The concept of personality is a rather complex semantic term, each science interprets it in its own way. Personality in psychology is a person with a diverse inner world, with an individual structure of consciousness and with his own mental characteristics, which fully characterize a person as an individuality..
The problem of personality in social psychology
Social psychology considers the problem of personality in the manifestation of several factors:
- The concept of personality is considered not only from a psychological, but also from a social point of view;
- Deciphering such a concept as the socialization of the individual;
- Consideration and explanation of the social structure of the individual;
- Development of methods for diagnosing the social structure of personality.
The world famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud identified several types of personality:
- "It";
- "Over I".
The first two types lie deep in the human subconscious, and the last type of "Super-I" is an attitude developed over the course of social life towards everything around and towards oneself.
The psychoanalyst laid in the basis of the development of human civilization the instinct of life and the instinct of death, which is due to the innate instincts of man.
The problem of studying personality in psychology
The main problem of studying personality is that each world science defines the concept of personality and other concepts that are associated with it in its own way. But there are a number of additional, no less important, problems:
- The presence in the individual of the biological and social side, which complicates the search for the relationship of the physical and spiritual aspects;
- certain percentage own personal inclinations and universal characteristics;
- Phylogenesis– the development of the world from the moment of creation and ontogenesis- the development of the individual from the moment of birth;
- The structure of personality as an individual;
- Factors affecting personality development;
- Methods for the study of consciousness and personality.
All these problems are due to the currently underdeveloped psychological science, as well as the extremely complex structure personality, which to study with the help of already public methods completely impossible.
The problem of personality development in psychology
For the harmonious existence of a personality, a person must have a feeling of active interaction with society and the outside world, as well as awareness of himself as a unique independent person.. To do this, the conscious and unconscious factors must be harmoniously combined in a person.
These two factors are completely opposite to each other, which is the appearance of the problem of personality development in psychology. The inner world of the individual should give impetus to the development of a person in an individual direction.
The problem of personality development is exacerbated at each stage of its development. Modern psychology distinguishes the following stages:
- mystical participation. At this stage, a person cannot yet distinguish himself as an individual. He lives and perceives himself exclusively as part of the world, but is not aware of his individuality. This phenomenon is inherent in children, but in Everyday life it occurs in a crowd when people, succumbing to the herd instinct, cannot think individually.
- Development problem correct settings . During this period, people begin to distinguish the primary sexual characteristics of others, and also form basic knowledge about the world around them.
- Further, a person is disciplined and prioritizes his life.
- The last step is the biggest problem. It implies a person's attempts to combine the conscious and the unconscious. With the successful combination of these phenomena, a person becomes a real person.
These stages are repeated in a circle throughout life, they help a person to constantly improve.
The problem of personality in domestic psychology
Symbols domestic psychology are A.N. Leontiev and L.I. Bozovic. It was they who made the greatest contribution to its development.
Bozovic developed a theory according to which a person once reaches highest point of your development, finding harmony within yourself. It is at this moment that he becomes a person. She developed methods for solving the problem of personality, which she considered early development a child who is being raised incorrectly.
Leontiev believed that the problem of personality lies in false or incorrect motives for human development.. According to him, “a person is born twice”. First time - in preschool age when it is just beginning to take root in social life, and the second time - as a teenager, when a person forms a specific worldview for himself. The development of a person as a person occurs in the interaction of many motivations that a person develops independently.
The problem of personality in foreign psychology
Foreign psychology considers the problem of personality in two directions. The first of these is the spiritual basis of development. The second brings theories in favor of the biological approach.
According to Sigmund Freud, the development of the individual at the instinctive level is hindered by the sense of responsibility and morality introduced into society.. The problem is that this causes the formation of an internal conflict. To develop as a person, this conflict must be overcome. If a person completely follows the lead of society, he loses his individuality and the opportunity to develop as a person.
the problem of personality structure;
the problem of behavior motivation;
the problem of personality development;
problem of mental health and psychopathology.
The basic problems of personality psychology are:
1. The problem of personality structure is closely related to the principle of systemicity, which involves studying an object from the point of view of its hierarchical structure and types of connection between individual levels. There are two approaches to solving the problem of personality structure. The first one (G. Allport, R. Cattell, G. Eysenck) is based on the theory of traits and the idea of factor organization of secondary properties, the second one (K. Jung, K.A. Abulkhanova) is realized through the principle according to which the whole variety of personality manifestations can be described using the personality type category. These two approaches have different theoretical foundations. The first refers to a posteriori theories, the logic of which is based on the principle "from the particular to the general", the second - to a priori, based on the principle "from the general to the particular".
