3 definitions of psychology by different authors. What is psychology: definition. Psychology as a Science. Attention in psychology

the science of the laws of development and functioning of the psyche as a special form of life, based on the appearance in self-observation of special experiences that are not attributable to the external world. The area of \u200b\u200bknowledge about the inner - mental - world of man. The term originated in the 16th century. and means the actual doctrine of the soul or the science of the soul. In the strict sense, it is understood as a science of the psyche, and a psychologist is a person professionally engaged in psychology in theoretical and practical terms, including to help people in certain situations.

The separation of psychology from philosophy took place in the second half of the 19th century. This became possible due to the development of objective experimental methods that replaced introspection, and the formation of a special subject of human psychology, the main features of which were activity and the appropriation of social and historical experience.

In the system of sciences, psychology occupies a very special place. Causes:

1) it is the science of the most complex that is still known to mankind;

2) in it, as it were, the object and the subject of cognition merge; only in it does the thought make a turn towards itself, only in it does the scientific consciousness of a person become his scientific self-consciousness;

3) its practical consequences are unique - they are not only incommensurably more significant than the results of other sciences, but also qualitatively different: since to know something is to master it and learn how to manage it, and managing your mental processes, functions and abilities is the most ambitious task; besides, knowing himself, a person thereby changes himself.

In historical terms, two fundamentally different stages of the development of psychology can be distinguished - the stages of pre-scientific psychology and scientific psychology. When it comes to simply psychology, it is usually scientific psychology that is meant.

In general, psychology is faced with a twofold task: to develop theoretical research further and to adequately solve — sometimes urgently — practical problems. This vocation of psychology gives reason to consider it as a scientific study of behavior and mental processes, including mental activity, as well as the practical application of the acquired knowledge.

Psychology has already accumulated a lot of facts about how new knowledge about oneself makes a person different, changes his attitudes, goals, states and experiences. We can say that psychology is a science that not only cognizes, but also constructs, creates a person.

Psychology is a living, evolving, developing area of \u200b\u200bknowledge and practice. Many approaches, directions, theories coexist in it, which are not mutually consistent in everything, and sometimes difficult to correlate: based on different philosophical systems, with different conceptual devices, and different explanatory principles. There is no single paradigm in psychology - the dominant theoretical and practical system that determines science as a whole. Moreover, many of its directions fundamentally do not adhere to traditional scientific principles, avoid deep theoretical constructions, without asking for serious self-justification, and to a significant extent turn out to be the art of working with the mental world of a person. There is also no agreement that psychology should study first and foremost, what its subject is.

Psychology object; although psychology literally means the science of the soul, the question of the reality of the soul is still controversial from a traditional scientific standpoint; until the soul can be "scientifically" discovered and proven or refuted its existence, experimenting with it. The soul remains empirically elusive. This is one of the features of psychology. If we talk not about the soul, but about the psyche, the situation will not change: the psyche turns out to be just as elusive. But for everyone it is quite obvious that there is a certain subjective reality, the world of mental phenomena in the form of thoughts, experiences, ideas, feelings, motives, desires and other things; it can be considered an object of psychology. Although this psychic reality is different for everyone, we can assume that it is formed according to the same basic principles, try to discover and investigate them.

Another feature of psychology is that, leaving the psyche as an object of reflection, it cannot make it an object of direct research: one has to look for other objects and through their study - indirectly - draw conclusions about the psyche itself. The choice of such a "secondary object" depends on what is considered to be the main one that determines mental life - on the explanatory principle that is proposed by a certain scientific school.

The subject matter of psychology has changed over time. During the domination of introspection, he was inextricably linked with its method and represented the sphere of human consciousness. In the second decade of the XX century, in connection with the debunking of the method of introspection, the subject of psychology changed: it became human behavior. So completely new facts were introduced into psychology - facts of behavior. But consciousness as an object of psychology can be opposed not only by behavior (as internally observed - externally observed), but also unconscious mental processes - as observed only indirectly, through "side effects" (-\u003e mental unconscious process). These processes began to be studied especially intensively from the beginning of the 20th century, and already the first results dealt such a blow to the psychology of consciousness, which is quite commensurate with the blow of behaviorism.

From the standpoint of the theory of activity, the subject of psychology is the laws of the generation and functioning of the reflection of the mental by the individual of objective reality in the process of human activity and animal behavior. Here activity is taken as the initial reality with which psychology deals, and the psyche is seen as its derivative and as its integral part. So the psyche cannot exist outside the activity, and the activity cannot exist outside the psyche. Simplifying, we can say that the subject of psychology is mentally controlled activity. A narrower point of view is the allocation of an orientational system of mental control of activity as a subject of activity psychology. In research practice, this has been realized in line with two strategic lines: in one of them, activity appears as a subject of research, in the other, as an explanatory principle. Thus, ideas about the structure of activity, about its dynamics, forms, about the process of interiorization, and so on are the result of the implementation of the first line. And the application of the concepts and provisions of the theory of activity to the analysis of mental processes, consciousness, personality is the result of the implementation of the second line. Both lines are closely intertwined, and the successes of each of them form the basis for the development of the other.

The main problems of scientific psychology are:

1) a psychophysiological problem - about the relationship of the psyche to its bodily substrate;

2) a psychosocial problem - about the dependence of the psyche on social processes and its active role in their implementation by specific individuals and groups;

3) a psychopraxic problem - about the formation of the psyche in the course of real practical activity and about the dependence of this activity on its mental regulators - images, operations, motives, personal properties;

4) a psychognostic problem - about the relationship of sensory and mental mental images to the reality displayed by them, etc. The development of these problems is based on:

1) the principle of determinism - the disclosure of the conditionality of phenomena by the action of the factors that produce them;

2) the principle of consistency - the interpretation of these phenomena as internally connected components of an integral mental organization;

3) the principle of development - the recognition of transformation, changes in mental processes, their transition from one level to another, the emergence of new forms of mental processes.

