The difference in approaches to understanding personality is due to the complexity and ambiguity of the “personality” phenomenon itself. There are many theories of personality, the main ones of which we will study in other sections of this discipline. Each of the theories sees and constructs personality in its own way, focusing on some of its aspects and leaving others out of the equation (or giving them a secondary role).
According to the authors of the monograph “Theories of Personality” by L. Kjell and D. Ziegler, “not a single outstanding theory can be fully and correctly understood” in relation to the definition of human nature, “differences between theories reflect more fundamental differences between their creators” .
L. Kjell and D. Ziegler, having analyzed the most well-known psychological theories of personality, present 9 bipolar scales expressing the basic principles about human nature of various schools and directions. They are:
1. Freedom – Determinism (responsibility).
2. Rationality – Irrationality.
3. Holism (integrity) – Elementalism.
4. Constitutionalism (biological) – Environmentalism (social).
5. Changeability (evolutionism) – Immutability.
6. Subjectivity - Objectivity.
7. Proactivity ( internal factors development) – Reactivity (behavior – reaction to external stimuli).
8. Cognizability – Unknowability.
9. Homeostasis (maintaining internal balance) – Heterostasis (personal growth and self-development).
The given scales represent the extreme poles that representatives of various psychological theories personality. Moreover, these poles, as a rule, are opposed to each other, when some scientists rely on one of them, while others defend the predominant meaning of the opposite. But another interpretation of these scales is possible within the framework of the principle of stable disequilibrium.
The genesis of human development itself is determined by the interaction of opposite principles. Such interaction gives rise to complexity and inconsistency in a person’s mental life and behavior. And this interaction is generated by a state of dynamic disequilibrium, in which there are two opposite principles, which determines the movement along the path of a person’s mental development and his integrity. We can say that the state of dynamic disequilibrium is the potential for human development.
Can be designated possible metapositions in the interpretation of personality:
personality as a profile of psychological traits(factor theory of traits by R. Cattell, dispositional theory of personality by G. Allport, factor theory of personality by H. Eysenck, etc.);
personality as human experience(psychoanalytic personality theory of S. Freud, behaviorism, partly (if we mean internal experience, personal experiences) humanistic psychology, personality research in the context of the life path) ;
personality as temperament and age(personality theories of G. Eysenck and E. Erikson) ;
personality as an interiorized ensemble of social relations(almost all theories of Soviet psychology: L.S. Vygotsky, A.N. Leontiev, S.L. Rubinstein, K.K. Platonov) .
In psychology there are different approaches to understanding personality.
1. A personality can be described in terms of its motives and aspirations, which constitute the content of its “personal world,” i.e., a unique system of personal meanings, individually unique ways of organizing external impressions and internal experiences.
2. Personality is considered as a system of traits - relatively stable, externally manifested characteristics of individuality, which are imprinted in the subject’s judgments about himself, as well as in the judgments of other people about him.
3. Personality is also described as the active “I” of the subject, as a system of plans, relationships, orientation, semantic formations that regulate the exit of its behavior beyond the boundaries of the original plans.
4. The personality is also considered as a subject of personalization, i.e. the individual’s needs and ability to cause changes in other people (199, pp. 17-18).
Personality is a social concept; it expresses everything that is supranatural and historical in a person. Personality is not innate, but arises as a result of cultural and social development(53, p. 315).
A personality is a person who has his own position in life, to which he came as a result of a lot of conscious work. Such a person does not simply stand out because of the impression he makes on another; he consciously distinguishes himself from his surroundings. He shows independence of thought, unbanality of feelings, some kind of composure and inner passion. The depth and richness of a personality presuppose the depth and richness of its connections with the world, with other people; the severance of these ties and self-isolation devastate her. A person is only a person who relates in a certain way to the environment, consciously establishes this attitude so that it manifests itself in his entire being (216, pp. 676-679).
Personality is a specifically human formation that is “produced” by social relations into which the individual enters in his activity. The fact that at the same time some of his characteristics as an individual change is not the cause, but the consequence of the formation of his personality. The formation of personality is a process that does not directly coincide with the process of lifetime, naturally ongoing changes in the natural properties of the individual in the course of his adaptation to external environment(144, pp. 176-177).