1) classification of motives,
2) changes in the motivational system,
3) measurements of motives,
4) actualization of motives,
5) the dynamics of the motivational process,
6) correlation of motive and purpose,
7) the diversity of the influence of motivation on behavior.
2. The problem of motivating the behavior of a person is based on the principle of activity and is associated with the solution of the following range of issues:
The task of classifying motives is formulated on the basis of the generally accepted position on the polymotivation of human behavior, on the presence of several motives at the same time that prompt an individual to act. In line with this problem, such particular tasks are formulated as determining the criteria for classifying motives, identifying biogenic and sociogenic needs, studying the principles of communication between different levels of motives (for example, the principle of functional autonomy of motives according to G. Allport, etc.).
The problem of changing motives includes mechanisms for the formation of new needs through motivational mediation (V. Vilyunas), with the help of a mechanism for shifting a motive to a goal (A.N. Leontiev), identification and acceptance of roles.
The question of measuring motives arises in connection with their frequent unconsciousness and, as a result, the impossibility of using traditional tests and questionnaires, which is why the issue of using projective tests and their psychometric characteristics is being discussed.
The problem of actualization of motives is caused by the influence of the situation factor on human behavior, by the fact that certain conditions can create internal stress(intensity of stimulation, novelty, complexity) and provoke the individual to commit the same type of actions (for example, reactive aggressive actions, patronizing behavior, orientation to success or failure, etc.).
The study of the dynamics of the motivational process consists in clarifying the stages of the disintegration of activity or its renewal, the reasons that determine them, the sequence, the order of stages.
The question of the relationship between motive and purpose is associated with establishing the meaning of activity, the nature of the relationship between what prompts an individual to act and what directs his actions.
3. The problem of personality development is associated with a number of methodological principles, primarily with the principle of determinism and development. The source of personality development is the conditions of its life, the socio-historical context. As a social being, a person goes through separate stages of socialization, or sociogenesis, appropriating and fulfilling certain social roles, setting their own benchmarks in relation to generally accepted norms and standards. "Society, at each stage of its development, sets certain general principles perception and interpretation of the world, determines the meaning of certain aspects of life, forms a focus on certain values ... and a developing person already at the early stages of his life path is an active subject of the formation of his own individual-personal equivalents of these norms. "In addition to going through the stages of sociogenesis, the individual has the opportunity develop as an individual, determining the direction of one's life path.Life path is the development of a person as a subject of one's own history, during which the regulation of the life process and the formation of a stable and, at the same time, plastic personality structure are carried out. social development personalities personal growth is described as a process of "mastering ever more perfect ways" of cognition and interaction with the outside world, where she acts as "the subject not only of her behavior, but of everything inner world, his mental life "(L.I. Antsyferova). The main characteristic of the subject is "a person's experience of himself as a sovereign source of activity, capable of deliberately carrying out changes in the surrounding world and himself within certain limits."
The first level is characterized by the fact that "the subject is not adequately aware of his true motives, he does not take into account the degree of his influence on the situation ... the qualities of the subject at this level are manifested through acts of goal-setting and actions to overcome difficulties on the way to achieving goals"
The second level means that a person begins to act as "a subject consciously correlating the goals and motives of his behavior, striving to provide for direct and indirect results of his own actions", she is able to regulate her goals and behavior, to be aware of her motives.
A person at the third level of development "becomes the subject of his life path, which he consciously measures by the scale of the historical time of his era. The qualities of individuality come to the fore here - not just the uniqueness that characterizes each person, but socio-historical (in the extreme case of universal) significance the uniqueness of the subject.At this level, a person has the greatest degrees of freedom - the freedom to identify, experience and resolve by their own actions the urgent contradictions of the development of society. "
Man as a subject goes through three levels of development:
4. The problem of mental health and psychopathology concerns, first of all, the criteria of a healthy personality. So, according to Z. Freud, such a criterion is the ability to maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships, according to A. Maslow, - a shift from primitive needs to more complex, mature ones, for example, self-actualization, according to E. Erickson, - the ability to positively solve the main problem of the stage of development at which the personality is.
5) it reduces the likelihood of deviating from treatment for some clients.
