The theme is the basic theory of mental development. Concepts of mental development of the child

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

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

2. The laws of the mental development of the child according to L.S. Vygotsky………………4

3.Theoretical and practical significance of the phenomenon of the "Zone of the nearest

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………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

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 the psychology of the child is the book of the German Darwinian scientist W. Preyer "The Soul of the 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 dealt with the problems of general psychology, who at the same time, one way or another, would not deal with the problems of the development of the psyche.

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. N. Leontiev, P. Ya. Galperin, D. B. Elkonin and others.

Development, first of all, is characterized by qualitative changes, the emergence of neoplasms, 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, dismemberment of the previously single element; the emergence of new aspects, new elements in development itself; restructuring of links between the sides of the object. Each of these processes corresponds to the listed development criteria.

At first, the task of developmental psychology was to accumulate facts and arrange them in a temporal sequence. This task corresponded to the strategy of observation, which led to the accumulation of various facts that had to be brought into the system, to identify the stages and stages of development, in order to then identify the main trends and general patterns of the development process itself and, in the end, to 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 studied phenomenon under certain controlled conditions, measure its quantitative characteristics and give a qualitative description.

At present, a new research strategy is being intensively developed - the strategy of the formation of mental processes, active intervention, the construction of a process with given properties, to which we owe 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 - the research of D. B. Elkonin, in which a strategy for the formation of personality was developed not in laboratory conditions, but in real life - by creating experimental schools.

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

All the scientific activity of L.S. Vygotsky was aimed at enabling psychology to move "from a purely descriptive, empirical and phenomenological study of phenomena to the disclosure of their essence." He introduced a new - experimental genetic method for the study of 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 child's cultural development." 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, specifics and driving forces of the mental development of the child; described the epochs, stages and phases of child development, as well as the transitions between them in the course of ontogenesis; he revealed and formulated the basic laws of the mental development of the child.

L.S. Vygotsky defined the field of his research as "top psychology" (the psychology of consciousness), which opposes the other two - "superficial" (behavior theory) and "deep" (psychoanalysis). He considered consciousness as "a problem of the structure of behavior".

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

It can be rightfully asserted that L.S. Vygotsky accomplished the task of restructuring psychology on the basis of a 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, in the process of his historical development, man has risen to the point of creating new driving forces for his behavior; only in the course of man's social life did his new needs arise, take shape and develop, and the natural needs of man themselves underwent profound changes in the process of his historical development.

According to L.S. Vygotsky, higher mental functions initially arise as a form of the child's collective behavior, as a form of cooperation with other people, and only later 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 experiences of the child. L.S. Vygotsky introduced the concept of key experience. As L.I. Bozhovich rightly pointed out later, “the concept of experiencing, 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; various influences of various external and internal circumstances are tied.

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

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

L.S. Vygotsky emphasized the unity of hereditary and social elements in the process of development. Heredity is present in the development of all the child's mental functions, but it seems to have a different proportion. Elementary functions (beginning with sensations and perception) are more hereditarily conditioned than higher ones (arbitrary 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 in different age periods;

2) unevenness (in the development of the 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 g - speech, a preschooler - memory, 3-4 g - correction of speech defects);

4) compensation (manifested in the ability of the psyche to compensate for the lack of some functions due to the development of others; for example, other qualities are aggravated in blind people - hearing, tactile sensations, smell)

Vygotsky singled out 2 levels (zones) of mental development:

1) Zone of actual development (ZAR) - those ZUN, actions that are in the child's psyche today; what the child can do on their own.

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

TRAINING should be based on ZPD. Training, according to L.S. Vygotsky, leads the development "pulls" him along. But it should not, at the same time, be divorced from the development of the child. A significant gap, artificial running ahead without taking into account the child's capabilities will lead to coaching at best, but will not have a developing 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. This law is connected with L.S. Vygotsky’s hypothesis about the systemic and semantic structure of consciousness.

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 later do they become internal individual (forms) functions of the child himself. Distinctive features of higher mental functions: mediation, awareness, arbitrariness, consistency; they are formed in vivo; they are formed as a result of the mastery of special tools, means developed in the course of the historical development of society; The development of external mental functions is associated with learning in the broad sense of the word; it cannot take place except 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

GOU VPO "Tobolsk State Social and Pedagogical Academy

named after D.I. Mendeleev".

Department of Psychology

Theories of mental development

Abstract made by:

Student of group 21

Faculty of Foreign Languages

Krasnova Yu.Yu.

Checked: Ph.D.

Bostandzhieva T.M.

Tobolsk 2010

Introduction

The main theories of mental development received their formalization 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 a difference in the understanding of mental development, as well as the laws and conditions of its course. 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 the individual. At the same time, the formation 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 features of behavior, to identify the mechanisms for the formation of certain mental qualities of a person.

In Western psychology, the mental development of a person 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 Z. Freud proposed his own interpretation of the 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 evaluation of Freud's ideas have lasted for decades. According to Freud's views, shared by a significant number of his followers, human activity depends on instinctive urges, 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, slow them down.

Instinctive drives are thus forced out of 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 retaining 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, instinctive 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 the identification of unconscious complexes and the promotion of their awareness, which leads to overcoming the internal conflicts of the individual (method of psychoanalysis). Among such motivating causes, for example, was the Oedipus complex.

Its essence is that in early childhood, each child is supposed to have a dramatic situation that resembles the conflict that is the main content of the tragedy of the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles "Oedipus Rex": ignorantly, the son's incestuous love 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 (the Oedipus complex) collides with another force - the fear of terrible punishment for incestuous sexual urges (the catastrophe complex). Freud's desire to bring out all the activity of the individual from sexual urges alone (then "death drive" was added to them) met with objections from many psychologists, which became one of the reasons for the birth of neo-Freudianism (K. Horney and others), which is characterized by a combination of classical Freudianism with certain departures from it. In understanding the personality, neo-Freudians refuse the priority of sexual drives and move away from the biologization of a person.

The dependence of the individual on the environment comes to the fore. At the same time, the personality acts as a projection of the social environment, by which the personality is allegedly automatically determined.

The environment projects its most important qualities onto a person, they become forms of activity of this person (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 authoritative persons, 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. "Rootal 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 opposite to conscious goals. Recognizing that "things are not what they seem" that human behavior and consciousness are highly determined by unconscious motives that can evoke seemingly irrational feelings and behavior.

Explanation of the continuing influence of the specifics of the treatment of significant others in very early childhood on the nature of adult experiences. From this point of view, early life experiences lead to the formation of stable inner worlds that emotionally charge the constructions of the outer worlds and their emotional experience. Inner worlds are created in very early childhood and represent the constructed grounds for the passage of life - psychic reality.

Statement as the main regulator of the mental life of an individual of psychological protection, aimed at overcoming internal anxiety. It is common for virtually all schools of psychoanalysis to recognize that consciousness and our inner versions of the world - established in childhood - are systematically altered in order to avoid anxiety. Psychological defense is aimed at creating internal versions of the world that reduce anxiety and make life more bearable. Since psychological defense often manifests itself unconsciously, it is precisely with the action of its mechanisms that many of our irrational actions and ideas are connected.

The nature of human difficulties is connected with the resolution of the main conflict between the Self and the Super-Self, that is, the requirements of the individual and the requirements of society, which gives rise to anxiety. To cope with anxiety, a person includes psychological defenses. However, such inclusion sometimes leads to incomplete development of the personality. Man is not what he really is. And how it should be for others (as a rule, those rigid patterns of behavior that were laid down in early childhood).

The main method: free association analysis, which is used in the analysis of errors, sedums, slips of the tongue, slips of the tongue, accidental or symptomatic actions, analysis of the client's dreams, introspection, transference analysis, interpretation of resistance, emotional relearning.

The goal is to bring the repressed, affectively charged material of the unconscious into the light of consciousness, in order to include its energy in vital activity. What is possible, according to Z. Freud, with emotional response (catharsis).

Advantages of the psychoanalytic theory of personality:

Exploration of the unconscious, the use of clinical methods, non-traditional insights, methods of therapeutic practice, the study of real experiences and problems of the client.

Flaws:

Social learning theory

Theories of personality in the perspective of social learning are primarily theories of learning. At the beginning of its formation, the theory of social learning attached extreme importance to the ideas of reinforcement, but modern theory has acquired a pronounced cognitive (cognitive - cognitive) character. The importance of reinforcement has been taken into account in terms that describe a thinking and knowing person who has expectations and ideas.

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

Departure from classical behaviorism. In the late 1930s, 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 the psychoanalytic theory of personality into the language of C. 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 back to the theorists such as Kurt Lewin and Edward Tolman. As regards the social and interpersonal aspects of this theory, the work of George Herbert Mead and Harry Stack Sullivan.

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

Take Julian Rotter's theory as an example:

Rotter's theory has several important features. First, Rotter takes t. sp. 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 goes to great lengths to use operational definitions that establish real measuring 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 takes place in an environment that is significant for a person, teeming 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 (expectation). It is also distinguished by the use of the empirical law of effect. Reinforcement is anything that causes movement towards or away from the goal.

Finally, this theory prioritizes performance over behavior acquisition.

