The ratio of social and biological in the structure of individuality. The ratio of biological and social in the personality of a person. Biological and social factors

As we have already stipulated, the problem of the mental development of the individual occupies a central place in psychological science. In the history of science, the first thing that researchers encountered when turning to the study of the psychological development of an individual is the question of the relationship between the biological and the social in it. Almost all possible formal-logical connections between the concepts of psychological, social and biological were enumerated. Mental development was also interpreted as a completely spontaneous process, independent of either the biological or the social; and as derived only from the biological, or only from social development, or as a result of their parallel action on the individual or interaction, etc.

In biological concepts, mental development is considered as a function of the development of the organism, as something that unambiguously follows this development. All the features of mental processes, states and properties of a person are trying to be derived here from biological laws. At the same time, they often use the laws discovered in the study of animals, which do not take into account the specifics of the development of the human body.

The essence of biological concepts was most clearly expressed by the German psychologist and philosopher William Stern: “The human individual in the first months of the infantile period, with a predominance of lower feelings, with an unthinking reflex and impulsive existence, are in the stage of a mammal; in the second half of the year, having developed the activity of grasping and versatile imitation, he reaches the development of the highest mammal - the monkey, and in the second year, having mastered the upright gait and speech - the elementary human condition. In the first five years of play and fairy tales, he stands at the level of primitive peoples. This is followed by admission to school, a more strenuous introduction into the social whole with certain responsibilities - an ontogenetic parallel of a person's entry into culture with its state and economic organizations. In the first school years, the simple content of the ancient and Old Testament world is most adequate to the childish spirit, the middle years bear the features of the fanaticism of Christian culture, and only in the period of maturity is spiritual differentiation achieved, corresponding to the state of culture of modern times.

The human individual is born with a certain set biological properties and physiological mechanisms, which act as such a basis. The entire genetically fixed system of properties and mechanisms is a common initial prerequisite for the further development of the individual, ensures his universal readiness for development, including mental development. For the psychological study of personality, the content of the individual's life activity in each time interval is important.

Domestic psychologist B.F. Lomov, developing a systematic approach to understanding the essence of personality, is trying to reveal the complexity and ambiguity of solving the problem of the relationship between social and biological in personality. His views on this problem boil down to the following basic propositions. Investigating the development of the individual, psychology, of course, is not limited to the analysis of only individual mental functions and states. She is primarily interested in the formation and development of a person's personality. In this regard, the problem of correlations between the biological and the social acts primarily as a problem of the organism and personality. One of these concepts was formed in the context of biological, the other - social sciences, but both relate to the individual as a representative of the species "reasonable man" and as a member of society. At the same time, each of these concepts contains two different systems properties of a person: in the concept of an organism - the structure of a human individual as a biological system, in the concept of personality - his involvement in society. As already noted, when studying the formation and development of the personality, domestic psychology proceeds from the Marxist position of the personality as a social quality of the individual. Outside of society, this quality of the individual does not exist, and therefore outside the analysis of the relationship between the individual and society cannot be understood. The objective basis of the personality properties of an individual is the system of social relations in which he lives and develops.

The concept of a systematic approach is one of the leading in modern scientific knowledge. It reflects the systemic nature of the world order. One of the areas of human knowledge, where the systematic approach is organically conditioned and intensively developed, is the area of human knowledge. Here there should be a combination of knowledge lying, as it were, on different planes, but invariably crossing the area of psychological knowledge. As a result, the components of psychological knowledge are included in the following of a variety of humanitarian and natural sciences, and in psychology, new perspectives for understanding the mental are opening up.

From the point of view of a systematic approach, “reasonable man” is understood as a kind of integrity, due to the unity of the biological and social. Man is, on the one hand, and on the other hand, an energy being, on the third, a social being. This is a creature that embodies the highest stage of the development of life, the subject of socio-historical activity.

The ratio of social and biological in the human psyche is multidimensional, multilevel and dynamic. It is determined by the specific circumstances of the individual's mental development and develops differently at different stages of this development and at its different levels.

Question.

General view about personality. Correlation of the concepts "individual", "personality", "individuality".

Definition of the concept of "personality". Correlation of the concepts "man", "individual", "individuality" with the concept of "personality"

The reality that is described by the concept of "personality" is already manifested in the etymology of this term. The word "personality" (persona) originally referred to actor's masks (in the Roman theater the actor's mask was called "mask" - a face facing the audience), which were assigned to certain types actors. Then this word began to mean the actor himself and his role. Among the Romans, the word "persona" was necessarily used with an indication of a certain social function of the role (the personality of the father, the personality of the king, the personality of the judge). Thus, personality by its original meaning is a certain social role or function of a person.