Diagnosis is the result of information gathering, careful listening, it gives the therapist confidence in his next steps, certainty in the individual process of healing and orientation of the duration of this process. To diagnose the degree of preservation / impairment of personality, two criteria are used:
1) assessment of the level of development of the personality organization, the level of individuation or the degree of pathology (psychotic, borderline, neurotic, normal);
2) an assessment of the defensive style within this organization, or the type of person's character - paranoid, depressive, schizoid, etc.
1. The problem of personality in psychological science
Psychology of Personality - This is a part of psychology that deals with the study of human individuality, it is sometimes called personology. The term was coined by Henry Murray in 1938. This section of psychology stands out among the psychological disciplines for its attention to the individual characteristics of people. Personality psychology integrates the fundamental provisions of other areas of psychology, striving to understand a person as a whole. Personality is the final and most complex object of psychology.
The familiar phrase "psychology of personality" needs clarification. Firstly , the word "psychology" is sometimes perceived as identical to the concept of "psyche", and then "psychology of personality" would mean a description of "the psyche that is characteristic of the personality", which does not correspond to the relationship between the concepts of "psyche" and "personality". Secondly , the concept of personality is common to a number of social sciences, and therefore there are many non-psychological conceptions of personality: philosophical, sociological, cultural, anthropological, legal, and even economic. Psychology of Personality is a set of psychological concepts of personality, that is, one of the sections psychological theory and practice, which deals with the personal characteristics of the human psyche.
Personality psychology is the theoretical and methodological basis of the personal principle (“personalism”), according to which personality - this is the logical center around which all other categories of psychology and the system of psychological sciences as a whole are built. In its development, personality psychology becomes "humanistic psychology".
What is a personality? This word appeared 300 years ago. J. Bruner believes that the sign of this is the use (in English) of the prefix "self" (self-respect, self-esteem), which dates back to XVII v. and is associated with the emergence of the individualistic teachings of Puritanism. Meanwhile, the Spanish philosopher Balthasar Gracian (1601-1658) in the same XVII century uses the concept of personality quite in the modern sense. He writes: “Everything has already reached maturity, and most of all – personality. Today, more is required from one wise man than from seven in ancient times, and in dealing with one person at the present time, more skill is needed than once with a whole people.
According to the “Dictionary of the Russian language” by S.I. Ozhegov, personality - this is “a set of properties inherent in a given person, constituting his individuality”; "a person in terms of his character, behavior, position, etc." At the same time, the word "personality" is free from explicit evaluation; it is combined with both "noble" adjectives ("heroic", "outstanding", "bright"), and with "low" ones ("colorless", "criminal", "limited").
In psychology, there are many definitions of the concept of personality. Most of these definitions contain such features as "totality", or "organization", "system" of traits (properties), "unity", "stability", "sociality", "identity", "individuality" (integrity, originality, isolation, the presence of an inner self, autonomy, creativity). Often the personality is revealed through consciousness and self-consciousness.
The simplest, indicative, definition of personality is reduced to an indication of the totality of spiritual properties inherent in a person and constituting his individuality. Swiss psychologist Richard Meili writes: “Under the term “personality”, we mean the totality of psychological qualities that characterizes each individual person. In a broad sense, the term "personality" includes such concepts as character, temperament and abilities, corresponding to its three particular aspects.
But personality is not just a collection or ensemble of properties. We are talking about such properties that, in their interaction, give rise to a special human quality, a sense of "I", consciousness of one's own individuality, or, as the American psychologist A. Maslow said, "the experience of identity." Considering this, personality they call a person who has his own self, capable of self-determination through his will and the implementation of his will in action. At the beginning of XX century, the Russian psychiatrist P.P. Viktorov, in his doctrine of personality, emphasized self-consciousness and consciousness: environmental change external environment". The same idea sounds in the work of a modern psychologist: "A distinctive characteristic of the human personality is consciousness, capable of thinking and thinking through options for itself through design."
Personality is formed as a result of interaction between the organism and the social environment. This interaction leads to the emergence of a holistic organization of mental properties, which has a more or less clearly defined center, which corresponds to the subjective feeling of "I". Personality is those characteristics of a person that are responsible for the coordinated manifestations of his feelings, thinking and behavior. The Russian psychologist A.F. Lazursky perfectly defined personality as a kind of stable and lasting unity, which serves as the basis for everything that happens in mental life.