Personality is a socialized individual, considered from the perspective of his most significant socially significant properties. Personality is such a purposeful, self-organizing particle of society, the main function of which is the implementation of an individual way of social existence.
The functions of a person’s behavior regulator are performed by his worldview, orientation, character, and abilities.
The personality is not only purposeful, but also a self-organizing system. The object of her attention and activity is not only the outside world, but also herself, which is manifested in the sense of “I”, which includes ideas about herself and self-esteem, self-improvement programs, habitual reactions to the manifestation of some of her qualities, the ability to introspection, introspection and self-regulation (74, pp. 37-44).
What does it mean to be a person? To be a person means to have an active life position, which can be said this way: I stand on this and cannot do otherwise. To be a person means to make choices that arise due to internal necessity, to evaluate the consequences decision taken and hold on to them. answer to yourself and the society in which you live. To be an individual means to constantly build oneself and others, to possess an arsenal of techniques and means with the help of which one can master one’s own behavior and subordinate it to one’s power. To be a person means to have freedom of choice and to bear its burden throughout life (24, p. 92).
In psychology there are many attempts to identify the core of personality. The available approaches can be systematized as follows.
1. Essential separation of the concepts of “man”, “individual”, “subject of activity”, “individuality” (in the sense of the uniqueness of each person) and “personality”. Consequently, the concept of “personality” cannot be reduced to the concepts of “man”, “individual”, “subject”, “individuality”, although, on the other hand, personality is both a person, and an individual, and a subject, and individuality, but only in to the extent, from the side that characterizes all these concepts from the point of view of a person’s involvement in social relations.
2. It is necessary to distinguish between an “extensive” understanding of personality, when personality is identified with the concept of a person, and a “peak” understanding, when personality is considered as a special level of human social development.
3. There are different points of view on the relationship between biological and social development in the individual. Some include the biological organization of a person in the concept of personality. Others consider the biological as given conditions for the development of personality, which do not determine its psychological traits, but act only as forms and methods of their manifestation (A. N. Leontyev).
4. One is not born a person, one becomes a person; personality
is formed relatively late in ontogenesis.
5. Personality is not a passive result of external influence on a child, but it develops in the process of his own activity (180, pp. 25-27).
Personal development. Personality cannot develop within the framework of the processes of assimilation and consumption alone; its development presupposes a shift of needs to creation, which alone knows no boundaries (144, p. 226).
Two types of patterns can be distinguished age development personalities:
1) psychological patterns of personality development, the source of which is the contradiction between the individual’s need for personalization (the need to be an individual) and the objective interest of his reference communities to accept only those manifestations of individuality that correspond to the tasks, norms, values and conditions of development of these communities;
2) patterns of personality development as a result of joining groups that are new to it, which become referent for the individual, acting as institutions of his socialization (family, kindergarten, school, work collective, etc.), and due to changes in his social position within a relatively stable group.
Move to next age stage is not spontaneous, it is determined by the peculiarities of the development of society, which stimulates the formation of appropriate motivation in the child (198, pp. 19-26).
The development of personality is necessarily connected with its self-determination, with the type and method of resolving contradictions with social reality, one’s own life, and the people around.
The initial level of organization of life and personality quality is, as it were, the dissolution of the personality in the events of life. Then, at the next level, the personality begins to stand out, to define itself in relation to events; here the variability of personality, parallel to the variability of events, already ceases. On top level a person not only determines himself in relation to the course of individual events, to certain personal actions, desires, etc., but also in relation to the course of life as a whole. The individual begins to more and more consistently and definitely pursue his line in life, which has its own logic, although not necessarily leading to external success or satisfaction of social expectations (4, pp. 34-36).
14.1. Concept of personality
Let me remind you that in the first lecture we talked about the fact that a person exists, as it were, in a system of three coordinates: a person is the objective world, a person is social world, a person is his own inner world. Revealing cognitive processes, we mainly talked about the ways a person understands the objective world. But personality exists primarily in systems social relations, it is in these relationships that it manifests itself.