Today, psychology interprets personality as a socio-psychological entity, which is formed due to a person's life in society. A person as a social being acquires new (personal) qualities when he enters into relationships with other people and these relationships become "formative" of his personality. At the time of birth, an individual does not yet have these acquired (personal) qualities.

Since personality is most often defined as a person in the totality of his social, acquired qualities, this means that personal characteristics do not include such features of a person that are naturally conditioned and do not depend on his life in society. Personal qualities do not include the psychological qualities of a person that characterize him cognitive processes or individual style of activity, with the exception of those that are manifested in relations with people in society. The concept of "personality" usually includes such properties that are more or less stable and testify to the individuality of a person, determining his features that are significant for people and. deeds.

By definition, R.S. Nemov, personality is a person taken in the system of such psychological characteristics, which are socially conditioned, are manifested in social connections and relations by nature, are stable and determine the moral actions of a person that are of significant importance for himself and those around him.

Along with the concept of "personality" the terms "man", "individual", "individuality" are used. Essentially, these concepts are intertwined. That is why the analysis of each of these concepts, their relationship with the concept of "personality" will allow us to more fully reveal the latter (Fig. 3).

Rice. 3. Correlation of the volumes of the concepts "person", "individual" and "individuality" with the concept of "personality"

Man is a generic concept that indicates the relation of a being to the highest stage of development of living nature - to the human race. The concept of "man" affirms the genetic predetermination of the development of actually human features and qualities.

Specific human abilities and properties (speech, consciousness, labor activity, etc.) are not transferred to people in order biological heredity, but are formed in vivo, in the process of assimilation of the culture created by previous generations. No personal experience a person cannot lead to the fact that he independently formed logical thinking and concept systems. Participating in work and various forms In social activities, people develop in themselves those specific human abilities that have already been formed in humanity. how creature a person is subject to the basic biological and physiological laws, as a social person is subject to the laws of the development of society.

An individual is a single representative of the species "homo sapiens". As individuals, people differ from each other not only in morphological features (such as height, bodily constitution and eye color), but also in psychological properties (abilities, temperament, emotionality).

Individuality is the unity of the unique personal properties of a particular person. This is the originality of his psychophysiological structure (type of temperament, physical and mental features, intellect, worldview, life experience).

With all the versatility of the concept of "individuality", it primarily denotes the spiritual qualities of a person. The essential definition of individuality is associated not so much with the concepts of "feature", "uniqueness", but with the concepts of "integrity", "unity", "originality", "authorship", " own way life". The essence of individuality is connected with the originality of the individual, his ability to be himself, to be independent and independent.

The ratio of individuality and personality is determined by the fact that these are two ways of being a person, two of his various definitions. The discrepancy between these concepts is manifested, in particular, in the fact that there are two different processes of the formation of personality and individuality.

The formation of personality is the process of socialization of a person, which consists in the development of his generic, social essence. This development is always carried out in the concrete historical circumstances of a person's life. The formation of personality is associated with the acceptance by the individual of the ideas developed in society. social functions and roles social norms and rules of conduct, with the formation of skills to build relationships with other people. A formed personality is a subject of free, independent and responsible behavior in society.

The formation of individuality is the process of individualization of an object. Individualization is the process of self-determination and isolation of the individual, its isolation from the community, the design of its separateness, uniqueness and uniqueness. A person who has become an individual is an original, actively and creatively manifesting himself in life.

In terms of "personality" and "individuality" various parties, different dimensions of the spiritual essence of man. The essence of this difference is well expressed in the language. With the word "personality" they usually use such epithets as "strong", "energetic", "independent", thus emphasizing its active representation in the eyes of others. We often say about individuality: "bright", "unique", "creative", referring to the qualities of an independent entity.

Question

The relationship of social and biological in personality

The problem of the relationship between the biological and the social in a person's personality has long been the subject of fierce debate among theoretical psychologists. Interestingly, before Ch. Darwin developed his theory of evolution, showing that it is based on natural selection, the question of the relationship between the biological and the social in personality was almost never raised. Previously, there were only very vague ideas about the origin of man, mainly mixed with religion and mysticism in general.

In the process of the formation of objective science, almost all possible connections between the concepts of "mental", "social" and "biological" were considered:

Mental development was interpreted as a completely spontaneous process, independent of either biological or social,

It was interpreted as a derivative only of the biological,

Or just social

Or from the parallel impact of biological and social.

