Mukhina B. Developmental psychology. Phenomenology of development

CHAPTER I. FACTORS DETERMINING MENTAL DEVELOPMENT
§ 1. CONDITIONS OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT

Section I Phenomenology of Development

Developmental psychology as a branch of psychological knowledge studies the facts and patterns of development of the human psyche, as well as the development of his personality at different stages of ontogenesis. In accordance with this, child, adolescent, youthful psychology, adult psychology, as well as gerontopsychology are distinguished. Each age stage is characterized by a set of specific patterns of development - the main achievements, accompanying formations and neoplasms that determine the features of a particular stage of mental development, including the features of the development of self-consciousness.
Before starting a discussion of the laws of development themselves, let us turn to age periodization. From the point of view of age psychology, the criteria for age classification are determined primarily by the specific historical, socio-economic conditions of upbringing and development, which are correlated with different types of activity. The classification criteria also correlate with age-related physiology, with the maturation of mental functions that determine the development itself and the principles of learning.
So, L. S. Vygotsky, as a criterion for age periodization, considered mental transformations, characteristic of a particular stage of development. He singled out "stable" and "unstable" (critical) periods of development. He attached decisive importance to the period of crisis - the time when a qualitative restructuring of the functions and relations of the child takes place. During these periods, there are significant changes in the development of the child's personality. According to L. S. Vygotsky, the transition from one age to another occurs in a revolutionary way.
The criterion for age periodization by A. N. Leontiev is leading activities. The development of leading activity causes major changes in the mental processes and psychological characteristics of the child's personality at a given stage of development. “The fact is that, like every new generation, so does every single person belonging to a given generation find certain conditions of life already prepared. They make possible this or that content of his activity.
The age periodization of D. B. Elkonin is based on leading activities that determine the emergence of psychological neoplasms at a particular stage of development. Relations between productive activity and communication activity are considered.
A. V. Petrovsky for each age period identifies three phases of entering the referential community: adaptation, individualization and integration, in which the development and restructuring of the personality structure take place2.
In reality, the age periodization of each individual person depends on the conditions of his development, on the characteristics of the maturation of morphological structures responsible for development, as well as on the internal position of the person himself, which determines development at later stages of ontogenesis. Each age has its own specific “social situation”, its own “leading mental functions” (L. S. Vygotsky) and its own leading activity (A. N. Leontiev, D. B. Elkonin)3. The ratio of external social conditions and internal conditions for the maturation of higher mental functions determines the general movement of development. At each age stage, selective sensitivity is detected, susceptibility to external influences - sensitivity. L. S. Vygotsky attached decisive importance to sensitive periods, believing that learning that is premature or late in relation to this period is not effective enough.
The objective, historically conditioned realities of human existence in their own way affect him at different stages of ontogeny, depending on through which previously developed mental functions they are refracted. At the same time, the child “borrows only what suits him, proudly passes by what exceeds the level of his thinking”4.
It is known that the passport age and the age of "actual development" do not necessarily coincide. The child can be ahead, behind and correspond to the passport age. Each child has his own way of development, and this should be considered his individual feature.
Within the framework of the textbook, periods should be determined that represent age-related achievements in mental development within the most typical limits. We will focus on the following age periodization:
I. Childhood.
Infancy (from 0 to 12-14 months).
Early age (1 to 3 years).
Preschool age (3 to 6-7 years).
Junior school age (from 6-7 to 10-11 years).
II. Adolescence (from 11-12 to 15-16 years).
Age periodization makes it possible to describe the facts of a child's mental life in the context of age limits and to interpret the patterns of achievements and negative formations in specific periods of development.
Before we proceed to the description of the age-related features of mental development, we should discuss all the components that determine this development: the conditions and prerequisites for mental development, as well as the significance of the internal position of the developing person himself. In the same section, one should specifically consider the dual nature of a person as a social unit and a unique personality, as well as the mechanisms that determine the development of the psyche and the human personality itself.