The problem of personality is one of the most complex and controversial in psychology. The content of the concept of “personality” from the standpoint of various theoretical concepts is extremely multifaceted. However, there are some general provisions, which relate to the definition of personality:
1. Personality is always associated with individuality. with those qualities and properties that distinguish one person from another.
2. The concept of “personality” is rather a hypothetical construct, an abstraction that reflects a systemic integrated approach to a person and his diverse manifestations.
3. Personality is considered in an asocial context in relation to life story the individual or the prospects for his development. Personality is characterized in the evolutionary process as a subject of influence of internal and external factors.
4. Personality is represented by those characteristics. which are “responsible” for sustainable forms of behavior. Personality, as such, is relatively unchanging, constant over time and changing situations. It provides a sense of continuity in time and environment.
Let's look at some of the main approaches to understanding the nature of personality.
The concept of “personality” has several approaches in psychological science.
First, the personality is described in terms of its aspirations and motives, which constitute the unique content of the personal world. The concept of “personality” in this meaning includes individual ways of organizing external and internal images in a person’s mind.
Secondly, a personalized approach. Within its framework, the concept of “personality” is interpreted as a system of special traits - stable and externally manifested characteristics of individuality. They are expressed in a person’s judgments about himself and the judgments of other people about him.
Thirdly, the sociological concept of personality. In this approach, significant attention is paid to its functioning in society. Therefore, the formation of norms and values becomes very important.
Fourthly, the concept of “personality” includes the active “I” of the subject as a system of relationships, plans, semantic formations and orientation.
Based on these approaches, a number of basic provisions were developed:
1. The concept of “personality” is a social generalization that includes everything that is supernatural in a person. Therefore, it is not innate, but arises as a result of cultural and social development.
2. A person becomes a person who has his own position in life, formed as a result of conscious and very hard work. He is able to show independence of thoughts, originality of feelings and special composure.
3. Personality is a specifically human formation formed by the system public relations, into which the individual will be able to enter in his activity. Its development is a process that does not directly coincide with the lifetime, natural properties of a person during his adaptation to the external environment.
4. The concept of “personality” is such a purposeful, self-organizing particle of society that has a special function. It is about implementing an individual way of functioning. The regulator of her behavior will be her abilities, character, orientation and worldview.
5. A personality is a self-organizing system, the object of attention and activity of which is both the external world and itself. As a result of its formation, the “I” appears, which includes self-esteem, self-image, a self-improvement program, the ability for introspection, self-regulation and self-analysis.
But any concept of personality includes that it should:
- have an active life position and the desire to achieve your goals;
- be able to make a choice in a situation of such necessity;
- be able to assess the consequences of the decision made;
- hold yourself accountable for your actions to society and yourself;
- to form value orientations and the motivational-need sphere;
- possess an arsenal of means, methods and techniques with which you can master your own behavior and subjugate it to yourself;
- have freedom of choice.
In psychology there is a large number of attempts to identify the central core of personality. As a result of numerous studies, a number of conclusions were drawn:
1. Personality includes a system of psychological traits and qualities that relate to the sphere of morality, ethics and self-improvement.
2. Inner core in ontogenesis it takes shape quite late. This becomes possible when it happens full formation"I" - as a rule, in adolescence.
3. Most of Scientists agree that personality cannot arise as a result of passive external actions on a growing person. It develops only in the process of his own activity.
The difference in approaches to understanding personality is due to the complexity and ambiguity of the “personality” phenomenon itself. There are many theories of personality. Each of the theories sees and constructs personality in its own way, focusing on some of its aspects and leaving others out of the equation (or giving them a secondary role).
According to the authors of the monograph “Theories of Personality” by Kjell and Ziegler, “no single theory of any importance can be fully and correctly understood” in relation to the definition of human nature, “the differences between theories reflect more fundamental differences between their creators.”
Kjell and Ziegler, having analyzed the most well-known psychological theories of personality, present 9 bipolar scales expressing the basic principles about human nature of various schools and directions:
- 1. Freedom - Determinism (responsibility).
- 2. Rationality - Irrationality.
- 3. Holism (integrity) - Elementalism.
- 4. Constitutionalism (biological) - Environmentalism (social).
- 5. Changeability (evolutionism) - Immutability.
- 6. Subjectivity - Objectivity.