In the course of the development of the main problems of psychology, its categorical apparatus was formed, where categories of image, motive, action, personality, etc. are distinguished. The categorical structure of psychology, reflecting mental reality in its originality, serves as the basis for the whole variety of branches of psychology, which act as separate branches, often acquiring an independent status. The transformation of psychology into a bunch of branches is due to the demands of various areas of practice, which confront psychology with specific problems. These problems are usually complex and developed by many disciplines. The inclusion of psychology in and participation in interdisciplinary research is productive only when it enriches them with its inherent concepts, methods and explanatory principles. And in contacts with other sciences, psychology itself is enriched with new ideas and approaches.

A serious impact on the further development of psychology was exerted by the emergence and widespread use of computers, which assumed the performance of a number of functions that were previously a unique property of the human brain - the functions of accumulating and processing information, managing and controlling. This made it possible to widely use cybernetic and information-theoretic concepts and models in psychology, which contributed to the formalization and mathematization of psychology, the introduction of the cybernetic style of thinking with its advantages due to the use of the logical and mathematical apparatus, computers, and others, but also with its explicit and implicit shortcomings associated not so much with the humanization of the machine as with the "cybernation" of man and living beings in general.

Automation and cybernetization have sharply increased interest in operational diagnostics and prognostics, the effective use and cultivation of human functions that cannot be transferred to electronic devices, primarily creative abilities. The study of the problems of intelligence, artificial and human creativity are becoming important areas of psychology.

Along with them, social psychology and psychology of management are rapidly developing, solving problems associated with the role of the "human factor" in the development of society, in management processes, as well as research related to the exploration of outer space, demographic, environmental and other topical problems of modernity. The inclusion of psychology in the multidimensional context of interaction of various social, natural and technical sciences gives special acuteness to the methodological analysis of its conceptual means, explanatory principles, concepts and methodological procedures in order to identify the most promising directions of its development.

PSYCHOLOGY

psycho + Greek. logos - science, teaching). The science of the laws of development and functioning of the psyche as a special form of life.

P. ASSOCIANIST. P.'s direction, considering the ability to form associations from primary mental units as the basis of mental activity.

P. AGE studies the characteristics of mental activity due to age.

P. DEEP. The direction of foreign psychology and psychiatry, the subject of which is the unconscious as a source of motives for human behavior and causes of mental disorders. Includes psychoanalysis, Adler's individual psychology, Jung's analytical psychology, neo-Freudianism, etc.

P. CHILDREN'S. Section P. age.

P. INDIVIDUAL ADLER. See Adler's individual psychology.

P. CRIMINAL. Section of legal (legal) P., which studies the psychological patterns of the formation of illegal attitudes and their implementation in criminal behavior. In recent years, it has become increasingly important along with forensic psychiatric forensic psychological examination.

P. MEDITSINSKAYA studies by psychological methods the peculiarities of the psyche of a sick person, as well as the psychological characteristics of the professional activity of medical workers, the relationship between them and patients. It includes pathopsychology, neuropsychology, somatopsychology, psychophysiology, socio-psychological diagnostics in relation to medical practice, medical professional orientation, psychological aspects of psychoprophylaxis, psychohygiene and psychotherapy.

P. "OBJECTIVE". P.'s direction, which studies mainly the body's reactions to the influence of external, situational factors, abstracting from the patient's subjective experiences.

P. SOCIAL. P., which studies the patterns of behavior and activities of people due to the factor of their entry into social groups, as well as the psychological characteristics of the groups themselves.

P. AGING. Gerontopsychology. Studying the peculiarities of the psyche during aging. Age section P.

P. JUDICIAL. A section of legal psychology that studies the mechanisms and patterns of people's activities in the investigation, trial and prevention of crimes.

P. LABOR examines mental activity, personal characteristics of a person in the process of labor activity. It is important for the organization of rehabilitation of the mentally ill.

PSYCHOLOGY

Psychology simply cannot be defined; indeed, it is not easy to characterize. Even if someone does it today, tomorrow it will be seen as an inadequate effort. Psychology is what scientists and philosophers of various beliefs have created in order to try to understand the consciousness and behavior of various organisms, from the most primitive to the more complex. Therefore, in reality it is not an object at all, it is about an object or about many objects. There are few boundaries here, and with the exception of the canons of science and the ethical norms of a free society, there should be no restrictions either from its representatives or from its critics. It is an attempt to understand what has so far largely eluded understanding. Any attempt to limit it or to put it in some kind of framework implies that something is known about the boundaries of our knowledge, and this is not true. As a separate discipline, it only emerged a century or so in the medical and philosophy departments. From medicine, she took the orientation that the explanation of what is done, thought and felt, ultimately, should be in biology and physiology, from philosophy, she took a class of deep problems concerning the consciousness of will and knowledge. Since then, it has been defined in different ways: as "the science of the psyche", "the science of mental life", "the science of behavior", etc. All such definitions, of course, reflect the prejudices of those who give them rather than the actual nature of the field. In the course of writing this vocabulary, a rather strange metaphor has emerged that seems to reflect to some extent an essential quality of our discipline. She is like an amoeba, relatively unstructured, but well identifiable as a separate being with a special mode of action, in which she projects herself onto some new methods, some new problem areas, some theoretical models or even some other separate scientific areas, incorporating them both slowly and awkwardly transforming into another form. Not very flattering, maybe. For lexicographic problems, see a psychologist.

Psychology

the science of consciousness, mental activity and behavior of living beings, ranging from primitive and completing this series with a person, from their birth to the end of life (science currently does not know more highly organized beings than a person).

PSYCHOLOGY (MEASUREMENTS IN PSYCHOLOGY)

procedures for determining the quantitative severity of psychological phenomena. They use a variety of scales containing a variety of positions, put in some correspondence with psychological elements. According to the classification of the scales proposed in 1946 by the American psychologist and psychophysicist S.S.Stevens, the following scales are distinguished: the scale of relations, the interval scale, the ordinal scale and the nominal scale.