CHAPTER I. FACTORS DETERMINING MENTAL DEVELOPMENT

§ 1. CONDITIONS OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT

Historically conditioned reality of human existence.
The condition for the development of man, in addition to the reality of Nature itself, is the reality of culture created by him. To understand the patterns of human mental development, it is necessary to define the space of human culture.
Culture is usually understood as the totality of society's achievements in its material and spiritual development, used by society as a condition for the development and existence of a person at a particular historical moment. Culture is a collective phenomenon, historically conditioned, concentrated primarily in sign-symbolic form.
Each individual person enters culture, appropriating its material and spiritual embodiment in the cultural and historical space surrounding him.
Developmental psychology, as a science that analyzes the conditions of human development at different stages of ontogenesis, requires the identification of the relationship between cultural conditions and individual developmental achievements.
Determined by cultural development, historically conditioned realities of human existence can be classified as follows: 1) the reality of the objective world; 2) the reality of figurative-sign systems; 3) the reality of social space; 4) natural reality. These realities at each historical moment have their constants and their metamorphoses. Therefore, the psychology of people of a certain era should be considered in the context of the culture of this era, in the context of the meanings and meanings attached to cultural realities at a particular historical moment.
At the same time, each historical moment should be considered in terms of the development of those activities that introduce a person into the space of contemporary culture. These activities, on the one hand, are the components and heritage of culture, on the other hand, they are a condition for the development of a person at different stages of ontogenesis, a condition for his everyday life.
A. N. Leontiev defined activity in a narrow sense, i.e. on the psychological level, as a unit of "life mediated by mental reflection, the real function of which is that it orients the subject in the objective world"5. Activity is considered in psychology as a system that has a structure, internal connections and realizes itself in development.
Psychology explores the activities of specific people, which takes place in the conditions of an existing (given) culture in two forms: 1) "in conditions of open collectivity - among the surrounding people, together with them and in interaction with them"; 2) "eye to eye with the surrounding objective world"6.
Let us turn to a more detailed discussion of the historically conditioned realities of human existence and activities that determine the nature of a person's entry into these realities, his development and being.
7. The reality of the objective world. An object or thing7 in the mind of a person is a unit, a part of being, everything that has a set of properties, occupies a volume in space and is in relation to other units of being. We will consider the material objective world, which has a relative independence and stability of existence. The reality of the objective world includes objects of nature and man-made objects, which man has created in the course of his historical development. But a person not only learned to create, use and preserve objects (tools and objects for other purposes), he formed a system of relations to the subject. These attitudes to the subject are reflected in language, mythology, philosophy and human behavior.
In the language, the category "object" has a special designation. In most cases in natural languages ​​it is a noun, a part of speech denoting the reality of the existence of an object.
In philosophy, the category "object", "thing" has its hypostases: "thing in itself" and "thing for us". "Thing in itself" means the existence of a thing in itself (or "in itself"). “Thing for us” means the thing as it is revealed in the process of cognition and practical activity of a person.
In the everyday consciousness of people, objects, things exist a priori - as a given, as natural phenomena and as an integral part of culture.
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At the same time, they exist for a person as objects that are created and destroyed in the process of objective, instrumental, tul activity of the person himself. Only at certain moments does a person think about the Kantian question about the “thing in itself” - about the knowability of a thing, about the penetration of human knowledge “into the interior of nature”8.
In practical objective activity, a person does not doubt the cognizability of the “thing”. In labor activity, in simple manipulation, he deals with the material essence of the object and is constantly convinced of the presence of its properties that are amenable to change and cognition.
Man creates things and masters their functional properties. In this sense, F. Engels was right, arguing that “if we can prove the correctness of our understanding of a given natural phenomenon by the fact that we ourselves produce it, call it from the conditions, make it also serve our goals, then Kant’s elusive “thing in itself "the end comes" 9.
In reality, Kant's idea of ​​the "thing in itself" turns out to be not a practical unknowability for a person, but the psychological nature of human self-consciousness. A thing, along with its functional features, often considered by a person from the point of view of its consumption, in other situations acquires the features of a person himself. Man is characterized not only by alienation from a thing in order to use it, but also by the spiritualization of a thing, giving it those properties that he himself possesses, identifying with this thing as akin to the human spirit. Here we are talking about anthropomorphism - endowing objects of nature and man-made objects with human properties.
The entire natural and man-made world in the process of human development acquired anthropomorphic features due to the development in the reality of social space of the necessary mechanism that determines the existence of a person among other people - identification.
Anthropomorphism is realized in myths about the origin of the sun (solar myths), the moon, the moon (lunar myths), stars (astral myths), the universe (cosmogonic myths) and man (anthropological myths). There are myths about reincarnations of one creature into another: about the origin of animals from people or people from animals. Ideas about natural ancestors were widespread in the world. Among the peoples of the North, for example, these ideas are present in their self-consciousness today. Myths about the transformation of people into animals, plants and objects are known to numerous peoples of the globe. Ancient Greek myths about hyacinth, narcissus, cypress, laurel tree are widely known. No less famous is the biblical myth of the transformation of a woman into a pillar of salt.
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The category of objects with which a person is identified includes natural and man-made objects, they are given the meaning of a totem - an object that is in a supernatural relationship with a group of people (clan or family)11. This may include plants, animals, as well as inanimate objects (skulls of totemic animals - a bear, a walrus, as well as a crow, stones, parts of dried plants).
Animation of the objective world is not only the destiny of the ancient culture of mankind with mythological consciousness. Animation is an integral part of human presence in the world. And today, in the language and in the figurative systems of human consciousness, we find the evaluative attitude of a thing, as having or not having a soul. There are notions that unalienated labor creates a "warm" thing into which a soul has been invested, while alienated labor produces a "cold" thing, a thing without a soul. Of course, the “animation” of a thing by modern man differs from how it happened in the distant past. But one should not rush to conclusions about a fundamental change in the nature of the human psyche.
In the distinction between things "with a soul" and things "without a soul" is reflected human psychology - his ability to feel, to identify himself with a thing and the ability to alienate from it. A person creates a thing, admires it, sharing his joy with other people; he destroys, annihilates the thing, reduces it to dust, sharing his alienation with accomplices.
In turn, a thing represents a person in the world: the presence of certain things that are prestigious for a particular culture is an indicator of a person’s place among people; the absence of things is an indicator of a person's low status.
Thing can take place fetish. In the beginning, natural things became fetishes, to which supernatural meanings were attributed. The sacralization of objects through traditional rituals gave them those properties that protected a person or a group of people and assigned them a certain place among others. So, through a thing from ancient times there was a social regulation of relations between people. In developed societies, products of human activity become fetishes. In fact, many objects can become fetishes: the power of the state is personified by the golden fund, the development and multiplicity of technology,12 in particular weapons, minerals, water resources, the ecological cleanliness of nature, the standard of living determined by the consumer basket, housing, etc.
The place of an individual among other people is really determined not only by his personal qualities, but also by the things that serve him, which represent him in social relations.
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(a house, an apartment, land and other things that are prestigious at a particular moment in the cultural development of society). The material, objective world is a specifically human condition for the existence and development of a person in the process of his life.
Naturalistic-objective and symbolic being of a thing. G. Hegel considered it possible to distinguish between the naturalistic-objective being of a thing and its semiotic determinateness13. It is reasonable to recognize such a classification as correct.
The naturalistic-objective being of a thing is a world created by man for labor activity, for arranging his everyday life - a home, a place of work, rest and spiritual life. The history of culture is also the history of things that accompanied a person in his life. Ethnographers, archaeologists, and cultural researchers provide us with vast material for the development and movement of things in the historical process.
The naturalistic-objective being of a thing, having become a sign of the transition of a person from the level of evolutionary development to the level of historical development, has become a tool that transforms nature and man himself - it has determined not only the existence of a person, but also his mental development, the development of his personality.
In our time, along with the world of “tamed objects” mastered and adapted to man, new generations of things appear: from microelements, mechanisms and elementary objects that are directly involved in the life of the human body, replacing its natural organs, to high-speed liners, space rockets, nuclear power plants, creating completely different conditions for human life.
Today it is generally accepted that the naturalistic-objective being of a thing develops according to its own laws, which are more and more difficult to control for a person. A new idea has appeared in the modern cultural consciousness of people: the intensive multiplication of objects, the developing industry of the objective world, in addition to objects symbolizing the progress of mankind, create a flow of objects for the needs of mass culture. This flow standardizes a person, turning him into a victim of the development of the objective world. Yes, and the symbols of progress appear in the minds of many people as destroyers of human nature.
In the mind of modern man, there is mythologization the overgrown and developed objective world, which becomes a “thing in itself” and “a thing for itself”. However, the object violates the human psyche insofar as the person himself allows this violence.
At the same time, the objective world created by man today clearly appeals to the psychic potential of man.
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motivating the power of the thing. The naturalistic-objective being of a thing has a well-known pattern of development: it not only increases its representation in the world, but also changes the objective environment in terms of its functional characteristics, in terms of the speed of performing actions of objects, and in terms of requirements addressed to a person.
Man generates a new objective world, which begins to test his psychophysiology, his social qualities. There are problems of designing a "man - machine" system based on the principles of increasing human capabilities, overcoming the "conservatism" of the human psyche, protecting the health of a healthy person in conditions of interaction with superobjects.
But didn't the first tools that man created make the same demands on him? Wasn't it required from a person, at the limit of his mental capabilities, to overcome the natural conservatism of the psyche in spite of the protective reflexes protecting him? The creation of a new generation of things and the dependence of man on their motivating force is an obvious trend in the development of society.
The mythologization of the objective world of the new generation is the underlying attitude of a person to a thing as a “thing in itself”, as an object that has an independent “internal power”14.
Modern man carries in himself an eternal property - the ability to anthropomorphize a thing, to give it spirituality. The anthropomorphic thing is the source of eternal fear of it. And this is not only a haunted house or brownie, it is a kind of inner essence that a person endows a thing with.
Thus, human psychology itself translates the naturalistic-objective being of a thing into its symbolic being. It is this symbolic domination of a thing over a person that determines that human relations, as K. Marx showed, are mediated by a certain connection: person - thing - person. Pointing to the dominance of things over people, K. Marx emphasized the dominance of land over man: “There is an appearance of a more intimate relationship between the owner and the land than the bonds of simply material wealth. A piece of land is individualized with its owner, has his title... his privileges, his jurisdiction, his political position, etc.”15.
In human culture there are things that appear in different meanings and senses. This may include sign things, for example, signs of power, social status (crown, scepter, throne, etc. down the strata of society); symbol things, that rally people (banners, flags), and much more.
A special fetishization of things is the attitude towards money. The dominance of money reaches its most striking form where the natural
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and social certainty of the subject, where paper signs acquire the meaning of a fetish and a totem.
In the history of mankind, reverse situations also occur, when a person himself in the eyes of others acquires the status of an “animated object”. So, the slave acted as an "animated tool", as a "thing for another." And today, in situations of military conflicts, one person in the eyes of another can lose anthropomorphic properties: complete alienation from human essence leads to the destruction of identification between people.
With all the variety of human understanding of the essence of things, with all the variety of attitudes towards things, they - historically conditioned reality of human existence.
The history of mankind began with the “appropriation” and accumulation of things: first of all, with the creation and preservation of tools, as well as with the transfer to the next generations of methods for making tools and working with them.
The use of even the simplest hand tools, not to mention machines, not only increases the natural strength of a person, but also enables him to perform various actions that are generally inaccessible to the naked hand. Tools become, as it were, artificial organs of man, which he puts between himself and nature. Tools make a person stronger, more powerful and freer. But at the same time, things that are born in human culture, serving a person, facilitating his existence, can also act as a fetish that enslaves a person. The cult of things that mediates human relations can determine the price of a person.
Periods arose in the history of the human race when separate strata of mankind, protesting against the fetishization of things, denied the things themselves. Thus, the Cynics rejected all values ​​created by human labor and representing the material culture of mankind (it is known that Diogenes walked in rags and slept in a barrel). However, a person who denies the value and significance of the material world, in essence, becomes dependent on it, but on the opposite side in comparison with a money-grubber who greedily accumulates money and property.
The world of things is the world of the human spirit: the world of his needs, his feelings, his way of thinking and way of life. The production and use of things created man himself and the environment for his existence. With the help of tools and other objects that serve everyday life, mankind has created a special world - the material conditions of human existence. Man, creating the material world, psychologically entered it with all the ensuing consequences: the world of things - the human habitat - the condition of his being, a means of satisfaction.
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of his needs and the condition of mental development and personality development in ontogeny.
2. Reality figurative-sign systems. Mankind in its history gave rise to a special reality that developed along with the objective world - the reality of figurative-sign systems.
A sign is any material sensually perceived element of reality, acting in a certain meaning and used to store and transmit some ideal information about what lies beyond the limits of this material formation. The sign is included in the cognitive and creative activity of a person, in the communication of people.
Man has created a system of signs that influence the internal mental activity, determining it, and at the same time determine the creation of new objects of the real world.
Modern sign systems are divided into linguistic and non-linguistic.
Language is a system of signs that serves as a means of human thinking, self-expression and communication. With the help of language, a person learns the world around him. Language, acting as an instrument of mental activity, changes the mental functions of a person, develops his reflexive abilities. As the linguist A. A. Potebnya writes, the word is "a deliberate invention and the Divine creation of language." "The word is originally a symbol, an ideal, the word thickens thoughts" "6. Language objectifies a person's self-consciousness, shaping it in accordance with the meanings and meanings that determine the value orientations on the culture of the language, behavior, relationships between people, on samples of a person's personal qualities" 7.
Each natural language took shape in the history of an ethnos, reflecting the path of mastering the reality of the objective world, the world of things created by people, the path of mastering labor and interpersonal relations. Language always participates in the process of objective perception, becomes an instrument of mental functions in a specifically human (mediated, symbolic) form, acts means of identification objects, feelings, behavior, etc.
Language develops due to the social nature of man. In turn, the language that develops in history influences the social nature of man. IP Pavlov attached decisive importance to the word in the regulation of human behavior, dominance over behavior. The grandiose signaling of speech appears for a person as a new regulative sign of mastery of behavior.
The word is of decisive importance for thought and for spiritual life in general. A. A. Potebnya points out that the word "is an organ of thought and an indispensable condition for the entire later development of understanding the world and oneself." However, as you use, as you acquire
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meanings and meanings, the word “loses its concreteness and figurativeness”. This is a very important idea, which is confirmed by the practice of language movement. Words are not only combined and exhausted, but, having lost their original meanings and meanings, they turn into trash, which pollutes the modern language. Discussing the problem of social thinking of people in their everyday life, M. Mamardashvili wrote about the problem of language: “We live in a space in which a monstrous mass of waste products of the production of thought and language has been accumulated”19. Indeed, in the language as an integral phenomenon, as the basis of human culture, along with words-signs that act in certain meanings and senses, in the process of historical development, fragments of obsolete and obsolete signs appear. These "waste products" are natural for any living and developing phenomenon, not only for language.
About the essence of linguistic reality, the French philosopher, sociologist and ethnographer L. Levy-Bruhl wrote: “Representations called collective, if defined only in general terms, without deepening the question of their essence, they can be recognized by the following features inherent in all members of a given social group: they are transmitted in it from generation to generation. They are imposed in it on individuals, prompting in them, according to the circumstances, feelings of respect, fear, worship, etc. in relation to their objects, they do not depend for their being on a separate person. This is not because representations presuppose a collective subject distinct from the individuals who make up the social group, but because they exhibit features that cannot be comprehended and understood by merely considering the individual as such. For example, language, although it exists, in fact, only in the minds of individuals who speak it, it is nevertheless an undoubted social reality based on a set of collective ideas ... Language imposes itself on each of these personalities, it precedes it and outlives it.(emphasis mine. - V. M.)20. This is a very important explanation of the fact that at first culture contains the linguistic matter of a system of signs - it “precedes” an individual person, and then “language imposes itself” and is appropriated by a person.
And yet language is the main condition for the development of the human psyche. Thanks to language and other sign systems, a person has found a means for mental and spiritual life, a means of deep reflective communication. Of course, language is a special reality in which a person develops, becomes, is realized and exists.
Language acts as a means of cultural development; in addition, it is a source of formation of deep attitudes towards a value attitude towards the world around us: people, nature, the objective world, language itself. Emotional-value attitude, feeling
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There are a lot of verbal analogues, but before that, in a lot of linguistic signs, there is something that only then becomes the attitude of a particular person. Language - the concentration of collective representations, identifications and alienation of the ancestors of man and his contemporaries.
In ontogeny, by appropriating a language with its historically determined meanings and meanings, with its relation to cultural phenomena embodied in the realities that determine human existence, the child becomes a contemporary and bearer of the culture within which the language is formed.
Distinguish natural languages(speech, facial expressions and pantomime) and artificial(in computer science, logic, mathematics, etc.).
Non-linguistic systems of signs: signs-signs, signs-copies, autonomous signs, signs-symbols, etc.
signs-signs- a sign, a mark, a difference, a difference, everything by which they recognize something. This is an external detection of something, designation by a sign of the presence of a particular object or phenomenon.
A sign signals about an object, a phenomenon. Signs-signs make up the content of a person's experience in life, are the simplest and primary in relation to the sign culture of a person.
In ancient times, people already identified signs-signs, which helped them navigate natural phenomena (smoke means fire;
scarlet evening dawn - tomorrow the wind; lightning Thunder). Through signs-signs, expressed by external expressive manifestations of different emotional states, people learned reflection from each other. Later they mastered more subtle signs-signs.
Signs-signs are the richest area of ​​human culture, which is present in it not only in the sphere of objects, not only in the sphere of human relations with the world, but also in the sphere of language.
Copy signs(iconic signs - iconic signs) - these are reproductions that carry elements of similarity with the designated. These are the results of human visual activity - graphic and pictorial images, sculpture, photographs, diagrams, geographical and astronomical maps, etc. Copy signs reproduce in their material structure the most important sensually perceptible properties of an object - shape, color, proportions, etc.
In the tribal culture, copy signs most often depicted totem animals - a wolf, a bear, a deer, a fox, a crow, a horse, a rooster, or anthropomorphic spirits, idols. The natural elements - the sun, the moon, fire, plants, water - also have their expression in copy signs used in ritual actions, and then becoming elements of folk art culture (ornaments in house building, embroidery of towels, bedspreads, clothes, as well as all amulet).
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A separate independent culture of iconic signs is presented dolls, which conceal especially deep possibilities of influencing the psyche of an adult and a child.
A doll is an iconic sign of a person or animal, invented for rituals (made of wood, clay, cereal stalks, herbs, etc.).
In human culture, the doll has had many meanings.
The doll initially possessed the properties of a living person as an anthropomorphic creature and helped him as an intermediary, taking part in rituals. The ritual doll usually dressed up beautifully. The expressions remained in the language: “doll-doll” (about a dapper but stupid woman), “doll” (weasel, praise). In the language there is evidence of the possible earlier animation of the doll. We say "doll" - the doll belongs, we give the dolls a name - a sign of its exceptional position in the human world.
The doll, being originally inanimate, but identical in appearance to a person (or animal), had the ability to appropriate other people's souls, coming to life due to the death of the person himself. In this sense, the doll was a representative of black power. In Russian speech, an archaic expression remained: "It's good: before the devil is a chrysalis." The category of abuse included the expression "Damn's doll!" as a sign of danger. In modern folklore, there are many stories when a doll becomes hostile and dangerous to a person.
The doll occupies the space of children's play activity and is endowed with anthropomorphic properties.
The doll is the acting character of the puppet theatre.
A doll is a symbolic sign and an anthropomorphic subject in doll therapy.
Copy signs became participants in complex magical actions when attempts were made to free themselves from the evil spells of a sorcerer, witch, demons. In the cultures of many peoples of the world, the manufacture of stuffed animals is known, which are signs-copies of frightening creatures for their ritual burning in order to free themselves from real danger. The doll has a multi-component effect on mental development.
In the process of the historical development of human culture, it is the iconic signs that have acquired an exclusive space in the visual arts.
Autonomous signs- this is a specific form of existence of individual signs, which is created by an individual person (or a group of people) according to the psychological laws of creative creative activity. Autonomous signs are subjectively free from the stereotypes of social expectations of representatives of the same culture as the creator. Each new trend in art was born by pioneers discovering a new vision, a new representation
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the reality of the real world in the system of new iconic signs and signs-symbols. Through the struggle of new meanings and meanings, the system embedded in new signs was either affirmed and accepted by culture as really necessary, or went into oblivion and became interesting only to specialists - representatives of sciences interested in tracing the history of changing sign systems21.
Signs-symbols- these are signs denoting the relations of peoples, strata of society or groups that affirm something. So, emblems are the distinctive signs of the state, estate, city - materially represented symbols, the images of which are located on flags, banknotes, seals, etc.
Signs-symbols include insignia (orders, medals), insignia (badges, stripes, shoulder straps, buttonholes on uniforms that serve to designate a rank, type of service or department). This also includes mottos and emblems.
Symbolic signs also include the so-called conventional signs (mathematical, astronomical, musical signs, hieroglyphs, proofreading marks, factory marks, brand marks, quality marks); objects of nature and man-made objects, which, in the context of the culture itself, acquired the significance of an exceptional sign, reflecting the worldview of people belonging to the social space of this culture.
Signs-symbols appeared in the same way as other signs in the tribal culture. Totems, amulets, charms have become signs-symbols that protect a person from the dangers lurking in the outside world. Man attached symbolic meaning to everything natural, really existing.
The presence of signs-symbols in human culture is countless, they create the realities of the sign space in which a person lives, determine the specifics of a person’s mental development and the psychology of his behavior in his modern society.
One of the most archaic forms of signs is totems. Totems have survived to this day among certain ethnic groups not only in Africa, Latin America, but also in the North of Russia.
In the culture of tribal beliefs, the symbolic reincarnation of a person with the help of a special symbolic means - a mask - is of particular importance.
Mask - a special overlay with the image of an animal muzzle, a human face, etc., worn by a person. Being a mask, the mask disguises the person's face and contributes to the creation of a new image. The reincarnation is carried out not only with a mask, but also with an appropriate costume, the elements of which are designed to “cover up traces”. Each mask has its own characteristic movements, rhythm, dances. The magic of the mask is to help identify the person
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century with the persona designated by it. The mask can be a way to put on someone else's disguises and a way to show your true qualities.
Liberation from the restraining beginning of normativity is expressed in the symbols of human laughter culture, as well as in various forms and genres of familiar-street speech (curse, swearing, oath, whim), which also take on symbolic functions.
Laughter, being a form of manifestation of human feelings, acts in human relations and as a sign. As the researcher of laughter culture M. M. Bakhtin shows, laughter is associated “with the freedom of the spirit and freedom of speech”22. Of course, such freedom appears in a person who can and wants to overcome the controlling canonization of existing signs (linguistic and non-linguistic).
Mat in indecent abuse, swearing, obscene words has a special meaning in speech culture. Swearing carries its own symbolism and reflects social prohibitions, which in different layers of culture are overcome by swearing in everyday life or are included in the culture of poetry (A. I. Polezhaev, A. S. Pushkin). The fearless, free and frank word appears in human culture not only in the meaning of lowering the other, but also in the meaning of a person’s symbolic liberation of himself from the context of the relations of the culture of social dependence. The context of swearing has meaning within the language it has accompanied in history23.
Gestures have always been of particular importance among signs-symbols.
Gestures - body movements, mainly with the hand, accompanying or replacing speech, which are specific signs. In tribal cultures, gestures were used as a language in ritual actions and for communicative purposes.
C. Darwin explained most of the gestures and expressions involuntarily used by a person by three principles: 1) the principle of useful associated habits; 2) the principle of antithesis; 3) the principle of direct action of the nervous system24. In addition to the gestures themselves, consistent with biological nature, humanity is developing a social culture of gestures. The natural and social gestures of a person are "read" by other people, representatives of the same ethnic group, state and social circle.
Gesture culture is very specific among different peoples. So, a Cuban, a Russian and a Japanese can not only not understand each other, but also cause moral damage when trying to reflect each other's gestures. Signs of gestures within the same culture, but in different social and age groups, also have their own characteristics (gestures of adolescents25, delinquents, seminary students).
Another group of structured symbols is the tattoo.
Tattoo - symbolic protective and frightening signs applied to the face and body of a person by incisions on the skin and
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introducing paint into them. Tattoos are an invention of a generic person26, which retains its vitality and is widespread in various subcultures (sailors, criminal environment27, etc.). Modern youth from different countries have a fashion for tattoos of their subculture.
The language of tattoos has its own meanings and meanings. In a criminal environment, the tattoo sign shows the place of the criminal in his world: the sign can "raise" and "lower" a person, demonstrating a strictly hierarchized place in his environment.
Each era has its own symbols that reflect human ideology, worldview as a set of ideas and views, people's attitude to the world: to the surrounding nature, the objective world, to each other. Symbols serve to stabilize or change social relations.
The symbols of the era, expressed in objects, reflect the symbolic actions and psychology of a person belonging to this era. So, in many cultures, an object that signifies the valor, strength, courage of a warrior, the sword, was of particular importance. Yu. M. Lotman writes: “The sword is also nothing more than an object. As a thing, it can be forged or broken... but... the sword symbolizes a free person and is a "sign of freedom", it already appears as a symbol and belongs to culture"28.
The area of ​​culture is always a symbolic area. So, in its various incarnations, a sword as a symbol can be both a weapon and a symbol, but it can only become a symbol when a special sword is made for parades, which excludes practical use, actually becoming an image (iconic sign) of a weapon. The symbolic function of weapons was also reflected in the Old Russian legislation (“Russian Truth”). The compensation that the attacker had to pay to the victim was proportional not only to material, but also to moral damage:
a wound (even a severe one) inflicted by the sharp part of the sword entails less vira (penalty, compensation) than less dangerous blows with an undrawn weapon or with a sword hilt, a bowl at a feast or the back of a fist. As Yu. M. Lotman writes: “The morality of the military class is being formed, and the concept of honor is being developed. A wound inflicted by the sharp (combat) part of a cold weapon is painful, but not dishonorable. Moreover, it is even honorable, because they fight only with an equal. It is no coincidence that in the life of Western European chivalry, initiation, i.e. the transformation of the “lower” into the “higher” required a real, and later a symbolic blow with a sword. Anyone who was recognized as worthy of a wound (later - a significant blow) was simultaneously recognized as socially equal. A blow with an undrawn sword, a handle, a stick - not a weapon at all - is dishonorable, because a slave is beaten like that.
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Let us recall that along with the physical reprisal against the participants of the noble movement in December 1825 (by hanging), many nobles underwent a shameful symbolic (civil) execution, when a sword was broken over their heads, after which they were exiled to hard labor and settlement.
N. G. Chernyshevsky also suffered a humiliating rite of civil execution on May 19, 1864, after which he was sent to hard labor in Kadai.
Weapons in all the versatility of their use as a symbol included in the worldview system of a certain culture shows how complex the sign system of culture is.
Signs-symbols of a particular culture have a material expression in objects, language, etc. Signs always have a time-appropriate meaning and serve as a means of conveying deep cultural meanings. Signs-symbols, just like iconic signs, constitute the material of art.
The classification of signs into signs-copies and signs-symbols is rather conditional. These signs in many cases have a fairly pronounced reversibility. So, copy signs can acquire the meaning of a sign-symbol - a statue of the Motherland in Volgograd, in Kyiv, a statue of Liberty in New York, etc.
It is not easy to determine the specifics of signs in the new for us, the so-called virtual reality, which involves many different "worlds", which are iconic signs and new symbols transformed by it in a new way.
The conditionality of signs-copies and signs-symbols reveals itself in the context of special signs, which are considered in science as standards.
Standard signs. In human culture, there are signs-standards of color, shape, musical sounds, speech. Some of these signs can be conditionally attributed to copy signs (standards of color, shape), others - to signs-symbols (notes, letters). At the same time, these signs fall under the general definition - standards.
Standards have two meanings: 1) an exemplary measure, an exemplary measuring device that serves to reproduce, store and transmit units of any quantities with the greatest accuracy (meter standard, kilogram standard); 2) measure, standard, sample for comparison.
A special place here is occupied by the so-called sensory standards.
Sensory standards are visual representations of the main samples of the external properties of objects. They were created in the course of the cognitive and labor activity of mankind - gradually people singled out and systematized various properties of the objective world for practical, and then scientific purposes. Allocate sensory standards of color, shape, sounds, etc.
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In human speech, standards are a phoneme, i.e. sound samples, considered as a means to distinguish between the meanings of words and morphemes (parts of a word: root, suffix or prefix), on which the meaning of spoken and heard words depends. Each language has its own set of phonemes that differ from each other in certain ways. Like other sensory standards, phonemes were gradually distinguished in the language, through a painful search for the means of their standardization.
Today we can observe a great differentiation of the standards that have already been sufficiently mastered by mankind. The world of sign systems more and more differentiates natural and human-created (historical) realities,
Of particular importance is a word that can simultaneously use several sensory modalities in a work of art or description. The novelist who refers the reader to color and sound, to smells and touches, usually manages to achieve greater expressiveness in describing the plot of a whole work or a single episode.
Non-linguistic signs do not exist on their own, they are included in the context of linguistic signs. All types of signs that have developed in the history of human culture create a very complex reality of figurative-sign systems, which for a person is ubiquitous and all-pervading.
It is she who fills the space of culture, becoming its material basis, its property and at the same time a condition for the development of the psyche of an individual person. Signs become special tools of mental activity that transform the mental functions of a person and determine the development of his personality.
L. S. Vygotsky wrote: “The invention and use of signs as auxiliary means in solving any psychological problem facing a person (remember, compare something, report, choose, etc.), with psychological side represents b one paragraph analogy with the invention and use of tools. The sign initially acquires instrumental function, he is called tool(“Language is the tool of thought”). However, one should not erase the profound difference between the object-tool and the sign-tool.
L. S. Vygotsky proposed a scheme depicting the relationship between the use of signs and the use of tools:

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In the diagram, both types of adaptation are represented as divergent lines of mediating activity. The deep content of this scheme lies in the fundamental difference between the sign and the tool-object.
“The most significant difference between the sign and the tool and the basis of the real divergence of both lines is the different orientation of both. The purpose of the tool is to serve as a conductor of human influences on the object of his activity, it is directed outward, it must cause certain changes in the object, it is a means of external human activity aimed at conquering nature. A sign ... is a means of psychological influence on behavior - someone else's or one's own, a means of internal activity aimed at mastering the person himself; the sign is directed inward. The two activities are so different that the nature of the means employed cannot be the same in both cases. The use of the sign marks the going beyond the limits of organic activity that exists for each mental function.
Signs as specific aids introduce a person into a special reality that determines the reincarnation of a mental operation and expands the system of mental function activity, which, thanks to language, become higher.
The space of sign culture turns not only words, but also ideas, feelings into signs that reflect the achievements of human development and transform meanings and meanings in the historical extent of human culture. The sign, "without changing anything in the very object of the psychological operation" (L. S. Vygotsky), at the same time determines the change in the object of the psychological operation in the self-consciousness of a person - not only language is a tool of a person, but also a person is a tool of language. In the history of human culture, the human spirit, there is a continuous rooting of the objective, natural and social world in the context of the reality of figurative-sign systems.
The reality of figurative-sign systems, defining the space of human culture and acting as a human habitat, gives him, on the one hand, the means of mental influence on other people, on the other hand, the means of transforming his own psyche. In turn, the personality, reflecting the conditions for the development and existence of figurative-sign systems in reality, becomes able to create and introduce new types of signs. This is how the progressive movement of mankind is carried out. The reality of figurative-sign systems acts as a condition for the mental development and existence of a person at all his age stages.
3. natural reality. Natural reality in all its manifestations in human consciousness enters into the reality of the objective world and into the reality of figurative-sign systems of culture.
We know that man came out of nature, and to the extent that he can restore his historical path, he
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he made his own food from the fruits of nature, created tools from the matter of nature and, influencing nature, created a new world of things that has not yet existed on Earth - a man-made world.
Natural reality for man has always been a condition and source of his life and activity. Man introduced nature itself and its elements into the content of the reality of the figurative-sign system he created and formed an attitude towards it as to the source of life, the condition of development, knowledge and poetry.
Nature is represented in the mind of an ordinary person as something invariably living, reproducing and bestowing - as a source of life. In annual cycles, plants bore fruits, seeds, roots, and animals gave offspring, rivers - fish. Nature provided materials for housing, clothing; its bowels, rivers and solar matter for thermal energy. Man exercised his intellect to take more and more efficiently, from his point of view, to take and take from nature.
As a result of the development of a huge human civilization, the natural conditions of human existence are undergoing cardinal changes. For several decades, environmentalists have been seriously warning:
there was a problem of violation of the ecological balance on our planet. These violations, accumulating gradually, imperceptibly, as a result of seemingly economically justified economic actions of a person, threaten catastrophe in the near future. The tension of the ecological crisis is also increasing due to the increase in the number of people. According to UN estimates, by 2025 there will be 93 cities with a population of more than 5 million people in the world (in 1985 - 34 cities with a population of more than 5 million people). Such settlements determine the special conditions for the formation of man - cut off from natural nature, he is clearly urbanizing, his attitude to nature becomes more and more alienated. This alienation contributes to the fact that a person is constantly “increasing” his impact on nature, pursuing seemingly justifying goals: obtaining food, natural raw materials, work that provides a livelihood. Due to the discrepancy between the growing number of people and the fertility of the land, already today the multi-million population of vast territories is chronically starving. According to UNESCO, children in many countries are starving. Half of the world's children under the age of six are malnourished. From a severe or partial lack of protein in the diet, children primarily suffer from three continents: Latin America, Africa and Asia.
The result of starvation is increased infant mortality. In addition, protein hunger leads children to the so-called general insanity, which is expressed in complete apathy and immobility of the child, loss of contact with the outside world.
Smoke - an integral part of the atmosphere of large cities - leads to the development of anemia, lung diseases. Accidents at nuclear power
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trostantsiyah lead to dysfunction of the thyroid gland. Urbanization leads to super-strong loads on the human psyche.
Violating the ecological laws that determine the sustainable functioning of all parts of the biosphere, a person is alienated from the need to take into account these laws and protect nature. As a result, consciously or unconsciously, the problem of preserving the biosphere passes into the category of secondary ones.
With all reasonableness in relation to the theoretical understanding of being, a person actually consumes nature with the egoism of a child.
In the history of mankind, the concept of "Earth" has acquired many meanings and meanings.
Earth is a planet revolving around the Sun, Earth is our world, the globe on which we live, an element among other elements (fire, air, water, earth). The human body is called Earth (dust)32. The land is called the country, the space occupied by the people, the state. The concept of "land" is identified with the concept of "nature". Nature is nature, everything material, the universe, the whole universe, everything visible, subject to the five senses, but more our world. Earth.
In relation to nature, man puts himself in a special place.
Let us turn to the meanings and meanings of the reality of nature, reflected in the sign system of man. This will allow us to come closer to understanding the relationship of man to nature.
Man in the process of historical development in his relation to nature gradually passed from adapting to by giving it anthropomorphic properties to own it, which is expressed in a well-known symbolic image "Man is the king of nature." The king is always the supreme ruler of the land, people or state. The king of the earth. The function of a king is to govern, to be a king is to govern a kingdom. But the king also subordinates those around him to his influence, his will, his command. The king has an unlimited autocratic form of government, he rules over everyone.
The development of the figurative-sign system in relation to man to himself gradually put him at the head of everything that exists. The Bible is an example.
On the last, sixth day of the creation of His Being, God created man in His image and likeness and granted man the right to rule over all: “... and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the beasts, and over the cattle, and over the whole earth, and over all the reptiles that creep on the earth. And God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the beasts, and over the birds of the air, and over every livestock, and over all the earth, and over every animal. , reptiles on the Earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed that is in all the earth, and every tree bearing fruit of a tree yielding seed; - this will be food for you; but to all the green beasts, and to all the birds of the air, and to every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, in which there is a living soul,
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I have given all herbs for food. And it became so. And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.
Man is destined to rule. In the structure of sign systems that form the meanings and meanings of domination, God, the King and man in general are represented. This connection is very strongly represented in proverbs.
King of heaven (God). The king of the earth (monarch ruling the country). The king of the earth walks under the king of heaven (under God). The reigning king (God) has many kings. King from God bailiff. Without God, there is no light; without a king, the earth is not ruled. Where the king is, here is the truth.
The books of kings, the books of the Old Testament, the chronicles of the kings and people of God are the desktop books of enlightened Christians. In Russia, the second millennium has begun, as the images of the Bible dominate the self-consciousness of a person - after all, all Russian culture came out of Christianity, just like other peoples of the world have their forerunners.
Nature itself in the existing sign systems is expressed by images of three kingdoms: animals - plants - fossils. But the king over all nature is Man. In all sign systems reflecting the concepts of “reign”, “reign”, a person took a very significant place for himself, calling himself “Homo sapiens”, “King of Nature”. But the word "reign" means not only to rule, but also to rule, to manage your kingdom. The ordinary consciousness of man, first of all, picked up a meaning that does not place responsibility for the existence of nature. Man in relation to nature has become a source of aggression: he has developed three principles of attitude towards nature: “take”, “neglect”, “forget”, which demonstrate a complete alienation from nature.
Nature was the first and only source of knowledge of ancient man. The entire space of figurative-sign systems is filled with objects and phenomena of nature. It is difficult to enumerate all the sciences that are aimed at comprehending nature, because the original sciences give birth to a child, then they differentiate again.
Science is the most important element of spiritual culture, the highest form of human knowledge. Science seeks to systematize the facts, to establish patterns of development of the matter of nature, to classify nature. Of particular importance for the development of science are sign systems, a special language that each science builds on its own grounds. The language of science, or thesaurus, is a system of concepts that reflect the main vision of the subject of science, theories prevailing in science. Therefore, science can be represented as a system of concepts about the phenomena and laws of nature, as well as human existence.
The knowledge of nature, starting with the practical life of a person and moving in the history of mankind to the level of production of tools and other objects, required a theoretical understanding
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nature. Natural science has two goals: 1) to reveal the essence of natural phenomena, to know their laws and to foresee new phenomena on their basis; 2) indicate the possibilities of using the known laws of nature in practice.
B. M. Kedrov, a Russian philosopher and historian of science, wrote: “Through science, humanity exercises its dominance over the forces of nature, develops material production, and transforms social relations”34.
The fact that science for a long time exercised "dominance" and "correct exploitation of nature" and insufficiently focused on the deep laws of natural science is a natural course of development of human consciousness. Only in the XX century. - In the century of rapid development of technical production, a new problem of mankind arises and is realized: to consider nature in the context of the existence of the Earth in the Universe35. New sciences are emerging that combine nature and society into a single system36. There are hopes for preventing the threat of the death of the entire human community and nature.
In the 70s and 80s, many scientists of the world, united, appealed to the human mind. Thus, A. Newman wrote: “We hope that the 80s of our century will go down in history as a decade of scientific enlightenment in the field of environmental protection, as a time of awakening global environmental thinking and a clear awareness of the role of man in the Universe”37. Indeed, social consciousness, being a combination of people's social psychology, today should include such concepts as "ecological thinking", "ecological consciousness", on the basis of which a person creates a new system of images and signs that allow one to move from knowledge and domination over the forces of nature to the knowledge of nature and the value attitude towards it, to the understanding of the need for careful attitude and recreation. Scientists of the world for many decades have been urging humanity to move to a new psychology and new thinking aimed at saving the human community through the search for a new ethics of relation to beings in general and to nature in particular.
Thanks to the sciences, man began to build his relationship with nature as a subject with an object. He fixed himself as a subject and nature as an object. But for the harmonious existence of man in nature, it is necessary not only to be able to alienate from it, but also to retain the ability to identify with it. Maintaining the ability to relate to natural objects as a “significant other”38 is of fundamental importance for the development of the human spirit. A person, being one on one with nature, can experience a special feeling of unity with it. Of course, a person cannot free himself from the cultural acquisition of the heritage of sign systems, but, identifying with nature through its contemplation, through dissolution in
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her, he can perceive it in a halo of various meanings (“Nature is the source of life”, “Man is a part of nature”, “Nature is the source of poetry”, etc.). The attitude to nature as an object is the basis for alienation from it; the attitude to nature as a subject is the basis for identification with it.
Natural reality exists and is revealed to man in the context of his consciousness. Being the primary condition for the existence of man, nature, along with the development of his consciousness, assumes the diverse functions that are attributed to it by people.
It is very important for the development of human spirituality not to forget about the possibility of giving nature a variety of meanings that have evolved in the history of culture: from its idealization to demonization;
from the position of the subject to the position of the object, from the image to the meaning.
Analyzing the image and meaning as the main components of art, the famous linguist A. A. Potebnya pointed to the polysemantic nature of the language and introduced the so-called formula of poetry, where BUT - image, X- meaning. Formula of Poetry [BUT< Х\ affirms the inequality of the number of images to the set of their possible meanings and raises this inequality to the specifics of art39. The expansion of the meanings of nature in the self-consciousness of man is the basis of his development as a natural and social existence. This should not be forgotten when organizing the conditions for the upbringing and development of the individual.
4. The reality of social space. Social space should be called the entire material and spiritual side of human existence along with communication, human activities and a system of rights and obligations. All the realities of human existence should be included here. However, we will single out and specifically consider the independent realities of the objective world, figurative-sign systems and nature, which is quite legitimate.
Further, the subject of our discussion will be such realities of social space as communication, the diversity of human activities, as well as the reality of duties and human rights in society.
Communication - mutual relations of people. In domestic psychology, communication is considered as one of the activities.
A person is immersed in society, which ensures his life and development through communication with his own kind. This maintenance is carried out due to the stability of the communication system in the community and “the stability of the system of personal in the form of existence, public in nature relations or relationships realized in communication”40.
The content of relationships and relationships is reflected primarily in the language, in the linguistic sign. A linguistic sign is a tool of communication, a means of cognition and the core of personal meaning for a person.
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As a tool of communication, language maintains a balance in the social relations of people, realizing the social needs of the latter in mastering information that is significant for everyone.
At the same time, language is a means of cognition - by exchanging words, people exchange meanings and meanings. Meaning is the content side of the language4". The system of verbal signs that form the language appears in meanings that are understandable to native speakers and corresponding to a specific historical moment in its development.
In logic, logical semantics, and the science of language, the term “meaning” is used as a synonym for “meaning”. The meaning serves to designate that mental content, that information that is associated with a specific linguistic expression, which is the proper name of the subject. A name is a language expression denoting an object (proper name) or a set of objects (common name).
The concept of "meaning" in addition to philosophy, logic and linguistics is used in psychology in the context of a discussion of personal meaning.
Language, as the core of personal meaning, attaches particular importance to the figurative and sign systems of each individual. Having many meanings and socially significant meanings, each sign carries its own individual meaning for an individual, which is formed due to the individual experience of entering the reality of social space, thanks to complex individual associations and individual integrative connections that arise in the cerebral cortex. A. N. Leontiev wrote about the correlation of meanings and personal meanings in the context of human activity and the motives that motivate it: “Unlike meanings, personal meanings ... do not have their own “supra-individual”, their own “non-psychological” existence. If external sensibility connects meanings in the consciousness of the subject with the reality of the objective world, then personal meaning connects them with the reality of his very life in this world, with its motives. Personal meaning creates the partiality of human consciousness”42.
The reality of social space is developing in the process of the historical movement of mankind: the language of signs is becoming more and more developed and more and more diversely reflecting the objective reality of the system that determines the existence of man. The language system determines the nature of people's communication, the context that allows communicating representatives of the same language culture to establish the meanings and meanings of words, phrases and understand each other.
Language has its own characteristics: 1) in individual psychological existence, expressed in personal meanings; 2) in subjective difficulty to convey states, feelings and thoughts.
Psychologically, i.e. in the system of consciousness, meanings exist through communication and various activities in line with the personal meaning of a person. Personal meaning is the subjective attitude of a person to what he expresses with the help of linguistic signs. “The embodiment of meaning in meanings is a deeply intimate, psychologically meaningful process that does not happen automatically and simultaneously”43.
It is the personal meanings that transform the signs of the language in the individual consciousness that represent a person as a unique native speaker. Communication therefore becomes not only an action of com-
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communication, not only by activities associated with other activities, but also by poetic, creative activities that bring “the joy of communication” (Saint-Exupery) from a person’s perception of new meanings and meanings, unknown to him until then, from the lips of another person.
In informal communication, there may be moments when it is difficult for a person to express what he thought was quite mature, having certain linguistic meanings. “It is difficult to find words” - this is usually the name of the state when the consciousness is ready to form emerging images into words, but at the same time, a person experiences difficulty in realizing his impulses (remember Fyodor Tyutchev: “I forgot the word, what I wanted to say, and the thought the incorporeal will return to the hall of shadows"). There is also such a state when the chosen and spoken words are perceived by the speaker as "not at all the same." Let us recall Fyodor Tyutchev's poem "Silentium!"44.
... How can the heart express itself? How can someone else understand you? Will he understand how you live? Thought spoken is a lie. Exploding, disturb the keys - Eat them - and be silent! ..
Of course, this poem has its own meanings and meanings, but in an extended interpretation it fits perfectly as an illustration of the problem under discussion.
The reality of social space in the sphere of communication appears before an individual through a unique set of embodiments of meanings in an individual combination of meanings that are significant for him, which represent him in the world as, firstly, a special person, different from others; secondly, as a person similar to others and thus able to understand (or come closer to understanding) the general cultural meanings and individual meanings of other people.
The reality of social space is also mastered when a person in his individual development goes through trials by various types of activity. Of particular importance are the activities through which a person has to go from birth to adulthood.
Activities that determine the child's entry into human realities. In the process of the historical development of man, labor and educational activities emerged from the syncretic activity of creating the simplest tools and imitative reproduction according to the model. These types of activity were accompanied by play actions, which, having biological prerequisites in the physical activity of developing cubs and young anthropoid ancestors and gradually changing, began to represent a play reproduction of relations and symbolic tool actions.
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In the individual ontogenesis of a modern person, society provides him with the opportunity to go the way to adulthood and self-determination through the historically established and accepted today, as a matter of course, the so-called leading activities. In ontogenesis for a person, they appear in the following order.
Game activity. In play activity (in its developing part), first of all, there is a search for objects - substitutes for depicted objects and a symbolic image of objective (tool and related) actions that demonstrate the nature of relations between people, etc. Game activity trains sign function: substitution by signs and sign actions; it arises after manipulation and objective activity and becomes a condition that determines the mental development of the child. Game activity today is the subject of its theoretical and practical comprehension for the organization of the conditions for the development of the child before school.
Educational activity. The subject of educational activity is the person himself, who seeks to change himself. When a primitive man sought to imitate his fellow tribesman, who mastered the production of a simple tool, he learned to make the same tools as his more successful brother.
Learning activity is always doing, changing oneself. But in order for each new generation to carry out learning effectively, in accordance with the new achievements of progress, a special category of people was required, transferring the means of learning to the new generation. These are scientists who develop the theoretical foundations of methods that promote learning; methodologists who empirically test the effectiveness of methods; teachers who set the ways of performing mental and practical actions that contribute to the development of students.
Learning activity determines the potential changes taking place in the cognitive and personal sphere of a person.
Labor activity arose as an expedient activity, thanks to which the development of natural and social forces took place, is taking place and will take place in order to satisfy the historically established needs of the individual and society.
Labor activity is the determining force of social development; labor is the main form of life of human society, the initial condition of human existence. It was thanks to the creation and preservation of tools that humanity stood out from nature, creating a man-made world of objects - the second nature of human existence. Labor has become the basis of all aspects of social life.
Labor activity is a consciously carried out impact by a tool on the object of labor, as a result of which the object of labor is transformed into the result of labor.
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Labor activity was originally associated with the developing consciousness of a person, which was born and formed in labor, in the relationship of people about tools and the object of labor. A certain image of the result of labor and an image of what labor actions can achieve this result were built in the mind of a person. The production and use of tools is "a specific characteristic feature of the human labor process..."45.
Tools of labor are artificial organs of man, through which he acts on the object of labor. At the same time, the historically developed generalized methods of labor and objective actions of people, expressed in the signs of the language, are embodied in the form and functions of tools and objects of labor.
In modern conditions, the degree of indirect interaction between a person and the object of labor has significantly increased. Science penetrates into labor activity, into all its parameters: into the process of production of tools and consumer goods, as well as into the organizational culture of work.
In the organizational culture of work, the system of relations and the conditions for the existence of the labor collective are manifested, i.e. something that significantly determines the success of the functioning and survival of the organization (team) in the long term.
People are the carriers of organizational culture. However, in teams with a well-established organizational culture, the latter, as it were, is separated from people and becomes an attribute of the social atmosphere of the team, which has an active impact on its members. The culture of an organization is a complex interaction of philosophy and ideology of management, the mythology of the organization, value orientations, beliefs, expectations and norms. The organizational culture of labor activity exists in the system of linguistic signs and in the "spirit" of the team, reflecting the readiness of the latter to develop, to accept symbols, through which value orientations are "transferred" to the team members. The production relations that people enter into determine the nature of their work activity, the nature of communication about the content of work activity, and mediate the style of communication. Labor activity is focused on the final product, as well as on receiving a cash equivalent for work. But in the labor activity itself there are conditions for self-development of a person. Each person, motivatedly included in the labor activity itself, strives to be a professional and a creator.
Thus, the main types of human activity - communication, play, learning, work - constitute the reality of social space.
The relations of people in the sphere of communication, labor activity, learning and games are mediated by the rules that have developed in society, which are presented in society in the form of duties and rights.
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Responsibilities and human rights. The reality of social space has an organizing behavior of a person, his way of thinking and motives, the beginning, expressed in a system of duties and rights. Each person will only feel sufficiently protected in the conditions of the reality of social space if he takes the existing system of duties and rights as the basis of his being. Of course, the meanings of duties and rights have the same pulsating mobility in the public consciousness of people in the process of history, like any other meanings. But in the sphere of individual meanings, duties and rights can acquire key positions for a person's life orientation.
At one time, Charles Darwin wrote: “Man is a social animal. Everyone will agree that man is a social animal. We see this in his dislike of solitude and in his striving for society...”46 Man depends on society and cannot do without it. As a social being, a powerful feeling has been formed in man in his historical development - the regulator of his social behavior, it is summarized in a short but powerful word "should", so full of high meaning. “We see in him the noblest of all the qualities of a person, which makes him, without the slightest hesitation, risk his life for his neighbor, or, after due consideration, sacrifice his life for some great goal, by virtue of a deep sense of duty or justice alone”47. Here Ch. Darwin refers to I. Kant, who wrote: “Sense of duty! A wonderful concept that affects the soul through fascinating arguments of flattery or threats, but by one force of an unadorned, immutable law and therefore always inspires respect, if not always humility ... "
The social quality of a person - a sense of duty - was formed in the process of building ideals and implementing social control.
An ideal is a norm, a certain image of how a person should manifest himself in life in order to be recognized by society. However, this image is very syncretic, it is difficult to give in to a verbal construction. I. Kant at one time spoke very definitely: “... We must, however, recognize that the human mind contains not only ideas, but also ideals(emphasis mine. - V. M.), which ... have practical force (as regulative principles) and underlie the possibility of the perfection of certain actions ... Virtue and with it human wisdom in all their purity are the essence of ideas. But the sage (of the Stoics) is the ideal, i.e. a person who exists only in thought, but who is completely consistent with the idea of ​​wisdom. Just as the idea gives the rules, so the ideal then serves as a prototype for the complete definition of its copies; and we have no other standard for our actions than the behavior of this divine man in us, with
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with which we compare ourselves, evaluate ourselves and thereby correct ourselves, never, however, being able to equal him. Although it is impossible to admit the objective reality (existence) of these ideals, nevertheless, one cannot, on this basis, consider them chimeras: they provide the necessary measure for the mind, which needs the concept of what is perfect in its kind, in order to evaluate and measure the degree and shortcomings. imperfect."48 Mankind, when creating and mastering the reality of social space, through its thinkers, has always sought to create a moral ideal.
The moral ideal is an idea of ​​the universal norm, a model of human behavior and relations between people. The moral ideal grows and develops in close connection with social, political and aesthetic ideals. At each historical moment, depending on the ideology that arises in society, on the direction of the movement of society, the moral ideal changes its shades. However, universal human values ​​worked out over the centuries remain unchanged in their nominal part. In the individual consciousness of people, they act in a feeling called conscience, they determine the behavior of a person in everyday life.
The moral ideal is focused on a large number of external components: laws, the constitution, duties that are indispensable for a particular institution where a person studies or works, the rules of a hostel in a family, in public places, and much more. At the same time, the moral ideal has an individual orientation in each individual person, acquires a unique meaning for him.
The reality of social space is the whole inseparable complex of sign systems of the objective and natural world, as well as human relations and values. It is in the reality of human existence as a condition that determines individual development and individual human destiny that every person enters from the moment of his birth and stays in it during his earthly life.
§ 2.PREREQUISITES FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHE
biological background. The preliminary conditions for the development of the psyche are usually called the prerequisites for development. The prerequisites include the natural properties of the human body. The child goes through a natural process of development on the basis of certain prerequisites created by the previous development of his ancestors over many generations.
In the second half of the XIX century. and in the first half XX in. The scientific consciousness of philosophers, biologists, psychologists was mastered by the biogenetic law formulated by E. Haeckel (1866). According to this law, each organic form in its individual development
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(ontogenesis) to a certain extent repeats the features and characteristics of those forms from which it originated. The law reads as follows: "Ontogeny is a brief and quick repetition of phylogenies"49. This means that in ontogenesis each individual organism directly reproduces the path of phylogenetic development, i.e. there is a repetition of the development of ancestors from a common root to which this organism belongs.