- 7. Proactivity (internal development factors) - Reactivity (behavior - reaction to external stimuli).
- 8. Cognizability - Unknowability.
- 9. Homeostasis (maintaining internal balance) - Heterostasis (personal growth and self-development).
The given scales represent the extreme poles that representatives of various psychological theories of personality adhere to. Moreover, these poles, as a rule, are opposed to each other, when some scientists rely on one of them, while others defend the predominant meaning of the opposite. But another interpretation of these scales is possible within the framework of the principle of stable disequilibrium.
The genesis of human development itself is determined by the interaction of opposite principles. This interaction gives rise to complexity and inconsistency. mental life a person and his behavior. And this interaction is generated by a state of dynamic disequilibrium, in which there are two opposite principles, which determines the movement along the path of a person’s mental development and his integrity. We can say that the state of dynamic disequilibrium is the potential for human development.
We can identify possible metapositions in the interpretation of personality:
- · personality as a profile of psychological traits (Cettell’s factor theory of traits, Allport’s dispositional theory of personality, Eysenck’s factor theory of personality)
- · personality as a person’s experience (Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality, behaviorism, partly (if we mean internal experience, personal experiences) humanistic psychology, personality studies in the context of the life path)
- · personality as temperament and age (personality theories of Eysenck and Erikson).
- · personality as an interiorized ensemble of social relations (~ all theories of Soviet psychology: Vygotsky, Leontiev, Rubinstein, Platonov).
- 3. The concept of “individual” and its characteristics
- 4. The essence and content of the concept of “individuality”
- 5. The problem of the relationship between the concepts of “personality”, “individual”, “individuality”
All psychological knowledge in one way or another relates to personal issues, contribute to the understanding of personality. The complexity of this phenomenon is explained by the fact that not only is there no single theory of personality, but, as a consequence, there is also no single, generally accepted definition of personality.
The word “personality” itself, like many others psychological concepts, is widely used in everyday communication. When they want to characterize a subject, they often talk about him either as a person, or as an individual, or as an individual. But these concepts are different, although they contain much in common.
3. An individual is a specific person, a single representative of a biological species, an individual. Those. the concept of “individual” embraces a biological element. Natural properties human are divided into: age, gender, neurodynamic and constitutional.
The individual is the starting point for the formation of personality. Personality will then be the result of the development of the individual, the most complete embodiment of all human qualities. Natural prerequisites in themselves do not determine personality traits.
The importance of individual properties, but not in themselves, but reflected in the consciousness of the subject, is evidenced by reflections inspired by the rapid development genetic engineering and its capabilities to design the human body in accordance with given parameters. So, if a growing person learns about the design procedure that other people subjected him to in order to change the genetic structure, then the prospect of an artificially created being may well displace such a person’s perception of himself as a naturally growing bodily being. The reification of human life leads to the transformation of the individual into a thing, into an object for manipulation. For effective development a person must be authentic and aware of this authenticity, have certainty towards his bodily existence.
But we must also remember that an individual is not just a bundle of nerves, a system of muscles and blood circulation. Human corporeality obeys the laws of psychological life, the life of the spirit. This idea has proven correct under extreme conditions.
Human corporeality, like his psychological essence, has been largely “cultivated.” Left to its own devices, the child’s body would remain pure biological organism- animals: a baby who is not rooted in society will never stand on his feet and walk. The child is forced to walk upright in order (and only in order) to free his forelimbs for labor, i.e. for functions imposed by cultural conditions, the forms of objects created by man for man, and the need to manipulate these objects in a human way. The same is true with the articulatory apparatus and with the organs of vision. From birth they are not organs of the human personality; they can only become such in the process of their culturally programmed method of use. Culture, lifestyle, the nature of a person’s relationships with other people change his physicality, his appearance.
4. Individuality is the uniqueness, inimitability, and originality of a person, realizing itself in the design and choice of one’s life path, carried out on the basis of the values inherent in a given socioculture. Individuality is a person in all his originality and his physical, physiological, psychological and social qualities and properties. Individuality is a person’s difference from others, his isolation from the world of his own kind.