According to the English psychologist G.Yu. Eizenk, “personality is a more or less stable and stable structure of a person’s character, temperament, intellect and constitution, which determines his individual adaptation to the world around him.”
In this way, personality is an integrated totality mental properties, in the presence of which a person acquires consciousness and self-consciousness (a sense of I), becomes the subject of activity and a partner in social interactions.
Personality - this is that side of the individual human psyche, which is stable, determines the spiritual originality of a given person and determines the features of his activity, communication and life in general.
Personality is an actively assimilating and purposefully transforming nature, society and man himself, about having a unique, dynamic ratio of spaces temporal orientations, need-volitional lives, content areas, levels of development and forms of implementation of activities that provide freedom do self-determination in actions and the measure of responsibility for their consequences for nature.
The concept of personality is derived from the basic category of psychological science - the psyche. Among the ancient Greeks, this word meant not only the soul, spirit, but also the person. It would be strange not to see the connection between the concepts of soul and personality! “Personality is a substance characterized by the presence of the soul as a substantial form and living not only biological and instinctive, but also intellectual and volitional life.”
Considering the personality as a set of certain traits sometimes leads to a separation of the personality from the psyche, which prompts people who feel this to insist that "there are no personality formations outside the psyche, in one way or another all personality traits are connected with the mechanisms of mental processes." It is useful for personality psychology to remember the principle of S.L. Rubinstein (1889 - 1960), according to which "... any psychology that understands what it is doing studies the psyche and only the psyche." Nevertheless, the personality is still poorly characterized psychologically, remaining excessively sociologized.
The concept of “personality” came to psychology from at least four sources.
First - Christianity, which consolidated the idea of the eternal and divine soul of man.
Second - philosophy. When, in the middle of the last century, psychology separated from philosophy, the question arose of a special - philosophical (non-psychological) - vision of man. On this basis, "philosophical anthropology" was born in Germany - an attempt to combine natural scientific and philosophical knowledge about a person, to find the "basic structure" of human existence and the specific features of a person. German philosophers of the past - I. Kant, L. Feuerbach J. Fichte, - and of the present - W. Dilthey, M. Scheler (XX century) - understood anthropology as knowledge of the specific essence of a person and about the features of his physical, mental, moral, spiritual and cultural life. And one of them - Max Scheler - (1874 - 1928) stated that in a certain sense, all the central problems of philosophy are reduced to the question of what a person is and what position he occupies among all being, the world and God. Psychology, in order to disassociate itself from philosophy, for some time refused to answer such global questions, but necessity turned out to be stronger than interdisciplinary relations.
Third source - psychiatric phenomena of "split personality", or "multiple personality". Cases have been described where a person suddenly became someone else. His biography, way of thinking, emotional world, range of interests changed. To the question: “What happens to a person in this case?” a convenient answer was found: personality changes. This source was carefully analyzed by the classic of world psychology W. James (1842 - 1910).
Fourth source - the needs of psychology itself in overcoming the sense of impasse. Psychologists, who, in striving for objectivity, focused on the knowledge of the mechanisms, processes of the psyche, felt that they were losing the most essential thing in a person. “Individual functions were studied, and man as a complex, as a complex system motivational forces were not considered. Psychoanalysts claim that Z. Freud significantly stimulated the emergence of personality theory. "His conclusions and principles gave rise to the first comprehensive theory of personality based on observation rather than speculative assumptions."
The concept of personality is a special case of the manifestation of the holistic (holistic) principle, according to which mental functions cannot "exist in isolation from the general whole, from that organization, the disclosure of whose laws is of decisive importance." In this sense personality represents higher form mental integrity.
Topic 5. The problem of personality in psychology
Lecture structure:
1. The problem of personality in psychology. Concepts: person, individual, personality, individuality. Man as a holistic biosocial formation. Man as an individual. Individual properties of a person: age-sex and individual-typical features. Man as a person. The concept of personality in psychology. The concept of individuality. Differences in the content of these concepts.
2. Stages scientific research and personality theory. Three main historical periods in the study of personality: philosophical and literary, clinical and experimental, their features. Modern psychological theories of personality: behaviorism, cognitive theory personality, Freudianism and neo-Freudianism, humanistic theories of personality. Domestic concepts of personality (S.L. Rubinstein, D.N. Uznadze, B.G. Ananiev, A.N. Leontiev).