Psychology

Most often, the term is defined as "the science of the laws of development and functioning of the psyche." Other definitions offered by some scholars reflect their interpretation and, depending on professional inclination, emphasize the leading role of reason or behavior. Some psychologists even believe that the study of the human psyche cannot be considered a scientific discipline in the strict sense of the word.

PSYCHOLOGY

psychology) is a science that studies the psyche and consciousness of a person, as well as his behavior. Psychology operates with such basic concepts as memory, rational and irrational thinking, intelligence, learning, personality, perception and emotions, and also studies their connection with human behavior. Existing psychological schools differ in what philosophical concept they adhere to and what methods they use in their work. These include such schools of introspection as the school of Freud, Jung and Adler, as well as Gestalt psychology, behavioral and cognitive schools; modern psychology is especially attracted by schools of the latter direction (see. Cognitive psychology). Many practicing psychologists do not belong to any of these schools; some are eclectic. The various directions in psychology, on the other hand, are functional or professional sub-divisions of psychology, which are based on practical considerations. These include: abnormal, analytical, applied, clinical, comparative, evolutionary, educational, experimental, geriatric, industrial, child, physiological, and social psychology. - Psychological (psychological).

Psychology

Word formation. Comes from the Greek. psyche - soul + logos - teaching.

Specificity. He studies the laws of the functioning and development of the psyche. Based on the representation in introspection of special experiences that are not related to the external world. From the 2nd half of the nineteenth century. there was a separation of psychology from philosophy, which became possible due to the development of objective experimental methods that replaced introspection, and the formation of a special subject of human psychology, the main features of which were activity and the appropriation of social and historical experience. The main philosophical problem of psychology is whether psychology should be considered as an objective, explanatory, hypothetical-constructive natural science or as an interactive, understanding, interpreting, reconstructing humanitarian science.

PSYCHOLOGY

from the Greek. psuche - soul + logos - doctrine, science) - science about the laws of development and functioning of the psyche as a special form of life. The interaction of living things with the surrounding world is realized through mental processes, acts, states that are qualitatively different from physiological, but not separable from them. For centuries the phenomena studied by P. were designated by the general term "soul" and were considered the subject of one of the branches of philosophy, named in the 16th century. P. It has been shown that mental processes, being a product of the individual's interaction with the external environment, are themselves an active causal factor in behavior. If idealistic concepts incorrectly explained this activity by a special mental causality, cognized by internal observation, then the natural scientific study of genetically primary forms of the psyche confirmed the priority of objective methods, which later became decisive for P. Self-observation retains the value of an important, but auxiliary source of information about the human psyche. ... As a product and function of social processes, the consciousness of an individual subject has a systemic and semantic organization, which gives various manifestations of the psyche properties that qualitatively distinguish them from the psyche of animals. The possibility of comprehending the processes of consciousness, regardless of the self-report about them by the cyber, is due to the fact that they develop in the objective system of his relations with other people, the surrounding world. In the same system, peering into others, the subject acquires the ability to judge the internal plan of his behavior. See Self-concept Not all components of this plan are translatable into the language of consciousness, but they, forming the sphere of the unconscious, serve as the subject of P. Inclusion of P. in the composition of interdisciplinary research and participation in them is productive only when it enriches them with concepts inherent only to it , methods, explanatory principles. At the same time, as a result of contacts with other sciences, P. itself is enriched with new ideas and approaches that develop its content and categorical apparatus, ensuring its integrity as an independent science. P.'s involvement in the multidimensional context of interaction of various social, natural, and technical sciences makes the methodological analysis of its conceptual means, explanatory principles, concepts, and methodological procedures particularly acute in order to identify promising directions for its further development. P. conflict is one of the areas of research in P. and at the same time a branch of conflict management. The item of conflicts is a system-forming branch of conflict management. Of the 16 sciences that investigate conflict, only P. studies all types of conflicts in humans (social, intrapersonal) and zoological conflicts. Man is the central link in conflicts of all levels without exception. Therefore, P.'s knowledge of human behavior in conflicts is a condition for their explanation.

Psychology is a very interesting and not fully understood science. Psychology studies the human subconscious and how the human brain behaves in various situations. Psychology can be divided into two types: fundamental and applied. The main processes that fundamental psychology considers are such as sensation, perception, attention, representation, memory, imagination, thinking and speech. Also, fundamental psychology studies mental properties and mental states. Applied psychology is a science that studies the practical meaning of human behavior. If you delve into this science, you can find out that it studies such phenomena as puberty, social thinking and in general all the psychological changes that occur with a person throughout his life.

Psychology in ancient times was associated with philosophy, as it studied things that people did not see. Psychology is one of the sciences that studies the human body, but has studied only a small fraction.

Psychology gained practical importance during the Cold War between the United States and the USSR, at a time when the war was fought not by armies, but by intelligence officers and spies. The intelligence officers had a very serious psychological influence, and the Soviet Union reached certain heights using psychological weapons. One of the types of such weapons was ultrasound, human ears do not perceive it, but the effect of such a sound on the human brain is great. The Cold War ended, and data on psychological weapons were classified, and then destroyed, only a small fraction leaked to the public.

In the modern world, a person needs psychology more than ever. After all, each of us is surrounded by stress and problems, children's psychological trauma from some kind of fright or stress is often encountered. Children are most susceptible to psychological diseases, since in the modern world, lust, debauchery, violence is everywhere. The computer has a great influence, because if a child plays cruel games from childhood, then later this cruelty he will splash out on others. To prove this, it is enough to give the example of Sasha from Ukraine. At the age of fourteen, Sasha spends all his time at the computer and at violent games, and this seriously affects his psyche. He stops taking the rules of respect for granted, beats up his relatives, throws out all his anger on those closest to him. A group of psychologists decided to help him and delivered an uncomfortable verdict - a severe mental deviation from the norm. Sasha was placed in a psychological dispensary, where he will undergo a rehabilitation course. But even if he comes out, he will still never become a full-fledged person, because after experiencing this, it is impossible to return to the usual way of life.