Not only people have individuality. Everyone knows how different domestic animals are from each other - dogs, cats: each has not only its own appearance, but also its own “character”. However, no one ever talks about the personality of even a very smart shepherd dog.
There is no doubt that all newborn babies are similar to each other only at first glance. In fact, each of them is already an individuality, but, of course, not yet a person. A person becomes a person, and is not born one. As psychologist Asmolov says, “they are born a person, they become a person, and they defend their individuality.”
Asmolov’s words contain another important difference between individuality and personality: individuality is formed and developed by self-determination and even the isolation of a person from society, and personality - through the individual’s acceptance of the developed social roles, norms and rules of conduct. Personality is the personification of social relations, and individuality is separation from these relations.
Listen to yourself in a specific situation life situation to make up your mind, not to miss something important at this point in life’s path, not to lose yourself - all this is the formation of individuality. Slobodchikov and Isaev write: “If personality is the definition of a person’s position in relationships with others, then individuality is the definition of one’s own position in life, the very certainty within one’s life itself. If personality arises in a person’s meeting with other people, then individuality is a meeting with oneself, with oneself as an Other, who now no longer coincides with oneself or with others in the main content of one’s former life.”
Meeting oneself allows a person to find his own way of life, which is not reducible to various samples and scripts. The common expression “to be yourself” obviously means to live in accordance with one’s essence, to live in the only way suitable for me. The uniqueness and originality of a person’s appearance, his abilities, his experiences, the uniqueness of his style of activity, communication and way of thinking - all this determines the one and only way of life. And the fate of man, which is also unique.
One might ask: what is the evolutionary meaning of personal individuality? Asmolov offers the answer: “...Behind the manifestations of individuality are the potential possibilities of endless lines of creative evolutionary process life." Thanks to individuals, society modernizes and develops.
Individuality presupposes not only uniqueness, but also a certain level of development of self-awareness, the embodiment of mental and creative forces in the main work of one’s life. And therefore, individuality is the authorship of one’s own life, when a person can “say himself,” as Buyakas put it, in order to reveal himself in all his unique fullness. However, any person, regardless of any achievements or feats, status or education, whether he wants it or not, is different from others. And individuality, therefore, is his constant companion.
Differences in the formation of individuality and personality only emphasize their interdependence. After all, individuality includes not only the unique features of the functioning of the body, but also unique properties personality. This allows personality to be defined through individuality. “Personality,” writes Golubeva, “is a holistic individuality in its social content and quality.”
Personality is a systemic social quality acquired by an individual in objective activity and communication and characterizing the level and quality of representation of social relations in the individual.
Those. most often the word “personality” denotes individuality in its social connections and relationships. Personality arises as a result of the cultural and social development of a person, i.e. it captures everything that is supernatural in a person, acquired as a result of an individual life history among other people. Therefore, personality can only be understood when considering the individual in society, and even in a broader context - as “the existence of a person in the world.”
As the famous philosopher Ilyenkov noted, “ human personality can rightfully be considered as a single embodiment of culture, i.e. universal in man." The “body” of the individual is the inorganic body of culture as a way and form of human existence. Outside the context of social and cultural life, it is impossible to answer the question of what a person is. The sociocultural conditioning of the personality is manifested in the fact that in the body, not a single specifically human action occurs on its own, because Only those functions are programmed in genes human body, which provide purely biological existence, but not its social-human form.
“The concept of “personality” is... a social, reflected concept,” Vygotsky noted, “built on the basis of the fact that the child applies to himself those methods of adaptation that he applies to others. That is why we can say that personality is the social in us.” And again: “Personality... is not innate, but arises as a result of cultural development, therefore “personality” is a historical concept. It embraces the unity of behavior, which is distinguished by the sign of mastery.”
“Personality existed and exists in a completely real space, where there are all those things in relation to which and through which a person’s body is connected with the body of another person “as if into one body,” as Spinoza once said, into one “ensemble,” as Marx preferred to say, into one cultural-historical formation, as we will say today, into a “body” created not by nature, but by the labor of people transforming this nature into their own “inorganic body.”
However, the essence of a specific, individual personality includes only that part of the totality of social relations in which a person is included in the real process of his life. Objectively existing in a system of diverse social relations, a person is included in them in different ways. Uniqueness specific person It is precisely this that manifests itself in the choice, selection of those spheres of social experience, those activities, those relationships that a person appropriates and makes his own.