According to E. Haeckel, the rapid repetition of phylogeny (recapitulation) is due to the physiological functions of heredity (reproduction) and adaptability (nutrition). At the same time, the individual repeats the most important changes in shape that its ancestors went through during the slow and long paleontological development according to the laws of heredity and adaptation.
E. Haeckel followed C. Darwin, who first posed the problem of the relationship between ontogeny and phylogenesis back in the "Essay of 1844". He wrote: "The embryos of extant vertebrates reflect the structure of some adult forms of this large class that existed in earlier periods of the history of the Earth"50. However, Charles Darwin also noted the facts reflecting the phenomena of heterochrony (changes in the time of appearance of signs), in particular cases when some signs appear in the ontogenesis of descendants earlier than in the ontogenesis of ancestral forms.
The biogenetic law formulated by E. Haeckel was perceived by contemporaries and the next generations of scientists as immutable5".
E. Haeckel analyzed the structure of the human body in the context of the entire evolution of the animal world. E. Haeckel considered the ontogeny of man and the history of his origin. Revealing the genealogy (phylogeny) of man, he wrote: “If countless plant and animal species were not created by a supernatural “miracle”, but “developed” through natural transformation, then their “natural system” will be a genealogical tree”52. Further, E. Haeckel proceeded to describe the essence of the soul from the point of view of the psychology of peoples, ontogenetic psychology and phylogenetic psychology. “The individual raw material of a child's soul,” he wrote, “is already qualitatively given in advance from parents and grandparents through heredity;
education presents a wonderful task to turn this soul into a magnificent flower by intellectual training and moral education, i.e. by adaptation." At the same time, he gratefully refers to the work of V. Preiner on the soul of a child (1882), which analyzes the inclinations inherited by a child.
Following E. Haeckel, child psychologists began to design the stages of ontogeny of individual development from the simplest forms to modern man (St. Hall, W. Stern, K. Buhler, and others). So,
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K. Buhler pointed out that “individuals bring with them inclinations, and the plan for their implementation consists of the sum of laws”54. At the same time, K. Koffka, exploring the phenomenon of maturation in relation to learning, noted: “Growth and maturation are such developmental processes, the course of which depends on the inherited characteristics of the individual, as well as the morphological trait completed at birth ... Growth and maturation, however, is not completely independent of external influences...”55
Developing the ideas of E. Haeckel Ed. Claperede wrote that the essence of children's nature is "in striving for further development", while "the longer childhood, the longer the period of development"56.
In science, during the period of the greatest dominance of any new idea, there is usually a roll in its direction. So it happened with the basic principle of the biogenetic law - the principle of recapitulation (from lat. recapitulation - a concise repetition of what was before). Thus, S. Hall tried to explain development in terms of recapitulation. He found numerous atavisms in the behavior and development of the child: instincts, fears. Traces from an ancient era - fear of individual objects, body parts, etc. “... The fear of eyes and teeth ... is partly due to atavistic remnants, echoes of those long epochs when man fought for his existence with animals that had large or strange eyes and teeth, when a long war of all against all within the human race was waged further” 57. S. Hall produced risky analogies that were not confirmed by real ontogeny. At the same time, his compatriot D. Baldwin explained the genesis of timidity in children from the same positions.
Many childhood psychologists named the stages through which a child must pass in the process of his ontogenetic development (S. Hall, V. Stern, K. Buhler).
F. Engels was also infected with the idea of ​​E. Haeckel, who also accepted ontogeny as a fact of the rapid passage of phylogeny in the field of the mental.
3. Freud understood the power of biological prerequisites in his own way, who divided the self-consciousness of a person into three spheres: “It”, “I” and “Super-I”.
According to 3. Freud, "It" is a receptacle for innate and repressed impulses, charged with psychic energy and requiring an exit. "It" is governed by the innate pleasure principle. If the “I” is the sphere of the conscious, the “Super-I” is the sphere of social control expressed in the human conscience, then “It”, being an innate gift, has a powerful influence on the other two spheres58.
The idea that innate characteristics, heredity are the key to the earthly destiny of a person, begins to flood not only scientific treatises, but also the ordinary consciousness of people.
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The place of the biological in development is one of the main problems of developmental psychology. This problem will still be worked out in science. Today, however, we can speak quite confidently about many prerequisites.
Is it possible to become human without having a human brain?
As you know, our closest "relatives" in the animal world are great apes. The most docile and intelligent of them are chimpanzees. Their gestures, facial expressions, behavior are sometimes striking in resemblance to human ones. Chimpanzees, like other great apes, are distinguished by inexhaustible curiosity. They can spend hours studying the object that fell into their hands, observe crawling insects, and follow the actions of a person. Their imitation is highly developed. A monkey, imitating a person, can, for example, sweep the floor or wet a rag, wring it out and wipe the floor. Another thing is that the floor after that will almost certainly remain dirty - everything will end with the movement of garbage from place to place.
As observations show, chimpanzees use a large number of sounds in different situations, to which relatives react. Under experimental conditions, many scientists have been able to get chimpanzees to solve rather complex practical problems that require thinking in action and even include the use of objects as the simplest tools. So, through a series of trials, monkeys built pyramids from boxes in order to get a banana suspended from the ceiling, mastered the ability to knock down a banana with a stick and even make one long stick out of two short ones for this, open the lock of a box with bait, using for this a “nag” of the desired shape ( stick with a triangular, round or square section). Yes, and the brain of a chimpanzee in its structure and the ratio of the sizes of individual parts is closer to the human than the brain of other animals, although it is much inferior to it in weight and volume.
All this led to the thought: what if we try to give a human education to a baby chimpanzee? Will it be possible to develop at least some human qualities in him? And such attempts were made repeatedly. Let's stop at one of them.
Domestic zoopsychologist N. N. Ladynina-Kote raised the little chimpanzee Ioni from one and a half to four years in her family. The cub enjoyed complete freedom. He was provided with a wide variety of human things and toys, the "foster mother" tried in every possible way to acquaint him with the use of these things, to teach him to communicate through speech. The entire course of the development of the monkey was carefully recorded in the diary.
Ten years later, Nadezhda Nikolaevna had a son, who was named Rudolf (Rudy). His development up to the age of four was also closely monitored. As a result,
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The book The Chimpanzee Child and the Human Child (1935) was born. What has been established by comparing the development of an ape with the development of a child?
When observing both babies, a great similarity was found in many playful and emotional manifestations. But at the same time, a fundamental difference emerged. It turned out that chimpanzees cannot master the upright gait and free their hands from the function of walking on the ground. Although he imitates many human actions, this imitation does not lead to the correct assimilation and improvement of the skills associated with the use of household items and tools: only the external pattern of the action is grasped, and not its meaning. So, Ioni, imitating, often tried to hammer a nail. However, either he did not apply enough force, or he did not hold the nail in a vertical position, or he hit the hammer past the nail. As a result, despite a lot of practice, Yoni was never able to hammer in a single nail. Inaccessible to a monkey cub are games that are creative and constructive in nature. Finally, he lacks any tendency whatsoever to imitate speech sounds and master words, even with persistent special training. Approximately the same result was obtained by other "adoptive parents" of the baby monkey - the Kellogg spouses.
This means that without the human brain, human mental qualities cannot arise.
Another problem is the possibilities of the human brain outside the conditions of life characteristic of people in society.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Indian psychologist Reed Singh received news that two mysterious creatures were seen near a village, similar to people, but moving on all fours. They were tracked down. One day, Singh and a group of hunters hid at a wolf hole and saw a she-wolf leading her cubs for a walk, among which were two girls, one about eight, the other one and a half years old. Singh took the girls with him and tried to raise them. They ran on all fours, got frightened and tried to hide at the sight of people, snarled, howled like wolves at night. The youngest, Amala, died a year later. The eldest, Kamala, lived until the age of seventeen. For nine years, she was mostly weaned from wolf habits, but still, when she was in a hurry, she fell on all fours. Kamala, in fact, never mastered her speech - with great difficulty she learned to use only 40 words correctly. It turns out that the human psyche does not arise even without human conditions of life.
Thus, both a certain structure of the brain and certain conditions of life and upbringing are necessary in order to become a man. However, their meaning is different. Examples with Yoni and Kamala in this sense
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le are very characteristic: a monkey raised by a man, and a child raised by a wolf. Yoni grew up as a monkey with all the behavioral characteristics of a chimpanzee. Kamala grew up not as a man, but as a creature with typical wolf habits. Consequently, the traits of monkey behavior are largely embedded in the brain of the monkey, predetermined hereditarily. There are no traits of human behavior, human mental qualities in the brain of a child. But there is something else - the opportunity to acquire what is given by the conditions of life, upbringing, even if it is the ability to howl at night.
Interaction of biological and social factors. The biological and the social in man are in fact so firmly reunited that it is only theoretically possible to separate these two lines.
L. S. Vygotsky, in his work on the history of the development of higher mental functions, wrote: “It is quite well known that the fundamental and fundamental difference between the historical development of mankind and the biological evolution of animal species ... we can ... draw a completely clear and indisputable conclusion: how excellent historical development of mankind from the biological evolution of animal species”59. The process of psychological development of the person himself, according to numerous studies of ethnologists, psychologists, occurs according to historical laws, and not according to biological ones. The main and all-defining difference between this process and the evolutionary one is that the development of higher mental functions occurs without changing the biological type of a person, which changes according to evolutionary laws.
Until now, it has not been sufficiently clarified what is the direct dependence of higher mental functions and forms of behavior on the structure and functions of the nervous system. Neuropsychologists and neurophysiologists are still solving this difficult problem - after all, we are talking about the study of the finest integrative connections of brain cells and manifestations of human mental activity.
There is no doubt that each stage in the biological development of behavior coincides with changes in the structure and functions of the nervous system, each new stage in the development of higher mental functions arises along with changes in the central nervous system. However, it still remains insufficiently clear what is the direct dependence of higher forms of behavior, higher mental functions on the structure and function of the nervous system.
Exploring primitive thinking, L. Levy-Bruhl wrote that the higher mental functions come from the lower ones. “In order to understand the higher types, it is necessary to refer to a relatively primitive type. In this case, a wide field opens up for productive research on mental functions ... "60 Exploring collective representations and meaning "by representation
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the fact of cognition”, L. Levy-Bruhl pointed to social development as determining the characteristics of mental functions. Obviously, this fact was noted by L. S. Vygotsky as a prominent position of science:
“Compared to one of the most profound investigators of primitive thinking, the idea that higher mental functions cannot be understood without biological study, those. that they are the product not of a biological but of a social development of behavior is not new. But only in in recent decades, it has received a solid factual basis in research on ethnic psychology. and can now be considered the indisputable position of our science. 6 "This means that the development of higher mental functions can be carried out through the collective consciousness, in the context of the collective ideas of people, i.e. it is due to the socio-historical nature of man. L. Levy-Bruhl indicates a very important circumstance, which had already been emphasized by many sociologists under him:
“In order to understand the mechanism of social institutions, one must get rid of the prejudice that consists in the belief that collective representations generally obey the laws of psychology based on the analysis of the individual subject. Collective representations have their own laws and lie in the social relations of people. These ideas led L. S. Vygotsky to the idea that became fundamental for Russian psychology: “The development of higher mental functions is one of the most important aspects of the cultural development of behavior.” And further: “Speaking of the cultural development of the child, we have in mind a process corresponding to the mental development that took place in the process of the historical development of mankind ... But, a priori, it would be difficult for us to abandon the idea that a peculiar form of adaptation of man to nature, fundamentally distinguishes man from animals and makes it fundamentally impossible to simply transfer the laws of animal life (the struggle for existence) into the science of human society, that this is a new form of adaptation that underlies the entire historical life of mankind, will be impossible without new forms of behavior, this basic mechanism balancing the body with the environment. A new form of relationship with the environment, which arose in the presence of certain biological prerequisites, but itself grew beyond the limits of biology, could not but give rise to a fundamentally different, qualitatively different, otherwise organized system of behavior.
The use of tools made it possible for a person, breaking away from developing biological forms, to move to the level of higher forms of behavior.
In human ontogenesis, of course, both types of mental development are represented, which are isolated in phylogeny: biological and
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historical (cultural) development. In ontogenesis, both processes have their analogues. In the light of the data of genetic psychology, two lines of a child's mental development can be distinguished, corresponding to two lines of phylogenetic development. Pointing to this fact, L. S. Vygotsky limits his judgment “only to one moment: the presence of two lines of development in phylogenesis and ontogenesis, and does not rely on Haeckel’s phylogenetic law (“ontogeny is a brief repetition of phylogeny”)”, which was widely used in biogenetic theories of V. Stern, Art. Hall, K. Buhler and others.
According to L. S. Vygotsky, both processes, presented in a separate form in phylogenesis and connected by a relationship of continuity and sequence, actually exist in a merged form and form a single process in ontogenesis. This is the greatest and most fundamental peculiarity of the mental development of the child.
"The growth of a normal child into civilization, - wrote L. S. Vygotsky, - is usually a single alloy with the processes of its organic maturation. Both plans of development - natural and cultural - coincide and merge with one another. Both series of changes interpenetrate one another and form, in essence, a single series of socio-biological formation of the child's personality. Insofar as organic development takes place in a cultural environment, it turns into a historically conditioned biological process. On the other hand, cultural development acquires a completely unique and incomparable character, since it takes place simultaneously and merged with organic maturation, since its carrier is the growing, changing, maturing organism of the child. L. S. Vygotsky consistently develops his idea of ​​combining growing into civilization with organic maturation.
The idea of ​​maturation underlies the allocation in the ontogenetic development of the child of special periods of increased response - sensitive periods.
Extreme plasticity, learning ability is one of the most important features of the human brain, which distinguishes it from the brain of animals. In animals, most of the brain matter is "occupied" by the time of birth - the mechanisms of instincts are fixed in it, i.e. forms of behavior that are inherited. In a child, a significant part of the brain turns out to be “clean”, ready to accept and consolidate what life and upbringing give him. Scientists have proven that the process of brain formation in an animal basically ends by the time of birth, while in humans it continues after birth and depends on the conditions in which the child develops. Consequently, these conditions not only fill the "blank pages" of the brain, but also affect its very structure.
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The laws of biological evolution have lost their force in relation to man. Natural selection ceased to act - the survival of the strongest, most adapted to the environment of individuals, because people themselves have learned to adapt the environment to their needs. transform it with the help of tools and collective labor.
The human brain has not changed since the time of our ancestor - the Cro-Magnon man, who lived several tens of thousands of years ago. And if a person received his mental qualities from nature, we would still huddle in caves, maintaining an unquenchable fire. In fact, everything is different.
If in the animal world the achieved level of development of behavior is transmitted from one generation to another in the same way as the structure of the body, by biological inheritance, then in humans, the types of activity characteristic of him, and with them the corresponding knowledge, skills and mental qualities, are transmitted in another way - through social inheritance.
social inheritance. Each generation of people expresses their experience, their knowledge, skills, mental qualities in the products of their labor. These include both objects of material culture (things around us, houses, cars) and works of spiritual culture (language, science, art). Each new generation receives from the previous ones everything that was created before, enters the world that has "absorbed" the activities of mankind.
Mastering this world of human culture, children gradually learn the social experience invested in it, the knowledge, skills, mental qualities that are characteristic of a person. This is social inheritance. Of course, a child is not able to decipher the achievements of human culture on his own. He does this with constant help and guidance from adults - in the process of education and training.
Tribes have survived on earth, leading a primitive way of life, not knowing not only television, but also metals, extracting food with the help of primitive stone tools. The study of representatives of such tribes at first glance indicates a significant difference between their psyche and the psyche of a modern cultured person. But this difference is not at all a manifestation of any natural features. If you raise a child of such a backward tribe in a modern family, he will be no different from any of us.
The French ethnographer J. Villard went on an expedition to a remote region of Paraguay, where the Guaquil tribe lived. Very little was known about this tribe: that it leads a nomadic lifestyle, constantly moving from place to place in search of its main food - the honey of wild bees, has a primitive language, and does not come into contact with other people. Villars, like many others before him, was not lucky enough to meet the Guayquils - they hurriedly left as the expedition approached. But in one of the abandoned parking lots, apparently,
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a bustling two-year-old girl. Villars took her to France and instructed her mother to raise her. Twenty years later, the young woman was already a trilingual ethnographer.
The natural properties of the child, without giving rise to mental qualities, create the prerequisites for their formation. These qualities themselves arise due to social inheritance. So, one of the important mental qualities of a person is speech (phonemic) hearing, which makes it possible to distinguish and recognize the sounds of speech. No animal has it. It has been established that, reacting to verbal commands, animals catch only the length of the word and intonation, they do not distinguish speech sounds themselves. From nature, the child receives the structure of the auditory apparatus and the corresponding parts of the nervous system, suitable for distinguishing speech sounds. But speech hearing itself develops only in the process of mastering a particular language under the guidance of adults.
The child does not have from birth any forms of behavior characteristic of an adult. But some of the simplest forms of behavior - unconditioned reflexes - are innate in him and absolutely necessary both for the child to survive and for further mental development. A child is born with a set of organic needs (for oxygen, at a certain ambient temperature, for food, etc.) and with reflex mechanisms aimed at satisfying these needs. Various environmental influences cause protective and orienting reflexes in the child. The latter are especially important for further mental development, since they form the natural basis for receiving and processing external impressions.
On the basis of unconditioned reflexes, the child already very early begins to develop conditioned reflexes, which lead to an expansion of reactions to external influences and to their complication. Elementary unconditional and conditioned reflex mechanisms provide the child's initial connection with the outside world and create conditions for establishing contacts with adults and transition to the assimilation of various forms of social experience. Under its influence, the mental qualities and personality traits of the child are subsequently formed.
In the process of assimilation of social experience, individual reflex mechanisms are combined into complex forms - the functional organs of the brain. Each such system works as a whole, performs a new function that differs from the functions of its constituent links: it provides speech hearing, musical ear, logical thinking and other mental qualities inherent in a person.
During childhood there is an intensive maturation of the child's body, in particular the maturation of his nervous system and brain. On pro-
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During the first seven years of life, the mass of the brain increases by about 3.5 times, its structure changes, and functions improve. targeted training and education.
The course of maturation depends on whether the child receives a sufficient number of external impressions, whether adult education provides the conditions necessary for the active work of the brain. Science has proven that areas of the brain that are not exercised cease to mature normally and may even atrophy (lose the ability to function). This is especially pronounced in the early stages of development.
A maturing organism is the most fertile ground for education. We know what impression the events that take place in childhood make on us, what influence they sometimes have on the rest of our lives. Education in childhood is more important for the development of mental qualities than adult education.
Natural prerequisites - the structure of the body, its functions, its maturation - are necessary for mental development; without them, development cannot take place, but they do not determine what kind of mental qualities appear in a child. It depends on the conditions of life and education, under the influence of which the child learns social experience.
Social experience is a source of mental development, from which the child, through an intermediary (adult), receives material for the formation of mental qualities and personality traits. An adult person himself uses social experience for the purpose of self-improvement.
Social conditions and age. Age stages of mental development are not identical to biological development. They are of historical origin. Of course, childhood, understood in the sense of a person's physical development, the time necessary for his growth, is a natural, natural phenomenon. But the duration of the period of childhood, when the child does not participate in social labor, but only prepares for such participation, and the forms that this preparation takes, depend on socio-historical conditions.
Data on how childhood passes among peoples at different stages of social development show that the lower this stage, the earlier the growing person is included in adult types of work. In a primitive culture, children literally
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cops, when they start walking, work together with adults. Childhood as we know it appeared only when the work of adults became inaccessible to the child and began to require a great deal of preliminary preparation. It was identified by mankind as a period of preparation for life, for adult activity, during which the child must acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, mental qualities and personality traits. And each age stage is called upon to play its own special role in this preparation.
The role of the school is to give the child the knowledge and skills necessary for various types of specific human activity (work in different areas of social production, science, culture), and to develop the appropriate mental qualities. The significance of the period from birth to entering school lies in the preparation of more general, basic human knowledge and skills, mental qualities and personality traits that every person needs to live in society. These include the acquisition of speech, the use of household items, the development of orientation in space and time, the development of human forms of perception, thinking, imagination, etc., the formation of the foundations of relationships with other people, the initial introduction to works of literature and art.
In accordance with these tasks and the possibilities of each age group, society assigns children a certain place among other people, develops a system of requirements for them, a range of their rights and obligations. Naturally, as children's abilities grow, these rights and obligations become more serious, in particular, the degree of independence assigned to the child and the degree of responsibility for his actions increase.
Adults organize the lives of children, build upbringing in accordance with the place assigned to the child by society. Society determines the adults' ideas about what can be required and expected from a child at each age stage.
The attitude of the child to the world around him, the range of his duties and interests are determined, in turn, by the place he occupies among other people, by the system of requirements, expectations and influences on the part of adults. If a baby is characterized by a need for constant emotional communication with an adult, then this is due to the fact that the whole life of a baby is entirely determined by an adult, and is determined not in any indirect way, but in the most direct and direct way: there is almost continuous physical contact when an adult swaddles child, feeds him, gives him a toy, supports him during his first attempts to walk, etc.
The need for cooperation with an adult that arises in early childhood, interest in the immediate objective environment are associated with
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the fact that, taking into account the growing capabilities of the child, adults change the nature of communication with him, move on to communication about certain objects and actions. They begin to demand from the child a certain independence in servicing himself, which is impossible without mastering the methods of using objects.
The emerging needs to join the actions and relationships of adults, the exit of interests beyond the immediate environment and, at the same time, their focus on the process of activity itself (and not on its result) are features that distinguish a preschooler and find expression in a role-playing game. These features reflect the duality of the place occupied by children of preschool age among other people. On the one hand, the child is expected to understand human actions, distinguish between good and evil, and consciously comply with the rules of behavior. On the other hand, all the vital needs of the child are satisfied by adults, he does not bear serious obligations, adults do not make any significant demands on the results of his actions.
Going to school is a turning point in a child's life. The sphere of application of mental activity is changing - the game is replaced by teaching. From the first day at school, the student is presented with new requirements that correspond to educational activities. According to these requirements, yesterday's preschooler must be organized, succeeding in the assimilation of knowledge; he must learn the rights and duties corresponding to the new position in society.
A distinctive feature of the position of the student is that his study is a mandatory, socially significant activity. For her, the student must be responsible to the teacher, family, himself. The life of a student is subject to a system of rules that are the same for all schoolchildren, the main of which is the acquisition of knowledge that he must learn for the future.
Modern living conditions - in the context of the socio-economic crisis - have created new problems: 1) economic, which at the level of schoolchildren act as the problem "Children and money"; 2) worldview - the choice of positions in relation to religion, which at the level of childhood and adolescence act as a problem "Children and religion"; 3) moral - the instability of legal and moral criteria, which at the level of adolescence and youth act as problems "Children and AIDS", "Early pregnancy", etc.
Social conditions also determine the value orientations, occupation and emotional well-being of adults.
Patterns of development. Since the stages of mental development are mainly of a social historical nature, they are not
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may be unchanged. Those stages that are listed above reflect the conditions of life of children in modern society. All the children of civilized countries go through them in one form or another. However, the age limits of each stage, the time of the onset of critical periods can vary significantly depending on the customs, traditions of raising children, and the characteristics of the education system of each country.
Those basic psychological traits that unite children who are at the same age stage of mental development, to a certain extent determine their more particular mental characteristics. This allows us to speak, for example, about the characteristics of attention, perception, thinking, imagination, feelings, volitional control of behavior that are typical for a young child, or a preschooler, or a primary school student. However, such features can be changed, rebuilt when changing the education of children.
Mental qualities do not arise by themselves, they are formed in the course of upbringing and education, based on the activity of the child. Therefore, it is impossible to give a general description of a child of a certain age without taking into account the conditions of his upbringing and education. Children at different stages of mental development do not differ from each other in the presence or absence of certain mental qualities under certain conditions of upbringing and education. The psychological characteristic of age consists primarily in identifying those mental qualities that at this age can and should be developed in a child, using existing needs, interests and activities.
The revealed possibilities of the child's mental development prompt some psychologists, educators, and parents to artificially accelerate mental development, to strive for the intensified formation in the child of such types of thinking that are more characteristic of schoolchildren. For example, attempts are being made to teach children to solve mental problems through abstract verbal reasoning. However, this path is incorrect, since it does not take into account the peculiarities of the preschool stage of the child's mental development with his characteristic interests and activities. He also does not take into account the sensitivity of preschoolers in relation to educational influences aimed at developing figurative, rather than abstract thinking. The main task of teaching at each age stage of mental development is not to accelerate this development, but to enrich it, to maximize the use of the opportunities that this particular stage gives.
The allocation of stages of mental development is based on external conditions and internal patterns of this development itself and constitutes a psychological age periodization.