To date, psychology has studied only a small fraction of the knowledge that hides the human brain, because the limits of its knowledge are limitless and great.

But psychology is not only diseases, it is also the knowledge of oneself and one's abilities. After all, everyone is interested in how his brain works, and what he is capable of. Millions of scientists make psychological tests for people who are interested in knowing themselves. All these tests indicate a person's predisposition to various kinds of activities. After all, knowing what you are more inclined to, and what is best for you, you can easily take your place in life and enjoy it not only physically, but also mentally. But you can endlessly study the riddles of the subconscious, because as soon as you solve one riddle, new ones will immediately appear and will also haunt you, and so it can continue indefinitely.

What is psychology. What does she study and what does she do?

Psychology is the science of the laws of development and the mechanisms of functioning of the psyche.

The psyche is the result of the interaction of the brain with the environment.

Psychology, Science and History.

Plato observed that philosophy begins with wonder. Science also begins with wonder - wonder at the inner workings of nature, and all natural sciences, including psychology, were originally part of philosophy.

Over the centuries, individual sciences have gradually gained independence from philosophy. Psychology was one of the last "separated from the parent", remaining a part of philosophy until the 19th century. The founders of psychology were both philosophers and psychologists, and even today psychology has retained close ties with philosophy.

For many centuries, the history of psychology has been, for the most part, the history of philosophy, especially in such areas as philosophy of mind, epistemology and ethics. The literal translation of the word "psychology" is the study of the soul, although the term itself was not used until the 17th century, and became widespread only in the 19th century.

Philosophers and religious leaders around the world have fiercely argued about the nature of the soul, that is, on a topic known to philosophers as the philosophy of reason. Does the soul exist? What is its nature? What is its purpose? How is it related to the body? Although psychologists do not accept the name "soul", preferring the term "mind", which carries less religious burden, they still ask the same troubling questions. Even those psychologists who define psychology as the study of behavior rather than the study of the mind respond to them in different ways.

Since the time of the ancient Greeks, philosophers have been interested in the problem of how people know the world. This direction is called epistemology (epistemology), from the Greek words episteme (knowledge) and logos (reasoning). Questions about how people learn about the world include questions about sensation, perception, memory, and thinking, a whole world that psychologists call cognitive psychology.

Ethics is another area that philosophers (and religious thinkers) share with psychology. While ethics is primarily concerned with the question of how people should behave, practical ethics depends on an understanding of human nature. Are people kind by nature? What motives do people have? Which ones should be welcomed and which ones should be suppressed? Are people social beings? Is there a general style of good living that everyone should follow?

Such questions are inherently psychological, and you can answer them by studying human nature. Ethical views are manifested in many branches of psychology. In scientific psychology, we find them in the study of motivation and emotions, social and sexual behavior. Applied psychology, whether it concerns business, industry or management, or is individual clinical or counseling psychology, is closely related to human ethics.

Although the conceptual foundations of psychology are to be found in philosophy, the idea of \u200b\u200bcreating psychology as an independent science stems from biology. The idea that the functions that philosophers attribute to the mind are in fact dependent on deep processes in the brain has existed since the time of ancient Greece, but it became generally accepted in the middle of the 19th century.

The founders of psychology hoped that speculative philosophy and religion could become natural sciences. The younger branch of biology, the theory of evolution, also laid the foundations for scientific psychology. Philosophers and psychologists, especially British and American, began to wonder how good the mind is in the struggle for existence, which is evolution through natural selection.

Why should we be conscious? Do animals have consciousness? These new questions have worried and inspired psychologists from the very beginning. Therefore, we must consider not only the abstract questions of philosophy, but also the growing understanding of the functioning of the brain and nervous system from antiquity to the present day.

Now, during the last decade - the present age of the brain - the hopes of early psychologists in physiology deserve respect. They hoped that psychological processes could be associated with physiological ones, but then, throughout almost the entire 20th century, psychology moved away from a physiological orientation. However, today, armed with the latest techniques in brain research, psychologists have returned to their original search. At the same time, the new field of evolutionary psychology returned to the old fundamental questions about human nature (R. Wright, 1994).

Understanding science.

Although the definition of the subject of psychology has always been controversial, since the 19th century. to this day, there has been an agreement that psychology is (or at least should be) a science. The Image of Modern Science People expect science to explain why the world, mind and body function this way and not otherwise.

GENERAL CONCEPT OF PSYCHOLOGY AS A SCIENCE.

An outstanding ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle has his treatise "On the Soul". He believes that among other knowledge, the study of the soul should be given one of the first places, since "it is knowledge about the most sublime and amazing." Secondly, psychology is in a special position because in it the object and the subject of cognition seem to merge.

To clarify this, I will use one comparison. Here a man is born. At first, being in infancy, he is not aware and does not remember himself. However, its development is proceeding at a rapid pace. His physical and mental abilities are being formed; he learns to walk, see, understand, speak. With the help of these abilities he learns the world; begins to act in it; the circle of his communication is expanding.

And gradually, from the depths of childhood, a completely special feeling comes to him and gradually grows - the feeling of his own "I". Somewhere in adolescence, it begins to take on conscious forms. There are questions: "Who am I? What am I?", And later, "Why am I?"

Those psychic abilities and functions that until now have served the child as a means for mastering the external world - physical and social, are turned to cognition of himself; they themselves become the subject of comprehension and awareness. Exactly the same process can be traced on the scale of all mankind.

In primitive society, the main forces of people were spent on the struggle for existence, on the development of the outside world. People made fire, hunted wild animals, fought with neighboring tribes, received the first knowledge about nature.

Humanity of that period, like a baby, does not remember itself. The strength and potential of mankind gradually grew. Thanks to their psychic abilities, people have created a material and spiritual culture; there were writing, arts, sciences. And then the moment came when a person asked himself questions: what are these forces that enable him to create, explore and subjugate the world, what is the nature of his mind, what laws does his inner, spiritual life obey?

