Psychic vs Psychological Trauma: What's the Difference? Features of the human psyche and consciousness. The difference between the mental activity of animals and humans
In the section on the question, what is the difference between the human psyche and the psyche of animals? given by the author Irochka)) the best answer is some have nothing
Answer from Wake up[guru]
in fact, a giraffe thinks about the same thing as a person
Answer from Yes, no clicks[guru]
Animal mind is natural, human mind is artificial.
Answer from Neurologist[master]
Animals have consciousness, but no thinking.
Answer from hospitable[guru]
the absence of a huge pile of problems with which a person complicates life for himself and others.
Answer from Andry Titov[active]
I think that a person is more based on consciousness and thought, animals on impulsive desire, instinct.
Answer from Yoveta cool[guru]
the human psyche is 100 times more psychic and psychopathic than that of animals
Answer from Natalya Balbutskaya[guru]
Types of memory and attention color vision, a completely different range of sounds in humans, many animals hear sounds below or above the threshold that a person has, the same is true in smells. A person usually has a complex logical chain associations. And in an animal it’s easier - meat = food, water = drink))
In addition, a person can plan his actions, while an animal, although it has an algorithm of actions, mostly reacts to stimuli immediately.
Answer from Elena Filatova[guru]
Comparison of the psyche of animals with the human allows us to highlight the following main differences between them.
1. An animal can act only within the framework of a situation that is perceived directly, and all the acts it performs are limited by biological needs, that is, the motivation is always biological.
Animals don't do anything that doesn't serve them. biological needs. The concrete, practical thinking of animals makes them dependent on the immediate situation. Only in the process of orienting manipulation is the animal able to solve problematic problems. A person, thanks to abstract, logical thinking, can foresee events, do according to cognitive necessity - consciously.
Thinking is closely related to broadcasting. Animals only give signals to their relatives about their own emotional states, while a person with the help of language informs others in time and space, passing on social experience. Thanks to language, each person uses the experience that humanity has developed over the millennia and which it has never perceived directly.
2. Animals are able to use objects as tools, but no animal can create tools. Animals do not live in a world of permanent things, do not perform collective actions. Even watching the actions of another animal, they will never help each other, act together.
Only a person creates tools according to well-thought-out plans, uses them for their intended purpose and saves them for the future. He lives in a world of permanent things, uses tools together with other people, takes over the experience of using tools and passes them on to others.
3. The difference between the psyche of animals and humans is in feelings. Animals are also capable of experiencing positive or negative emotions, but only a person can sympathize with another person in grief or joy, enjoy pictures of nature, and experience intellectual feelings.
4. Conditions for the development of the psyche of animals and humans is the fourth difference. The development of the psyche in the animal world is subject to biological laws, and the development of the human psyche is determined by socio-historical conditions.
Both man and animal are characterized by instinctive reactions to stimuli, the ability to gain experience in life situations. However, only a person is capable of appropriating social experience that develops the psyche.
From the moment of birth, the child masters the ways of using tools and communication skills. This, in turn, develops the sensual sphere, logical thinking, forms the personality of the individual. A monkey in any conditions will manifest itself as a monkey, and a person will only become a person if his development takes place among people. This is confirmed by cases of raising human children among animals.
In some sciences, the concepts of "psyche" and "consciousness" are fundamental. Each of them has its own meaning. Let's try to uncover these terms and find out how the psyche differs from consciousness.
Definition
Psyche- this is a property belonging to some living beings, in particular to humans and animals, to reflect reality in a special way.
Consciousness- a complex manifestation of brain activity observed at the highest level mental development.
Comparison
The basis for the existence of both qualities is nervous activity. And the difference between the psyche and consciousness lies in the fact that it is the first of the two concepts that is basic.
People and creatures that are one step lower in their development have a psyche - animals. It is a function of the brain and acts as a kind of tool that helps to adapt to environment and survive. The processes occurring in the psyche can be elementary and very complex.
Aggregate higher manifestations such activity forms consciousness. At this level, only the human brain functions, but not animals. The latter are able to operate exclusively with visual thinking, acting on the basis of objective perception. This is true even for such "intelligent" creatures as monkeys, dolphins or dogs.
At the same time, the possibilities of consciousness human are not limited to the formation of images. Here great role plays a speech. It allows you to perform important abstract-logical operations and acquire new knowledge that can be transferred even through generations. People tend to plan and set goals. In addition, they tend to evaluate their own behavior and self-control.