Basic concepts. Rotter's theory requires four concepts or variables to predict the behavior of an individual. First of all, it is the behavioral potential (BP). This variable characterizes the potential of any given behavior that occurs 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 expectancy (E). It is an individual's estimate of the likelihood that a certain reinforcement will appear as a result of a specific behavior implemented in a particular situation. Expectations are subjective and do not necessarily match the actuarial probability calculated in an objective way from previous reinforcement. The perceptions of the individual play a decisive role here.

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

Finally, the psychologist herself. situation, according to the social learning theory, serves as an important predictive factor. For an accurate prediction of behavior in any situation, it is necessary to understand psychol. the significance of the situation in terms of its impact on both the value of reinforcements and expectations.

Problem Solving Expectations. In recent years, a large number of research 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 about how problem situations should be interpreted in order to facilitate their resolution. People vary widely in these cognitions. The subject of these studies. steel, ch. arr., two types of generalized expectations: internal/external reinforcement control (locus of control) and interpersonal trust. In the first case, people differ in their beliefs in whether the events happening to them are due to 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 expect others to tell the truth, while there are those who believe otherwise. On the other hand, how people approach the problems they face will depend greatly 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.

Kelly's main source of personality development is the environment, the social environment. The cognitive theory of personality emphasizes the influence of intellectual processes on human behavior. In this theory, any person is compared with a scientist who tests hypotheses about the nature of things and makes a forecast of 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 learns the world, but also establishes interpersonal relationships. The constructs that underlie these relationships are called personality constructs (Fransella 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 personality constructs, and also formulated the fundamental postulate and 11 consequences.

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

People differ not only in the number of constructs, but also in their location. Those constructs that are actualized in consciousness faster are called superordinate, and those that are slower - subordinate. For example, if, upon meeting a person, you immediately evaluate him in terms of whether he is smart or stupid, and only then - good or evil, then your "smart-stupid" construct is superordinate, and the "kind- 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, while the other does not have such a 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. In personality dominates predominantly "conscious". The unconscious can only refer to distant (subordinate) constructs, which a person rarely uses when interpreting perceived events.

Kelly believed that the individual has limited free will. The constructive system that has developed in a person during 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 head. Ultimately, according to cognitivists, the fate of a person 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 their 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 "nuclear" constructs is about 50 main constructs that are at the top of the constructive system, i.e. in the constant focus of operational consciousness. People use 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.

The holistic properties of the personality act as a result of the joint functioning of both blocks, all constructs. There are two types of integral personality:

cognitively complex personality with a large number of constructs

a cognitively simple personality with a small set of constructs.

A cognitively complex personality, in comparison with a cognitively simple one, has the following characteristics:

1) has better mental health;

2) cope 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 ("repertoire grid test") (Fransella F., Bannister D., 1987).

The subject compares triads simultaneously 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 this subject) in order to identify such psychological characteristics that two of the compared three people have, but are absent from the third person.

For example, you have to compare the teacher you love with your wife (or husband) and yourself. Suppose you think that you and your teacher have a common psychological property - sociability, and your spouse (s) does not have such a quality. Therefore, in your constructive system there is such a construct - "sociability-non-sociability". 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 peculiar hierarchy of constructs.

To the control question "Why are some people more aggressive than others?" cognitivists answer: aggressive people have a special constructive system of personality. 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.

It is due to them that it turned to the realm of the unconscious, the possibility of carrying out large-scale psychotherapeutic practice, the strengthening of ties 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, obeying a certain technology of society, the rules and norms that are imposed on them. But the system of prescriptions cannot provide for all specific variants of situations or life cases, and a person is forced to choose. Freedom of choice and responsibility for it are the criteria of the personal level of self-consciousness.

Bibliography

1. Petroshevsky A.V., Yaroshevsky M.T. Psychology. Textbook for higher. Ped. Un. - 2nd ed. - M.: - Publishing center "Academy", 2000. - 512p.

2. Psychology of personality: Pod. Ed. Yu.B. Gippenreiter. - M:, 1985

3. Leontiev 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 the main attention to the knowledge of the source of this movement.

The first concept tells us almost nothing, it can be said to be dry, dead. And the second gives life. It alone is the key to the self-movement 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 sense of the word. Since development is depicted as an exclusively numerical increase in innate qualities, it occurs in stages, evolutionarily, there is no place for the appearance of new formations, jumps, revolutionary changes or interruptions. The main principle, which guides the supporters of the evolutionist concept, is the ratio of continuity and continuity.

The evolutionist concept has a whole chain of erroneous methodological conclusions, which 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 conception find it acceptable to transfer the laws of one stage of development to all others. In most cases, this happens mechanically, by transferring them from the bottom up. So, 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-materialistic conception of the development of the psyche is the opposite of the evolutionary one. The Marxist theory of development is based on two main principles. And the first is dialectical. He determines the meaning and place of development, his research in the general concept. The regularities of all mental phenomena are considered only in their development. It also determines the interpretation of development itself.

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

The second principle of this concept is materialistic. The product of organic life was, is and will be the psyche. 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, directly, the psyche is associated with humoral and chemical regulation.

For the psyche, the autonomic nervous system plays an important role, because it is involved in the humoral regulation of the life of the body. In turn, this system interacts with the somatic system 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.

The consciousness of a person is established by his being, and being is a brain, an organism with its natural features, an activity due to which a person historically develops, 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 question of the relationship between the psyche and the material carrier (the brain) is solved 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 continuity of structure and function in organic development. Such unity means that, moving to the higher stages of development, the comparative independence of the function from the structure and the probability of a functional change in activity without changes in the structure increase.

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

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 booming developmental psychology is acquiring three lines of research:

1. proper area 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 revealing patterns of phylogeny. However, the opposite effect was also observed, according to which phylogenesis allowed us to take a fresh look at ontogeny. This relationship between ontogeny and phylogeny was called by E. Haeckel the biogenetic law, which implies the repetition in ontogenesis in an abbreviated and condensed form of the history of phylogeny (the theory of recapitulation). 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 up attracted research forces. So, in America, S. Hall (1846-1924) begins work, with whose name the foundation of pedology, a complex science about children, including pedagogy, psychology, physiology, etc., will subsequently be associated. child.

A student of W. Wundt, S. Hall, directly responding to the needs of the American school, began to read a course of lectures on the psychology of childhood. But lecturing teachers required a description of the actual content of the child's psyche. To do this, S. Hall did not use the experimental methods he learned in the Wundtian laboratory, but questionnaires that were distributed to teachers in order to collect information about how children represent the world around them. These questionnaires were soon expanded and standardized. They included questions, in response to which schoolchildren had to report their feelings (in particular, moral and religious), about their attitude towards other people, about early memories, etc. Then, thousands of responses were statistically processed in order to present a complete 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 complex 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. Thus, for example, the study of the psyche of children with the help of questionnaires introduced the techniques of introspective psychology into the psychology of childhood. S. Hall also owned the idea of ​​constructing childhood ages based on the theory of recapitulation, according to which the child in his individual development briefly repeats the main stages in the history of the entire human race. This theory was modeled on the biogenetic law put forward by E. Haeckel and which stated that the history of the development of an individual organism succinctly repeats the main stages of development of a whole 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 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.

A critical attitude to the position of S. Hall was expressed by many American and European psychologists. The method of asking children about their own mental states was negatively assessed, for example, by T. Ribot, who opposed the emerging test method to it as an objective one that allows one to make judgments about the mental development of children not on the basis of what they say about themselves, but on the basis of reality. their specially selected tasks.

The earliest of the actual psychological theories of development is the concept of recapitulation, in which E. Haeckel formulated the biogenetic law in relation to embryogenesis (ontogeny is a short and quick repetition of phylogenesis), and the American psychologist S. Hall transferred it to ontogenesis: the child briefly repeats in his 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 either.

The theory of recapitulation did not play the role of an explanatory principle for long, but the ideas of S. Hall had a significant impact on child psychology through the studies of two of his famous students - A.L. Gesell and L. Termen. Modern psychology relates their work to the development of a normative approach to development.

A. Gesell's theory of maturation. A. Gesell owes psychology the introduction of the longitudinal (longitudinal) method, i.e. a longitudinal study of the mental development of the same children from birth to adolescence, which he proposed to call "biographical-laboratory". In addition, while 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.

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

Summarizing the data of 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 studies 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 a simple increase, biological growth, maturation - "increase in behavior", without analyzing the 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 a decrease in the rate of development with age (or a decrease in the "density" of development): the younger the child, the faster changes in his behavior occur.

A. Gesell focused on the biological model of development, in which cycles of renewal, integration, balance alternate, and within the framework of this approach to understanding development, he could not answer the question of what is hidden behind the change in the pace of development. This is understandable, because the result of the cross-sectional (transverse and longitudinal) methods of research used by him was the identification of development and growth.