This moment was the birth of the self-consciousness of mankind, that is, the birth of psychological knowledge. An event that once happened can be briefly expressed as follows: if earlier a person's thought was directed to the outside world, now it turned to itself. Man dared to begin to investigate thinking itself with the help of thinking.

So, the tasks of psychology are incommensurably more complicated than the tasks of any other science, because only in it does thought turn on itself. Only in it does the scientific consciousness of man become his scientific self-consciousness. the peculiarity of psychology lies in its unique practical consequences.

The practical results from the development of psychology should become not only incommensurably more significant than the results of any other science, but also qualitatively different. After all, to cognize something means to master this “something”, to learn how to manage it.

Learning to control your mental processes, functions, abilities is, of course, a more daunting task than, for example, space exploration. It should be especially emphasized that, knowing himself, a person will change himself.

Psychology has already accumulated a lot of facts showing how a person's new knowledge of himself makes him different: changes his attitudes, goals, his states and experiences. If we go back to the scale of all mankind, then we can say that psychology is a science that not only cognizes, but also constructs, creates a person.

And although this opinion is not now generally accepted, recently voices have been louder and louder calling to comprehend this feature of psychology, which makes it a science of a special type.

I must say that psychology is a very young science. This is more or less understandable: we can say that, like the aforementioned teenager, the period of formation of the spiritual forces of mankind had to go through in order for them to become the subject of scientific reflection.

excerpts from the book Gippenreiter Yu.B. "Introduction to General Psychology"

Recently, the study of human psychology has become very popular. In the West, the consulting practice of specialists in this field has existed for quite some time. In Russia, this is a relatively new direction. What is psychology? What are its main functions? What methods and programs do psychologists use to help people in difficult situations?

Psychology concept

Psychology is the study of the mechanisms of the functioning of the human psyche. She examines patterns in various situations, thoughts, feelings and experiences that arise during this.

Psychology is what helps us to better understand our problems and their causes, to realize our weaknesses and strengths. Its study contributes to the development of moral qualities and ethics in a person. Psychology is an important step towards self-improvement.

Object and subject of psychology

The object of psychology should be some carriers of the phenomena and processes studied by this science. Such a person could be considered, however, according to all norms, he is a subject of knowledge. That is why the object of psychology is considered to be the activity of people, their interaction with each other, behavior in various situations.

The subject of psychology has been constantly changing over time in the development and improvement of its methods. Initially, the human soul was considered as it. Then the subject of psychology was the consciousness and behavior of people, as well as their unconscious beginning. Currently, there are two views on what is the subject of this science. From the point of view of the first, these are mental processes, states and personality traits. According to the second, its subject is the mechanisms of mental activity, psychological facts and laws.

The main functions of psychology

One of the most important is the study of the peculiarities of people's consciousness, the formation of general principles and laws by which an individual acts. This science reveals the hidden capabilities of the human psyche, the reasons and factors affecting human behavior. All of the above represent the theoretical functions of psychology.

However, like any, it has practical applications. Its value lies in helping a person, developing recommendations and strategies for action in various situations. In all areas where people have to interact with each other, the role of psychology is invaluable. It allows a person to properly build relationships with others, avoid conflicts, learn to respect the interests of other people and reckon with them.

Processes in psychology

The human psyche is a single whole. All the processes taking place in it are closely interconnected and cannot exist one without the other. That is why their division into groups is very arbitrary.

It is customary to distinguish the following processes in human psychology: cognitive, emotional and volitional. The first of these include memory, thinking, perception, attention, and sensation. Their main feature is that it is thanks to them that it reacts and responds to influences from the outside world.

They form a person's attitude to certain events, allow one to evaluate oneself and others. These include feelings, emotions, mood of people.

Volitional mental processes are represented directly by will and motivation, as well as proactivity. They allow a person to control their actions and deeds, to control behavior and emotions. In addition, the volitional processes of the psyche are responsible for the ability to achieve the set goals, to reach the desired heights in certain areas.

Types of psychology

In modern practice, there are several classifications of types of psychology. The most common is its division into everyday and scientific. The first type is based primarily on the personal experience of people. Everyday psychology is intuitive in nature. Most often it is very specific and subjective. Scientific psychology is a science based on rational data obtained through experimentation or professional observation. All of its provisions are thought out and accurate.

Theoretical and practical types of psychology are distinguished depending on the scope of application. The first of them deals with the study of the laws and characteristics of the human psyche. Practical psychology sets as the main task of rendering help and support to people, improving their condition and increasing productivity.

Psychology methods

To achieve the goals of science in psychology, various methods of studying consciousness and characteristics of human behavior are used. First of all, these include the experiment. It is a simulation of a particular situation that provokes a certain human behavior. At the same time, scientists record the data obtained and reveal the dynamics and dependence of the results on various factors.

The observation method is very often used in psychology. With the help of it, various phenomena and processes occurring in the human psyche can be explained.

Recently, methods of questioning and testing have been widely used. At the same time, people are asked to answer certain questions in a limited amount of time. Based on the analysis of the data obtained, conclusions are drawn about the results of the research and certain programs in psychology are drawn up.

To identify problems and their sources in a particular person, they use it.It is based on a comparison and analysis of various events in an individual's life, key moments of his development, identifying crisis stages and determining stages of development.

Psychology is a long-established science, highly developed and divided into many directions and schools. It is not even one, but a whole system of sciences. Their number at the present time is difficult to determine precisely, since some psychological sciences today are still only taking shape, becoming independent. In any case, judging by the branches of psychology listed in the dictionary attached to the previous chapter of the textbook, there are at least 80 of them.

Themes, problems and research methods used in these branches of psychology are so different that it is almost impossible to give an exact and comprehensive definition of the subject of this science. Nevertheless, we will have to do this in the textbook, since a working definition of the subject of the science considered in it is still necessary for those who begin to study this scientific discipline. Of course, this definition, like everyone else, cannot claim to be exhaustive and absolutely accurate. It will only be author's, i.e. one of many possible definitions of the subject of psychology. Along with it, there may well exist (and indeed exist) many other, equal definitions.