In the first group of concepts, in which the spontaneity of mental development is proved, the mental is considered as a phenomenon completely subordinate to its own internal laws, in no way connected with either the biological or the social. The organism was usually regarded as some "receptacle" of mental activity. The views of ancient philosophers and theologians can be attributed precisely to this group, because the sources of the development of the psyche were sought only in the psyche itself.

In biologization concepts, the psyche is considered as a linear function of the development of the organism, as something that unambiguously follows this development. All features of mental processes, states and properties of a person are determined by the features of the biological structure, and their development is subject exclusively to biological laws. The laws discovered in the study of animals are often used, which do not take into account the specifics of the development of the human body. In place and out of place, to explain mental development, they refer to the biogenetic law (the law of recapitulation), according to which in the development of the individual, the evolution of the species to which this individual belongs is reproduced in the main features.

Biologists argue that the mental as an independent phenomenon does not exist in nature, since all mental phenomena can be described or explained using biological (physiological) concepts. It is possible, but such descriptions and explanations are very, very strained. Unfortunately (or joyfully?), a person is so deeply immersed in society, in civilization, in culture, in us the mind is so developed that to describe human behavior through physiological means to extremely simplify and distort the real patterns of such behavior.

In contrast to the biologists, as already mentioned, there are sociological concepts that affirm the priority of the social over the biological. It is interesting that the same law of recapitulation is applied here, but in a different sense: the individual in his ontogenesis reproduces the main steps of the process historical development society, especially the development of its spiritual life and culture.

At present, disputes between scientists about the role of the biological and the social have almost ceased. If they continue somewhere, then mainly for speculative reasons - to depict the activities of certain "psychological schools".

No one disputes the fact that a person is born as a representative of a certain species, with their physiological characteristics, with reflexes, instincts, etc. On the other hand, cases are widely known when small children were brought up by animals (the so-called "mowgli children"), as a result of which they could not surpass the usual 3-4 year old child in terms of their development. After birth, a person finds himself in a certain social environment and therefore develops not only as a biological object, but also as a representative of a particular society.

Literature

Maklakov A. G. General psychology. St. Petersburg: Peter, 2001.

Question.

» — general concept, denoting belonging to the human race, the nature of which, as noted above, combines biological and social qualities. In other words, man appears in his essence as biosocial being.

Modern man from birth is a biosocial unity. He is born with incompletely formed anatomical and physiological qualities, which are fully developed during his life in society. At the same time, heredity supplies the child not only with purely biological properties and instincts. He initially turns out to be the owner of actually human qualities: developed ability to imitate adults, curiosity, the ability to be upset and rejoice. His smile (the “privilege” of a person) has an innate character. But it is society that completely introduces a person into this world, which fills his behavior with social content.

Consciousness is not our natural property, although nature creates a physiological basis for. Conscious mental phenomena are formed during life as a result of active mastery of language and culture. It is to society that a person owes such qualities as transformative tool activity, communication through speech, and the ability for spiritual creativity.

The acquisition of social qualities by a person occurs in the process socialization: what is inherent in a particular person is the result of the development of cultural values that exist in a particular society. At the same time it is an expression, an embodiment internal capabilities personality.

Natural and social interaction between man and society contradictory. Man is the subject of social life, he realizes himself only in society. However, it is also a product of the environment, reflecting the features of the development of biological and social aspects of social life. Achievement of biological and social harmony society and man at each historical stage acts as an ideal, the pursuit of which contributes to the development of both society and man.

Society and man are inseparable from each other both biologically and socially. Society is what the people who form it are, it acts as an expression, design, fixing the inner essence of a person, a way of his life. Man came out of nature, but exists as a man only thanks to society, is formed in it and forms it with its activity.

Society determines the conditions for not only social, but also biological improvement of man. That is why the focus of society should be on ensuring the health of people from birth to old age. The biological health of a person allows him to actively participate in the life of society, realize his creative potential, create a full-fledged family, raise and educate children. At the same time, a person deprived of the necessary social conditions of life loses his “biological form”, sinks not only morally, but also physically, which can cause antisocial behavior and crimes.

In society, a person realizes his nature, but he himself is forced to obey the requirements and restrictions of society, to be responsible to him. After all, society is all people, including every person, and, submitting to society, he affirms in himself the requirements of his own essence. Speaking against society, a person not only undermines the foundations of general well-being, but also deforms his own nature, violates the harmony of biological and social principles in himself.