L. Theremin's normative approach. 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 and above, and carefully monitored their development. The study continued until the mid-1970s. and ended after the death of L. Termen. Unfortunately, such a large-scale work, contrary to expectations, did not give grounds for broad generalizations and serious conclusions: according to L. Termen, "genius" is associated with better health, higher mental endowments 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, lies in the fact that they laid the foundation for its formation as a normative discipline that describes 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 classic American trend in the study of childhood. This is where the study of the problems of “acceptance of roles”, “personal growth” originates, since it was within its framework that studies of such important developmental conditions as the sex of the child and birth order were first conducted. In the 40-50s. 20th century normative studies of emotional responses in children were initiated (A. Jerseyld et al.). In the 70s. 20th century on the same basis, E. Maccoby and K. Jacqueline studied the features of the mental development of children of different sexes. The studies of J. Piaget, J. Bruner, J. Flavell and others were partially oriented towards the normative approach.

But already in the 60s. 20th century qualitative changes began to emerge in normative studies. If earlier psychology 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 one or another type of development. The posing of new problems led psychologists to develop new empirical research, which in turn made it possible to reveal new phenomena in child development. So, at that 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 down cognitive activity were described, the deep relationship between mother and infant was studied, etc.

The theory of three stages of development of K. Buhler. Researchers in European countries were more interested in analyzing the qualitative features of the development process. They were interested in the stages or stages in the development of behavior in phylo and ontogeny. So the Austrian psychologist K. Buhler proposed the theory of three stages of development: instinct, training, intelligence. K. Buhler associated these stages, their emergence not only with the maturation of the brain and the complication of relations with the environment, but also with the development of affective processes, with the development of the experience of pleasure associated with action. In the course of the evolution of behavior, a transition of pleasure "from the end to the beginning" is noted. In his opinion, the first stage - instincts - is characterized by the fact that pleasure comes as a result of satisfying an instinctive need, that is, after performing an action. At the level of skills, pleasure is transferred to the act itself. There was a concept: "functional pleasure". But there is also an 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 behind the development of behavior. K. Buhler transferred this scheme to ontogeny. Carrying out experiments on children, K. Buhler noticed the similarity between 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 a chimpanzee-like age. The study of the child with the help of a zoopsychological experiment was an important step towards the creation of child psychology as a science. Note that not long before this, W. Wundt wrote that child psychology is generally impossible, since self-observation is not available to the child.

K. Buhler 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 the same denominator and ignored the fundamental originality of the development of the child. K. Buhler shared with almost all 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 the concept of K. Buhler was given by K. Lorenz. He pointed out that K. Buhler's idea of ​​the superstructure in the process of phylogenesis of the higher levels of behavior over the lower ones is contrary to the truth. According to K. Lorenz, these are three lines of development, independent of each other, arising at a certain stage of the animal kingdom. Instinct does not prepare training, training does not precede the intellect. Developing the thoughts of K. Lorenz, D.B. Elkonin emphasized that there is no impassable line between the stage of intellect and the stage of training. A skill is a form of existence of an intellectually acquired behavior, so there may be a different sequence of behavior development: first the intellect, and then the skill. If this is true for animals, then it is even more true for a child. In the development of a child, conditioned reflexes occur in the second or third week of life. You can not call a child an instinctive animal - a child must even be taught to suck!

K. Buhler is deeper than St. Hall, stands on the positions of the biogenetic approach, as it extends it to the entire animal world. And although the theory of K. Buhler today no longer has supporters, its significance lies in the fact that, as D.B. Elkonin, poses the problem of childhood history, the history of postnatal development.

The origins of mankind are lost, and the history of childhood is also lost. Monuments of culture in relation to children are poor. 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 a child's mental development.

Theory of learning I.P. Pavlov and J. Watson.

Another approach to the analysis of the problem of development, which has a rather long history, is associated with the general principles of behaviorism. This trend has deep roots in empirical philosophy and is most consistent with American ideas about a person: a person is what his environment, his environment, makes of him. This is a direction in American psychology, for which the concept of development is identified with the concept of learning, the acquisition of new experience. The ideas of I.P. Pavlova. American psychologists perceived in 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 an impetus for J. Watson to develop a new concept of psychology. This is too general. The very idea of ​​conducting a rigorous scientific experiment, created by I.P. Pavlov to study the digestive system. The first description of I.P. Pavlov of such an experiment was 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 ​​a relationship between 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 a real natural science research, which is still so highly valued in American psychology: objectivity, accuracy (control of all conditions), availability for measurement. It is known that I.P. Pavlov persistently rejected any attempts to explain the results of experiments with conditioned reflexes by referring 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's study what man does!"

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

In the earliest studies of learning, the idea of ​​a combination of stimulus and response, conditioned and unconditioned stimuli, came to the fore: the time parameter of this connection was singled out. This is how the associationist concept of learning arose (J. Watson, E. Gasri). When the attention of researchers was attracted by 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 a stimulus and a response, depends on such states of the subject as hunger, thirst, pain, which have received the name drive in American psychology, led to more complex theoretical concepts of learning - the concepts of N. Miller and K. Hull. The last 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 the motivation and cognitive development of the child.

Later, American scientists turned to the analysis of the orienting reflex as a necessary condition for the development of a new neural connection, 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 properties of the stimulus as intensity, complexity, novelty, color, uncertainty, etc., carried out by the Canadian psychologist D. Berline. However, D. Berlein, like many other scientists, considered the orienting reflex precisely as a reflex - in connection with the problems of the neurophysiology of the brain, and not from the standpoint of the organization and functioning of mental activity, from the standpoint of orienting research activity.

Another idea of ​​the Pavlovian experiment was refracted in the minds of American psychologists in a special way - 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 at the request of the experimenter (B. Skinner). Such a mechanistic approach to behavior completely ignored the need for the subject to orient himself in the conditions of his own action.

Theories of E. Thorndike and B. Skinner. When the attention of researchers was attracted by 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 Pavlovian idea of ​​constructing a new behavioral act in an animal directly in the laboratory resulted in B. Skinner's idea of ​​"behavior technology", 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, stretched over long 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.

The main concept of B. Skinner is reinforcement, i.e. an increase or decrease in the likelihood that the corresponding act of behavior will be repeated 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 - the dissatisfaction of the parents, the 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. The primary reinforcement is food, water, extreme cold or heat, and so on. Conditioned reinforcement - originally neutral stimuli that acquired a reinforcing function due to the combination with the primary forms of reinforcement (the type of drill in the dentist's office, sweets, etc.). Punishment can remove positive reinforcement or provide negative reinforcement. Reward does 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 likely to behave correctly if their behavior is noticed and approved by their 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 be considered only a particular explanatory principle in teaching. In the experiments of E. Thorndike (study of acquired forms of behavior), in the studies of I.P. Pavlova (the study of the physiological mechanisms of learning) emphasized the possibility of the emergence of new forms of behavior on an instinctive basis. It was shown that under the influence of the environment, hereditary forms of behavior are overgrown with acquired skills and abilities. As a result of these studies, there was confidence that everything in human behavior can be created, if only there were 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 the conditions of life? The philosophical dispute between nativists (“there are innate ideas”) and empiricists (“man is a blank slate”) is connected with the solution of this problem.

The mechanistic interpretation of human behavior, brought to its logical end in the concept of B. Skinner, could not but cause violent indignation of many humanistically minded scientists.

The well-known representative of humanistic psychology K. Rogers opposed his position to B. Skinner, emphasizing that freedom is the realization that a person can live on his own, “here and now”, by his own choice. It is the courage that makes a person able to enter into the uncertainty of the unknown, which he chooses for himself. It is the understanding of meaning within oneself. According to Rogers, a person who expresses his thoughts deeply and boldly acquires his own uniqueness, responsibly "chooses himself." He may have the happiness of choosing among a hundred external alternatives, or the misfortune of having none. But in all cases, his freedom nonetheless 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 the experimental material should be collected. The fact is that B. Skinner's experiments were often performed on one or more subjects. In modern psychology, many researchers believed that patterns of behavior could only be obtained by sifting through individual differences and random deviations. This can be achieved only by averaging the behavior of many subjects. This attitude has led to an even greater expansion of the scope of research, the development of special techniques for quantitative data analysis, the search for new ways of studying learning, and with it development research.

The theory of development by S. Bijou and D. Baer. The traditions of B. Skinner were continued by S. Bijou and D. Baer, ​​who also use the concepts of behavior and reinforcement. Behavior can be reactive (responsive) or operant. Stimuli can be physical, chemical, organismal or social. They can evoke reciprocal behavior or enhance operant behavior. Instead of individual stimuli, whole complexes often act. Special attention is given to differentiation stimuli, which are attitudinal and perform the function of intermediate variables that change the influence of the main stimulus.

The distinction between reciprocal and operant behavior is of particular importance for developmental psychology. Operant behavior creates stimuli, which, in turn, significantly influence the 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 is the cause of the changes that occur to a person throughout his life, S. Bijou and D. Baer essentially introduce the concept of interaction. Despite the wide spread 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. the 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 response, as well as exploratory behavior; ends with the emergence of speech behavior;
2. main stage: increasing liberation from organismal restrictions (the need for sleep decreases, muscle strength and dexterity increase); the emergence of speech as a second signal system; expanding the range of relationships from biologically significant persons of the immediate environment to the whole family. This stage is divided into:
   • early childhood, family socialization, first independence;
   • for middle childhood: socialization in elementary school, development of social, intellectual and motor skills;
   • on youth: heterosexual socialization.
3. social stage (more commonly referred to as cultural): adulthood divided by:
   • for maturity: stability of behavior; professional, marital and social socialization (continues until the beginning of involutionary processes);
   • for old age: the involution of social, intellectual and motor capabilities and the construction of compensatory behavior.