Even the mental processes themselves, people, possessing consciousness, are able to control to some extent. This happens when, for example, we force ourselves to memorize a poem or focus on something on purpose. Animals with their simplest psyche cannot do this. Human consciousness has historically developed and exists together with his social and labor activity.
What is the difference between mind and consciousness? The fact that the latter, despite its complexity and versatility, is only part of the system. In all mental activity there is a lot of unconscious and not yet fully understood.
A.V. Petrovsky identifies the following significant differences between the psyche of animals and humans:
Differences in the thinking of man and animal. It has been proved by many experiments that only practical thinking is characteristic of higher animals. Human behavior is characterized by the ability to abstract from this particular situation and anticipate the consequences that may arise in connection with this situation. The "language" of animals and the language of man are different, and this also determines the difference in thinking.
The second difference between man and animal lies in his ability to create and preserve tools. outside specific situation the animal never singles out a tool as a tool, never saves it for use. Man, on the other hand, creates a tool according to a predetermined plan.
The third difference is in feelings. Both the animal and the person do not remain indifferent to what is happening around. However, only a person is able to empathize in grief and rejoice in another person.
The most important difference between the animal psyche and the human psyche lies in the conditions of their development. The development of the psyche of the animal world proceeded according to the laws of biological evolution. The development of the actual human psyche, of human consciousness, is subject to the laws of historical development. But only a person is able to appropriate the social experience that develops his psyche to the greatest extent.
3.4. Consciousness as the highest level of the psyche
A qualitatively new level of development of the psyche was the emergence of human consciousness. Consciousness - highest level human reflection of reality. The main condition for the emergence and development of human consciousness is the joint instrumental activity of people mediated by speech. Consciousness is interpreted in domestic psychology as the highest form inherent only in man. mental reflection reality in the light of historically established social relations and sociocultural experience. Along with sociocultural conditioning, consciousness is characterized by activity, intentionality (focus on a specific object), varying degrees of clarity, motivational-value character and the ability to reflect - self-observation and reflection of one's own contents.
Two fundamental problems of consciousness fall into the sphere of scientific interests of psychology: 1) the socially conditioned nature of the formation of consciousness in ontogenesis; 2) dynamic ratio of conscious and unconscious substructures in an integral system human psyche.
The psychological structure of consciousness includes the following most important characteristics: the first characteristic of consciousness is already given in its name: consciousness is knowledge about the surrounding world. A person acquires knowledge through cognitive processes; the second characteristic of consciousness is the difference between subject and object, fixed in it, that is, what belongs to the “I” of a person and his “not-I”; the third characteristic of consciousness is the provision of goal-setting human activity; the fourth characteristic is the presence of emotional evaluations in interpersonal relationships.
The characteristics of consciousness are formed in the speech activity of people.
Unconscious
Not all mental phenomena are perceived by man. Some phenomena of reality that a person perceives, but is not aware of this perception, are fixed by the lower level of the psyche, which in turn forms the unconscious. The unconscious is understood as a specific form of reflection of reality, in which no account is given of the actions performed, the completeness of orientation in time and place of action is lost, and speech regulation of behavior is violated. The unconscious principle is represented in almost all mental processes, properties and states of a person. The sphere of the unconscious includes all mental phenomena that occur in a dream; some pathological phenomena; human reactions arising in response to sensations that actually affect a person, but are not felt by him; movements that were conscious in the past, but through repetition have become automated and therefore no longer conscious.
For the first time, the unconscious in the structure of personality was singled out by Z. Freud. According to his theory, the personality structure includes three spheres: the unconscious (id - "it"), consciousness (ego - "I"), superego ("super - I"). In the development of mental states, Z. Freud singled out a number of mechanisms, which he called the defense mechanisms of the “I”. These include the mechanisms of denial, repression, projection, rationalization, inclusion, compensation, identification, sublimation. Psychological defense mechanisms work in a complex.
At present, the question of the relationship between the unconscious and the conscious remains complex and is not resolved unambiguously.
Division into psychological and mental, as a norm and pathology, is historically understandable, but terminologically unjustified. If they say that a person mental problems- most often, in fact, they mean psychotic problems, which narrows the concept of the psyche to psychosis, extreme form mental disorders. And if they want to say that a person is experiencing universal human difficulties, then they are talking about psychological problems, which, strictly speaking, is very strange, because psychological problems can only be in the scientific sense (yes, science psychology many problems), and a person can only have mental problems. To speak of "psychological problems" in a person is as semantically incorrect as to speak of " medical problems instead of "health problems".