Biological and social factors

What allowed man to stand out from the animal world? The main factors of anthropogenesis can be divided as follows:

biological factors- upright posture, development of the hand, a large and developed brain, the ability to articulate speech;

main social factors- labor and collective activity, thinking, language and morality.

Of the factors listed above, he played a leading role in the process of becoming a person; his example shows the relationship of other biological and social factors. So, upright posture freed hands for the use and manufacture of tools, and the structure of the hand (distant thumb, flexibility) allowed the effective use of these tools. During joint labor close relations developed between members of the team, which led to the establishment of group interaction, care for members of the tribe (morality), and the need for communication (the appearance of speech). The language contributed by expressing increasingly complex concepts; the development of thinking, in turn, enriched the language with new words. The language also made it possible to pass on experience from generation to generation, preserving and increasing the knowledge of mankind.

Thus, modern man is a product of the interaction of biological and social factors.

Under it biological features understand what brings a person closer to an animal (with the exception of the factors of anthropogenesis, which were the basis for separating a person from the kingdom of nature), - hereditary traits; the presence of instincts (self-preservation, sexual, etc.); emotions; biological needs (breathe, eat, sleep, etc.); physiological features similar to other mammals (the presence of the same internal organs, hormones, constant body temperature); the ability to use natural objects; adaptation to the environment, procreation.

Social Features characteristic exclusively for man - the ability to produce tools; articulate speech; language; social needs (communication, affection, friendship, love); spiritual needs ( , ); awareness of their needs; activity (labour, art, etc.) as the ability to transform the world; consciousness; the ability to think; creation; creation; goal setting.

A person cannot be reduced solely to social qualities, since biological prerequisites are necessary for his development. But it cannot be reduced to biological features, since a person can become only in society. Biological and social are inseparably merged in a person, which makes him special. biosocial being.

Biological and social in man and their unity

Ideas about the unity of the biological and social in the development of man did not form immediately.

Without delving into distant antiquity, we recall that in the Enlightenment, many thinkers, differentiating the natural and the social, considered the latter as "artificially" created by man, including here almost all the attributes of social life - spiritual needs, social institutions, morality, traditions and customs. It was during this period that concepts such as "natural law", "natural equality", "natural morality".

The natural, or natural, was considered as the foundation, the foundation of correctness social structure. There is no need to emphasize that the social played a sort of secondary role and was directly dependent on the natural environment. In the second half of the XIX century. various theories of social Darwinism, the essence of which is to try to extend to public life principles of natural selection and the struggle for existence in wildlife, formulated by the English naturalist Charles Darwin. The emergence of society, its development were considered only within the framework of evolutionary changes that occur independently of the will of people. Naturally, everything that happens in society, including social inequality, the strict laws of social struggle, were considered by them as necessary, useful both for society as a whole and for its individual individuals.

In the XX century. attempts at a biologizing "explanation" of the essence of man and his social qualities do not stop. As an example, one can cite the phenomenology of a person by the famous French thinker and naturalist, by the way, the clergyman P. Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955). According to Teilhard, man embodies and concentrates in himself all the development of the world. Nature, in the course of its historical development, acquires its meaning in man. In it, it reaches, as it were, its highest biological development, and at the same time it also acts as a kind of beginning of its conscious, and, consequently, social development.

At present, science has established the opinion about biosocial nature person. At the same time, the social is not only not belittled, but its decisive role in highlighting Homo sapiens from the animal world and its transformation into a social being. Now hardly anyone dares to deny biological prerequisites for the emergence of man. Even without resorting to scientific evidence, but guided by the simplest observations and generalizations, it is not difficult to discover the enormous dependence of man on natural changes - magnetic storms in the atmosphere solar activity, earthly elements and disasters.

In the formation, existence of man, and this has already been said before, a huge role belongs to social factors, such as labor, relationships between people, their political and social institutions. None of them by itself, taken separately, could lead to the emergence of man, his separation from the animal world.

Each person is unique and this is also predetermined by his nature, in particular, by the unique set of genes inherited from his parents. It must also be said that the physical differences that exist between people are primarily predetermined by biological differences. First of all, these are the differences between the two sexes - men and women, which can be attributed to the number of the most significant differences between people. There are other physical differences - skin color, eye color, body structure, which are mainly due to geographical and climatic factors. It is these factors, as well as the unequal conditions of historical development and the system of education, that largely explain the differences in everyday life, psychology, and the social status of the peoples of different countries. And yet, despite these rather fundamental differences in their biology, physiology and mental potencies, the people of our planet are generally equal. The achievements of modern science convincingly show that there is no reason to assert the superiority of any race over another.

