to consider periods of childhood development by analogy with the stages of development of the animal world and human culture shows how persistently researchers searched for general patterns of evolution.

Psychoanalytic theory. Having emerged as a method of treatment, psychoanalysis was almost immediately perceived as a means of obtaining psychological facts that made it possible to clarify the origins of an individual’s personality traits and problems. 3. Freud introduced into psychology the idea that the psychological problems of the adult personality can be derived from early childhood experiences and that childhood experiences have an unconscious influence on the subsequent behavior of the adult.

Based on the general theses of psychoanalysis, 3. Freud formulated the ideas of the genesis of the child’s psyche and child’s personality: the stages of child development correspond to the stages of movement of zones in which the primary sexual need is satisfied. These stages reflect the development and relationship between Id, Ego and Super-Ego.

The infant, completely dependent on the mother for pleasure, is in the oral phase (0-12 months) and in the biological stage, characterized by rapid growth. The oral phase of development is characterized by the fact that the main source of pleasure and potential frustration is associated with feeding. In the psychology of a child, one desire dominates - to absorb food. The leading erogenous area of ​​this stage is the mouth as an instrument of feeding, sucking and initial examination of objects.

The oral stage consists of two phases - early and late, occupying the first and second half of life and corresponding to two successive libidinal actions - sucking and biting.

Initially, sucking is associated with food pleasure, but gradually it becomes a libidinal action, on the basis of which the instincts of the Id are fixed: the child sometimes sucks his thumb even in the absence of food. This type of pleasure, as interpreted by 3. Freud, coincides with sexual pleasure and finds the objects of its satisfaction in the stimulation of one’s own body. Therefore, he calls this stage autoerotic.

In the first half of life, according to 3. Freud, the child does not yet separate his sensations from the object that caused them: the child’s world is actually a world without objects. The child lives in a state of primary narcissism (his basic state is sleep), in which he is not aware of the existence of other objects in the world.

In the second phase of infancy, the child begins to form an idea of ​​​​another object (mother) as a being independent of him - he experiences anxiety when the mother leaves or a stranger appears in her place. The influence of the real external world increases, differentiation of Ego and Id develops, danger from the external world increases and the importance of the mother as an object that can protect against dangers and, as it were, compensate for lost intrauterine life, grows excessively.

The biological connection with the mother causes the need to be loved, which, once it arises, will remain in the psyche forever. But the mother cannot satisfy all the baby’s desires on demand; In education, restrictions are inevitable, becoming a source of differentiation, highlighting an object. Thus, at the beginning of life, the distinction between external and internal, according to the views of Z. Freud, is achieved not on the basis of the perception of objective reality, but on the basis of the experience of pleasure and displeasure associated with the actions of another person.

In the second half of the oral stage, with the appearance of teeth, a bite is added to sucking, which gives the action an aggressive character, satisfying the child’s libidinal need. But the mother does not allow the child to bite her breast, even if he is dissatisfied or upset, and his desire for pleasure begins to conflict with reality.

According to 3. Freud, the newborn does not yet have an Ego, but it gradually differentiates from the Id, being modified under the influence of the external world. Its functioning is associated with the principle of “satisfaction-lack of satisfaction.” Since the child experiences the world through his mother, in her absence he experiences a state of dissatisfaction and thanks to this he begins to single out the mother, since the absence of a mother for him is a lack of pleasure. At this stage, the Super-Ego instance does not yet exist, and the child’s Ego is in constant conflict with the Id.

The lack of satisfaction of the desires and needs of the child at this stage of development, as it were, “freezes” a certain amount of mental energy, libido is fixed, which constitutes an obstacle to further normal development. A child who does not receive sufficient satisfaction of his oral needs is forced to continue to seek substitutes to satisfy them and therefore cannot move on to the next stage of genetic development.

The oral period is followed by the anal period (from 12-18 months to 3 years), during which the child first learns to control his bodily functions. Libido is concentrated around the anus, which becomes the object of attention of the child, who is accustomed to neatness and cleanliness. Now children's sexuality finds the object of its satisfaction in mastering the functions of defecation and excretion. And here the child first encounters many prohibitions, so the outside world appears before him as a barrier that he must overcome, and development takes on a conflicting character.

According to 3. Freud, at this stage the Ego instance is fully formed, and now it is able to control the impulses of the Id. Learning toilet habits prevents the child from enjoying the pleasure he experiences from holding or excreting excrement, and aggression, envy, stubbornness, and possessive feelings appear in his behavior during this period. He also develops defensive reactions against coprophilic tendencies (the desire to touch feces) - disgust and cleanliness. The child's Ego learns to resolve conflicts by finding compromises between the desire for pleasure and reality. Social coercion, punishment from parents, fear of losing their love force the child to mentally imagine and internalize certain prohibitions. In this way, the child’s Super-Ego begins to form as part of his Ego, where the authorities, the influence of parents and other adults are mainly based, who play a very important role as educators and socializers of the child.

The next phase begins at about three years of age and is called the phallic phase (3-5 years). It characterizes the highest level of child sexuality: if until now it was autoerotic, now it becomes objective, i.e. children begin to experience sexual attachment to adults. The genitals become the leading erogenous zone.

Motivational-affective libidinal attachment to parents of the opposite sex 3. Freud proposed to call it the Oedipus complex for boys and the Electra complex for girls. In the Greek myth about King Oedipus, who killed his father and married his mother, hidden, according to Freud, is the key to the sexual complex: experiencing an unconscious attraction to his mother and a jealous desire to get rid of his rival father, the boy experiences hatred and fear towards his father . Fear of punishment from the father underlies the castration complex, reinforced by the discovery that girls do not have a penis and the conclusion that he might lose his penis if he misbehaves. The castration complex represses oedipal experiences (they remain unconscious) and promotes identification with the father.

By repressing the Oedipus complex, the Super-Ego instance is completely differentiated. Getting stuck at this stage and the difficulties of overcoming the Oedipus complex create the basis for the formation of a timid, shy, passive personality. Girls who have difficulty overcoming the Electra complex often develop a neurotic desire to have a son.

With the development of the child, the “principle of pleasure” is replaced by the “principle of reality”, since he is forced to adapt the instincts of the Id to the opportunities for satisfying drives that real situations provide. In the process of development, the child must learn to evaluate the relative importance of various and often conflicting instinctual desires, so that, by refusing or delaying the satisfaction of some, he can achieve the fulfillment of others, more important.

According to 3. Freud, the most important periods in a child’s life end before the age of 5-6 years; It was by this time that all three main personality structures were formed. After five years, a long period of latent childhood sexuality begins (5-12 years), when the former curiosity about sexual manifestations gives way to curiosity about the entire world around us. Libido at this time is not fixed, sexual potency is dormant, and the child has opportunities for identification and construction of self-identity.

He goes to school and most of his energy goes into studying. The stage is characterized by a general decrease in sexual interests: the psychic authority Ego completely controls the needs of the Id; being divorced from a sexual goal, libido energy is transferred to the development of universal human experience, enshrined in science and culture, as well as to the establishment of friendly relationships with adults and peers outside the family environment.

And only from about 12 years old, with the beginning of adolescence, when the reproductive system matures, sexual interests flare up again. The genital phase (12-18 years) is characterized by the development of self-awareness, a sense of self-confidence and the capacity for mature love. Now all the former erogenous zones are united, and the teenager strives for one goal - normal sexual communication.

In line with psychoanalysis, a huge number of interesting observations have been made on various aspects of child development, however, there are few holistic pictures of development in psychoanalysis. Perhaps only the works of Anna Freud and Erik Erikson can be considered as such.

E. Erikson's epigenetic theory of the life course of a person largely continued the ideas of classical psychoanalysis.

E. Erikson accepted the ideas of 3. Freud about the three-member structure of personality, identifying the Id with desires and dreams, and the Super-Ego with experiences of obligation, between which a person constantly fluctuates in thoughts and feelings. Between them there is a “dead point” - Ego, in which, according to E. Erikson, we are most of all ourselves, although we are least aware of ourselves.