Rezvitsky: “If a human individual cannot become a person without mastering his social essence, then a person cannot acquire his independent existence without becoming an individual. Personality, therefore, is social in its essence, but individual in its mode of existence. It represents the unity of the social and the individual, essence and existence.”
Personality presupposes a certain level of mental development, when a person has formed his own views and attitudes, principles and positions, moral requirements and assessments, making him relatively stable and independent of environmental influences alien to his own beliefs, from private situations and incentives. A person’s personality is the most generalized mental system of his life. A person does not receive a personality by inheritance, but becomes one as he develops, in the process of communicating with other people and enriching himself with the experience of previous generations.
A necessary characteristic of a person is his activity. A person at this level of development is capable of consciously influencing the surrounding reality, changing it for his own purposes, and also changing himself for his own purposes, being the cause of himself, as ancient philosophers wrote.
A person, who is an individual, has a level of mental development that makes him capable of managing his behavior and activities, and to a certain extent, his own mental development. This feature must be taken into account so as not to reduce the understanding of personality only to the totality of the social roles it has acquired. Stirlitz played the role perfectly German officer, citizen fascist Germany, but his true personality was expressed in something else.
Another situation is also possible: external stamps, the mask is glued to the face so firmly that he cannot get rid of it. The mask can replace the personality (it is not the dog that wags the tail, but the tail that wags the dog).
It is not the role itself that characterizes a person, but his attitude to this role, independence and responsibility in fulfilling its instructions, as well as the conscious choice of a specific role from the range of available ones. Those. It is not so much the role that is important as its bearer. The significance of the individual lies in his enrichment of the role and the surrounding world as a whole. This understanding of personality allows us to look at a person as a being who overcomes the barriers of his natural and social limitations. From here arises the conviction that it is not nature that makes people, but people make themselves, that personality is not what the environment has done to a person, but what a person has done to himself. This idea is perfectly expressed by Hegel’s formula: “Circumstances or motives dominate a person only to the extent that he himself allows them to do so.”
Another aspect: personality is included in the process of creation, it is inseparable from creativity. In this sense, says Davydov, a simple worker, by virtue of the fact that he increases the treasury of social wealth, is a person. The most widespread, most widespread is creativity in the sphere of morality, since each individual must make discoveries anew and for the first time every time. moral order, resolving the conflicts of moral life in a dignified human way.
So, every person has the opportunity to think: am I a person or am I still not. And clear criteria are proposed: have your own convictions, do not refer to the fact that someone somehow influenced you in the wrong way and led you in the wrong direction. Influence and lead yourself, change yourself, align yourself with the ideal. If, of course, you have one, if you are... a person. To be an individual means to make a choice, to assume the burden of responsibility for a certain social, intellectual movement. The loss of independence in life makes a person completely impersonal; with its weak manifestation, we can talk about a weak or passive personality.
“If personality is the definition of a person’s position in relationships with others, then individuality is the definition of one’s own position in life, the very certainty within one’s life itself. If personality arises in a person’s meeting with other people, then individuality is a meeting with oneself, with oneself as an Other, who now no longer coincides with oneself or with others in the main content of one’s former life.”
That. we see that the development of a person’s personality can be represented as the process of its entry into a new social environment and integration into it. Personality arises thanks to other people according to the principle “from outside to inside” (interiorization), and then it can exist and develop thanks to its participation in the life of society and influence on other people according to the principle “from inside to outside” (exteriorization). And if we talk about the development of personal properties, then, according to Ananyev, the main form of their development is “ life path a person in society, his social biography.”
6. Structural and system-structural approaches to personality research
The complexity and ambiguity of personality is most conveniently explained through the concept of “system”. A person is a complex formation because it is a system.