Thus, in classical behaviorism, the problem of development was not specifically emphasized - in it there is only the problem of learning based on the presence or absence of reinforcement under the influence of the environment. But it is not easy to transfer the model of relations between the organism and the environment to the social behavior of a person. 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., the establishment of a connection between a stimulus and a response) depends on such states of the subject as hunger, thirst, pain, which have received the name drive in American psychology, has led to more complex theoretical concepts of learning developed by 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 the 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 C. 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, for more than half a century, the concepts of social learning have been developed, the central problem of which has become the problem of socialization.

Sociogenetic concepts of mental development. In the late 1930s, 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 the psychoanalytic theory of personality into the language of C. 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, for more than half a century, the concepts of social learning have been developed, the central problem of which has become the problem of socialization. Socialization is a process that allows the child to take his place in society, it is the promotion of a newborn from an asocial "humanoid" state to life as a full-fledged member of society. How does socialization take place? All newborns are similar to each other, and after two or three years they are different children. So, social learning theorists say, these differences are the result of learning, they are not innate.

There are different concepts of learning. In classical Pavlovian conditioning, subjects begin to give the same response to different stimuli. In Skinner's operant learning, a behavioral act is formed due to the presence or absence of reinforcement of one of the many possible responses. Both of these concepts do not explain how new behavior occurs. A. Bandura believed that reward and punishment are not enough to teach new behavior. Children acquire new behavior by imitating the 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, empathy for this person.

Let us briefly consider the contribution 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 3. Freud, they considered clinical material as the richest source of data; in their opinion, the 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 a long and dynamic change in behavior under the influence of social correction.

On the other hand, Miller and Dollard are experimental psychologists who use precise laboratory methods, also addressing the behavioral mechanisms of animals studied through experiments.

Miller and Dollard share Freud's point of view on the role of motivation in behavior, believing that the behavior of both animals and humans is the result of such primary (innate) urges as hunger, thirst, pain, etc. All of them can be satisfied, but by no means extinguished. In keeping with the behavioral tradition, Miller and Dollard quantify drive strength by measuring, for example, the duration of deprivation. In addition to the primary ones, there are secondary drives, 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 impulses is the cause of neuroses.

In transforming Freud's ideas, Miller and Dollard replace the pleasure principle with the reward principle. They define reinforcement as something that reinforces the tendency to repeat a previously occurring response. From their point of view, reinforcement is a reduction, a withdrawal of urge, or, to use Freud's term, a drive. Learning, according to Miller and Dollard, is the strengthening of the connection between a key stimulus and the response that it elicits 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. Emphasizing the mechanism of learning by trial and error, Miller and Dollard pay attention to the possibility of using imitation to reduce the amount of trial and error and get closer to the correct answer through observation of the behavior of another.

In the experiments of Miller and Dollard, the conditions for imitation of the leader (with or without reinforcement) were clarified. Experiments were carried out on rats and children, and in both cases similar results were obtained. The stronger the urge, the more the reinforcement strengthens the stimulus-response connection. If there is no motivation, learning is impossible. Miller and Dollard believe that self-satisfied self-satisfied people are bad learners.

Miller and Dollard draw on Freud's theory of childhood trauma. They regard childhood as a period of transient neurosis, and the young child as disoriented, deceived, disinhibited, incapable of higher mental processes. From their point of view, a happy child is a myth. Hence the task of parents is to socialize children, to prepare them for life in society. Miller and Dollard share the idea of ​​A. Adler that the mother, who gives the child the first example of human relations, 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, the manifestation of aggressiveness in a child. Early conflicts are non-verbalized 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.

The concept of social learning. A. Bandura. And Bandura - the most famous representative of the second generation of theorists of the concept of social learning - developed the ideas of Miller and Dollard about social learning. He criticized Freud's psychoanalysis and Skinner's behaviorism. Having accepted 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 in human behavior arises on the basis of observation of the behavior of another.

Unlike his predecessors, Bandura believes that in order to acquire new responses based on imitation, it is not necessary to reinforce the actions of the observer or the actions of the model; but reinforcement is necessary in order to reinforce and maintain the behavior formed by imitation. A. Bandura and R. Walters found that the visual learning procedure (that is, training in the absence of reinforcement or the presence of indirect reinforcement of only one model) is especially effective for learning new social experience. Thanks to this procedure, the subject develops a "behavioral predisposition" to reactions that were previously unlikely for him.

Learning by observation is important, according to Bandura, because it can be used to regulate and direct the child's behavior, giving him the opportunity to imitate authoritative models.

Bandura has done a lot of laboratory and field research on child 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 more frequent than in children who did not watch the film.

While a number of American scientists consider Bandura's theory of social learning as a concept consisting of "smart hypotheses about the process of socialization", other researchers note that the mechanism of imitation is insufficient to explain the emergence of many behavioral acts. Just by watching a bike ride, it's hard to learn how to ride yourself - it takes practice.

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

1. The attention of the child to the action of the model. Requirements for the model - clarity, visibility, affective richness, functional significance. The observer must have an appropriate level of sensory capabilities.
2. A memory that stores information about the effects of the model.
3. Motor skills that allow you to reproduce what the observer perceives.
4. Motivation that determines the desire of the child to fulfill what he sees.

Thus, Bandura recognizes the role of cognitive processes in the formation and regulation of behavior based on imitation. This is a marked departure from Miller and Dollard's original position, which conceived of 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 find their expression. Cognitive regulation of behavior, however, is subject to the control of stimulus and reinforcement - the main variables of the behavioral theory of learning.

Social learning theory recognizes that the impact 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:

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

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

• less opportunities for imitation in infants compared to preschoolers (the reason is weaker memory, fewer skills, unstable attention, etc.);

• the extreme limitation in animals of the ability to imitate new physical actions with the help of 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 the combination of psychoanalytic theory with behaviorism. He focused on the study of external behavior that can be measured. In active behavior, he singled out action and social interactions.

Action is motivated. Like Miller and Dollard, Sears assumes that initially all actions are associated with primary or innate urges. The satisfaction or frustration that results from the behavior motivated by these primary drives leads the individual to a new experience. The constant reinforcement of specific actions leads to new, secondary impulses that arise as a result of social influences.

Sears introduced the dyadic principle of studying child development: since it takes place within a dyadic unit of behavior, adaptive behavior and its reinforcement in an individual should be studied taking into account the behavior of another 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. phase of rudimentary behavior - 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 early age and is associated with school entry).

According to Sears, the newborn is in a state of autism, his bringing does not correlate with the social world. But already the first innate needs of the child, his inner impulses serve as a source of learning. The first attempts to extinguish the inner tension constitute the first experience of learning. This period of rudimentary antisocial behavior precedes socialization.

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

Each child has a repertoire of actions that are necessarily replaced in the course of 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 addiction. Reinforcement in dyadic systems always depends on contact with others, it is already present in the earliest contacts between the child and the mother, when the child learns through trial and error to satisfy his organic needs with the help of the mother. The dyadic relationship fosters and reinforces the child's dependence on the mother.

Psychological dependence manifests itself in search of attention: the child asks an adult to pay attention to him, to look at what he is doing, he wants to be near an adult, sit on his lap, etc. Dependence is manifested in the fact that the child is afraid to be 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 paying attention to a child, we reinforce him, and this can be used to teach him something.

Lack of reinforcement for addiction can lead to aggressive behavior. Sears considers addiction as the most complex motivational system, which is not innate, but is formed during life.

The social environment in which a child is born has an impact on its 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, the 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 the child, the personality of the mother is manifested, her ability to love, to regulate everything “possible” and “impossible”. A mother's abilities are related to her own self-esteem, her assessment of her father, 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, belonging to a certain culture predetermine the practice of upbringing. The probability of healthy development of the child is higher if the mother is satisfied with her position in life.

Thus, the first phase of the development of the child links the biological heredity of the newborn 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 a child's 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 rebuilt and turn into secondary motives.

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

Sears made an attempt to identify a correlation between the forms of addictive behavior and the practice of caring for a child by his parents - mother and father.

Studies have shown that neither the number of reinforcements, nor the duration of breastfeeding, nor feeding by the hour, nor the difficulty of weaning, nor other characteristics of feeding practices have a significant effect on the manifestation of addictive behavior in preschool age. It is not oral reinforcement that is most significant for the formation of addictive behavior, but participation in the care of the child of each of the parents.

1. "Negative Negative Attention Seeking": Attracting attention through fights, breakups, defiance, or so-called oppositional behavior (resistance to direction, rules, order, and demands by ignoring, refusing, or contrary behavior). This form of dependency is a direct consequence of low demands and insufficient restrictions in relation to the child, that is, a weak upbringing on the part of the mother and - especially in relation to the girl - a strong participation in the upbringing of the father.