Analyzing the biographies of M. Luther, M. Gandhi, B. Shaw, T. Jefferson using the psychohistorical method and conducting ethnographic field research, E. Erikson tried to understand and evaluate the influence of the environment on the individual, constructing him exactly as he is and not otherwise. These studies gave rise to two concepts of his concept - "group identity" and "ego identity".

Group identity is formed due to the fact that from the first day of life, the upbringing of a child is focused on his inclusion in a given social group, on the development of a worldview inherent in this group. Ego identity is formed in parallel with group identity and creates in the subject a sense of stability and continuity of his Self, despite age and other changes.

The formation of ego identity (or personal integrity) continues throughout a person’s life and goes through eight age stages (see table).

Stages of periodization according to E. Erikson

H. Old age (after 50 years)	Secondary ego - integration (personal integrity)
	Disappointment in life (despair); socially valuable quality - wisdom
G. Maturity (25-50 years)	Creativity (production work)
	Stagnation; socially valuable quality - care
F. Youth (from 18-20 to 25 years old)	Experience of intimacy (closeness)
	Experience of isolation (loneliness); socially valuable quality - love
E. Puberty (adolescence) and adolescence (genital stage, according to Z. Freud; 12-18 years)	Ego - identity (personal individuality)
	Identity diffusion (role confusion); socially valuable quality - loyalty
D. School age (latency stage; latent stage, according to Z. Freud; 5-12 years)	Sense of achievement (hard work)
	Feeling of inferiority; socially valuable quality - competence
C. Age of play (preschool age; locomotor-genital stage; phallic stage, according to Z. Freud; 3-5 years)	Feeling of initiative
	Guilt; a socially valuable quality - determination (the Super-I instance is formed as a result of overcoming the Oedipus complex)
B. Early childhood (muscular-anal stage; anal stage, according to Z. Freud; 2-3 years)	Sense of autonomy
	Feelings of doubt about one’s capabilities, shame, dependence; socially significant quality - the foundations of will
A. Infancy (oral - sensory stage; oral stage, according to Z. Freud; from birth to one year)	Basic trust
	Basic distrust of the world (hopelessness); socially valuable quality - hope (the beginning, like S. Freud: the desire for life against the desire for death (eros and thanatos; libido and mortido))

At each stage, society sets a specific task for the individual and sets the content of development at different stages of the life cycle. But the solution to these problems depends both on the already achieved level of psychomotor development of the individual, and on the general spiritual atmosphere of society.

Thus, the task of infancy is the formation of basic trust in the world, overcoming the feeling of separation from it and alienation. The task of early childhood is to fight against feelings of shame and strong doubts about one’s actions for one’s own independence and self-sufficiency. The task of the playing age is to develop active initiative and at the same time experience feelings of guilt and moral responsibility for one’s desires. During the period of schooling, the task arises of developing diligence and the ability to handle tools, which is opposed by the consciousness of one’s own ineptitude and uselessness. In adolescence and early adolescence, the task of the first integral awareness of oneself and one’s place in the world appears; the negative pole in solving this problem is uncertainty in understanding one’s own self (“diffusion of identity”). The task of the end of adolescence and young adulthood is to find a life partner and establish close friendships that overcome the feeling of loneliness. The task of the mature period is the struggle of human creative forces against inertia and stagnation. The period of old age is characterized by the formation of a final, integral idea of ​​oneself, one’s life path, as opposed to possible disappointment in life and growing despair.

The solution to each of these problems, according to E. Erikson, comes down to establishing a certain dynamic relationship between the two extreme poles. The equilibrium achieved at each stage marks the acquisition of a new form of ego identity and opens up the possibility of inclusion of the subject in a wider social environment. The transition from one form of ego identity to another causes identity crises. Crises are not personality illnesses, not manifestations of neurotic disorders, but “turning points” of development.

Psychoanalytic practice convinced E. Erikson that the development of life experience is carried out on the basis of the child’s primary bodily impressions. That is why he introduced the concepts of “organ mode” and “behavior modality”. “Organ mode” is a zone of concentration of sexual energy. The organ with which sexual energy is connected at a specific stage of development creates a certain mode of development, i.e. formation of a dominant personality quality. According to the erogenous zones, there are modes of retraction, retention, invasion and inclusion.

Zones and their modes, according to E. Erikson, are the focus of any cultural system of raising children. The mode of an organ is only the primary soil, the impetus for mental development. When society, through various institutions of socialization (family, school, etc.), gives a special meaning to a given mode, then “alienation” of its meaning occurs, separation from the organ and transformation into a modality of behavior. Thus, through modes, the connection between psychosexual and psychosocial development is realized.

Let's briefly look at the characteristics of the stages.

A. Infancy. Stage one: fundamental faith and hope versus fundamental hopelessness. The peculiarity of modes is that for their functioning another object or person is necessary. In the first days of life, the child “lives and loves through the mouth,” and the mother “lives and loves through the breast.” In the act of feeding, the child receives the first experience of reciprocity: his ability to “receive through the mouth” meets a response from the mother. Unlike Z. Freud, for E. Erikson it is not the oral zone itself that is important, but the oral method of interaction, which consists in the ability to “receive” not only through the mouth, but through all sensory zones. The mode of the organ - “receive” - is detached from the zone of its origin and spreads to other sensory sensations (tactile, visual, auditory, etc.), and as a result of this, the mental modality of behavior is formed - “to absorb”.

Like Z. Freud, E. Erikson associates the second phase of infancy with teething. From this moment on, the ability to absorb becomes more active and directed and is characterized by the “biting” mode. Alienating, the mode manifests itself in all types of activity of the child, displacing passive receiving (“to absorb”).

The eyes, initially ready to receive impressions as they come naturally, learn to focus, isolate and snatch objects from the background, and follow them. The ears learn to recognize significant sounds, localize them and control the search rotation towards them. The arms learn to purposefully stretch out and the hands to grasp. As a result of the spread of the mode to all sensory zones, a social modality of behavior is formed - “taking and holding things.” It appears when the child learns to sit. All these achievements lead to the child identifying himself as a separate individual.

The formation of the first form of ego-identity, like all subsequent ones, is accompanied by a developmental crisis. His indicators at the end of the 1st year of life: general tension due to teething, increased awareness of oneself as a separate individual, weakening of the mother-child dyad as a result of the mother’s return to professional activities and personal interests. This crisis is overcome more easily if, by the end of the 1st year of life, the ratio between basic trust and basic distrust is in favor of the former.

Signs of social trust in an infant are manifested in easy feeding, deep sleep, and normal bowel function.

The dynamics of the relationship between trust and distrust in the world are determined not by the characteristics of feeding, but by the quality of child care, the presence of maternal love and tenderness, manifested in caring for the baby. An important condition for this is the mother’s confidence in her actions.

B. Early childhood. Stage two: autonomy versus shame and doubt. It begins from the moment the child begins to walk.

At this stage, the pleasure zone is associated with the anus. The ballroom zone creates two opposite modes - the mode of holding and the mode of relaxation (letting go). Society, attaching special importance to teaching a child to be neat, creates conditions for the dominance of these modes, their separation from their organ and transformation into such modalities of behavior as “preservation” and “destruction”. The struggle for “sphincteric control”, as a result of the importance attached to it by society, is transformed into a struggle for mastery of one’s motor capabilities, for the establishment of a new, autonomous self.

Control on the part of parents makes it possible to preserve this feeling by limiting the child’s growing desires to demand, appropriate, and destroy, when he, as it were, tests the strength of his new capabilities. But external control at this stage should be strictly calming. The child must feel that his basic belief in existence is not threatened.

Parental restrictions create the basis for negative feelings of shame and doubt. The emergence of a feeling of shame, according to E. Erikson, is associated with the emergence of self-awareness. In our civilization, according to E. Erikson, shame is easily absorbed by feelings of guilt. Punishing and shaming a child for bad behavior leads to the feeling that “the eyes of the world are looking at him.”