3. The structure of personality. The concept of structure. The structure of personality. Isolation of the personality structure for its deeper knowledge. Conventional and hypothetical allocation of personality components. The existence of different views on the structure of personality. A look at the structure of the psyche and the structure of personality in psychoanalysis Z. Freud. Topographic model of the levels of the human psyche (consciousness, preconscious and unconscious). Structural Components personality: id, ego and superego. The relationship between personal structures and levels of consciousness. A look at the structure of personality in Soviet psychology(K.K. Platonov, S.L. Rubinstein, A.G. Kovalev). Personal orientation. The concept and structure of personality orientation. Motives, interests, beliefs, worldview, desires, inclinations, personality attitudes. Features of their formation.
Personality structure according to B.G. Ananiev. Identification of primary (social status, social functions-roles, goals and value orientations) and secondary (motivation, structure of social behavior, worldview) personal properties. Character and inclinations as a result of the integration of primary and secondary personality traits.
Currently, there are a large number of definitions of personality in the psychological literature. Their extraordinary diversity testifies to the increased interest in this object of study and at the same time shows that the issue of developing principles, criteria for selecting characteristics that would describe this phenomenon with sufficient completeness and scientific character and define the concept of personality is still far from resolved.
To illustrate, we can cite the definitions of the concept of “personality” contained in the works of some psychologists.
“The concept of personality denotes a human individual as a member of society, generalizes the socially significant features integrated in it” (IS Kon).
“Personality is the subject of social behavior and communications” (B.G. Ananiev).
“Personality is an individual who has determined his active position to everything that surrounds him: to work, to the social system, to the tasks of the team, to the fate of another person” (P.E. Kryazhev).
“A person is a person as a social individual, a subject of knowledge and objective transformation of the world, a rational being with speech and the ability to work” (A.V. Petrovsky).
“ Personality - the human individual as a product community development, the subject of labor, communication and knowledge, determined by the specific conditions of society. (I.S. Kon).
“Personality is a person as a carrier of consciousness” (K.K. Platonov).
Thus, we see that in all definitions of personality the words appear: “man”, “individual”, “personality”, “individuality”. A comparison of these concepts makes it possible to single out the differential features of personality, which necessarily determine the objective and the subjective in a dialectical unity.
The concept of “man” is the broadest term for designating the subject of activity, cognition, and communication. Man is a living being with articulate speech, consciousness, capable of creating tools and using them in the process. social labor. Being the highest product of nature, man is no longer only a natural biological being. He is a biosocial being.
To define an individual as a representative of Homo sapiens or any social community the term "individual" is used. An individual designates a person as one of the people, as a bearer of common properties, as a certain singularity. The concept of "individual" can be used not only to state the general properties of the psyche, but also to define a person as a single carrier of social relations and functions, to single out a single representative of any social group. In this case, the specific qualities and differences of people are not fixed, only the fact that they are “units” is noted (B.D. Parygin).
In a certain relationship are the concepts of "man" and "personality". If the concept of “man” is used to designate the subject of historical activity and cognition, then this broad concept coincides with common definition personality. However, in terms of content, these two concepts are by no means identical. The concept of personality indicates a property of a person, and a person is the bearer of this property. Consequently, these concepts differ as a property and as a substratum... It is known that a person as a substratum, on the one hand, is an object of nature, and on the other, a social phenomenon, an element of society. These two sides of the essence of man play a different role in determining the concept of personality. The property of being a person is inherent in a person not as a biological being, but as a social being, i.e. socio-historical person.
More precisely, the specific features of a person, including the features of his physical development, inherited biological traits acquired in individual development mental traits that have developed social properties under certain conditions are defined by the concept of “individuality”. The concept of "individuality" indicates the uniqueness, singularity of signs and their combinations in an individual. Individuality is a set of features that distinguish one person from another. These features are due to the peculiarities of the circumstances of human life and activity.
A peculiar point of view on the relationship between individuality and personality was put forward by S.L. Rubinstein. He introduced into psychology the distinction between individual and personal properties of a person. According to S.L. Rubinshtein, “personal properties are by no means reduced to its individual characteristics. They include the general, and the special, and the singular. Personality is the more significant, the more in the individual refraction it represents the universal. The individual properties of a person are not the same as the personal properties of an individual, i.e. characteristics that characterize him as a person. And the ratio of individuality and personality S.L. Rubinshtein describes it as follows: “A person is an individuality due to the presence of special, single, unique properties in him; a person is a person by virtue of the fact that he consciously determines his attitude to the environment.