The social in man- this is, first of all, tool-production activity, collectivist forms of life with the division of duties between individuals, language, thinking, social and political activity. It is known that Homo sapiens as a person and personality cannot exist outside of human communities. Cases are described when small children, for various reasons, fell under the care of animals, “brought up” by them, and when they returned to people after several years in the animal world, it took them years to adapt to a new social environment. Finally, the social life of a person cannot be imagined without his social and political activity. Strictly speaking, as noted earlier, a person's life itself is social, since he constantly interacts with people - at home, at work, during leisure. How does the biological and social correlate in determining the essence and nature of man? modern science unequivocally answers this - only in unity. Indeed, without biological prerequisites, it would be difficult to imagine the appearance of hominids, but without social conditions, the formation of man was impossible. It is no longer a secret to anyone that pollution of the environment, the human habitat poses a threat to the biological existence of Homo sapiens. Summing up, we can say that now, like many millions of years ago, the physical state man, his existence to a decisive extent depend on the state of nature. In general, it can be argued that now, as with the appearance of Homo sapiens, its existence is ensured by the unity of the biological and social.

Personality is a specific person, taken in the system of his stable socially conditioned psychological characteristics, which are manifested in social relations and relations, determine his moral actions and are essential for himself and those around him.

The concept of "personality" characterizes one of the most significant levels of human organization, namely, the features of its development as a social being.

When considering the structure of personality, it usually includes abilities, temperament, character, motivation and social attitudes. All these qualities will be considered in detail below, but for now we will limit ourselves to their general definitions.

Abilities are individually stable properties of a person that determine his success in various activities. Temperament is dynamic response human mental processes. Character contains qualities that determine the relationship of a person to other people. Motivation is a set of motives for activity, and social attitudes are people's beliefs.

The problem of the relationship between the biological and the social in a person's personality is one of the central issues modern psychology. In the process of formation and development of psychological science, almost all possible connections between the concepts of "mental", "social" and "biological" were considered. Mental development was interpreted both as a completely spontaneous process, independent of either biological or social, and as a derivative only of biological or only of social development, or as a result of their parallel action on the individual, etc. Thus, several groups of concepts can be distinguished , differently considering the ratio of social, mental and biological.

In the group of concepts in which the spontaneity of mental development is proved, the mental is considered as a phenomenon completely subordinate to its own internal laws, in no way connected with either the biological or the social. At best, within the framework of these concepts, the human body is assigned the role of a certain receptacle of mental activity.

In biologization concepts, the psyche is considered as a linear function of the development of the organism, as something that unambiguously follows this development. From the position of these concepts, all the features of mental processes, states and properties of a person are determined by the features of the biological structure, and their development is subject exclusively to biological laws. In this case, the laws discovered in the study of animals are often used, which do not take into account the specifics of the development of the human body. Often in these concepts, to explain mental development, the main biogenetic law is involved - the law of recapitulation, according to which, in the development of an individual, the evolution of the species to which this individual belongs is reproduced in the main features. The extreme manifestation of this position is the assertion that the mental as an independent phenomenon does not exist in nature, since all mental phenomena can be described or explained using biological (physiological) concepts. It should be noted that given point vision is very widespread among physiologists.

For example, IP Pavlov adhered to such a point of view.

Exist whole line sociological concepts, which also come from the idea of recapitulation, but here it is presented in a slightly different way. Within the framework of these concepts, it is argued that the mental development of an individual in a concise form reproduces the main steps in the process of the historical development of society, primarily the development of its spiritual life and culture.

The essence of such concepts was most clearly expressed by V. Stern. In his interpretation, the principle of recapitulation covers both the evolution of the psyche of animals and the history spiritual development society. He writes: “The human individual in the first months of the infantile period with a predominance of lower feelings, with an unreasonable reflex and impulsive existence, is in the stage of a mammal; in the second half of the year, having developed the activity of grasping and versatile imitation, he reaches the development of the highest mammal - the monkey, and in the second year, having mastered the upright gait and speech, - the elementary human state. In the first five years of games and fairy tales, he stands at the level of primitive peoples. This is followed by admission to school, a more strenuous introduction into the social whole with certain responsibilities - an ontogenetic parallel of the entry of a person into a culture with its state and economic organizations. In the first school years, the simple content of the ancient and Old Testament world is most adequate to the childish spirit, the middle years bear the features of the fanaticism of Christian culture, and only in the period of maturity is spiritual differentiation achieved, corresponding to the state of culture of the New Age.