The struggle of a sense of independence against shame and doubt leads to the establishment of a relationship between the ability to cooperate with other people and insist on one's own, between freedom of expression and its restriction. At the end of the stage, a fluid balance develops between these opposites. It will be positive if parents and close adults do not overly control the child and suppress his desire for autonomy.

C. Preschool age. Third stage: initiative versus guilt. Being firmly convinced that he is his own person, the child must now find out what kind of person he can become.

Three lines of development form the core of this stage, simultaneously preparing its future crisis:

1) the child becomes freer and more persistent in his movements and, as a result, establishes a wider and essentially unlimited radius of goals;

2) his sense of language becomes so perfect that he begins to ask endless questions about countless things, often without receiving a proper and intelligible answer, which contributes to a completely incorrect interpretation of many concepts;

3) both speech and developing motor skills allow the child to expand his imagination into such a large number of roles that sometimes it frightens him. He can profitably discover the outside world by combining permitted actions with his own abilities. He is ready to see himself as a greater being than adults. He begins to make comparisons about differences in size and other properties of the people around him, and shows unlimited curiosity, in particular about gender and age differences. He tries to imagine possible future roles and figure out which ones are worth imagining.

The matured child looks more “like himself” - more loving, calmer in his judgment, more active and proactive. Now he quickly forgets his mistakes and achieves what he wants in a non-humiliating and more accurate way. Initiative adds to autonomy the qualities of enterprise, planning and the ability to “attack” a task only for the sake of experiencing a sense of one’s own activity and “motor joy”, and not as before, due to an involuntary desire to annoy or, at least, emphasize one’s independence.

Modes of invasion and inclusion create new modalities of behavior at this stage of personality development.

The mode of intrusion, which dominates behavior at this stage, determines the variety of types of activity and fantasies that are “similar” in form. Invasion of space through vigorous movements; attacking other bodies through physical attack, “getting into” the ears and souls of other people through aggressive sounds; entering the unknown through devouring curiosity - this is, as E. Erikson describes, a preschooler at one pole of his behavioral reactions. At the other pole, he is receptive to his surroundings, ready to establish gentle and caring relationships with peers and children. Under the guidance of adults and older children, he gradually enters into the intricacies of children's politics in the garden, street, and yard. His desire to learn at this time is surprisingly strong; he moves steadily forward from limitations to future possibilities.

The stage of play and childhood genitality adds to the list of basic modalities for both sexes the modality of “doing,” in particular, “making a career.” Moreover, for boys the emphasis remains on “doing” through a brain attack, while for girls it can turn into “catching” through either an aggressive capture or turning themselves into an attractive and irresistible person - prey. In this way, the prerequisites for male or female initiative are formed, as well as some psychosexual images of oneself, becoming ingredients of positive and negative aspects of future identity.

The child eagerly and actively learns about the world around him; in the game, modeling and imagining, he, together with his peers, masters the “economic ethos of culture”, i.e. a system of relations between people in the production process. As a result of this, a desire is formed to get involved in real joint activities with adults, to step out of the role of a child. But adults remain omnipotent and incomprehensible to the child; they can shame and punish for aggressive behavior and claims. And as a result, a feeling of guilt awakens.

D. School age. Stage four: hard work versus inferiority. The fourth stage of personality development is characterized by a certain dormancy of infantile sexuality and a delay in genital maturity, necessary for the future adult to learn the technical and social foundations of work.

With the onset of the latency period, a normally developing child forgets, or rather sublimates, the previous desire to “do” people through direct aggressive action and immediately become “dad” or “mom”; now he learns to gain recognition by producing things. He develops a sense of diligence, hard work, and adapts to the inorganic laws of the instrumental world. Tools and work skills are gradually included in the boundaries of his Self: the principle of work teaches him the pleasure of the expedient completion of work, achieved through unwavering attention and persistent diligence. He is filled with the desire to design and plan.

At this stage, a broad social environment is very important for him, allowing him to take on roles before he encounters the relevance of technology and economics, and a good teacher who knows how to combine play and study, how to involve the child in business, is especially important. What is at stake here is nothing less than the development and maintenance in the child of a positive identification with those who know things and know how to do things.

The school systematically introduces the child to knowledge, conveys the “technological ethos” of the culture, and develops diligence. At this stage, the child learns to love learning, maintains discipline, fulfills the demands of adults and learns most selflessly, actively appropriating the experience of his culture. At this time, children become attached to the teachers and parents of their friends, they want to observe and imitate the activities of people that they understand - a fireman and a policeman, a gardener, a plumber and a garbage man. In all cultures, the child at this stage receives systematic instruction, although not always only within the walls of school.

Now the child sometimes needs to be alone - to read, watch TV, dream. Often, when left alone, a child begins to make something, and gets very angry if he doesn’t succeed. E. Erikson calls the feeling of being able to do things the feeling of creation - and this is the first step in transforming oneself from a “rudimentary” parent into a biological one. The danger that awaits a child at this stage is a feeling of inadequacy and inferiority. The child in this case experiences despair from his ineptitude in the world of tools and sees himself doomed to mediocrity or inadequacy. If, in favorable cases, the figures of the father or mother (their importance for the child) fade into the background, then when a feeling of inadequacy emerges with the requirements of the school, the family again becomes a refuge for the child.

Much of a child's development is damaged when family life fails to prepare the child for school life or when the child's school life fails to reinforce the hopes of earlier stages. The feeling of being unworthy, of little value, of incompetence can fatally aggravate the development of character.

E. Erikson emphasizes that at each stage of development, the child must come to a vital sense of his own worth and should not be satisfied with irresponsible praise or condescending approval. His ego identity reaches real strength only when he understands that achievements are manifested in those areas of life that are significant for a given culture. The sense of competence maintained in each child (i.e., the free exercise of one's skills and intellect in performing serious tasks, unaffected by infantile feelings of inferiority) creates the basis for cooperative participation in productive adult life.

E. Adolescence and youth. Fifth stage: personal individuality versus role confusion (identity confusion). The fifth stage is characterized by the deepest life crisis. Three lines of development lead to it:

1. rapid physical growth and puberty (“physiological revolution”);
2. concern about how the teenager looks in the eyes of others, what he represents;
3. the need to find one’s professional calling that meets acquired skills, individual abilities and the requirements of society.

In a teenage identity crisis, all past critical moments of development arise anew. The teenager must now solve all the old problems consciously and with the inner conviction that this is the choice that is significant for him and for society. Then social trust in the world, independence, initiative, and mastered skills will create a new integrity of the individual.

The integration which here reaches the form of ego-identity is more than just the sum of childhood identifications. This is a person’s conscious experience of his own ability to integrate all identifications with libidinal drives, with mental abilities acquired in activity, with favorable opportunities offered by social roles. Further, the sense of ego identity consists of an ever-increasing confidence that the inner individuality and integrity that is meaningful to oneself is equally significant to others. The latter becomes obvious in the very tangible perspective of a “career.”

The danger of this stage is role confusion, diffusion (confusion) of ego identity. This may be due to initial uncertainty about sexual identity (and then gives rise to psychotic and criminal episodes - clarification of the self-image can also be achieved through destructive measures), but more often - with the inability to resolve issues of professional identity, which causes anxiety. To put themselves in order, adolescents temporarily develop (to the point of losing their own identification) overidentification with the heroes of the streets or elite groups. This marks the onset of a period of “falling in love”, which in general is in no way or even initially of a sexual nature - unless morals require it. To a large extent, youthful love is an attempt to come to a definition of one’s own identity by projecting one’s own initially vague image onto someone else and seeing it in an already reflected and clarified form. That's why showing teenage love largely comes down to talking.