In addition, when looking for a definition of the subject of modern psychology, one should take into account the fact that, along with scientific, also practical and alternative psychology. Practical psychology is recognized, widespread in the modern world, largely scientifically grounded, and therefore should also be reflected in the universal definition of the subject of psychology. Alternative psychology is popular among a significant part of the population, it has a certain impact on the consciousness of people. Therefore, it is advisable to mention it at least in passing in the universal definition of the subject of psychology.

Finally, it should be borne in mind that the current state of psychology is not static, but dynamic. It is constantly changing in all its areas, primarily related to science and practice, and therefore its definition cannot be fitted into any frozen definition. The description of the complete subject of modern psychology, therefore, requires at least several detailed judgments, with the obligatory separation of the definitions of the subject of psychology as science and practice. The corresponding description, moreover, must remain "alive", i.e. such that it could be modified, adding to the already established understanding of the subject of psychology a new one, which is brought into it by continuously developing science and practice.

Of course, we would like to propose not a definition that is stagnant, outdated and therefore losing its accuracy over time, but a dynamic one that corresponds to a system of scientific knowledge that is constantly evolving, regularly absorbing new things. But science, so far, alas, "has not learned" to offer such definitions.

The above and the above reservations does not mean that it is currently impossible to present any special requirements to the definition of the subject of psychology. These requirements actually exist and are as follows.

• 1. The definition of the subject of science should reflect as fully as possible the content of the main scientific research currently being conducted in this area. In this regard, the most successful can be considered a definition that covers the greatest number of various scientific topics, problems and developments.
• 2. The corresponding definition should not contain logical contradictions and errors, i.e. should correspond to the logic of definition of concepts accepted in science.
• 3. This definition, naturally, should differ from the definitions of the subjects of other sciences.
• 4. The proposed definition should correspond to the already existing directions and schools, i.e. integrate and generalize what scientists who call themselves psychologists are doing.

Before trying to offer a definition of modern psychology that meets all these requirements, we will make a short excursion into the history of psychology and try to find out how in antiquity the idea of \u200b\u200bthe subject of science was given and changed over time - first about the soul and then about psychology. An excursion into history will allow us to find such an understanding of the subject of psychology, which would take into account not only the current state of this science, but also its historical, ancient and recent past.

The word "psychology", which has taken root in our days as the name of modern science of the psyche, is of Greek origin. It is formed from two words: "soul" (psyche) and "logos" (logos) - teaching. Consequently, in its original meaning, the word "psychology" was literally understood as "the doctrine of the soul." Until the XVI century. ego doctrine acted as part of philosophy, was not independent and retained its most ancient name. Starting from this century, the philosophical doctrine of the soul received the modern name "psychology", proposed to it by analogy with the names of many other sciences that had separated from philosophy by that time and became independent, for example, "philology", "biology", "zoology", "Geology", etc.

In the XVII-XVIII centuries. the name "psychology" was finally assigned to the science of the soul. Initially, the term "psychology" referred only to the phenomena that a person discovered in his mind. Later, in the 18th-19th centuries, the sphere of psychological research expanded to include also unconscious mental phenomena (unconscious).

Studying the historical process of transformation of ideas about the subject of psychology, it is important to keep in mind the following circumstance. Since ancient times, knowledge about the soul has interested people not only in itself - to understand the nature of the phenomena that people discovered in their consciousness (soul), but also in order, using this knowledge, to explain the events taking place in the world around them, including human and animal behavior. Consequently, since the emergence of the concept of the soul and the science of the soul in ancient Greece, the subject of the corresponding science included, at least, the explanation of the behavior of people and animals with the help of mental phenomena.

Modern scientists not only include human behavior (variant - activity) in the subject of psychological research, but also recognize that psychology has the right to act as the main science that claims to understand and explain behavior. In this regard, the name "psychology", if we mean the science to which it currently belongs, is not entirely accurate and to some extent has lost its original meaning, limiting its subject only to mental phenomena presented in the consciousness or subconsciousness of a person ... In its scientific research, modern psychology has gone far beyond the limits of not only consciousness as such, but also psychic phenomena proper, including the study and explanation of the behavior of people and animals (zoopsychology) in the scope of its research.

Considerable difficulties also arise with the inclusion of behavior (activity) in the subject of psychological study. There is still no consensus on how to represent human behavior (activity) as a subject of psychology. Let us recall that S. L. Rubinstein believed that human activity (behavior) is not a subject of psychology. Answering him, A. N. Leont'ev noted that mental processes themselves are types of activity, therefore, activity must necessarily enter into the subject of psychological research. To prove the correctness of his position, A.N. Leont'ev gives the following arguments:

• 1) the mental processes themselves are derived from various types of human practical activity;
• 2) without studying human activity, its structure and development, it is impossible to understand the human psyche;
• 3) the psyche, cut off from activity, turns into something incomprehensible and unknowable.

Hence, it inevitably follows that, not including activity (behavior) in the definition of the subject of psychology, we, firstly, significantly limit it, turning psychology into a science that describes and explains only mental phenomena. Secondly, in this case, we incorrectly represent the human psyche itself, illegally separating and isolating it from human activity, or incorrectly considering activity as something alien or external to the psyche.

Retention of its former name for psychology, in general, is apparently correct, since psychologists, both in our days and in the past, were primarily interested in the knowledge and understanding of mental or mental phenomena. But it is obvious that such a definition of science, taking into account the above arguments, is no longer enough today. Nevertheless, attempts to call psychology in another way cannot be considered successful, for example, the science of behavior, as the behaviorists proposed to do, the science of the unconscious, as psychoanalysts believed, the science of reactions or reflexes, as, for example, K.N.Kornilov or V.M.Bekhterev. Such names for science are obviously much less apt than the old name "psychology"

The above brief excursion into the history of psychology shows that while maintaining the previous name - "psychology" or "the science of the soul" - the content of research conducted by psychologists has changed several times over the long history of the development of this science. In ancient times, the soul was considered as something objectively existing and different from material objects and phenomena. Therefore, it was correct to define and limit the subject of the corresponding science only to psychic (mental) phenomena. At the same time, already in antiquity, the soul, as we established in the first chapter, was understood in different ways: both as a source of all kinds of movements observed in the world, and as a fundamental principle of life, and as a reason explaining the behavior of humans and animals.