2. "Seeking constant confirmation": apologizing, asking for unnecessary promises, or seeking protection, comfort, comfort, help, or guidance. This form of addictive behavior is directly related to the high demands of 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, interrupt this activity. This is a more "mature" form of addictive behavior that involves efforts to gain approval from those around you.

This is one of the forms of "immature", passive manifestation in the behavior of dependence, 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 method of parenting, Sears emphasizes, depends on the ability of parents 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 dispute of psychologists about what determines the process of child development - hereditary giftedness or the environment - has led to the theory of 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 the external conditions of life. V. Stern wrote that it is impossible to ask about any function, any property: does it occur from the outside or from the inside? The only legitimate question is: what exactly is happening in it from the outside and what is happening inside? Because in its manifestation both are always active, only each time in different proportions.

Behind the problem of the correlation of two factors that influence the process of a child's mental development, most often lies 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 fail to overcome the biologist approach to development if the environment and the entire process of development 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 the infantile period with still unreasoned reflex 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 the highest mammal - the monkey; in the future, having mastered the upright gait and speech, the child reaches the initial stages of the human condition; for the first five years of play and fairy tales, he stands at the level of primitive peoples; this is followed by admission to school, which is associated with the mastery of higher social responsibilities, which, according to V. Stern, corresponds to the entry of a person into culture with its state and economic organizations. The simple content of the ancient and Old Testament world is most adequate in the first school years to the childish spirit, the middle years bear the features of the fanaticism of Christian culture, and only in the period of maturity is spiritual differentiation achieved, corresponding to the state of culture of the New Age. It is appropriate to recall that quite often puberty is called the age of enlightenment.

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

psychoanalytic theory. Having arisen 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 the personality characteristics and problems of the individual. 3. Freud introduced into psychology the idea that the psychological problems of the adult personality can be inferred from early childhood experiences and that childhood experience has an unconscious influence on the adult's subsequent behavior.

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 the movement of zones in which the primary sexual need finds its satisfaction. 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 the child, one desire dominates - to absorb food. The leading erogenous area of ​​this stage is the mouth as a tool for feeding, sucking and primary examination of objects.

The oral stage consists of two phases - early and late, occupying the first and second six months 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 Id instincts are fixed: the child sometimes sucks his thumb even in the absence of food. This type of pleasure in Freud's interpretation 3. 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 six months of life, according to 3. Freud, the child does not yet separate his sensations from the object by which they were caused: the world of the child is in fact 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 instead of her. The influence of the real external world is increasing, the differentiation of Ego and Id is developing, the danger from the outside world is increasing, and the importance of the mother as an object that can protect against dangers and, as it were, compensate for the lost intrauterine life, grows excessively.

The biological connection with the mother causes the need to be loved, which, having arisen, will remain in the psyche forever. But the mother cannot, at the first request, satisfy all the desires of the baby; in education, limitations are inevitable, which become a source of differentiation, the allocation of an object. Thus, at the beginning of life, the distinction between the external and the 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 the sucking, which gives the action an aggressive character, satisfying the libidinal need of the child. But the mother does not allow the child to bite her breast, even if he is displeased 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 is gradually differentiated from Id, being modified under the influence of the outside world. Its functioning is connected with the principle of "satisfaction-lack of satisfaction". Since the world is known to the child through the mother, in her absence he experiences a state of dissatisfaction and due to this he begins to single out the mother, since the absence of a mother for him is the absence 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 desires, 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 replacement for their satisfaction 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, accustomed to neatness, cleanliness. Now children's sexuality finds the object of its satisfaction in mastering the functions of defecation, excretion. And here, for the first time, the child encounters many prohibitions, so the outside world appears to him as a barrier that he must overcome, and development takes on a conflict character.

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

The next phase begins at about three years and is called phallic (3-5 years). It characterizes the highest level of childish sexuality: if until now it was autoerotic, now it is becoming 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 the oedipal complex for boys and the Electra complex for girls. In the Greek myth of King Oedipus, who killed his father and married his mother, according to 3. Freud, the key to the sexual complex is hidden: 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 by the father underlies the castration complex, reinforced by the discovery that girls do not have a penis and the conclusion that he may lose his penis if he misbehaves. The castration complex represses Oedipal experiences (they remain unconscious) and promotes identification with the father.

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

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

According to 3. Freud, the most important periods in a child's life are completed before 5-6 years; it was by this time that all three main structures of the personality 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 whole world around. Libido at this time is not fixed, sexual potencies are dormant, and the child has the opportunity to identify and build I-identity.

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

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

In line with psychoanalysis, a huge number of interesting observations have been made on various aspects of the development of the child; nevertheless, 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. Erickson's epigenetic theory of the personality's life course continued the ideas of classical psychoanalysis in many respects.

E. Erickson accepted the ideas of 3. Freud about the three-membered structure of personality, identifying Id with desires and dreams, and Super-Ego with feelings of duty, between which a person constantly fluctuates in thoughts and feelings. Between them there is a "dead point" - Ego, in which, according to E. Erickson, 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 field ethnographic research, E. Erickson tried to understand and evaluate the influence of the environment on the personality, constructing it exactly this way and not another. 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 including him in a given social group, on developing 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-related 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. Erickson

H. Old age (after 50 years)	Secondary ego - integration (personal integrity)
	Disappointment in life (despair); socially valuable quality - wisdom
G. Maturity (25-50 years old)	Creativity (production work)
	Stagnation; socially - valuable quality - care
F. Youth (18-20 to 25 years old)	Experience of intimacy (closeness)
	Experiencing isolation (loneliness); socially valuable quality - love
E. Pubertal (adolescent) and adolescence (genital stage, according to Z. Freud; 12-18 years old)	Ego - identity (personal individuality)
	Diffusion of identity (role mixing); socially - valuable quality - fidelity
D. School age (stage of latency; latent stage, according to Z. Freud; 5-12 years old)	A sense of accomplishment (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)	Sense of initiative
	Guilt; socially valuable quality - purposefulness (the instance of the Super-I is formed as a result of overcoming the oedipal complex)
B. Early childhood (muscular - anal stage; anal stage, according to Z. Freud; 2-3 years)	Feeling of autonomy
	Feeling of doubt in one's abilities, shame, dependence; socially significant quality - the basis of the will
A. Infant age (oral-sensory stage; oral stage, according to Z. Freud; from birth to a year)	Basic trust
	Basic distrust of the world (hopelessness); a socially valuable quality - hope (the beginning, as in Z. 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 of 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 disunity with it and alienation. The task of early childhood is the struggle against feelings of shame and strong doubts in one's actions for one's own independence and independence. The task of the playing age is the development of an active initiative and at the same time experiencing a sense of guilt and moral responsibility for one's desires. During the period of study at school, the task arises of developing industriousness 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 the lack of confidence in understanding one's own self ("diffusion of identity"). The task of the end of youth and youth is the search for a life partner and the establishment of close friendships that overcome the feeling of loneliness. The task of the mature period is the struggle of the creative forces of man 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 of each of these problems, according to E. Erickson, is reduced to the establishment of a certain dynamic relationship between the two extreme poles. The balance 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 diseases, not manifestations of neurotic disorders, but "turning points" of development.

Psychoanalytic practice convinced E. Erickson 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 "modality of behavior." The “organ mode” is a zone of concentration of sexual energy. The organ with which sexual energy is connected at a particular stage of development creates a certain mode of development, i.e. the formation of the dominant personality trait. According to the erogenous zones, there are modes of retraction, retention, intrusion and inclusion.

Zones and their modes, according to E. Erickson, are in the center of attention of any cultural system of raising children. The modus 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 this mode, then its meaning is “alienated”, detached from the organ and transformed into a modality of behavior. Thus, through modes, a link is made between psychosexual and psychosocial development.

Let us briefly describe the stages.

A. Infancy. Stage one: foundational faith and hope vs. foundational hopelessness. The peculiarity of modes is that another object or person is necessary for their functioning. 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 with a response from the mother. Unlike 3. Freud, for E. Erickson, it is not the oral zone itself that is important, but the oral mode of interaction, which consists in the ability to “receive” not only through the mouth, but also through all sensory zones. The modus of the organ - "receive" - ​​breaks away from the zone of its origin and spreads to other sensory sensations (tactile, visual, auditory, etc.), and as a result, a mental modality of behavior is formed - "take in".

Like 3. Freud, E. Erikson associates the second phase of infancy with teething. From this moment the ability to take in becomes more active and directed and is characterized by the "biting" mode. Being alienated, the modus manifests itself in all types of the child's activity, displacing passive receiving (“absorbing”).

The eyes, initially prepared to receive impressions as they come naturally, learn to focus, isolate and pick out objects from the background, follow them. The ears are trained to recognize significant sounds, locate them, and control the search turn towards them. Hands are taught to stretch purposefully, and hands to grasp. As a result of the distribution of the modus to all sensory zones, a social modality of behavior is formed - "taking and holding things." It manifests itself when the child learns to sit. All these achievements lead to the child singling out 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 himself as a separate individual, weakening of the mother-child dyad as a result of the mother's return to professional pursuits and personal interests. This crisis is overcome more easily if, by the end of the first 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 light feeding, deep sleep, normal bowel movements.