The selectivity in communication and cruelty towards “strangers” inherent in teenage groups is a defense of the sense of one’s own identity from depersonalization and confusion. That is why details of costume, jargon or gestures become signs that distinguish “us” from “strangers”. By creating closed groups and clichéing their own behavior, ideals and “enemies,” adolescents not only help each other cope with identification, but also test each other’s ability to remain faithful. The readiness for such testing, by the way, also explains the response that totalitarian sects and concepts find in the minds of the youth of those countries and classes that have lost or are losing their group identity (feudal, agrarian, tribal, national).

The mind of a teenager, according to E. Erikson, is in a state of moratorium (which corresponds to the psychological stage intermediate between childhood and adulthood) between the morality learned by the child and the ethics that must be formed by the adult. The mind of a teenager, as E. Erikson writes, is an ideological mind: it presupposes the ideological worldview of a society that speaks to him “on an equal footing.” The teenager is ready to have his position as an equal confirmed by the adoption of rituals, a “creed” and programs that simultaneously define what is evil. In the search for social values ​​that govern identity, the teenager faces the problems of ideology and aristocracy in the most general senses, associated with the idea that within a certain image of the world and in the course of a predetermined historical process, the best people will come to leadership and leadership will develop the best in people the best. To avoid becoming cynics and apathy, young people must somehow convince themselves that those who succeed in the adult world also shoulder the responsibility of being the best of the best.

At first glance, it seems that teenagers, hemmed in by their physiological revolution and the uncertainty of future adult social roles, are completely busy trying to create their own teenage subculture. But in fact, the teenager passionately seeks people and ideas in whom he can trust (this is a legacy of the early stage - the need for trust). These people must prove that they are worthy of trust, because at the same time the teenager is afraid of being deceived, having innocently trusted the promises of others. He closes himself off from this fear with demonstrative and cynical disbelief, hiding his need for faith.

The adolescence period is characterized by the search for a free choice of ways to fulfill one’s responsibilities, but at the same time the teenager is afraid of being a “weakling”, forcibly involved in an activity where he will feel like an object of ridicule or feel insecure in his abilities (a legacy of the second stage - desires). This can also lead to paradoxical behavior: without free choice, a teenager can behave provocatively in the eyes of elders, thereby allowing himself to be forced into activities that are shameful in his own eyes or in the eyes of his peers.

As a result of the imagination acquired at the play stage, the teenager is ready to trust his peers and other guides, leading or misleading elders who are able to set imaginative (if not illusory) boundaries for his aspirations. The proof is that he vehemently protests against the limitations of his self-image and can loudly insist on his guilt even against his own interests.

And finally, the desire to do something well, acquired at the stage of primary school age, is embodied in the following: the choice of occupation becomes more important for a teenager than the question of salary or status. For this reason, teenagers prefer to temporarily not work at all, rather than take the path of activities that promise success, but do not give satisfaction from the work itself.

Adolescence and youth are the least “stormy” period for that part of young people who are well prepared in in terms of identification with new roles that involve competence and creativity. Where this is not the case, the teenager’s consciousness obviously becomes ideological, following the unified tendency or ideas (ideals) instilled in him. Thirsty for the support of peers and adults, the teenager strives to perceive “worthwhile, valuable” ways of life. On the other hand, as soon as he feels that society is limiting him, he begins to resist it with such force.

An unresolved crisis leads to a state of acute diffusion of identity and forms the basis of a special pathology of adolescence. Identity pathology syndrome, according to E. Erikson, is associated with the following points:

• regression to the infantile level and the desire to delay the acquisition of adult status as long as possible;

• a vague but persistent state of anxiety; feeling isolated and empty; constantly being in a state of expectation of something that can change life; fear of personal communication and inability to emotionally influence people of the other sex;

• hostility and contempt for all recognized social roles, including male and female (“unisex”); contempt for everything domestic and irrational preference for everything foreign (according to the principle “it’s good where we are not”). In extreme cases, the search for a negative identity begins, the desire to “become nothing” as the only way of self-affirmation.

F. Youth. Stage six: intimacy versus loneliness. Overcoming the crisis and the formation of ego-identity allows young people to move to the sixth stage, the content of which is the search for a life partner, the desire for close friendly ties with members of their social group. Now the young man is not afraid of loss of self and depersonalization, he is able to “readily and willingly mix his identity with others.”

The basis for the desire to get closer to others is the complete mastery of the main modalities of behavior. It is no longer the mode of some organ that dictates the content of development, but all the considered modes are subordinated to the new, holistic formation of ego-identity that appeared at the previous stage. The body and personality (Ego), being complete masters of erogenous zones, are already able to overcome the fear of losing their Self in situations requiring self-denial. These are situations of complete group solidarity or intimacy, close camaraderie or direct physical combat, experiences of inspiration caused by mentors, or intuitions from deepening into one’s Self.

The young person is ready for intimacy, he is able to commit himself to cooperation with others in specific social groups, and he has sufficient ethical strength to firmly adhere to such group affiliation, even if it requires significant sacrifices and compromises.

Avoidance of such experiences and contacts that require closeness due to fear of loss of self can lead to a feeling of deep loneliness and a subsequent state of complete self-absorption and distancing. Such a violation, according to E. Erikson, can lead to acute “character problems” and psychopathology. If the mental moratorium continues at this stage, then instead of a feeling of closeness there arises a desire to maintain distance, not to let into one’s “territory”, into one’s inner world. There is a danger that these aspirations and the biases that arise from them can turn into personality traits - into experiences of isolation and loneliness.

Love helps to overcome these negative aspects of identity. E. Erikson believes that it is in relation to a young man, and not to a young man, and even more so to a teenager, that one can speak of “true genitality,” since most of the sexual episodes that preceded this readiness for intimacy with others, despite the risk of losing one’s own individuality, was only a manifestation of the search for one’s Self or the result of phallic (vaginal) desires for victory in competition, which turned youthful sexual life into a genital battle. Before the level of sexual maturity is reached, much of sexual love will come from self-interest, a hunger for identity: each partner is really trying only to come to himself.

The emergence of a mature feeling of love and the establishment of a creative atmosphere of cooperation in work activity prepares the transition to the next stage of development.

G. Maturity. Seventh stage: productivity (generativity) versus stagnation. This stage can be called central at the adult stage of a person’s life path. Personal development continues thanks to the influence of children and the younger generation, which confirms the subjective feeling of being needed by others. Productivity (generativity) and procreation (procreation), as the main positive characteristics of the individual at this stage, are realized in caring for the upbringing of the new generation, in productive work activity and in creativity. In everything a person does, he puts a piece of his Self, and this leads to personal enrichment. A mature person needs to be needed.

Generativity is, first of all, an interest in the organization of life and the guidance of the new generation. And quite often, in the case of failures in life or special talent in other areas, a number of people direct this drive not to their offspring, so the concept of generativity also includes productivity and creativity, which makes this stage even more important.

If the developmental situation is unfavorable, there is a regression to the obsessive need for pseudo-intimacy: excessive concentration on oneself appears, leading to inertia and stagnation, personal devastation. In this case, the person views himself as his own and only child (and if there is physical or psychological ill-being, then they contribute to this). If conditions favor such a tendency, then physical and psychological disability of the individual occurs, prepared by all previous stages, if the balance of forces in their course developed in favor of an unsuccessful choice. The desire to care for others, creativity, the desire to create (create) things in which a piece of unique individuality is embedded, help to overcome possible self-absorption and personal impoverishment.

N. Old age. Eighth stage: personal integrity versus despair. Having gained life experience, enriched by caring for the people around him, and especially children, with creative ups and downs, a person can gain integrativeness - the conquest of all seven previous stages of development. E. Erickson identifies several of its characteristics:

1. ever-increasing personal confidence in one’s propensity for order and meaningfulness;
2. post-narcissistic love of a human person (and not an individual) as an experience that expresses some kind of world order and spiritual meaning, regardless of the price at which they are obtained;
3. acceptance of one’s only path in life as the only one that is proper and does not need to be replaced;
4. a new, different from the previous, love for your parents;
5. a comradely, involved, affiliative attitude towards the principles of distant times and various activities as they were expressed in the words and results of these activities.