In this correlation of personality and individuality, S.L. Rubinstein gives personality traits not to a person as such, but to a person, including not only a personal characteristic, but also those features that distinguish one person from those similar to him in terms of the characteristics of the organism.
The individual is the bearer of the biological in man. A person as an individual is a set of natural, genetically determined properties, the development of which is carried out in the course of ontogenesis, resulting in the biological maturity of a person. Thus, the concept of an individual expresses the generic affiliation of a person, i.e. every person is an individual. But, coming into the world as an individual, a person acquires a special social quality he becomes a person.
Man as a person goes through his life path, within which the socialization of the individual takes place and his social maturity is formed.
Thus, each person appears as a kind of integrity, as an individual and personality, due to the unity of the biological and social. As an individual, he develops in ontogenesis, as a person he goes through his life path, during which the socialization of the individual is carried out.
Individuality is a unique combination of traits in a person. Individuality is a combination of the psychological characteristics of a person that make up his originality, his difference from other people.
Thus, personality is one of the aspects of man, which fundamentally distinguishes him from animals. The problem of personality is studied in many sciences. So, personality in philosophy is the totality of all social relations.
In psychology, personality is studied by various branches of psychological science. This is due to the diversity of personality manifestations, which requires a multi-level psychological analysis.
BG Ananiev summarizes the study of the problem of personality in psychology in this way. “The problem of personality, being one of the central ones in theoretical and applied psychology, acts as a study of the mental properties and relationships of the personality (general personality psychology), individual characteristics and differences between people (differential psychology), interpersonal relationships, status and roles of the individual in various communities ( social Psychology), the subject of social behavior and specific activities (all areas of applied psychology)”.
Personality is a systemic quality acquired by an individual in objective activity and communication, characterizing him from the side of involvement in social relations and formed in joint activities and communication (B.G. Ananiev).
Personality is at the center of attention of modern sociology, psychology, pedagogy and ethics. The increased interest in the individual is determined by both political and industrial goals. Personal knowledge is a prerequisite effective management her activities.
V modern psychology there are the most diverse, often opposing and opposing conceptions of personality. Among them, biological, biosocial and social are especially distinguished.
Biologism appears especially brightly and clearly in Freud's interpretation of personality. According to his teaching, a person is a biological individuality closed in itself, constantly in society and experiencing its influence, but at the same time opposing it. All behavior of a person is determined by biological drives, and primarily sexual. From the drives, Freud also derives the inevitability of wars, which, in his opinion, correspond to the nature of man with his drive to death and destruction. Freud's concept is the concept of a purely biological individualism of the individual.
Representatives of the biosocial concept (and they are the majority) break the personality into two halves, as it were, and believe that mental processes of a person have a biological nature, while the orientation of the personality is determined social phenomena. Such an understanding is erroneous, since the elementary process of sensation is already complicated by socially determined tastes and attitudes of a person, depends on the degree of development of sensory, achieved only in objective activity.
The social concept of personality is widespread in psychology (Durkheim, Vygotsky). Also actively developed so the theory of socialization. According to this theory, a person, being born a biological individual, becomes a personality due to the influence of social conditions of life. The decisive importance is given to communication, psychological mutual influence, while the economic and political relations of people and their influence on the individual are not taken into account. Representatives of this concept pay great attention to the study of the phenomena of conformity, or the influence of a social group on a person. Psychologists of "groupism" declare the conscious or unconscious desire of the individual to adapt to the requirements of the group, in other words, to the immediate environment, as a universal pattern. At the same time, conformism is considered a universal mechanism.
In fact, the influence of the group on the individual can be of a different nature. It depends both on the characteristics of the individual, her character, and the characteristics of the impact. The relationship between the group and the individual in conditions of comradely cooperation and mutual assistance is fundamental, and the action of a member of the collective in the interests of the group is the action of a collectivist by conviction. Such action has nothing to do with conforming behavior.
Another socio-psychological concept is the theory of learning. According to her, the life of a person, her relationships are the result of learning, mastering the amount of knowledge and skills (E. Thorndike and others). Learning certainly has a huge vitality, including for the formation of personality. However, the entire development of personality cannot be reduced only to the influence of individual experience. The decisive influence on its formation is exerted by the relations that have developed in society, which are the defining context for any interactions of the individual.