At first, the research subject of the science of the soul was really mainly only the functions of the soul and its possible manifestations. These functions were described in detail by ancient scholars. The question of the origin of the soul itself was solved by materialists and idealists in different ways. The first tried to identify mental phenomena with one of the varieties of matter: air movements, fire, ether, small and mobile atoms, etc. The latter declared the soul to be something intangible, in no way connected with the material world, either by origin or by existence. Idealists believed that the soul cannot be derived from matter and cannot be reduced to it. Many of them, in addition, not finding a satisfactory answer to the question of the origin of the soul (there is still no convincing answer to it in science, including a materialistically oriented one), agreed that God endowed man with a soul, and through it he controls human behavior.

In the XVI-XVII centuries. a new, natural-scientific, mechanistic picture of the world appeared, which was reflected in the works of many European scientists - physicists and mechanics, first of all R. Descartes and I. Newton. Descartes proposed to exclude from the number of functions of the soul the control of the simplest movements of the organism, limiting its role only to the highest mental processes: thinking and affects. The range of phenomena to be studied in the science of the soul, starting from this time, has narrowed down to what is represented in the human mind. As a result, psychology began to be called the science of human consciousness, its content and dynamics, studied using the method of internal self-observation - introspection.

However, already in the XVIII century. scientists (for example, G. Leibniz) started talking about the existence of the unconscious in the psyche and human behavior. This idea gradually won an increasing number of supporters, and received final recognition in the second half of the 19th century, thanks to the works of Z. Freud. In this regard, it became necessary to again change the idea of \u200b\u200bthe subject of psychology as a science, including the study of unconscious mental phenomena. Such a change did take place over time, but it practically did not affect the definition of the subject of psychology. For at least a hundred years after scientists started talking about the unconscious and recognized its existence, psychology continued to be defined as the science of consciousness, its structure, and this is quite consistent with what was mainly studied in this science. In the first half of the XX century. almost none of the scientific psychologists explicitly included unconscious mental phenomena in the definition of the subject of science.

At the end of the XIX century. the first applied branches of scientific psychology appeared, such as clinical and educational psychology. The emergence of these branches of psychology also required a redefinition of the subject matter of psychology. As a result, at the beginning of the XX century. a situation is developing that contributes to the emergence of a new, more modern and comprehensive understanding of the subject of psychology, which includes, in addition to the mental phenomena presented in the human mind, the following points.

• 1. The idea that psychology should recognize and study unconscious mental phenomena.
• 2. The idea that the subject of psychology is not only mental phenomena as such, but also the activity (behavior) of humans and animals.
• 3. An indication of why all this should be investigated in psychology (the functional purpose of the mental phenomena themselves and the applied value of scientific knowledge about the psyche).

However, the need to redefine the subject of psychology at this time historically coincided with two events that temporarily postponed the search for an adequate, updated and accurate definition of the subject of this science for the future. This is, firstly, the beginning division of psychology into a number of sciences and areas of research; secondly, the crisis that has hit the world of psychological science.

The newly emerging psychological sciences specialized in the study of individual groups of mental phenomena and forms of human and animal behavior. Each of them, accordingly, acquired its own, narrowly and specifically understood subject, different from the subject of research in psychology as a whole and other psychological sciences. Under these conditions, the specifics of understanding the subject of psychology began to depend on the direction in which psychological ideas were being developed. So, in psychoanalysis, behaviorism, gestalt psychology, and then in humanistic and cognitive psychology, the subjects of scientific research began to be understood in different ways. This gave rise to additional difficulties in the search for a holistic understanding of the subject of psychology as a science.

The crisis of the world psychological science, in addition, exacerbated the contradictions between the newly emerging areas of psychology, and the presence of competition between them also became an obstacle in the search for a common definition of the subject of psychology as a whole. Representatives of each direction of research, insisting on its sole correctness, naturally proposed their own definition of the subject of psychology. So, for example, in behaviorism it was behavior and its natural-scientific explanation, in gestalt psychology - structurally understood cognitive processes and other mental phenomena, in psychoanalysis - the unconscious and its role in managing the psyche and human behavior, in functionalism - the life purpose of various mental phenomena , in humanistic psychology - a person in its highest, spiritual manifestations.

As long as psychology is in a state of fragmentation, confrontation and division of a previously unified science into many directions and schools that compete with each other - and this state is characteristic of it today - a general definition of the subject of psychology, which suits everyone without the exception of scientists is impossible to find.

However, by the end of the XX century. the situation has changed for the better. Sharp contradictions and open competition between individual areas and schools of psychology were smoothed out, their rapprochement was outlined (unfortunately, it has not yet been completed), and this opened up the prospect of searching for a unified definition of the subject of psychology. Although such a definition still does not exist, it is still possible to outline ways to find it in the future.

The easiest way to understand and understand what modern psychology is doing is through a brief listing and description of the phenomena that it is currently studying. Therefore, the next paragraph can be viewed as an attempt at a detailed descriptive definition of the subject of psychology through the presentation of the system of phenomena studied in it.

Psychology is, first of all, the science of phenomena that are called mental or psychological. Psychology in connection with the study of such phenomena raises and solves the following major questions.