The bearer of such personal integrity, although he understands the relativity of all possible life paths that give meaning to human efforts, is nevertheless ready to defend the dignity of his own path from all physical and economic threats. After all, he knows that the life of an individual person is only a random coincidence of only one life cycle with only one segment of history and that for him the entire human integrity is embodied (or not embodied) in only one type - the one that he realizes. Therefore, for a person, the type of integrity developed by his culture or civilization becomes the “spiritual heritage of the fathers,” the stamp of origin. At this stage of development, wisdom comes to a person, which E. Erikson defines as a detached interest in life in the face of death.

E. Erickson proposes to understand wisdom as a form of such an independent and at the same time active relationship between a person and his life limited by death, which is characterized by maturity of mind, careful deliberation of judgments, and deep comprehensive understanding. Not every person creates his own wisdom; for most, its essence is tradition.

The loss or absence of this integration leads to a disorder of the nervous system, a feeling of hopelessness, despair, and fear of death. Here, the life path a person has actually traversed is not accepted by him as the limit of life. Despair expresses the feeling that there is too little time left to try to start life over again, to arrange it differently, to try to achieve personal integrity in a different way. Despair is masked by disgust, misanthropy, or chronic contemptuous dissatisfaction with certain social institutions and individuals. Be that as it may, all this testifies to a person’s contempt for himself, but quite often “a million torments” do not add up to one great repentance.

The end of the life cycle also gives rise to “final questions”, which not a single great philosophical or religious system passes by. Therefore, any civilization, according to E. Erikson, can be assessed by the importance it attaches to the full life cycle of an individual, since this importance (or lack thereof) affects the beginning of the life cycles of the next generation and affects the formation of a child’s basic trust (mistrust) in to the world.

No matter what abyss these “final questions” lead individuals to, a person as a psychosocial creation, by the end of his life, inevitably finds himself faced with a new edition of the identity crisis, which can be captured by the formula “I am what will survive me.” Then all the criteria of vital individual strength (faith, willpower, determination, competence, loyalty, love, care, wisdom) pass from the stages of life into the life of social institutions. Without them, institutions of socialization fade away; but without the spirit of these institutions permeating the patterns of care and love, instruction and training, no power can emerge simply from the succession of generations.

Cognitive theories in developmental psychology. Theory of J. Piaget. J. Piaget proceeded from several basic principles. First of all, this is a question about the relationship between the whole and the part. Since there are no isolated elements in the world and they are all either parts of a larger whole or are themselves broken up into small components, the interactions between the parts and the whole depend on the structure in which they are included. In the general structure, their relationship is balanced, but the state of equilibrium is constantly changing.

Development is considered by J. Piaget as evolution driven by the need for balance. He defines equilibrium as a stable state of an open system. Equilibrium in a static, already implemented form is an adaptation, adaptation, a state in which each impact is equal to the reaction. From a dynamic point of view, balance is the mechanism that provides the main function of mental activity - constructing an idea of ​​reality, ensures the connection between subject and object, and regulates their interaction.

J. Piaget believed that, like any development, intellectual development tends to a stable equilibrium, i.e. to the establishment of logical structures. Logic is not innate initially, but develops gradually. What allows the subject to master this logic?

To cognize objects, the subject must act with them, transform them - move, combine, remove, bring together, etc. The meaning of the idea of ​​transformation is as follows: the boundary between subject and object is not established from the very beginning and it is not stable, therefore in every action the subject and object are mixed.

To understand his own actions, the subject needs objective information. Without constructing intellectual tools of analysis, according to J. Piaget, the subject does not distinguish what in cognition belongs to himself, what belongs to the object, and what belongs to the action of transforming the object. The source of knowledge lies not in objects in themselves and not in subjects, but in interactions that are initially inseparable between subject and objects.

That is why the problem of cognition cannot be considered separately from the problem of the development of intelligence. It comes down to how the subject is able to adequately cognize objects, how he becomes capable of objectivity.

Objectivity is not given to the subject from the very beginning. To master it, a series of sequential constructions is necessary, bringing the child ever closer to it. Objective knowledge is always subject to certain structures of action. These structures are the result of construction: they are not given either in objects, since they depend on actions, or in the subject, since the subject must learn to coordinate his actions.

The subject, according to J. Piaget, is hereditarily endowed with adaptive activity, with the help of which he carries out the structuring of reality. Intelligence is a special case of such structuring. Characterizing the subject of activity, J. Piaget identifies its structural and functional properties.

Functions are biologically inherent ways of interaction with the environment. The subject is characterized by two main functions: organization and adaptation. Every act of his behavior is organized, i.e. represents a certain structure, the dynamic aspect of which (adaptation) consists of the balance of two processes - assimilation and accommodation.

All acquired sensorimotor experience is formalized, according to J. Piaget, into action schemes. A schema is the sensorimotor equivalent of a concept. It allows the child to act economically and adequately with different objects of the same class or with different states of the same object. From the very beginning, the child gains his experience on the basis of action: he follows with his eyes, turns his head, explores with his hands, drags, feels, grasps, pulls into his mouth, moves his legs, etc. All this experience is formalized into schemas - the most general thing that is preserved in action when it is carried out repeatedly in different circumstances.

In a broad sense, an action schema is a structure at a certain level of mental development. A structure is a mental system or whole whose principles of activity are different from the principles of activity of the parts that make up the structure. Structure is a self-regulating system, and new mental structures are formed based on action.

As a result of interactions with the environment, new objects are involved in the schemes and thus assimilated by them. If existing schemes do not cover new types of interaction, then they are restructured and adjusted to the new action, i.e. accommodation occurs. In other words, accommodation is a passive adaptation to the environment, and assimilation is active. At the stage of accommodation, the subject reflects the internal connections of the environment; at the stage of assimilation, he begins to influence these connections for his own purposes.

Adaptation, assimilation and accommodation are hereditarily fixed and unchangeable, and structures (as opposed to functions) develop in ontogenesis and depend on the child’s experience and, therefore, are different at different age stages. This relationship between function and structure ensures continuity, succession of development and its qualitative originality at each age level.

Mental development in the understanding of J. Piaget is a change in mental structures. And since these structures are formed on the basis of the actions of the subject, J. Piaget came to the conclusion that thought is a compressed form of action, the internal arises from the external, and learning must be ahead of development.

In accordance with this understanding, J. Piaget built the logic of mental development. The most important starting point for him is to regard the child as a being who assimilates things, selects and assimilates them according to his own mental structure.

In studies of children's ideas about the world and physical causality, J. Piaget showed that a child at a certain stage of development usually views objects as they are given by direct perception, i.e. he does not see things in their internal relations. For example, a child thinks that the moon follows him when he walks, stops when he stands, and runs after him when he runs away. J. Piaget called this phenomenon “realism,” which prevents us from considering things independently of the subject, in their internal interconnection. The child believes his instant perception to be absolutely true, since he does not separate his “I” from the surrounding things.

Until a certain age, children do not know how to distinguish between the subjective and external world. The child begins by identifying his ideas with things and phenomena of the objective world and only gradually comes to distinguish them from each other. This pattern, according to J. Piaget, can be applied both to the content of concepts and to the simplest perceptions.

At the early stages of development, every idea of ​​the world is experienced by the child as true; the thought of a thing and the things themselves are almost the same. But as the intellect develops, children's ideas move from realism to objectivity, going through a number of stages: participation (involvement), animism (universal animation), artificialism (understanding of natural phenomena by analogy with human activity), in which the egocentric relationship between the “I” and the world are gradually being reduced. Step by step, the child begins to take a position that allows him to distinguish what comes from the subject and to see the reflection of external reality in objective representations.