§3.INTERNAL POSITION AND DEVELOPMENT
The existence of social relations is reflected in the personality, as is known, through the appropriation of socially significant values ​​by a person, through the assimilation of social standards and attitudes. At the same time, both the needs and motives of each person carry the socio-historical orientations of the culture in which the person develops and acts. This means that a human being can rise in his development to the level of personality only in the conditions of a social environment, through interaction with this environment and appropriation of the spiritual experience that has been accumulated by mankind. A person gradually in the process of ontogenetic development forms his own internal position through a system of personal meanings.
The system of personal meanings. Psychology has identified a number of conditions that determine the basic laws of the mental development of the individual. The starting point in each personality is the level of mental development; this can include mental development and the ability to independently build value orientations, to choose a line of behavior that allows you to defend these orientations.
The individual being of a person is formed through an internal position, the formation of personal meanings, on the basis of which a person builds his worldview, through the content side of self-consciousness.
The system of personal meanings of each person determines individual variants of his value orientations. From the first years of life, a person learns and creates value orientations that shape his life experience. He projects these value orientations onto his future. That is why people's value-oriented positions are so individual.
Modern society has risen to that stage of development, at which the value of the personal principle in a person is realized, the comprehensive development of the personality is highly appreciated.
A. N. Leontiev pointed out that personality is a special quality that an individual acquires in society, in the totality of relations that are social in nature, in which the individual is involved65. Satisfaction of material needs by a person leads to their reduction only to the level of conditions, and not to the level of internal sources of personality development: a personality cannot develop within the framework of needs, its development involves a shift of needs to creation that knows no boundaries. This conclusion is of fundamental importance.
Psychologists who develop the theory of personality believe that a person as a person is a relatively stable psychological system. According to L. I. Bozhovich, psychologically
50
a mature personality is a person who is able to be guided by consciously set goals, which determines the active nature of his behavior. This ability is due to the development of three aspects of personality: rational, volitional, emotional66.
For a holistic, harmonious personality, of course, the ability not only for conscious self-government, but also for the formation of motivating systems is important. Personality cannot be characterized by the development of any one side - rational, volitional or emotional. Personality is a kind of indissoluble integrity of all its aspects.
V. V. Davydov rightly pointed out that the socio-psychological maturity of the individual is determined not so much by the processes of organic growth as by the real place of the individual in society. He argues that in modern developmental psychology the question should be posed as follows: “How to form a holistic human personality, how to help it, in the words of F. M. Dostoevsky, “stand out”, how to give the educational process the most accurate, socially justified direction” 67.
Of course, this process should be built in such a way that every child gets a chance to become a real full-fledged, comprehensively developed personality. In order for a child to become a person, it is necessary to form in him the need to be a person. E. V. Ilyenkov wrote about this: “Do you want a person to become a person? Then put him from the very beginning - from childhood - in such a relationship with another person (with all other people), within which he not only could, but would be forced to become a personality ... It is a comprehensive, harmonious (and not ugly - one-sided) development of each person is the main condition for the birth of a person who is able to independently determine the path of his life, his place in it, his business, interesting and important for everyone, including himself.
The comprehensive development of the personality does not exclude the absence of conflict of the personality itself. Motivation and consciousness of the individual determine the features of its development at all stages of ontogenesis, where unity and struggle of opposites inevitably arise in the self-consciousness of the individual and its emotional-affective and rational manifestations69.
At the present stage of the cultural and historical development of society, as a result of the allocation of a special "place factor" in the system of social relations, the development of preschool children is determined in a special way. The whole system of preschool education is aimed at organizing the effective “appropriation” of the spiritual culture created by mankind by the child, forming a hierarchy of behavioral motives useful for society, developing its consciousness and self-awareness.
51