The dynamics of the relationship between trust and distrust of the world is 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. Second stage: autonomy versus shame and doubt. It starts from the moment when the child begins to walk.

At this stage, the pleasure zone is associated with the anus. The ballroom creates two opposite modes - the mode of retention and the mode of relaxation (letting go). Society, attaching special importance to accustoming a child to neatness, 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 "sphincter control" as a result of the importance given to it by society is transformed into a struggle for mastery of one's motor capabilities, for the establishment of a new, autonomous self.

Parental control allows you to keep this feeling through the restriction of the growing desires of the child to demand, appropriate, destroy, when he, as it were, tests the strength of his new capabilities. But external control at this stage should be strictly soothing. 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 appearance of a sense of shame, according to E. Erickson, is associated with the emergence of self-consciousness. In our civilization, according to E. Erickson, shame is easily absorbed by guilt. Punishing and shaming a child for bad deeds 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 mobile balance develops between these opposites. It will be positive if parents and close adults do not excessively 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, preparing at the same time its future crisis:

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

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 misinterpretation of many concepts;

3) both speech and developing motor skills allow the child to extend his imagination to such a large number of roles that it sometimes 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 big being, like adults. He begins to make comparisons about differences in size and other properties of the people around him, shows unlimited curiosity, in particular about gender and age differences. He tries to imagine possible future roles and understand which ones are worth imagining.

The matured child looks more "himself" - more loving, more calm in judgments, more active and proactive. Now he forgets mistakes faster 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" the task only for the sake of experiencing a sense of one's own activity and "motor joy", and not, as before, because of an involuntary desire to annoy or, at least, emphasize one's independence.

The modes of intrusion and inclusion create new modalities of behavior at this stage of personality development.

The intrusion mode, which dominates behavior at this stage, determines the variety of activities and fantasies that are “similar” in form. Intrusion into space through energetic movements; attacking other bodies by means of a physical assault "crawling" into the ears and souls of other people by means of aggressive sounds; entry into the unknown through consuming curiosity - such, according to the description of E. Erickson, is a preschooler at one pole of his behavioral reactions. At the other extreme, he is receptive to the environment, ready to establish tender and caring relationships with peers and kids. Under the guidance of adults and older children, he gradually enters into the intricacies of the children's policy of the garden, street, yard. His desire for learning at this time is surprisingly strong; it moves relentlessly forward from limitations to future possibilities.

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

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

D. School age. Fourth stage: industriousness versus inferiority. The fourth stage of personality development is characterized by a certain drowsiness of infantile sexuality and a delay in genital maturity, which is necessary for the future adult to learn the technical and social foundations of labor activity.

With the onset of a period of latency, a normally developing child forgets, or rather sublimates, the former desire to "make" people through direct aggressive action and immediately become a "dad" or "mother"; now he is learning to win recognition by producing things. He develops a sense of diligence, industriousness, he adapts to the inorganic laws of the tool world. Tools and labor skills are gradually included in the boundaries of his ego: the principle of work teaches him the pleasure of expedient completion of labor activity, achieved through steady attention and persistent diligence. He is overwhelmed by the desire to design and plan.

At this stage, a wide social environment is very important for him, allowing him to play roles before he meets 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 developing and maintaining in the child a positive identification with those who know things and know how to do things.

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

Now the child sometimes needs to be alone - to read, watch TV, dream. Often, when left alone, the child begins to make something, and gets very angry if he does not succeed. E. Erickson calls the feeling of being able to do things a sense of creation - and this is the first step in turning oneself from a “rudimentary” parent into a biological one. The danger that awaits the child at this stage is the 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 significance for the child) fade into the background, then when a feeling of inadequacy arises for the requirements of the school, the family again becomes a refuge for the child.

Much in child development is damaged when family life fails to prepare the child for school life, or when school life fails to rekindle the hopes of the earlier stages. Feeling yourself unworthy, of little value, inept, can fatally aggravate the development of character.

E. Erickson emphasizes that at each stage of development the child must come to a sense of his own worth, which is vital for him, and he must 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, intellect in the performance of serious tasks, not affected by infantile feelings of inferiority) creates the basis for cooperative participation in a productive adult life.

E. Adolescence and youth. Fifth stage: personal identity 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 a teenager looks in the eyes of others, what he represents;
3. the need to find one's professional vocation that meets the acquired skills, individual abilities and the requirements of society.

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

The integration which here takes the form of ego-identity is more than just the sum of childhood identifications. It is the conscious experience of one's own ability to integrate all identifications with the drives of the libido, with the mental faculties acquired through activity, with the opportunities offered by social roles. Further, the sense of ego-identity lies in the ever-increasing conviction that the inner individuality and wholeness that matters to oneself is equally meaningful to others. The latter becomes apparent in the quite tangible perspective of a "career".

The danger of this stage is role confusion, diffusion (confusion) of ego-identity. This may be due to the initial lack of confidence in sexual identity (and then it gives psychotic and criminal episodes - clarification of the image of the Self can be achieved by 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 identity) an over-identification 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 and even initially sexual in nature - unless mores require it. To a large extent, youthful falling in love is an attempt to come to the definition of one's own identity by projecting one's own initially indistinct image onto someone else and contemplating it in an already reflected and clarified form. That is why the manifestation of youthful love in many ways comes down to talking.

The selectivity in communication and cruelty towards “strangers” inherent in adolescent groups is a defense of a sense of one's own identity from depersonalization and confusion. That is why the details of the costume, jargon or gestures become signs that distinguish “us” from “them”. By creating closed groups and clichéd their own behavior, ideals, and "enemies," adolescents not only help each other cope with identification, but also test each other's ability to be faithful. The readiness for such a test, 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. Erickson, is in a state of moratorium (which corresponds to a psychological stage intermediate between childhood and adulthood) between the morality learned by the child and the ethics that must be formed by an adult. The mind of a teenager, as E. Erickson writes, is an ideological mind: it assumes the ideological worldview of a society that speaks to him “on an equal footing”. The teenager is ready for his position as an equal to be confirmed by the adoption of rituals, "creeds" and programs that simultaneously define what is evil. In search of the social values ​​that govern identity, the teenager is faced with the problems of ideology and aristocracy in the most general sense, related to the notions 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 most in people. the best. In order not to become cynical and apathetic, young people must somehow convince themselves that those who succeed in the adult world are also shouldering the responsibility of being the best of the best.

At first glance, it seems that adolescents, caught in the ring of their physiological revolution and the uncertainty of future adult social roles, are completely busy trying to create their own teenage subculture. But in reality, the teenager is passionately looking for people and ideas that he can believe in (this is the legacy of the early stage - the need for trust). These people must prove that they are trustworthy, because at the same time the teenager is afraid of being deceived, innocently trusting the promises of others. From this fear, he closes himself with demonstrative and cynical disbelief, hiding his need for faith.

The teenage period is characterized by the search for a free choice of ways to fulfill one's duties, but at the same time, the teenager is afraid of being a "weakling", forcibly involved in such activities, where he will feel like an object of ridicule or feel insecure in his abilities (the legacy of the second stage is desire). It can also lead to paradoxical behavior: out of free choice, a teenager can behave defiantly in the eyes of elders, which allows him 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 during the play stage, the adolescent is ready to trust peers and other guides, guides or misleading elders who are able to set figurative (if not illusory) limits to his aspirations. The evidence is that he violently protests against the limitations of his ideas of himself 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 here in the following: the choice of occupation becomes more important for a teenager than the question of salary or status. For this reason, adolescents prefer not to work at all temporarily than to 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 the youth that is well prepared in in terms of identification with new roles that involve competence and creativity. Where this is not the case, the adolescent's consciousness obviously becomes ideological, following the unified trend or ideas (ideals) suggested to him. Thirsty for the support of peers and adults, a teenager seeks to perceive “worthwhile, valuable” ways of life. On the other hand, as soon as he feels that society limits 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. Erickson, 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; feelings of isolation and emptiness; constantly being in a state of expectation of something that can change life; fear of personal communication and inability to emotionally influence persons of the opposite sex;

• hostility and contempt for all recognized social roles, even male and female ("unisex"); contempt for everything domestic and an irrational preference for everything foreign (on the principle of "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. Sixth stage: intimacy versus loneliness. Overcoming the crisis and the formation of ego-identity allows young people to move on to the sixth stage, the content of which is the search for a life partner, the desire for close friendships with members of their social group. Now the young man is not afraid of the loss of the Self and depersonalization, he is able to "with readiness and desire to mix his identity with others."

The basis of the desire for rapprochement with 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 subordinate to the new, integral formation of ego-identity that appeared at the previous stage. The body and personality (Ego), being the full masters of the erogenous zones, are already able to overcome the fear of losing one's Self in situations requiring self-denial. These are situations of complete group solidarity or intimacy, close fellowship or direct physical combat, experiences of inspiration caused by mentors, or intuitions from self-deepening into one's Self.