Another important direction in the development of children's thought is from realism to relativism: at first, children believe in the existence of absolute qualities and substances, but later they discover that phenomena are interconnected and that our assessments are relative. The world of independent and spontaneous substances gives way to a world of relationships. For example, at first the child believes that every moving object has a motor; in the future, he considers the movement of an individual body as a function of the actions of external bodies. Thus, the child begins to explain the movement of clouds in a different way, for example, by the action of the wind. The words “light” and “heavy” also lose their absolute meaning and acquire meaning depending on the chosen units of measurement (an object is light for a child, but heavy for water).

Thus, the child’s thought, which at first does not separate subject from object and is therefore “realistic,” develops in three directions: towards objectivity, reciprocity and relationality.

The inability to perform logical addition and multiplication leads to contradictions with which children's definitions of concepts are saturated. J. Piaget characterized contradiction as a result of a lack of equilibrium: the concept gets rid of contradiction when equilibrium is achieved. He considered the criterion of stable equilibrium to be the appearance of reversibility of thought - such a mental action when, starting from the results of the first action, the child performs a mental action that is symmetrical in relation to it, and when this symmetrical operation leads to the initial state of the object without modifying it. Each mental action has a corresponding symmetrical action that allows you to return to the starting point.

It is important to keep in mind that, according to J. Piaget, in the real world there is no reversibility. Only intellectual operations make the world reversible. Therefore, reversibility of thought cannot arise in a child from observing natural phenomena. It arises from the awareness of the mental operations themselves, which perform logical experiments not on things, but on oneself, in order to establish which system of definitions provides the “greatest logical satisfaction.”

According to J. Piaget, in order for a child to develop truly scientific thinking, and not a simple body of empirical knowledge, a special kind of experience is necessary - logical-mathematical, aimed at actions and operations performed by the child with real objects.

According to the hypothesis of J. Piaget, intellectual development can be described in the form of groupings that sequentially follow from one another, and he began to study how the logical operations of classification, seriation, etc. are formed in a child.

Based on the theory of development, where the main thing is the desire of the subject’s structures for balance with reality, J. Piaget put forward a hypothesis about the existence of stages of intellectual development.

Stages are steps or levels of development that successively change each other, and at each level a relatively stable equilibrium is achieved. J. Piaget repeatedly tried to present the development of intelligence as a sequence of stages, but only in his later review works did the picture of development acquire certainty and stability.

The process of a child’s intellectual development, according to J. Piaget, consists of 3 large periods, during which the emergence and formation of 3 main structures occurs:

1. sensorimotor structures, i.e. systems of reversible actions performed materially and sequentially;
2. structures of specific operations - systems of actions performed in the mind, but based on external, visual data;
3. structures of formal operations associated with formal logic, hypothetico-deductive reasoning.

Development takes place as a transition from a lower stage to a higher one, with each previous stage preparing the next one. At each new stage, integration of previously formed structures is achieved; the previous stage is rebuilt at a higher level.

The order of the stages is unchanged, although, according to J. Piaget, it does not contain any hereditary program. Maturation in the case of stages of intelligence comes down to only the discovery of development opportunities, and these opportunities still need to be realized. It would be wrong, J. Piaget believed, to see the sequence of stages as a product of innate predetermination, because in the process of development there is a continuous construction of the new.

The age at which balance structures appear may vary depending on the physical or social environment. In conditions of free relationships and discussions, prelogical ideas are quickly replaced by rational ideas, but they persist longer in relationships based on authority. According to J. Piaget, one can observe a decrease or increase in the average chronological age of the appearance of one or another stage, depending on the activity of the child himself, his spontaneous experience, school or cultural environment.

The stages of intellectual development, according to J. Piaget, can be considered as stages of mental development as a whole, since the development of all mental functions is subordinate to the intellect and is determined by it.

J. Piaget's system is one of the most developed and widespread, and researchers from different countries offer their own options for its correction and addition.

L. Kohlberg's theory of moral development. L. Kohlberg criticized J. Piaget for exaggerated attention to intelligence, as a result of which all other aspects of development (emotional-volitional sphere, personality) remain, as it were, on the sidelines. He posed the question - what cognitive schemes, structures, rules describe such phenomena as lying (which appears in children at a certain age and has its own stages of development), fear (also an age-related phenomenon), theft (inherent in everyone in childhood). Trying to answer these questions, L. Kohlberg discovered a number of interesting facts in child development, which allowed him to build a theory of the moral development of the child.

As criteria for dividing development into stages, L. Kohlberg takes 3 types of orientation, forming a hierarchy:

1. orientation towards authorities
2. orientation towards customs,
3. principle-oriented.

Developing the idea put forward by J. Piaget and supported by L. S. Vygotsky that the development of a child’s moral consciousness goes parallel to his mental development, L. Kohlberg identifies several phases in it, each of which corresponds to a certain level of moral consciousness.

The “pre-moral (pre-conventional) level” corresponds to stage 1 - the child obeys in order to avoid punishment, and stage 2 - the child is guided by selfish considerations of mutual benefit - obedience in exchange for some specific benefits and rewards.

“Conventional morality” corresponds to stage 3 - the model of the “good child”, driven by the desire for approval from significant others and shame before their condemnation, and 4 - an attitude towards maintaining the established order of social justice and fixed rules (what is good is what corresponds to the rules).

“Autonomous morality” brings the moral decision within the individual. It opens with stage 5A - a person realizes the relativity and conditionality of moral rules and demands their logical justification, seeing it in the idea of ​​utility. Then comes stage 5B - relativism is replaced by recognition of the existence of some higher law corresponding to the interests of the majority.

Only after this - stage 6 - are stable moral principles formed, the observance of which is ensured by one’s own conscience, regardless of external circumstances and rational considerations.

In recent works, L. Kohlberg raises the question of the existence of another 7th, highest stage, when moral values ​​are derived from more general philosophical postulates; however, according to him, only a few reach this stage.

Empirical testing of L. Kohlberg's theory in the USA, England, Canada, Mexico, Turkey, Honduras, India, Kenya, New Zealand, and Taiwan confirmed its cross-cultural validity regarding the universality of the first three stages of moral development and the invariance of their sequence. With higher stages the situation is much more complicated. They depend not so much on the level of individual development of a person, but on the degree of social complexity of the society in which he lives.

The complication and differentiation of social relations is a prerequisite for the autonomization of moral judgments. In addition, the style of an individual's moral judgments inevitably depends on what a given society sees as the source of moral precepts - whether it is God's will, a community institution, or simply a logical rule. The center of gravity of the problem is thus transferred from the mental development of the individual to the social and structural characteristics of society, the macro and microsocial environment, on which the degree of his personal autonomy directly depends.

L. Kohlberg does not distinguish between ages and adult levels. He believes that the development of morality in both a child and an adult is spontaneous, and therefore no metric is possible here.

Cultural and historical concept of L.S. Vygotsky. In developmental psychology, the direction of socialization arose as an attempt to define the relationship in the subject-environment system through the category of the social context in which the child develops.

We begin the analysis of the concepts of this direction with the ideas of L.S. Vygotsky, according to which the mental development of a person should be considered in the cultural and historical context of his life.

From the point of view of today's understanding, the expression “cultural-historical” evokes associations with ethnography and cultural anthropology, taken from a historical perspective. But during the time of L.S. Vygotsky’s word “historical” carried the idea of ​​​​introducing the principle of development into psychology, and the word “cultural” implied the inclusion of the child in the social environment, which is the bearer of culture as the experience gained by humanity.

In the works of L.S. We will not find Vygotsky’s description of the socio-cultural context of that time, but we will see a specific analysis of the structures of interaction with the social environment surrounding him. Therefore, translated into modern language, perhaps, the theory of L.S. Vygotsky should be called “interactive-genetic”. “Interactive” - because it considers the child’s real interaction with the social environment in which the psyche and consciousness develop, and “genetic” - because the principle of development is implemented.

One of the fundamental ideas of L.S. Vygotsky - that in the development of a child’s behavior it is necessary to distinguish between two intertwined lines. One is natural “maturation”. The other is cultural improvement, mastery of cultural ways of behavior and thinking.