No one will dispute the fact that a person is born as a representative of a certain biological species. At the same time, after birth, a person finds himself in a certain social environment and therefore develops not only as a biological object, but also as a representative of a particular society.

The results of numerous studies of the patterns of human mental development allow us to say that the initial prerequisite for the mental development of an individual is his biological development. An individual is born with a certain set of biological properties and physiological mechanisms, which act as the basis of his mental development. However, these prerequisites are realized only when a person is in the conditions of human society.

Considering the problem of interaction and mutual influence of biological and social in mental development of a person, three levels of human organization can be distinguished: the level of biological organization, the social level and the level of mental organization. Thus, considering this problem, it must be borne in mind that interaction in the triad "biological - mental - social" is considered. Moreover, the approach to the study of the relationship between the components of this triad is formed from an understanding of the psychological essence of the concept of "personality".

In various domestic psychological schools, the concept of "personality", and even more so the relationship between biological and social in personality, their role in mental development are considered differently. Despite the fact that all domestic psychologists unconditionally accept the point of view that the concept of "personality" refers to the social level of human organization, there are certain disagreements on the question of the degree of manifestation of social and biological determinants in the personality. Thus, there is a difference in views on this problem in the works of representatives of Moscow and St. Petersburg universities, which are the leading centers of Russian psychology. For example, in the works of Moscow scientists, one can often find the opinion that social determinants play more significant role in the development and formation of personality. At the same time, in the works of representatives of St. Petersburg University, the idea of equal importance for the development of the personality of social and biological determinants is proved.

In the history of Russian psychology, the idea of psychological essence personalities have changed over and over again. Initially, the understanding of the personality as a psychological category was based on the enumeration of the constituent parts that form the personality as a kind of mental reality. In this case, personality acts as a set of qualities, properties, traits, features of the human psyche.

From the mid 1960s. Attempts began to be made to elucidate the general structure of personality. Very characteristic in this direction is the approach of K. K. Platonov, who understood a certain biosocial hierarchical structure as a personality. The scientist singled out the following substructures in it: orientation, experience (knowledge, skills, abilities), individual characteristics various forms of reflection (sensation, perception, memory, thinking) and, finally, the combined properties of temperament.

In contrast to the opinion of K. K. Platonov, the idea was expressed that the biological, entering the personality of a person, becomes social.

By the end of the 1970s. in addition to focusing on a structural approach to the problem of personality, the concept of a systematic approach began to develop. In this regard, the ideas of A. N. Leontiev are of particular interest.

Personality, according to A. N. Leontev, is a psychological formation of a special type, generated by a person’s life in society. The subordination of various activities creates the basis of personality, the formation of which occurs in the process of social development (ontogenesis). A. N. Leontiev did not refer to the concept of “personality” primarily genotypically determined features of a person - physical constitution, type nervous system, temperament, biological needs, affectivity, natural inclinations, as well as life acquired knowledge, skills and abilities, including professional ones. These categories, in his opinion, constitute the individual properties of a person. The concept of "individual", according to A. N. Leontiev, reflects, firstly, the integrity and indivisibility of a particular person as a separate individual of a given biological species and, secondly, the features of a particular representative of the species that distinguish him from other representatives of this species. In his opinion, individual properties, including genotypically determined ones, can change in many ways in the course of a person's life. However, this does not make them personal, because a person is not an individual enriched by previous experience. The properties of the individual do not pass into the properties of the personality. Even transformed, they remain individual properties, not defining the emerging personality, but constituting only the prerequisites and conditions for its formation.

The approach to understanding the problem of personality formulated by A. N. Leontiev found its further development in the works of domestic psychologists - representatives of the Moscow school, including A. V. Petrovsky.

The idea of the problem of personality, formed within the framework of the Leningrad psychological school, is most clearly presented in the works of B. G. Ananiev. According to B. G. Ananiev, a person is a social individual, an object and a subject historical process. Therefore, in the characteristics of a person, the social essence of a person is most fully revealed, that is, the property of being a person is inherent in a person not as a biological being, but as a social one. At the same time, a social being is understood as a person of a particular social historical era in the totality of his social relations. Consequently, the Leningrad psychological school, like the Moscow one, includes in the concept of "personality" social characteristics person. This is the unity of positions in domestic psychology in relation to the problem of a person's personality. The difference in views between these schools is revealed when considering the structure of personality.