The theory of roles is very popular in psychology. It comes from the fact that each person plays a certain set of roles, the combination of which creates his personality. Depending on the role played, the nature of the behavior of the individual, her relationships with other people is determined. Undoubtedly, the study of the role of personality is important both for psychological theory and for understanding social practice. However, the role cannot be considered only in the system psychological relations, without taking into account the material, political and ideological relations that determine both the position of the individual and her place in society, without her individual characteristics.
And, finally, a notable trend in personality psychology is the field theory developed by Kurt Lewin and his numerous followers. According to this concept, the individual's behavior is forced: the personality moves in an external field of forces of attraction and repulsion. Lewin's concept is Gestaltist. Although the personality is considered in a holistic situation, the group, however, does not take into account the macro-social determinants of its behavior.
As you can see, each of these theories explains social behavior a person based on the properties of the person or environment closed in themselves. At the same time, the objective social conditions of a person's life, which determine his behavior, are not taken into account. These theories, in essence, ignore the actual laws of the development of society, social groups and personalities. This shortcoming is overcome in the works of the Russian psychologist A.F. Lazursky, who for the first time in psychology posed the problem of relations and quite clearly showed the dependence of the system of relations on the social conditions of life.
In 1931, L. S. Vygotsky wrote that "the central and highest problem of psychology still remains closed - the problem of personality and its development." Around the same time, G. Allport, in his book Personality: A Psychological Interpretation, cites more than 50 various definitions personality. An attempt to synthesize them was unsuccessful, and G. Allport was forced to abandon the definition of personality, recognizing only that “a person is objective reality". It should be recognized that the problem of personality turned out to be the most difficult for both foreign and domestic psychology. Even the presence in Soviet psychology of a unifying ideological denominator in the form of Marxist philosophy did not stimulate an unambiguous interpretation of personality and its nature.
In any case, as K. K. Platonov notes, from 1917 to the 70s. in Soviet psychology, at least four dominant theories of personality can be distinguished: 1917-1936. - personality as a profile of psychological traits; 1936-1950 - personality as a person's experience; 1950-1962 - personality as temperament and age; 1962-1970 - personality as a set of relations manifested in direction.
A. V. Petrovsky also spoke about the existence in Russian psychology of different approaches to understanding the personality in various historical periods of time. Period 50-60s. characterized by the so-called "collector's" approach, in which "personality acts as a set of qualities, properties, traits, characteristics, features of the human psyche." According to A. V. Petrovsky, such an idea of personality turns out to be “surprisingly non-heuristic”, since the line between the concepts of “personality” and “individual” is erased, the personality is divided into constituent elements that are adjacent to each other.
From the mid 1960s. attempts are being made to elucidate the general structure of personality, and the All-Union Symposium on Personality Problems, held in 1969, was marked by an understanding of personality as a biosocial being and a structural approach. The subsequent criticism of this approach was that both biological and socially determined substructures were distinguished in the personality, and this led to the fact that between the concepts of "personality" and "man", "personality" and "individual" an equal sign was put.
By the end of the 1970s. orientation towards a structural approach to the problem of personality is replaced by a tendency to apply a systemic (or structural-systemic) approach, which requires the identification of system-forming personality traits. Recognition of the undoubted unity, but not the identity of the concepts of "personality" and "individual" (B. G. Ananiev, A. N. Leontiev, etc.) gave rise to a number of questions, among which was the question of what constitutes this special systemic quality an individual, which is denoted by the term "personality" and turns out to be irreducible to the biological prerequisites included in the nature of its carrier - the individual.
A. N. Leontiev wrote: “Personality is a special quality that is acquired by an individual in society, in the totality of relations that are social in nature, in which the individual is involved ... In other words, personality is a systemic and therefore “supersensory” quality, although the bearer of this quality is a completely sensual, bodily individual with all his innate and acquired properties.
Personality can only be understood in a system of stable interindividual connections, which are mediated by the content, values, and meaning of joint activity for each of its participants. These connections are quite real, but by their nature "supersensible"; they are contained in the specific properties of the individual, but are not reducible to them; they are given to the researcher in the manifestations of the personality of each member of the group, but at the same time they form a special quality of the group activity itself, which mediates these personal manifestations that determine the special position of each in the system of interindividual relations, more broadly - in the system of relations in society (A. V. Petrovsky) .
So, it can be stated that today in psychology there is a widespread view of a person as an individual, personality and subject of activity, but there is no generally accepted concept of personality.