Cultural development consists of mastering such auxiliary means of behavior that humanity created in the process of its historical development and such as language, writing, number system, etc.; cultural development is associated with the assimilation of behavioral techniques that are based on the use of signs as a means for carrying out one or another psychological operation. Culture modifies nature in accordance with human goals: the method of action, the structure of the technique, the entire structure of psychological operations changes, just as the inclusion of a tool rearranges the entire structure of the labor operation. The child’s external activity can turn into internal activity; the external technique, as it were, grows and becomes internal (interiorized).

L.S. Vygotsky owns two important concepts that define each stage of age development - the concept of the social situation of development and the concept of new formation.

Under the social situation of development of L.S. Vygotsky had in mind the unique, age-specific, exclusive, unique and inimitable relationship that develops at the beginning of each new stage between a person and the reality around him, primarily social. The social situation of development represents the starting point for all changes possible in a given period, and determines the path by which a person acquires high-quality developmental formations.

Neoplasm L.S. Vygotsky defined it as a qualitatively new type of personality and human interaction with reality, absent as a whole at the previous stages of its development.

L.S. Vygotsky established that a child in mastering himself (his behavior) follows the same path as in mastering external nature, i.e. from outside. He masters himself as one of the forces of nature, with the help of a special cultural technique of signs. A child who has changed the structure of his personality is already a different child, whose social existence cannot but differ significantly from the existence of a child of an earlier age.

A leap in development (a change in the social situation of development) and the emergence of new formations are caused by fundamental developmental contradictions that develop towards the end of each segment of life and “push” development forward (for example, between maximum openness to communication and the absence of a means of communication - speech in infancy; between the growth subject skills and the inability to implement them in “adult” activities in preschool age, etc.).

Accordingly, the age of L.S. Vygotsky defined it as an objective category to designate three points:

1. chronological framework of a particular stage of development,
2. a specific social development situation emerging at a specific stage of development,
3. qualitative new formations arising under its influence.

In his periodization of development, he suggests alternating stable and critical ages. In stable periods (infancy, early childhood, preschool age, primary school age, adolescence, etc.) there is a slow and steady accumulation of minute quantitative changes in development, and in critical periods (newborn crisis, crisis of the first year of life, crisis of three years , crisis of seven years, puberty crisis, crisis of 17 years, etc.) these changes are detected in the form of abruptly occurring irreversible neoplasms.

At each stage of development there is always a central new formation, as if leading the entire development process and characterizing the restructuring of the child’s entire personality as a whole on a new basis. Around the main (central) neoplasm of a given age, all other partial neoplasms related to individual aspects of the child’s personality, and developmental processes associated with neoplasms of previous ages, are located and grouped.

Those developmental processes that are more or less directly related to the main neoplasm, L.S. Vygotsky calls the central lines of development at a given age, and calls all other partial processes and changes that occur at a given age secondary lines of development. It goes without saying that the processes that were the central lines of development at a given age become side lines in the next, and vice versa - the side lines of the previous age come to the fore and become central lines in the new one, as their meaning and specific weight in the overall structure change. development, their attitude towards the central neoplasm changes. Consequently, during the transition from one stage to another, the entire age structure is rebuilt. Each age has a specific, unique and unrepeatable structure.

Understanding development as a continuous process of self-movement, continuous emergence and formation of something new, he believed that new formations of “critical” periods are not subsequently preserved in the form in which they arise during the critical period, and are not included as a necessary component in the integral structure of the future personality. They die off, being absorbed by new formations of the next (stable) age, being included in their composition, dissolving and transforming into them.

Enormous multilateral work led L.S. Vygotsky to the construction of the concept of the connection between learning and development, one of the fundamental concepts of which is the zone of proximal development.

We determine by tests or other means the level of mental development of the child. But at the same time, it is completely insufficient to take into account what the child can and does today and now; it is important what he can and will be able to do tomorrow, what processes, even if not completed today, are already “ripening.” Sometimes, in order to solve a problem, a child needs a guiding question, an indication of how to solve it, etc. Then imitation arises, as everything that the child cannot do on his own, but which he can learn or which he can perform under the guidance or in collaboration with another, older or more knowledgeable person. But what a child can do today in cooperation and under guidance, tomorrow he becomes able to do independently. By examining what a child is able to accomplish independently, we are examining the development of yesterday. By examining what a child is capable of accomplishing in cooperation, we determine the development of tomorrow - the zone of proximal development.

L.S. Vygotsky criticizes the position of researchers who believe that a child must reach a certain level of development, his functions must mature, before learning can begin. It turns out, he believed, that learning “lags behind” development, development always goes ahead of learning, learning is simply built on top of development, without changing anything in essence.

L.S. Vygotsky proposed a completely opposite position: only that learning is good that is ahead of development, creating a zone of proximal development. Education is not development, but an internally necessary and universal moment in the process of development in a child of not natural, but cultural and historical characteristics of a person. In training, the prerequisites for future new formations are created, and in order to create a zone of proximal development, i.e. give rise to a number of internal development processes, properly constructed learning processes are needed.

Early death prevented L.S. Vygotsky to explicate his ideas. The first step in the implementation of his theory was taken in the late 30s. psychologists of the Kharkov school (A.N. Leontyev, A.V. Zaporozhets, P.I. Zinchenko, P.Ya. Galperin, L.I. Bozhovich, etc.) in a comprehensive program of research on the development of the child’s psyche (the role of leading activity in the mental development of the child, the content and structure of children's play, the consciousness of teaching, etc.) Its conceptual core was action, which acted both as a subject of research and as a subject of formation. The “Vygotchans” developed the concept of objective activity, which became the foundation of the psychological theory of activity.

Humanistic psychology emerged in the mid-20th century as a more optimistic third force in the study of personality (Maslow, 1968). It was a reaction against the external determinism advocated by learning theory and the internal determinism of sexual and aggressive instinctual drives assumed by Freud's theory. Humanistic psychology offers a holistic theory of personality and is closely related to the philosophy of existentialism. Existentialism is a direction of modern philosophy, the focus of which is the desire of man to find the meaning of his personal existence and to live freely and responsibly in accordance with ethical principles. Therefore, humanistic psychologists reject the determinism of drives, instincts or environmental programming. They believe that people themselves choose how to live. Humanistic psychologists place human potential above all else.

As a species, humans differ from other animals in their more developed ability to use symbols and think abstractly. For this reason, humanistic psychologists believe that numerous animal experiments provide little information about humans. A rat in a maze cannot theoretically comprehend the task before it, as a human would.

Psychologists of the humanistic direction attach equal importance to consciousness and the unconscious, considering them to be the main processes of human mental life. People view themselves and others as self-motivated beings seeking to creatively achieve their goals (May, 1986). The optimism of humanistic psychologists markedly distinguishes it from most other theoretical approaches. Let's take a closer look at the humanistic views of A. Maslow and C. Rogers.

An influential psychologist of the humanistic school is Abraham Maslow (1908-1970). His theory of the self, proposed in 1954, emphasizes every person's innate need for self-actualization—the development of one's full potential. According to Maslow's theory, self-actualization needs can only be expressed or satisfied after "lower" needs, such as the needs for safety, love, food and shelter, are satisfied. For example, a hungry child will not be able to concentrate on reading or drawing at school until he is fed.

Maslow built human needs in the form of a pyramid.

At the base of the pyramid are the basic physiological needs for survival; People, like other animals, need food, warmth and rest to survive. At a higher level is the need for security; people need to avoid danger and feel protected in everyday life. They cannot reach higher levels if they live in constant fear and anxiety. Once the rational needs for safety and survival are satisfied, the next most pressing need is the need to belong. People need to love and feel loved, to be in physical contact with each other, to communicate with other people, to be part of groups or organizations. After the needs of this level are satisfied, the need for self-respect is updated; people need positive reactions from others, ranging from simple confirmation of their basic abilities to applause and fame. All this gives a person a feeling of well-being and self-satisfaction.