As for the child's personality, which is in the process of development, in relation to it, we are talking only about the formation of the prerequisites necessary to achieve comprehensive development. The prerequisites at each stage of mental development create personal formations that have an enduring significance that determines the further development of the individual. It seems obvious to us that the development of a person goes in the direction of improving personal qualities that provide the possibility of successful development of the personality of the individual and at the same time in the direction of developing personal qualities that ensure the possibility of the existence of the individual as a unit of society, as a member of the team.
To become a man means to learn to express yourself in relation to other people, as befits a person. When we talk about the “appropriation” of the material and spiritual culture created by mankind, we mean not only the assimilation by a person of the ability to correctly use objects created by the labor of people, to successfully communicate with other people, but also the development of his cognitive activity, consciousness, self-awareness and motives behavior. We have in mind the development of personality as an active, unique, individual existence of social relations. At the same time, it is important to identify positive achievements and negative formations that arise at different stages of ontogenesis, to learn how to manage the development of the child's personality, understanding the patterns of this development.
Personal development is determined not only by innate characteristics (if we are talking about a healthy psyche), not only by social conditions, but also by an internal position - a certain attitude already developing in a small child to the world of people, to the world of things and to himself. These prerequisites and conditions of mental development deeply interact with each other, determining the internal position of a person in relation to himself and the people around him. But this does not mean that, having taken shape at a given level of development, this position cannot be influenced from outside at the next stages of personality formation70.
At the first stage, a spontaneous formation of personality, not directed by self-consciousness, takes place. This is the period of preparation for the birth of a self-conscious personality, when the child manifests polymotivation and subordination of his actions in obvious forms. The beginning of personality development is due to the following events in the life of the child. First of all, he distinguishes himself as a person (this happens throughout the entire early and preschool age), as the bearer of a certain name (proper name, pronoun "I" and a certain physical appearance). Psychologically, the “I-image” is formed from an emotional (positive or negative) attitude
52
chiya to people and with the expression of his will (“I want”, “I myself”), which acts as a specific need of the child. Very soon, the claim to recognition (which has both a positive and a negative direction) begins to appear. At the same time, the child develops a sense of gender, which also determines the characteristics of personality development. Further, the child has a sense of himself in time, he has a psychological past, present and future, he begins to relate to himself in a new way - the prospect of his own development opens up for him. The understanding that a person among people must have duties and rights is of paramount importance for the formation of a child's personality.
Thus, self-consciousness is a value orientation that forms a system of personal meanings that make up the individual being of a person. The system of personal meanings is organized into a structure of self-consciousness, representing the unity of links developing according to certain laws.
The structure of a person's self-consciousness is formed by identification with forehead, proper name (value attitude to the body and name);
self-esteem, expressed in the context of a claim to recognition; presenting oneself as a representative of a certain gender (gender identification); self-representation in the aspect of psychological time (individual past, present and future); assessment of oneself within the framework of the social space of the individual (rights and obligations in the context of a particular culture).
The structural links of self-consciousness are filled with signs that have arisen in the process of the historically conditioned reality of human existence. The systems of signs of the culture to which a person belongs are a condition for his development and “movement” within this system. Each person in his own way assigns the meanings and meanings of cultural signs. Therefore, in the minds of every person, the objective-subjective realities of the objective world, figurative-sign systems, nature, social space are represented.
It is this individualization of the meanings and meanings of cultural signs that makes each person a unique, unique individual. This naturally implies the need to appropriate the largest volume of culture: the paradoxical representation of the universal in an individual - the greater the volume of cultural units is represented in the self-consciousness of an individual, the more individual transformations of the meanings and meanings of social signs, the richer the individuality of a person.
Of course, here we can only talk about a possible correlation between the amount of appropriation and the individualization of a person. Of course, there are many different conditions and prerequisites that make up the possibility of individualization of a person.