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

Avoiding such experiences and contacts that require closeness for fear of losing one's self can lead to feelings of deep loneliness and a subsequent state of complete self-absorption and distancing. Such a violation, according to E. Erickson, can lead to acute "character problems", to psychopathology. If the psychic moratorium continues at this stage, then instead of a feeling of closeness, there arises a desire to keep a distance, not to let one into one's "territory", into one's inner world. There is a danger that these strivings and the prejudice that arises from them can turn into personal qualities - into an experience of isolation and loneliness.

Love helps to overcome these negative aspects of identity. E. Erickson 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) striving to win in rivalry, which turned youthful sex 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 only trying to come to himself.

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

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

Generativity is, first of all, an interest in arranging life and instructing a new generation. And quite often, in the event of failure in life or special talent in other areas, a number of people direct this drive to other than 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 an obsessive need for pseudo-closeness: an excessive focus on oneself appears, leading to inertia and stagnation, personal devastation. In this case, a person considers himself as his own and only child (and if there is physical or psychological distress, then they contribute to this). If conditions favor such a tendency, then the physical and psychological disability of the individual occurs, prepared by all previous stages, if the balance of forces in their course was in favor of an unsuccessful choice. The desire to care for others, creativity, the desire to create (create) things in which a particle of unique individuality is invested help to overcome possible self-absorption and personal impoverishment.

N. Old age. Eighth stage: integrity of the personality against despair. Having gained life experience enriched by caring for the people around him, and primarily about children, creative ups and downs, a person can gain integrativity - the conquest of all seven previous stages of development. E. Erickson highlights several of its characteristics:

1. ever-increasing personal confidence in their tendency to 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, no matter what price they get;
3. acceptance of one's only life path as the only one due and not in need of replacement;
4. new, different from the former, love for their parents;
5. comradely, participatory, connected attitude to the principles of remote times and various activities in the form in which 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 an accidental 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 of its types - in 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 seal of origin. At this stage of development, wisdom comes to a person, which E. Erickson defines as a detached interest in life in the face of death.

Wisdom E. Erickson proposes to understand as a form of such an independent and at the same time active relationship of a person with his life limited by death, which is characterized by the maturity of the mind, careful deliberation of judgments, and deep comprehensive understanding. Not every person creates their 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 actually passed by a person 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, 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 big repentance.

The end of the life cycle also gives rise to "final questions" that no great philosophical or religious system passes by. Therefore, any civilization, according to E. Erickson, can be assessed by the importance it attaches to the full-fledged life cycle of an individual, since this value (or its absence) affects the beginning of the life cycles of the next generation and affects the formation of a child’s basic trust (distrust) in the world.

No matter what abyss these “last questions” lead individuals to, a person as a psychosocial creature, by the end of his life, inevitably finds himself in the face of a new version of the identity crisis, which can be fixed by the formula “I am that which will outlive me”. Then all the criteria of the vital individual strength (faith, willpower, purposefulness, competence, fidelity, love, care, wisdom) pass from the stages of life into the life of social institutions. Without them, the institutions of socialization fade away; but even without the spirit of these institutions, permeating the patterns of care and love, instruction and training, no power can emerge from a mere succession of generations.

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

Development is considered by J. Piaget as evolution driven by the need for balance. Equilibrium he defines 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 counteraction. From a dynamic point of view, balance is the mechanism that provides the main function of mental activity - the construction of an idea of ​​reality, provides a connection between the subject and the object, and regulates their interaction.

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

In order 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 any action, the subject and object are mixed.

To understand their own actions, the subject needs objective information. According to J. Piaget, without the construction of intellectual tools of analysis, the subject does not distinguish what belongs to him in cognition, 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 originally inseparable between subject and objects.

That is why the problem of cognition cannot be considered separately from the problem of the development of the intellect. It boils 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 successive constructions is needed, bringing the child closer and 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, because they depend on actions, or in the subject, since the subject must learn to coordinate its 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. Describing the subject of activity, J. Piaget highlights its structural and functional properties.

Functions are biologically inherent ways of interacting with the environment. The subject has two main functions: organization and adaptation. Each 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.

According to J. Piaget, all acquired sensorimotor experience is formed into schemes of action. 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 acquires his experience on the basis of action: he follows his eyes, turns his head, explores with his hands, drags, feels, grasps, pulls in his mouth, moves his legs, etc. All this experience is formed into schemes - the most general that is preserved in action during its repeated implementation in different circumstances.

In a broad sense, a scheme of action 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 those of the parts that make up the structure. Structure is a self-regulating system, and new mental structures are formed on the basis of 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, adapted to the new action, i.e. accommodation takes place. In other words, accommodation is a passive adaptation to the environment, and assimilation is an active one. At the stage of accommodation, the subject displays 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 unchanging, while structures (unlike functions) are formed in ontogenesis and depend on the child's experience and, therefore, are different at different age stages. Such a relationship between function and structure ensures the 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 should outstrip development.

In accordance with this understanding, J. Piaget built the logic of mental development. The most important initial thesis for him is to consider 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 considers 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 is standing, and runs after him when he runs away. J. Piaget called this phenomenon "realism", which makes it difficult to consider things independently of the subject, in their internal interconnection. The child considers his instantaneous 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 the external world. The child begins by identifying his ideas with things and phenomena of the objective world and only gradually comes to distinguishing them from each other. This regularity, 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 indistinguishable. But as the intellect develops, children's ideas move from realism to objectivity, passing through a series of stages: participation (participation), animism (universal animation), artificalism (understanding of natural phenomena by analogy with human activity), in which the egocentric relationship between the "I" and the world are gradually 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, later they discover that phenomena are interconnected and that our assessments are relative. The world of independent and spontaneous substances gives way to the world of relations. For example, at first the child believes that there is a motor in every moving object; in the future, he considers the displacement of an individual body as a function of the actions of external bodies. So, 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 the subject from the object and is therefore "realistic", develops in three directions: towards objectivity, reciprocity and relativity.

The inability to perform logical addition and multiplication leads to contradictions with which children's definitions of concepts are saturated. J. Piaget characterized the contradiction as the result of a lack of balance: the concept gets rid of the contradiction when the balance is reached. He considered the criterion of stable equilibrium to be the emergence of thought reversibility - such a mental action when, starting from the results of the first action, the child performs a mental action that is symmetrical with respect to it, and when this symmetrical operation leads to the initial state of the object without modifying it. For every mental action there is 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, there is no reversibility in the real world. Only intellectual operations make the world reversible. Therefore, the reversibility of thought cannot arise in a child from observation of natural phenomena. It arises from the awareness of the mental operations themselves, which make logical experiments not on things, but on themselves, in order to establish which system of definitions gives "the greatest logical satisfaction."

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

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

Based on the theory of development, where the main thing is the striving of the subject's structures to 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 consistently change each other, and at each level a relatively stable balance is achieved. J. Piaget repeatedly tried to present the development of the intellect as a sequence of stages, but only in later review works did the picture of development acquire certainty and stability.

The process of the intellectual development of the child, 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 consistently;
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, hypothetical-deductive reasoning.

Development takes place as a transition from a lower stage to a higher one, with each previous stage preparing the next. At each new stage, the 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 intellect is reduced only to the discovery of development opportunities, and these opportunities still need to be realized. It would be wrong, J. Piaget believed, to see in the sequence of stages the product of innate predetermination, because in the process of development there is a continuous construction of the new.

The age at which equilibrium structures appear may vary depending on the physical or social environment. In conditions of free relationships and discussions, pre-logical ideas are quickly replaced by rational ideas, but they last 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 a particular 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 subordinated to the intellect and 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 correcting and supplementing it.

Theory of moral development L. Kohlberg. L. Kohlberg criticized J. Piaget for his exaggerated attention to the intellect, as a result of which all other aspects of development (emotional-volitional sphere, personality) seem to be left out. He raised the question - what cognitive schemes, structures, rules describe such phenomena as lies (which appear in children at a certain age and have their own stages of development), fear (which is 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 child's moral development.

As criteria for dividing development into stages, L. Kolberg takes 3 types of orientation that form a hierarchy:

1. authority orientation,
2. custom orientation,
3. principles orientation.

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 singles out 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 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 the shame of their condemnation, and 4 - setting to maintain the established order of social justice and fixed rules (good is what corresponds to the rules).

"Autonomous morality" transfers the moral decision inside the personality. It opens with stage 5A - a person realizes the relativity and conventionality of moral rules and requires their logical justification, seeing such in the idea of ​​utility. Then comes stage 5B - relativism is replaced by the recognition of the existence of some higher law that corresponds to the interests of the majority.

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

In recent works, L. Kolberg 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, Taiwan confirmed its cross-cultural validity regarding the universality of the first three stages of moral development and the invariance of their sequence. With the 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 a source of moral prescriptions - whether it be God's will, a communal 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 socio-structural characteristics of society, the macro and micro social environment, on which the degree of his personal autonomy directly depends.

L. Kolberg does not single out 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 - historical concept of L.S. Vygotsky. In developmental psychology, the direction of socialization arose as an attempt to determine the relationship in the subject-environment system through the category of the social context in which the child develops.

Let's start 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 in the days of L.S. Vygotsky, the 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 an experience gained by mankind.

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

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 "ripening". The other is cultural improvement, mastery of cultural ways of behaving and thinking.