• 1. What are mental phenomena?
• 2. What distinguishes some mental phenomena from others?
• 3. What groups (classes, varieties) are mental phenomena divided into?
• 4. How do mental phenomena differ from phenomena studied in other sciences?
• 5. Where did psychic phenomena come from and how did they arise (if they really did ever arise)?
• 6. How do mental phenomena characteristic of humans differ from analogous phenomena characteristic of animals?
• 7. How do mental phenomena correlate with processes occurring in the human body, in particular, in the brain?
• 8. What influence do mental phenomena have on human behavior?
• 9. How do mental phenomena depend on human activity?

Since ancient times, the science of the soul has been called upon to explain what is happening in the world, first of all, to the various movements carried out by living objects: animals and humans. In modern scientific language, these movements are defined through the concept of "behavior". Consequently, the explanation of behavior, based on knowledge of mental (mental) phenomena, represented and still represents one of the main tasks of psychology, has always been part of its subject. This should be understood as follows. Behavior, as such, in its pure form, is the subject of psychological study of ns. However, it is subject to scientific explanation in precisely psychology, although psychology does not appear as the only science that explains it. Representatives of many other, humanities and social sciences, along with psychology, can claim to solve this problem. The behavior of people, for their part, is explained, for example, by biology, medicine, physiology, history, sociology, philosophy, law, pedagogy and many other sciences.

The situation is different with the inclusion of activity in the subject of psychology. She, unlike behavior, is the subject of direct psychological study. Mental phenomena in one way or another are associated with activity (not behavior) and are derived from it. It is impossible to answer the questions formulated above about the nature of mental processes, where they come from, how they form and develop, without studying human activity.

Mental phenomena characteristic of a person are manifested in his activity, are formed in it and are cognized through activity. One of the reasons why introspection as a research method turned out to be untenable in the study of mental phenomena was precisely the fact that this method of cognition separated the psyche from activity and ignored the fact of their interconnection and interdependence. The cognition of activity, according to A. N. Leont'ev, is at the same time the cognition of the human psyche, since mental phenomena are the most important components of human activity, and activity, in turn, includes mental processes.

Thus, in a brief form that summarizes the above, the working definition of modern psychology can sound like this: psychology is the science of human activity, of the mental phenomena associated with it, which are born in it, develop and regulate it. An additional characteristic of the subject of psychology, especially emphasizing its scientific and practical significance, can be the understanding of psychology as a science that explains mental phenomena and, based on them, human behavior and activity.

Concluding the discussion on the definition of psychology as a science, the following conclusions can be drawn.

• 1. Throughout the history of the existence of this science, despite the changes that took place in the general scientific worldview and in views on the nature of mental phenomena, they invariably entered the definition of the subject of this science.
• 2. In connection with the inclusion of mental phenomena in the subject of psychology, the following questions were raised and resolved:
• 1) what is the nature of mental phenomena, in contrast to other phenomena existing in the world and studied by different sciences;
• 2) how mental phenomena are associated with other phenomena that do not appear as mental;
• 3) how the behavior (activity) of a person depends on mental phenomena;
• 4) how are mental phenomena formed (developed, changed)?
• 3. From ancient times to the present day, there has been a gradual narrowing of the prevalence in the world and the limitation of the functions of mental (mental) phenomena.
• 4. At the same time, the concept of the subject of psychology expanded: from phenomena associated only with consciousness to unconscious mental phenomena and practical human activity.
• 5. Attempts to recognize psychology as an untenable science, to exclude mental phenomena from the definition of the subject of psychology, or to replace it with a completely different science that explains behavior without reference to mental phenomena, have not been successful.
• 6. At present, the subject of psychology has more or less been defined, and the situation associated with the search for such a definition has stabilized. However, psychologists have not yet come to a single, universal definition of the subject of their science.

• We will not define the subject of practical psychology in this textbook, since its content is mainly devoted only to scientific, general psychology.
• The materialistic point of view of AN Leont'ev, discussed further, in the sixth chapter of the textbook, on the emergence of an elementary mental phenomenon in the form of sensitivity from the property of irritability inherent in living matter, does not finally and consistently solve the question of the origin of the psyche, unfortunately. This hypothesis, firstly, still has no experimental, empirical or experimental confirmation, and secondly, it generates and leaves unanswered a number of rather complex questions, for example the following: 1) why the reactions of living matter are sound, light, favor, etc. P. associate precisely and only with the presence of the psyche? After all, plants, and even some inanimate objects, as proven in biology, physics and chemistry, MOiyr react to this kind of impact. This means that it is necessary to recognize the presence of the psyche and they, that is. return to the oldest, long-rejected doctrine of panpsychism; 2) on what basis are the stimuli to which the living thing reacts are divided into biologically significant (biotic) and biological neiphal (abiotic)? From a physical point of view, light and heat are phenomena of the same nature, i.e. electromagnetic waves of various lengths. The same can be said, for example, about the sounds and sensations of vibration: behind them are also physical phenomena of the same nature - fluctuations in air pressure with different frequencies. Light and sound, according to A. N. Leont'ev's definition, are abiotic influences associated with sensitivity and, therefore, with the psyche, and heat and vibration are biotic stimuli that are important for the body and are correlated, respectively, with irritability. It turns out that the body's responses to stimuli of the same nature in one case are declared biologically significant, in the other - neutral, in one case they are associated, and in the other they are not associated with the presence of the psyche.
• True, it is also not entirely correct to assert that this was the case. The recognition of the existence of the unconscious in the human psyche was still reflected in the understanding and definition of the subject of this science. This, in particular, was manifested in the fact that most scientists cease to define the subject of this science as soon as the study of consciousness. In addition, the inclusion in the subject of psychology of human activity or behavior also means the removal of the limitation of its subject only to the phenomena of consciousness, since both activity and behavior can have a deliberately uncontrollable character.
• Note that this will be an attempt to offer a truly integral definition of science - such as it really is not. Instead, there are many separate fundamental and applied psychological sciences, for each of which there is a particular definition of its subject. Here we propose a working definition that applies to all psychological sciences and, at the same time, does not fully correspond to the definition of the subject of any of the particular psychological sciences.
• There are fundamental differences between activity and behavior, which will be discussed in detail below.