Nevertheless, not only in everyday life, but also in science, two concepts have taken root: "human psyche" and "human psychology". Thus the word "psychology" became a defense against the recognition of the disturbing truth that every human being is endowed with a psyche. It must be admitted that psychologists themselves greatly contributed to this, avoiding the use of the word "psyche" in every possible way. And the word "psychology" has become too tightly incorporated in its second, figurative, meaning into speech, that it is already impossible to refuse this meaning of the word. For example, the phrase " psychological support" cannot be replaced by "psychic support." The word "mental", however, has become more negative character, and the phrase "mental support" will rather cause associations with "mental processing".
Incidentally, the definition of psychology as the science of the soul is historically understandable, but not justified. The term "soul" (in Greek "psyche") has exclusively religious significance and is not used today among scientific terms in psychology. The soul was "studied" by religious philosophers, and modern psychologists study the psyche, or rather, its manifestations.
However, if someone is frightened by the word "psyche" by association with "mental illness", then he should also be frightened by the word "soul" by association with " mental illness". However, I must admit, the word "psychic" is more repulsive, and, obviously, the merit of this, first of all, is psychiatrists.
But if a person is "afraid" of everything that is connected with the psychic, there must be many reasons for this.
Of course, these difficulties and confusion in concepts are connected not only with historical development these two sciences about the human psyche, but also with the history of attitudes towards people who have mental illness. It is unlikely that psychiatry and psychiatrists could earn confidence when, just a few decades ago, such barbaric methods of "treatment" as electroconvulsive therapy and lobectomy were used (remember, for example, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest").
But it's not even about the horrors of psychiatric clinics that we read about in books and saw in the movies. The point is, first of all, in doctors, whose task is to treat, for which it is necessary to study the disease. And the doctors who studied mental illness, talked about the psyche only in connection with the disease. But worse than that, because doctors treat the sick, anyone who turned to a doctor who treats mental illness turned out, as if immediately, to be mentally ill.
And this is the main frightening meaning of the word "psyche". And the point is not even that if a person turns to a psychiatrist, or even talks about problems with the psyche, those around him are immediately attributed to "crazy", so to speak, they stick a label, although this is very important.
Thinking about the mental is creepy, because a mentally ill person can almost never notice their mental problems, and we all know about it. Of course, psychiatrists know about this, and we also know about it. And we are terrified of the very fact of a visit to a psychiatrist (and, at the same time, to a psychoneurologist, psychologist or psychoanalyst), because we are afraid not only of what they can find in us psychical deviations, and to a greater extent, that they will not even try to tell us the truth about this.
But some people gather courage and come to a psychologist, despite the fact that the name of his specialty contains the root "crazy".
As a rule, people come to a psychologist for advice.
But who is a psychologist to give advice?
The psyche and consciousness are so close, but different concepts. Having a narrow and broad understanding of each of these words can confuse anyone. However, in psychology, the concepts of the psyche and consciousness have been successfully separated, and despite their close relationship, it is quite easy to see the border between them.
How is consciousness different from the psyche?
Psyche, if we consider the term in broad sense, are all mental processes realized by a person. Consciousness is the process of controlling a person by himself, which is also conscious. Considering the concepts in a narrower sense, it turns out that the psyche is aimed at the perception and evaluation of the external world, and consciousness allows you to evaluate the inner world and realize what is happening in the soul.
The psyche and consciousness of man
Speaking of general characteristics these concepts, it is worth paying attention to the main each of them. Consciousness is the highest form of mental reflection of reality and has the following properties:
- knowledge of the surrounding world;
- distinction between subject and object (“I” of a person and his “not-I”);
- setting a person's goals;
- relation to different objects of reality.
In a narrow sense, consciousness is seen as highest form psyche, and the psyche itself - as the level of the unconscious, i.e. those processes that are not realized by the person himself. The area of the unconscious includes a variety of phenomena - responses, unconscious behavioral patterns, etc.
The development of the human psyche and consciousness
The development of the psyche and consciousness is usually considered from different points vision. So, for example, the problem of the development of the psyche includes three aspects:
It is believed that the emergence of the psyche is associated with the development of the nervous system, thanks to which the whole organism functions as a whole. Nervous system includes irritability, as the ability to change state under the influence external factors, and sensitivity, which allows you to recognize and respond to adequate and inadequate stimuli. It is sensitivity that is considered the main indicator of the emergence of the psyche.
Consciousness is peculiar only to man - it is he who is able to realize the flow mental processes. Animals do not have this. It is believed that the main role in the emergence of such a difference is played by labor and speech.