When people are fed, clothed, sheltered, belong to a group, and have reasonable confidence in their abilities, they are ready to try to develop their full potential, that is, they are ready for self-actualization. Maslow (1954,1979) believed that the need for self-actualization plays no less important role for a person than the listed basic needs. “A person must become what he can become,” says Maslow. In a sense, the need for self-actualization can never be completely satisfied. It involves “the search for truth and understanding, the attempt to achieve equality and justice, the creation and pursuit of beauty” (Shaffer, 1977).

Another humanistic psychologist, Carl Rogers (1902-1987), had a great influence on pedagogy and psychotherapy. Unlike Freudians, who believe that human character is determined by internal drives, many of which are harmful to a person, Rogers (Rogers, 1980) was of the opinion that the core of human character is made up of positive, healthy, constructive impulses that begin to operate from birth. Like Maslow, Rogers was primarily interested in how people could be helped to realize their inner potential. Unlike Maslow, Rogers did not first develop a theory of staged personality development and then apply it in practice. He was more interested in the ideas that arose during his clinical practice. He found that the greatest personal growth in his patients (whom Rogers called clients) occurred when he truly and completely empathized with them and when they knew that he accepted them as they were. He called this "warm, positive, accepting" attitude positive. Rogers believed that the therapist's positive attitude contributed to the client's greater self-acceptance and greater tolerance of other people.

An assessment of humanistic psychology. Humanistic psychology has been effective in several ways. The emphasis on taking into account the richness of real-life possibilities acts as a stimulus for other developmental psychology approaches. In addition, she had a significant influence on adult counseling and the emergence of self-help programs. She also contributed to the dissemination of child-rearing methods based on respect for the uniqueness of each child, and pedagogical methods aimed at humanizing intra-school interpersonal relationships.

However, as a scientific or genetic psychology, the humanistic perspective has its limitations. Concepts such as self-actualization are not clearly defined and cannot be easily used in typical research projects. Moreover, the development of these concepts in relation to various segments of a person’s life path has not been completed. Humanistic psychologists can identify developmental changes that occur over the course of psychotherapy, but they have difficulty explaining normal human development across the lifespan. However, there is no doubt that humanistic psychology continues to influence counseling and psychotherapy by offering an alternative holistic approach that is critical of simplistic explanations of human thinking and behavior.

Theories of "I". The developing self is a central theme in several theories of adult and child development. These self theories center on the individual's self-concept, that is, his or her perception of personal identity. The authors of these theories use the self-concept as an integrator, filter and mediator of human behavior. They believe that people tend to engage in behavior that is consistent with their understanding of themselves. With a self-concept, adults in moments of crisis or the death of a loved one can critically reconsider their life history and try to understand their position in changing circumstances. As you will see in the appendix “Helping Young Mothers in Difficult Financial Conditions,” young mothers have little chance of escaping poverty if they do not value themselves.

One of the theories that puts the self-concept at the forefront is the theory of the developing “I”, owned by Robert Kegan.

Kegan's semantic systems. Robert Kegan (1982), drawing on a number of developmental theories, has proposed a unifying approach to the evolution of the self, which continues to develop throughout adulthood. Emphasizing the importance of meaning in human behavior, Kegan argues that the developing individual is in a continuous process of differentiating himself from the general mass and at the same time understanding his integration with the wider world.

Kegan believes that people continue to develop meaning systems even into adulthood. Drawing on Piaget's ideas and theories of cognitive development, he identifies several "levels of development of meaning systems" analogous to stages of development. These meaning systems then shape our experience, organize thinking and feeling, and serve as sources of our behavior.

As we grow older, our individual meaning systems become unique, yet retain commonality with the meaning systems of other people at the same stage of development. At each stage, the old becomes part of the new, just as in children a concrete understanding of the world becomes part of the initial data for thinking at the stage of formal operations. According to Kegan's theory, most people continue to structure and restructure their understanding of the world, even well into their thirties. This view is quite optimistic.

Awareness of the complexity and versatility of human mental development and the desire of scientists to explain its content have led to the development of a number of theories of human development. Each of them analyzes important aspects of personality development, but none has been able to describe the mental development of a person in all its complexity and diversity. To analyze and differentiate the content of these theories, the following problematic aspects are taken into account, presented in Fig. 1.14.

Analyzing the theoretical views that explain human development, the following approaches can be distinguished:

1) biogenetic, which focuses on the problems of human development as an individual endowed with certain anthropological properties, goes through various stages of maturation as the phylogenetic program is implemented in ontogenesis (biogenetic theories of S. Hall, M. Hutchinson, psychoanalytic approach of S. Freud)

2) sociogenetic - emphasis on the study of the processes of socialization of a person, his assimilation of social norms and roles, the acquisition of social attitudes and value orientations (learning theories of J. Watson, B. Skinner, A. Bandura), according to which a person acquires various forms of behavior through learning ;

Rice. 1.14. Aspects of differentiation of theories of mental development

3) representatives of the personogenetic approach (A. Maslow, K. Rogers) focus on the problems of activity, self-awareness and creativity of the individual, the formation of the human “I”, self-realization of personal choice, the search for the meaning of life;

4) theories of the cognitive direction (J. Bruner, J. Piaget) occupy an intermediate direction between biogenetic and sociogenetic approaches, since the genotypic program and the social conditions in which this program is implemented are considered the leading determinants of development;

5) a popular and influential theory of development has become ecological systems model(U. Bronfenbrenner), which considers mental development as a dual process of an individual restructuring his life environment and experiencing influence from the elements of this environment.

Biogenetic approaches to mental development

The actual scientific approach to the study of human mental development became possible on the basis of the evolutionary teachings of Charles Darwin. Within the framework of the biogenetic approach, the main theories are the theories of recapitulation by E. Haeckel and S. Hall, the psychoanalytic theory of Z. Freud.

The basis of the theory of recapitulation is the assertion that the human body in its intrauterine development repeats the entire series of forms that ancestor animals went through over hundreds of millions of years - from single-celled creatures to primitive man. Other scientists have expanded the time frame of biogenetic law beyond uterine development. Thus, Stanley Hall believed that if in 9 months an embryo repeats all stages of development from a single-celled creature to a human being, then a child, during the period of growing up, goes through the entire course of human development from primitive savagery to modern culture. This idea was developed by M. Hutchinson, who identified 5 periods of human culture, according to which the interests and needs of a child change from birth to adulthood:

Rice. 1.15. Periods of reproduction of human culture in ontogenesis

Thus, during the period of wildness, the child tends to dig in the ground, pulls everything into his mouth, edibility is the measure of everything. In human ontogenesis, this period lasts from birth to 4 years, reaching maximum development at 3 years. The content of the period of hunting and capturing prey is the child's fear of strangers, secret actions, cruelty, in the actions of children's groups, playing as prisoners, shelters. It lasts from 4 to 9 years, the main features appear at the age of 7 years. The period of shepherding is manifested through the child’s tenderness for animals, the desire to have his own pet, the construction of huts and underground structures. The duration of this stage is from 9 to 12 years, the peak occurs at 10 years. The next agricultural period is realized as a desire for gardening, lasts from 12 to 16 years, the peak occurs at 14 years. The specifics of the industrial and commercial period are monetary interests, exchange, trade. This stage begins at 16 years of age and continues into adulthood, reaching its peak of development at 18-20 years of age.

Arnold Gesell proposed an ethological interpretation of the evolutionary prerequisites for human behavior, believing that the basis of a child’s mental development is the instincts formed during phylogeny and laid down by genes. According to the scientist, the primary manifestation of the instinct of a newborn is crying, which forms the child’s emotional attachments in later life. The basic instincts of the newborn provide the basis for shaping the child's social experience during his sensitive periods. Gezzel developed and implemented a system for diagnosing the mental development of a child from birth to the end of adolescence, which was implemented on the basis of a longitudinal study.

Ethology - the study of the evolutionary background of behavior

Children, like plants, “bloom” according to the pattern or schedule provided by their genes.