According to B. G. Ananiev, not all psycho-physiological functions, mental processes and states are included in the structure of personality. Of the many social roles, attitudes, value orientations, only a few are included in the structure of the personality. At the same time, this structure can also include some properties of the individual, repeatedly mediated by the social properties of the individual, but themselves related to the characteristics of the human body (for example, the mobility or inertness of the nervous system). Therefore, as B. G. Ananiev believes, the structure of personality includes the structure of the individual in the form of the most general and relevant complexes of organic properties for life and behavior.

Later, the well-known Russian psychologist B.F. Lomov, exploring the problems of personality formation, tried to reveal the complexity and ambiguity of the relationship between social and biological in personality. His views on this problem boiled down to the following main provisions. First, when studying the development of an individual, one cannot limit oneself only to the analysis of individual mental functions and states. All mental functions should be considered in the context of the formation and development of personality. In this regard, the problem of the relationship between the biological and the social acts primarily as a problem of the relationship between the organism and the personality.

Secondly, it should be borne in mind that one of these concepts was formed within the biological sciences, and the other - within the social sciences. However, both of them simultaneously refer to a person both as a representative of the Homo sapiens species and as a member of society. At the same time, each of these concepts reflects different systems of human properties: in the concept of "organism" - the structure of the human individual as a biological system, and in the concept of "personality" - the inclusion of a person in the life of society.

Thirdly, as has been repeatedly noted, when studying the formation and development of personality, Russian psychology proceeds from the fact that personality is a social quality of an individual, in which a person appears as a member of human society. Outside of society, this quality of the individual does not exist, and therefore outside the analysis of the relationship "individual-society" it cannot be understood. The objective basis of the personality properties of an individual is the system of social relations in which he lives and develops.

Fourthly, the formation and development of the individual must be considered as the assimilation of the social programs that have developed in a given society at a given historical stage. At the same time, it must be borne in mind that this process is directed by society with the help of special social institutions, primarily the system of upbringing and education.

Based on this, we can draw the following conclusion: the factors that determine the nature of an individual's development are systemic and highly dynamic, that is, they play a different role at each stage of development. At the same time, they contain both social and biological determinants. An attempt to present these determinants as the sum of two parallel or interrelated series that determine the nature of an individual's mental development is a very crude simplification that largely distorts the essence of the matter. There is hardly any universal principle for organizing the relationship between the psychic and the biological. These connections are multifaceted and multifaceted. The biological can act in relation to the mental as its certain mechanism, as a prerequisite for the development of the mental, as the content of mental reflection, as a factor influencing mental phenomena, as the cause of individual acts of behavior, as a condition for the emergence of mental phenomena, etc.

20.2. The relationship of social and biological in personality

The concepts of "personality" and "individuality", from the point of view of domestic psychology, do not coincide. Moreover, in domestic psychological science there are quite a lot of disagreements about the correlation of these concepts. Periodically, scientific disputes arise on the question of which of these concepts is wider. From one point of view (which is most often presented in the works of representatives of the St. Petersburg psychological school), individuality combines those biological and social features a person who make him different from other people, i.e. the concept of "individuality" from this position seems to be broader than the concept of "personality". From another point of view (which can most often be found among representatives of the Moscow psychological school), the concept of "individuality" is seen as the narrowest in the structure of a human organization, uniting only a relatively small group of qualities. Common in these approaches is that the concept of "personality" includes, first of all, the qualities of a person, manifested at the social level in the course of the formation of social relations and human ties.

At the same time, there are a number of psychological concepts in which a person is not considered as a subject of a system of social relations, but is presented as a holistic integrative entity that includes all the characteristics of a person, including biological, mental and social. Therefore, it is believed that with the help of special personality questionnaires it is possible to describe a person as a whole. Such a divergence of opinions is caused by the difference in approaches to considering the relationship between biological and social in the structure of a person's personality.

The problem of the relationship between the biological and the social in a person's personality is one of the central problems of modern psychology. In the process of formation and development of psychological science, almost all possible connections between the concepts of "mental", "social" and "biological" were considered. Mental development was interpreted both as a completely spontaneous process, independent of either biological or social, and as a derivative only of biological or only of social development, or as a result of their parallel action on the individual, etc. Thus, several groups of concepts can be distinguished , differently considering the ratio of social, mental and biological.