We already know well that we cannot equate the concepts of “personality” and “person,” “personality” and “individual.” Of course, as Petrovsky and Yaroshevsky write in their work “Fundamentals theoretical psychology", "the individual's soma, his endocrine system, the advantages and defects of its physical organization affect the course of its mental processes, formation mental characteristics. But it does not follow from this that a “quarter” or “third” of his personality - as a special substructure - should be given over to biology. The biological, entering the human personality, becomes social, passes into the social. For example, brain pathology generates in a person, in the structure of his individuality, biologically determined psychological traits, but they become personal traits, specific personality traits or do not become due to social determination. Did this individual as a person simply remain mentally disabled or did he become revered as a “fool”, “blessed”, i.e. kind historical figure“, to whose prophecies people listened in ancient times, depended on the historical environment in which its individual psychological traits were formed and manifested.”
That is why in the history of psychology, the orientation towards a structural approach to the problem of personality is being replaced by a tendency to use a systematic approach.
But what is that special psychological systemic quality that is not reducible to the individual, natural qualities of a person? According to Leontyev, “the problem of personality forms a new psychological dimension: other than the dimension in which research is carried out on certain mental processes, individual properties and states of a person; this is a study of his place, position in the system, which is a system of social connections, communications that open to him; this is a study of what, for what and how a person uses what is innate to him and acquired by him...” Thus, the desired system-forming property is the active mediation of interpersonal relationships.
By joining the network of social relations, being an active participant and creator, a person develops his subjectivity and self-awareness.
The concept of “system” is defined as a set of elements that are in relationships and connections with each other, which form a certain integrity, unity.
The following appear as general characteristics of a “system” in a variety of systems studies:
- 1. Integrity - the irreducibility of any system to the sum of its constituent parts and the irreducibility of its properties as a whole from any part of the system;
- 2. Structurality - connections and relationships of system elements are ordered into a certain structure, which determines the behavior of the system as a whole;
- 3. The relationship of the system with the environment, which can be “closed” (not changing the environment and system) or “open” (transforming the environment and system) in nature;
- 4. Hierarchy - each component of the system can be considered as a system that includes another system, i.e. each component of the system can simultaneously be an element (subsystem) of a given system, and itself include another system;
- 5. Multiplicity of description - each system, being a complex object, in principle cannot be reduced to just one picture, one display, which presupposes for full description a system of coexistence of many different representations of it.
Along with these general characteristics Any system also has a number of more specific characteristics, for example, the determination of complex technical, living and social systems, their self-organization, i.e. the ability to change one's own structure, etc.
The involvement of the individual in different social groups and necessitates the orientation of the complementary or mutually exclusive goals of these groups, the development of self-awareness of the individual as a functional organ that provides such orientation.
Acting as an “element” of the system, the individual is at the same time a special “element” that, under certain historical circumstances, can accommodate the system and lead to its change. A paradox arises that relates to one of the paradoxes of systemic thinking: “element in the system” and “system in the element”, “person in the system of society” and “society in the system of the individual.” In the process of personality development, there is a kind of collapse of the space of social relations into the space of the individual.
Wagner discovers a pattern: the more developed a particular community is, the greater the variability in the manifestations of the individuals included in this community.
Purposeful joint activity acts as a system-forming basis that ensures a person’s involvement in the world of culture and his self-development.
There are many different theories of personality that describe its basic manifestations and structure in different ways. The structure makes it possible to see what components a personality consists of and what are the connections between them. Knowledge of personality structure orients a person towards better understanding yourself and others, helps you act more subtly in your inner world, as well as in social relationships.
The famous Soviet psychologist Platonov, based on the criterion of the relationship between the social and the biological, identified its various substructures or levels in the personality structure:
- 1) biologically determined substructure (which includes temperament, gender, age, and sometimes pathological properties of the psyche);
- 2) psychological substructure, including individual properties of individual mental processes that have become properties of the individual (memory, emotions, sensations, thinking, perception, feelings and will);
- 3) the substructure of social experience (which includes the knowledge, skills, abilities and habits acquired by a person);
- 4) substructure of personality orientation (within which there is a special hierarchically interconnected number of substructures: drives, desires, interests, inclinations, ideals, individual picture of the world and highest form orientation - beliefs).
In addition, the personality structure has two general integrative substructures (character and abilities), which, unlike hierarchical substructures, permeate all four levels of the hierarchy, absorbing qualities from the substructures of each identified level. Thus, personality can be represented as a structural system that has horizontal and vertical dimensions.
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