Cultural development consists in mastering such auxiliary means of behavior that mankind has created in the process of its historical development and such as language, writing, number system, etc.; cultural development is associated with the assimilation of such methods of behavior, which are based on the use of signs as means for the implementation of one or another psychological operation. Culture modifies nature in accordance with the goals of man: the mode of action, the structure of the method, the whole system of psychological operations changes, just as the inclusion of a tool rebuilds the entire structure of a labor operation. The external activity of the child can turn into internal activity, the external method, as it were, is ingrained and becomes internal (internalized).

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

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

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

L.S. Vygotsky established that the child in mastering himself (his behavior) follows the same path as in mastering external nature, i.e. from the 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 another child, whose social being cannot but differ in a significant way from that of a child of an earlier age.

A leap in development (a change in the social situation of development) and the emergence of neoplasms are caused by fundamental contradictions of development that take shape by the end of each segment of life and “push” development forward (for example, between maximum openness to communication and the lack of a means of communication - speech in infancy; between the increase subject skills and the inability to implement them in "adult" activities at preschool age, etc.).

Accordingly, the age of L.S. Vygotsky defined three things as an objective category:

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

In his periodization of development, he proposes to alternate 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 the smallest 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, pubertal crisis, crisis of 17 years, etc.) these changes are found in the form of irreversible neoplasms that have arisen abruptly.

At each stage of development there is always a central neoformation, as if leading the entire process of development and characterizing the restructuring of the entire personality of the child as a whole on a new basis. Around the main (central) neoplasm of a given age, all other partial neoplasms related to certain aspects of the child's personality, and development 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, changes occurring at a given age, side lines of development. It goes without saying that the processes that were the central lines of development at a given age become secondary lines in the next, and vice versa - the secondary lines of the previous age come to the fore and become central lines in the new one, as their significance and share in the overall structure change. development, their attitude to the central neoplasm changes. Consequently, during the transition from one stage to another, the entire structure of age is reconstructed. Each age has its own specific, unique and inimitable structure.

Understanding development as a continuous process of self-movement, the incessant emergence and formation of something new, he believed that neoplasms of “critical” periods subsequently do not persist 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, being absorbed by neoplasms of the next (stable) age, being included in their composition, dissolving and transforming into them.

A huge 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 methods the level of mental development of the child. But at the same time, it is absolutely not enough to take into account what the child can and can do today and now, it is important that he can and will be able tomorrow, what processes, even if not completed today, are already “ripening”. Sometimes a child needs a leading question, an indication of a solution, etc. to solve a problem. Then imitation arises, like everything that the child cannot do on his own, but what he can learn or what he can do under the guidance or in cooperation 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 the child is capable of accomplishing on his own, we examine the development of yesterday. Exploring what the child is able to accomplish 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 simply builds on development without changing anything in essence.

L.S. Vygotsky proposed a completely opposite position: only that training is good, which 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 features of a person. In training, the prerequisites for future neoplasms are created, and in order to create a zone of proximal development, i.e. to generate a number of internal development processes, properly constructed learning processes are needed.

An early death prevented L.S. Vygotsky to explicate his ideas. The first step in the realization of his theory was taken in the late 1930s. psychologists of the Kharkov school (A.N. Leontiev, A.V. Zaporozhets, P.I. Zinchenko, P.Ya. Galperin, L.I. Bozhovich and others) in a comprehensive program of research on the development of the child’s psyche mental development of the child, the content and structure of children's play, the consciousness of learning, etc.) Its conceptual core was the 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-twentieth 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 a person to find the meaning of his personal existence and 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 they live. Humanistic psychologists place human potential above all else.

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

Humanistic psychologists attach equal importance to consciousness and the unconscious, considering them to be the main processes of a person's mental life. People treat themselves and others as beings acting on their own and striving creatively to achieve their goals (May, 1986). The optimism of humanistic psychologists distinguishes it markedly from most other theoretical approaches. Let us consider in more detail the humanistic views of A. Maslow and K. Rogers.

An influential psychologist of the humanistic school is Abraham Maslow (1908-1970). In his theory of "I", proposed in 1954, special importance is attached to the innate need for self-actualization inherent in each person - the full development of one's potential. According to Maslow's theory, self-actualization needs can only be expressed or satisfied after "lower" needs, such as the needs for security, love, food, and shelter, have been satisfied. For example, a hungry child will not be able to concentrate on reading or drawing at school until they are fed.

Maslow built human needs in the form of a pyramid.

At the base of the pyramid are the basic physiological needs of survival; Humans, like other animals, need food, warmth, and rest to survive. A level higher is the need for security; people need to avoid danger and feel secure in their daily lives. They cannot reach higher levels if they live in constant fear and anxiety. When reasonable needs for safety and survival are satisfied, the next pressing need is the need for belonging. 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 respect for oneself is actualized; people need positive reactions from others, 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 are reasonably confident in their abilities, they are ready to try to develop their full potential, that is, ready for self-actualization. Maslow (Maslow, 1954, 1979) believed that the need for self-actualization plays no less important role for a person than the listed basic needs. "Man must become what he can become," says Maslow. In a sense, the need for self-actualization can never be fully satisfied. It includes "the search for truth and understanding, the attempt to achieve equality and justice, the creation of beauty and the pursuit of it" (Shaffer, 1977).

Another humanistic psychologist, Carl Rogers (1902-1987), had a great influence on pedagogy and psychotherapy. In contrast to the Freudians, who believed that human character is due to 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 act from birth. Like Maslow, Rogers was primarily interested in helping people realize their inner potential. Unlike Maslow, Rogers did not first develop a theory of the stage of personality development in order to then put it into practice. He was more interested in ideas that arose in the course of his clinical practice. He found that the maximum personal growth of his patients (whom Rogers called clients) occurred when he truly and completely empathized with them and when they knew that he accepted them for who they are. He called this "warm, positive, accepting" attitude positive. Rogers believed that the psychotherapist's positive attitude contributes to the client's greater self-acceptance and greater tolerance for other people.

Assessment of humanistic psychology. Humanistic psychology has proved effective in several respects. The emphasis on accounting for the richness of real life possibilities acts as a stimulus for other developmental psychology approaches. In addition, she had a significant impact on adult counseling and the birth of self-help programs. She also promoted child-rearing practices that respect the uniqueness of each child and pedagogical practices that humanize interpersonal relationships within schools.

However, as a scientific or genetic psychology, the humanistic perspective has its limitations. Concepts such as self-actualization are not clearly defined and are not 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 the developmental changes that occur during the course of psychotherapy, but they have difficulty explaining normal human development throughout life. However, there is no doubt that humanistic psychology continues to influence counseling and psychotherapy, offering an alternative holistic approach that is critical of simplistic explanations of human thought and behavior.

Theories of "I". The developing self is a central theme in several theories of adult and child development. These theories of "I" focus on the self-concept of the individual, that is, his 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 behave in ways that are consistent with their understanding of themselves. With a self-concept, adults in moments of crisis or the death of a loved one can critically review their life history and try to understand their position in changing circumstances. As you will see in the Help for Young Mothers in Hardships app, young mothers have little chance of climbing out of poverty if they don't value themselves.

One theory that focuses on the self-concept is the theory of the developing self, which belongs to Robert Kegan.

Kegan's sense 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 from the mass and at the same time understanding his integration with the wider world.

Kegan believes that people continue to develop meaning systems even as adults. Based on the ideas of Piaget and on the theories of cognitive development, he defines several "levels of formation of meaning systems", analogous to the stages of development. These meaning systems then shape our experience, organize our thinking and feelings, and serve as sources of our behavior.

As we grow older, our individual meaning systems become unique, while retaining a commonality with the meaning systems of other people who are at the same stage of age 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 input 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 past the age of thirty. This view is quite optimistic.

Awareness of the complexity and versatility of human mental development and the desire of scientists to explain its content led to the development of a number of theories of human development. Each of them analyzes important aspects of the formation of a personality, but none of them managed 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. Getchinson, psychoanalytic approach of Z. Freud)

2) sociogenetic - emphasis on the study of the processes of human socialization, the 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(W. Bronfenbrenner), which considers mental development as a twofold process of restructuring by the individual of his living environment and experiencing the impact of 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 Ch. 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 range of forms that animal ancestors passed over hundreds of millions of years - from single-celled creatures to primitive man. Other scientists have extended the time frame of the biogenetic law beyond uterine development. So, Stanley Hall believed that if the embryo repeats all stages of development from a single-celled creature to a person in 9 months, then the 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. Getchinson, who singled out 5 periods of human culture, in accordance with which the interests and needs of the child change from birth to adulthood:

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

So, 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 a maximum of 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, games of 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, 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 falls on 14 years. The specifics of the industrial and commercial period are monetary interests, exchange, trade. This stage begins at the age of 16 and continues into adulthood, the peak of development reaches 18-20 years.

Arnold Gesell proposed an ethological interpretation of the evolutionary prerequisites for human behavior, believing that the basis of a child's mental development is instincts formed during the phylogenetic 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 social experience of the child 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 premises of behavior

Children, like plants, "bloom" according to the pattern or schedule provided by the genes.