Topic: Causes of deviations in development.

Conditions for the normal development of the child.

Biological factors of deviations in development.

Socio-psychological factors of deviations in development.

Literature:

Fundamentals of Special Psychology / Ed. L.V. Kuznetsova. - M., 2002.

Sorokin V.M. Special psychology. - St. Petersburg, 2003.

Sorokin V.M., Kokorenko V.L. Workshop on special psychology. - St. Petersburg, 2003.

- 1 –

Factor- the cause of any process, phenomenon (Modern Dictionary of Foreign Words. - M., 1992, p. 635).

There are many types of influences that affect the occurrence of various deviations in the psychophysical and personal-social development of a person. And before characterizing the causes leading to deviations in development, it is necessary to consider the conditions for the normal development of the child.

These 4 basic conditions necessary for the normal development of the child were formulated by G.M. Dulnev and A.R. Luria.

First the most important condition - "normal functioning of the brain and its cortex."

Second condition - "the normal physical development of the child and the associated preservation of normal performance, normal tone of nervous processes."

Third condition - "the safety of the sense organs that ensure the normal connection of the child with the outside world."

Fourth condition - systematic and consistent teaching of the child in the family, in kindergarten and in a secondary school.

Data from the analysis of the psychophysical and social health of children shows a progressive increase in the number of children and adolescents with various developmental disabilities. There are fewer and fewer children who are healthy in all respects of development. According to various services, from 11 to 70% of the entire child population at different stages of their development, to one degree or another, need special assistance.

- 2 -

The range of pathogenic causes is very wide and varied. Usually, the whole variety of pathogenic factors is divided into endogenous (hereditary) and exogenous (environmental).

Biological factors include:

genetic factors;

somatic factor;

index of damage to brain structures.

By the time of exposure, pathogenic factors are divided into:

prenatal (before the onset of labor);

natal (during labor);

postnatal (after childbirth, and taking place in the period up to 3 years).

According to clinical and psychological materials, the most gross underdevelopment of mental functions occurs as a result of exposure to damaging hazards during the period of intense cellular differentiation of brain structures, i.e. in the early stages of embryogenesis, at the beginning of pregnancy.

To biological risk factors that can cause serious deviations in the physical and mental development of children include:

chromosomal genetic abnormalities, both hereditary and resulting from gene mutations, chromosomal aberrations;

infectious and viral diseases of the mother during pregnancy (rubella, toxoplasmosis, influenza);

sexually transmitted diseases (gonorrhea, syphilis);

endocrine diseases of the mother, in particular diabetes;

Rh factor incompatibility;

alcoholism and drug use by parents, and especially by the mother;

biochemical hazards (radiation, environmental pollution, the presence of heavy metals in the environment, such as mercury, lead, the use of artificial fertilizers, food additives in agricultural technology, improper use of medicines, etc.) that affect parents before pregnancy or the mother during pregnancy, as well as on the children themselves in the early periods of postnatal development;

serious deviations in the somatic health of the mother, including malnutrition, hypovitaminosis, tumor diseases, general somatic weakness;

hypoxic (oxygen deficiency);

maternal toxicosis during pregnancy, especially in the second half;

pathological course of labor activity, especially accompanied by traumatization of the brain of the newborn;

brain injuries and severe infectious and toxic-dystrophic diseases suffered by a child at an early age;

chronic diseases (such as asthma, blood diseases, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, tuberculosis, etc.) that began in early and preschool age.

- 3 –

Pathogenic factors biological in nature do not exhaust the circle of causes of deviations in development. Socio-psychological factors are no less diverse and dangerous.

Social factors include:

early (up to 3 years) environmental impacts;

current environmental impacts.

To social risk factors relate:

unfavorable social situations in which the mother of the unborn child finds herself and which are directed directly against the child himself (for example, the desire to terminate the pregnancy, negative or anxious feelings associated with future motherhood, etc.);

prolonged negative experiences of the mother, the result of which is the release of anxiety hormones into the amniotic fluid (this leads to fetal vasoconstriction, hypoxia, placental abruption and premature birth);

strong short-term stresses - shocks, fears (this can lead to spontaneous miscarriage);

the psychological state of the mother during childbirth;

separation of the child from the mother or persons replacing her, lack of emotional warmth, poor sensory environment, improper upbringing, callous and cruel attitude towards the child, etc.

If factors of a biological nature to a greater extent constitute the field of interests of clinicians, then the socio-psychological spectrum is closer to the professional field of teachers and psychologists.

Clinical studies show that the same cause sometimes leads to completely different developmental abnormalities. On the other hand, pathogenic conditions differing in nature can cause the same forms of disorders. This means that the causal relationship between the pathogenic factor and impaired development can be not only direct, but also indirect.

The prerequisites for mental development are something that has a certain effect on the individual, i.e. external and internal circumstances on which the characteristics, the level of mental development depend.
They are external and internal. The external prerequisites for mental development are the quality and characteristics of a person's upbringing; internal - activity and desire, as well as motives and goals that a person sets for himself in the interests of his improvement as a person.

Man is a biosocial being. Therefore, in influencing his mental development, 2 main factors are distinguished: biological, natural, and social - living conditions, education and upbringing organized by society.
Biological conditions - hereditary and innate properties of the body that create anatomical and physiological prerequisites (inclinations, type of GNI) for the formation of various types of mental activity.
Social conditions - none of the specific human qualities (logical thinking, creative imagination, volitional regulation of actions, etc.) can arise only through the maturation of organic inclinations, certain conditions for training and education are required (Mowgli's example).
However, neither the environment nor heredity can influence a person outside of his own activity.

There are prerequisites for normal mental development. They are determined by various factors: body size and shape, growth and maturation rates, health status, and many others. The embryo and fetus are particularly sensitive in terms of the influence of these factors. Some causes of serious disorders in the development of the embryo and fetus are known, namely: abnormal division of chromosomes, placental insufficiency, viral and initial infectious diseases of the fetus, metabolic disorders resulting from maternal diseases, Rh conflict, the influence of ionizing rays, the influence of certain drugs, toxic drugs, which directly affects the psychosomatic development of the child in the future.
Condition of mental development the child can be considered the reality surrounding him (family, social and living conditions, etc.). Conditions are determined by social and biological factors. What is understood by the term social factors is related to the direct influences to which the organism is subjected during development (from birth to full maturity) and on which the realization of heredity depends. The following conditions are not the best conditions for the development of the fetus: too young age of the expectant mother, micro- and macrotrauma during pregnancy, pressure changes, for example, during an airplane journey, noise that lasts long enough, the consequences of infertility treatment. With violations, children are born in those women who smoke and drink a lot. All these children are included in the so-called risk group. Malnutrition during pregnancy, lack of vitamins, especially A and B2, can also cause abnormalities in the development of the fetus. Thus, the nutrition of the mother, her lifestyle affects the development of the fetus. If a woman is pregnant, she should not smoke or drink alcohol. Negatively affect the developing fetus, mainly on the nervous system, negative emotions of the pregnant woman, worries, nervousness. Family conflicts are highly undesirable, as a pregnant woman may experience a feeling of fear.
Social conditions in a child under three years of age are most often limited to the parental home. Among social factors, the main role is given to the family. As studies show, the negative influence of the family associated with the development of the child leads not only to violations of the mental development of the baby, but also to serious difficulties in adapting to the environment, which usually manifests itself only in the second decade of life.
In addition, the psychological development of a child cannot be normal if the basic needs for a sense of security, love, respect, mutual understanding, and a sense of connection with parents are not provided. The kid should feel that he is a gifted and beloved child. These are necessary for the normal development of the child, as well as appropriate nutrition, fresh air or vaccinations and hygiene. The educational impact of parents is closely related to the implementation of the basic needs of the child. Both excessive indulgence and excessive strictness or inconsistency in the actions and actions of parents have a bad effect on the psychosomatic development of the baby.
According to most modern psychologists, the following combinations are extremely negative for the normal development of a child: an aggressive and despotic mother and a compliant father who is not interested in the child; a fearful mother and a stern, strict father; an overprotective mother and a cold or aggressive father.
The development of the child is negatively affected by the pedagogical incompetence of the parents, the unwillingness to deal with the child, the psychological and physical neglect of the child. If there is no appropriate prompting from adults, if the child, figuratively speaking, is not taken by the hand and is not led forward in the right direction, development does not occur. For example, if a child is not forced to speak and he does not speak until the age of seven, then his speech will never develop. Neglect leads to developmental delay. The child learns only some elementary, primitive skills. A personality is being formed, which, most likely, will subsequently take revenge on loved ones who neglected its development, and at the same time the whole society.
Mental retardation also causes excessive pressure, overprotection. It hinders the natural development of the child, leads to a delay in mental development, to mental underdevelopment, to borderlines, to emotional deficiency. As a rule, the child sooner or later becomes aggressive towards the one who held back his development.
It has also been proven that for the normal development of the psyche, the motor apparatus, the harmonious development of individual systems, including the central nervous system, motor activity, outdoor recreational exercises and hardening are of great importance. The development of the motor sphere in general, and fine motor skills in particular, is the most important condition for the mental development of a child. Fine motor skills are the basis of development, a kind of locomotive, of all mental processes, including attention, memory, perception, thinking and speech.
Unfavorable conditions for raising a child in a family can prevent the realization of his genetic inclinations. So that the baby can show all the best properties of his nature, both physical and mental. Parents should live his life, should give him maximum attention, show love for the baby, be interested in his affairs, watch him, talk with him, provide the child with the necessary experience and at the same time teach self-control, endurance, self-confidence. The influence of these factors on the psychosomatic development of the child has been scientifically proven. Parents need to protect the baby from the negative influence of factors associated with modern civilization, great chemistry, poisoning and pollution of the environment, and a number of others that take place in modern life (television, limitation of motor activity, etc.).
Thus, the mental development of children depends on heredity, family environment and upbringing, as well as the external environment with its variety of social and biological influences. All these influences act in a single complex, which can cause both strengthening and leveling of the influence of each of the factors. In general, the impact of the environment and biological factors is the more intense, the younger the organism. This applies to both positive and negative influences. Of decisive importance is the health of the mother (age, absence of infectious and viral diseases, bad habits), healthy heredity, favorable course of pregnancy and childbirth (absence of micro-macrotraumas), normal functioning of the placenta, absence of adverse environmental effects (toxic drugs, drugs, radiation) , as well as the psycho-emotional state of the pregnant woman and her good nutrition. The most important condition for the mental development of a child is the development of the motor sphere in general, and fine motor skills in particular. For the normal mental development of a child, it is extremely necessary to ensure his basic needs for a sense of security, love, respect, mutual understanding, and a sense of connection with his parents.

(according to G.M. Dulnev and A.R. Luria):

1 ESSENTIAL CONDITION- “normal functioning of the brain and its cortex”. In the presence of pathological conditions arising as a result of various pathogenic influences, the normal ratio of irritable and inhibitory processes is disturbed, the implementation of complex forms of analysis and synthesis of incoming information is difficult; the interaction between the blocks of the brain responsible for various aspects of human mental activity is disrupted.

2 CONDITION- "the normal physical development of the child and the associated preservation of normal performance, normal tone of nervous processes."

3 CONDITION- "the safety of the sense organs that ensure the normal connection of the child with the outside world."

4 CONDITION- systematic and consistent teaching of the child in the family, in preschool and educational school.

It should be noted that the most general patterns, found in the mental development of a normal child, are also traced in children with various mental and physical disabilities.

For the first time this position was noted by a doctor and psychologist G.Ya.Troshin in his book Anthropological Foundations of Education. Comparative psychology of abnormal children”, published in 1915. Then this was repeatedly emphasized L.S. Vygotsky.

These patterns, first of all, include a certain sequence of stages in the development of the psyche, the presence of sensitive periods in the development of mental functions, the sequence of development of all mental processes, the role of activity in mental development, the role of speech in the formation of HMF, the leading role of training in mental development.

These and other specific manifestations of the commonality of normal and disturbed development were clearly identified in the studies of L.V. Zankov, T.A. Vlasova, I.M. Solovyov, T.V. Rozanova, Zh.I. period from 1930 - 1970s. These psychologists and their collaborators showed that the main laws governing the development of perception, memory, representations, thinking, and activity, established in the study of a normally developing child, apply to both the deaf and the o/o.

Comparative studies covering several types of impaired development since the 1960s. started to be carried out in other countries. In the USA there were studies by S. Kirk, H. Furt; In the UK - N.O. Connor and others. In all these studies, patterns were established, both common to persons with developmental disabilities and normally developing, and characteristic only of persons with deviations from normal development.

According to the Russian physiologist I.P. Pavlov, there is a visible correlation between pathophysiology and normal physiology: studies of impaired functions make it possible to discover what exists and occurs in a hidden and complicated form under conditions of normal development.

One of the first GENERAL REGULARITIES OF DEFECTIVE DEVELOPMENT in relation to various types of mental dysontogenesis were formulated by V.I. Lubovsky. THE MAIN THESIS is the evidential postulation of the presence

3 HIERARCHICAL LEVELS OF REGULARITIES

DEFECTIVE DEVELOPMENT:

I LEVEL - patterns inherent in all types of dysontogenetic development.

II LEVEL - patterns characteristic of the group of dysontogenetic disorders.

LEVEL III - specific patterns inherent in a particular type of dysontogenesis.

From the point of view of modern researchers, patterns or features that are often identified by researchers as specific to a given defect are not always so. Many of them are actually more general in nature and can be traced in the development of children belonging to several types of impaired development. Thus, comparing the characteristics of children belonging to one type of developmental disorder with the norm is clearly not enough, because. does not make it possible to identify the specific signs of a given defect, to discover patterns of development that are only inherent in it.

L.S. Vygotsky considered such shortcomings as blindness, deafness, u / o. He noted that the causes that cause them lead to the emergence of a basic violation in the field of mental activity, which is defined as - PRIMARY VIOLATION. The primary violation, if it occurs in early childhood, leads to peculiar changes in the entire mental development of the child, which is manifested in the formation SECONDARY AND SUBSEQUENT ORDER in the field of mental activity. All of them are caused by a primary violation and depend on its nature (on the type of primary deficiency), the degree of its severity and the time of occurrence.

REGULARITIES:

1) APPEARANCE OF SECONDARY DEFECTS in the process of mental development of a child with a deficiency of one type or another was singled out by L.S. Vygotsky in the early 1930s as a general pattern of abnormal development.

2) According to L.S. Vygotsky, the second regularity is - DIFFICULTIES OF INTERACTION WITH THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT and disruption of communication with the outside world all children with developmental disabilities.

Zh.I. Shif formulates this pattern as follows: common to all cases of abnormal development is that the totality of the consequences generated by the defect manifests itself in changes in the development of the personality of the abnormal child as a whole. The author also notes that in children with developmental disabilities of all categories, there are violations of speech communication, although they manifest themselves in varying degrees and forms.

3) VIOLATIONS OF RECEPTION, PROCESSING, PRESERVATION

AND USE OF THE INFORMATION.

As experimental neurophysiological and psychological studies show, any pathology disrupts the "decoding" of the surrounding world. Depending on the specifics of the deviation, various parameters of the surrounding reality are distorted.

4) DISTURBANCE OF SPEECH MEDIATION.

Even L.S. Vygotsky put forward the position that from about 2 years old, speech begins to play a DEFINING ROLE in the further development of all mental processes. Of particular importance is the FORMATION OF THE REGULATORY FUNCTION OF SPEECH, which is inextricably linked both with the development of the actual speech function and the frontal parts of the brain as the BRAIN BASIS OF VOLUNTARY.

Neurophysiological studies show that the DELAY IN THE MATURATION OF THE FRONTAL STRUCTURES is a common pathogenetic characteristic of a number of dysontogenies, such as u / o, mental retardation, RDA, etc. With all deviations of mental development, a DIVERGENCE OF NON-VERBAL AND VERBAL BEHAVIOR is observed to a greater or lesser extent, which makes it difficult to normal development of the child and requires the use of special methods of his upbringing and education.

5) LONGER FORMATION TIME

REPRESENTATIONS AND CONCEPTS ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT

REALITY.

Any kind of dysontogenetic development is characterized by a violation of the normal mental reflection of reality, a complete or partial loss of "mental tools": intellectual abilities are reduced, or social inadequacy is revealed, or any type of information (visual, auditory, visual-auditory, effective) about the surrounding reality falls out .

In order for a child with a particular developmental pathology to form as complete and adequate ideas about different aspects of the surrounding reality, as happens in normally developing children, longer periods and special methods are certainly needed.

6) RISK OF STATES OF SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL DISADAPTATION.

The problem of interaction between the individual and the environment is extremely important in the analysis of the process of mental development. In solving this problem, the analysis of not only the activity of the individual, but also the features of its adaptation, occupies a special place.

The wide prevalence of states of mental underdevelopment, and especially its mild forms, is an additional source of serious problems for society, the main of which include INCOMPLETE SOCIAL INTEGRATION OF PERSONS WITH MENTAL DEVELOPMENT, with the accompanying increase in juvenile delinquency.

The system of specialized care for children with various forms of mental underdevelopment, developed and created by the efforts of domestic speech pathologists, has achieved significant success in solving the problems of diagnosing and correcting cognitive impairments in childhood. However, to a much lesser extent, attention was paid to the study of the GENESIS AND SPECIFICITY OF PERSONAL PROBLEMS, which inevitably arise in these children IN THE PROCESS OF SOCIALIZATION. Meanwhile, it is precisely this kind of problem, focusing in itself a complex combination of organic and social factors of a child's development, that takes shape in various phenomena of behavioral disorders, GENERAL OR PARTIAL DISADAPTATION, often reaching the level of clinical or criminal severity.

This parameter has appeared in recent years in connection with the strengthening of integration processes in education and with the importance that has been given to the development of people's social competence, regardless of the severity and nature of their deviations.

This parameter means that any defect makes it difficult for a person to achieve an optimal balance between the ability to satisfy their significant needs and the conditions available for this, including both purely domestic conditions (for example, the presence of ramps for wheelchair access) and socio-psychological conditions - the readiness of the nearest social environment to interact with such people.

THE CONCEPT OF A.R. LURIYA and his followers ABOUT BRAIN

BASES OF ORGANIZATION OF A HOLISTIC MENTAL

HUMAN ACTIVITIES- is a methodological basis for identifying the very fact of deviation from normal ontogenesis, the structure of the deviation, determining the most disturbed and intact brain structures, which must be taken into account when organizing the correctional and pedagogical process.

AGE SYMPTOMS:

EVERY AGE leaves its mark on the NATURE OF RESPONSE IN THE EVENT OF PATHOGENIC IMPACT:

1) SOMATOVEGETATIVE (from 0 to 3 years old)- Against the background of the immaturity of all systems, the body at this age reacts to any pathogenic effect with a complex of somatovegetative reactions, such as general and autonomic excitability, fever, sleep disturbance, appetite, and gastrointestinal disorders.

2) PSYCHOMOTOR LEVEL (4- 7 years) - intensive formation of the cortical sections of the motor analyzer, and in particular the frontal sections of the brain, makes this system predisposed to hyperdynamic disorders of various origins (psychomotor excitability, tics, stuttering, fears). The role of psychogenic factors is increasing - adverse traumatic relationships in the family, reactions to addiction to children's educational institutions, unfavorable interpersonal relationships.

3) AFFECTIVE LEVEL (7-12 years old)- the child reacts to any harmfulness with a noticeable affective component - from severe autism to affective excitability with phenomena of negativism, aggression, neurotic reactions.

4) EMOTIONAL-IDEATOR (12 - 16 years old) - leading in prepubertal and pubertal age. It is characterized by pathological fantasizing, overvalued hobbies, overvalued hypochondriacal ideas, such as ideas of imaginary ugliness (dysmorphophobia, anorexia nervosa), psychogenic reactions of protest, opposition, emancipation.

The predominant symptomatology of each age level of response does not exclude the occurrence of symptoms of previous levels, but they, as a rule, occupy a peripheral place in the picture of dysontogeny. The predominance of pathological forms of response, characteristic of a younger age, indicates the phenomena of mental retardation.

The reactions listed above are an exacerbated form of a normal age-related response to a particular harmful effect.

IN 2. MAIN MECHANISMS OF APPEARANCE

FAULTS IN PSYCHOPHYSICAL

DEVELOPMENT.

In 1927 SCHWALBE He was the first to introduce the term "dysontogenesis" to denote deviations in the intrauterine development of the organism. V.V. Kovalev (1985) uses the concept "MENTAL DYSONTOGENESIS”, applying it to disorders of mental development in childhood and adolescence as a result of the disorder and maturation of the structures and functions of the brain.

Term DYSONTOGENIA" was introduced by representatives of clinical medicine to refer to various forms of disruption of normal ontogenesis that occur in childhood, when the morphofunctional systems of the body have not yet reached maturity. For the most part, these are the so-called NON-PROGREDIENT DISEASE CONDITIONS (the non-progressive nature of disorders means the absence of aggravation of the primary defect underlying mental underdevelopment), a kind of malformation that obeys the same laws as normal development, but represents its pathological modification, which makes it difficult to fully psychosocial development of a child without appropriate special psychological and pedagogical, and in some cases medical care.

In the works of psychiatrists, II MAIN TYPES OF MENTAL DYZONTOGENESIS ARE DISTRIBUTED:

1) retardation, 2) asynchrony.

Under RETARDATION- refers to the delay or suspension of mental development. There are GENERAL (TOTAL) and PARTIAL (PARTIAL) MENTAL RETARDATION.

At PARTIAL RETARDATION- there is a suspension or delay in the development of individual mental functions. The neurophysiological basis of partial retardation is a violation of the pace and timing of the maturation of individual functional systems.

characteristic feature ASYNCHRONY- there is a pronounced advance in the development of some mental functions and properties of the emerging personality and a significant lag in the pace and timing of the maturation of others. This becomes the basis for the disharmonious development of the psyche as a whole.

ASYNCHRONY should be distinguished from PHYSIOLOGICAL HETEROCRONY- i.e. differences in maturation of cerebral structures and functions, which is observed during normal mental development.

Young inexperienced parents raising their first child, literally after the first month, begin to actively look for answers to the following questions: when he does, speaks, how to develop fine motor skills, what should be the conditions for the development of a child in a family so that he develops correctly? And many others. And if suddenly something goes behind (or ahead of) the generally accepted norms, they begin to worry. In most cases, avoiding this is not difficult, it is enough to create the necessary conditions for this. We'll talk about this.

What should be the conditions for the development of young children

It is really not difficult to create conditions for the normal development of a child. Just to begin with, let's define what it is to talk about the same things. Specialists under favorable conditions for the development of the child in the family understand such an organization of the living space of the baby, which will stimulate its development. But that's in theory, but how about in practice?

We create conditions for the normal development of a child 0-6 months

The first thing to ensure is the availability of as many as possible of the most diverse objects in shape, color, material and texture. Of course, they all need to be safe. Even if the baby still cannot reach most of them, but he can and should be helped. Lay it on the floor more often, and help a little to reach this or that toy.

Such activities can be combined with hardening. No matter how high-quality and modern a disposable diaper is (more details:), it still prevents the skin from breathing. Do not wear it, air baths will only benefit the child.

Such laying out on the stomach will significantly expand the view of the baby, will allow you to see how many interesting things are around. By the way, it is not necessary to surround him only with toys. In most cases, children love to play with some household items. So a glasses case or a strainer can keep your little one busy for 30 minutes.

We create conditions for the normal development of a child 6-12 months old

After six months, a new period begins in the development of the child. Now he has an increased need for physical activity and the development of new movements. So, the main rule for creating favorable conditions for the development of young children is - do not limit.

Reduce the time spent in the playpen or crib, let the child spend more time on the floor. So he will quickly learn to crawl, sit down, roll over, get up, holding on to something. Of course, at first you will have to constantly help and support him, but the baby learns quickly. It seems that yesterday he was only making his first attempts to stand on his feet, and already today he is confidently walking along the wall.

Have you noticed that the baby scatters everything that comes to hand? This is normal, it means it develops with age. The period of destruction must be present, because at this time there is an active development of the child's thinking. He learns to compare, establishes cause-and-effect relationships (I quit - my mother picked it up).

Instead of limiting the child and punishing for another damaged thing, offer him games related to destruction. Build turrets out of cubes and let them break, let them tear apart an old newspaper. Tie toys that you take for a walk to strings so that they do not fall into the mud. As a result, the child will get what he wants, and you will get by with minimal or no losses.

Favorable conditions for the development of a young child in the family help to outgrow many problems. For example, at a certain stage of growing up, the baby begins to poke his fingers into various holes, while greatly frightening his parents. So, in order for such behavior not to develop into an obsession (for example, sticking a finger into a socket), you need to create conditions that help it outgrow it faster. So take care of the availability of appropriate toys or come up with something from improvised means.

Within the framework of one article, it is difficult to consider all aspects of creating conditions for the development of young children, but the main idea, I hope, is clear. You can get additional information from the following materials: and.