In biologization concepts, the psyche is considered as a linear function of the development of the organism, as something that unambiguously follows this development. From the position of these concepts, all the features of mental processes, states and properties of a person are determined by the features of the biological structure, and their development is subject exclusively to biological laws. In this case, the laws discovered in the study of animals are often used, which do not take into account the specifics of the development of the human body. Often in these concepts, to explain mental development, the main biogenetic law is invoked - the law of recapitulation, according to which in the development of an individual, the evolution of the species to which this individual belongs is reproduced in the main features. The extreme manifestation of this position is the assertion that the mental as an independent phenomenon does not exist in nature, since all mental phenomena can be described or explained using biological (physiological) concepts. It should be noted that this point of view is very widespread among physiologists. For example, IP Pavlov adhered to such a point of view.

There are a number of sociological concepts that also come from the idea of recapitulation, but here it is presented in a slightly different way. Within the framework of these concepts, it is argued that the mental development of the individual

474 Part IV. Mental properties of personality

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What forms a personality: heredity or environment

From the moment of birth, the influences of genes and environment are closely intertwined, forming the personality of the individual. Parents provide their offspring with both genes and a home environment, both of which depend on the parents' own genes and the environment in which they grew up. As a result, there is a close relationship between the inherited characteristics (genotype) of a child and the environment in which he is brought up. For example, since general intelligence is partly heritable, parents with high intelligence are more likely to have a child with high intelligence. But beyond that, highly intelligent parents are more likely to create an environment for their child that stimulates the development of intelligence, both through their own interaction with the child and through books, music lessons, museum trips, and other intellectual experiences. As a result of this double positive relationship between genotype and environment, the child receives a double dose of intellectual capabilities. Similarly, a child raised by low-intelligence parents may encounter a home environment that further reinforces hereditary intellectual retardation.

Some parents may deliberately create an environment that is negatively correlated with the child's genotype. For example, introverted parents may encourage the child's social activities to counteract the child's own introversion. Parents

a very active child, on the contrary, may try to come up with some interesting quiet activities for him. But regardless of whether the correlation is positive or negative, it is important that the child's genotype and environment are not just two sources of influence that add up to form his personality.

Under the influence of the same environment different people react to the event or the environment itself in different ways. A restless, sensitive child will feel the cruelty of the parents and react to it differently than a calm, flexible one; a harsh voice that brings tears to a sensitive girl may not be noticed at all by her less sensitive brother. An extroverted child will be drawn to the people and events around him, while his introverted brother will ignore them. A gifted child will learn more from what they read than an ordinary child. In other words, each child perceives the objective environment as a subjective psychological environment, and it is this psychological environment that shapes the further development of the personality. If parents create the same environment for all their children - which, as a rule, does not happen - it still will not be psychologically equivalent for them.

Therefore, in addition to the fact that the genotype affects simultaneously with the environment, it also forms this environment itself. In particular, the environment becomes

in a concise form reproduces the main stages of the process of the historical development of society, primarily the development of its spiritual life and culture.

The essence of such concepts was most clearly expressed by V. Stern. In his interpretation, the principle of recapitulation covers both the evolution of the psyche of animals and the history of the spiritual development of society. He writes: “The human individual in the first months of the infantile period with a predominance of lower feelings, with an unreasonable reflex and impulsive existence, is in the stage of a mammal; in the second half of the year, having developed the activity of grasping and versatile imitation, he reaches the development of the highest mammal - the monkey, and in the second year, having mastered the upright gait and speech, - the elementary human state. In the first five years of play and fairy tales, he stands at the level of primitive peoples. This is followed by entry into school, a more strenuous introduction into the social whole with certain responsibilities, an ontogenetic parallel of the entry of a person into culture with its state and economic organizations. In the first school years, the simple content of the antiquity and the Old Testament world is most adequate to the childish spirit, the middle years bear the features

Chapter 20

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function of the child's personality due to three types of interaction: reactive,caused andprojective. Reactive interaction occurs throughout life. Its essence lies in the actions or experiences of a person in response to the influence of the external environment. These actions depend both on the genotype and on the conditions of upbringing. For example, some people perceive a harming action as an act of deliberate hostility and react to it in a very different way than those who perceive such an action as the result of unintentional insensitivity.

Another kind of interaction is called interaction. The personality of each individual evokes its own special reactions in other people. For example, an infant who cries when picked up evokes less positive emotion in the parent than one who enjoys being nursed. Obedient children evoke a less rigid parenting style than aggressive children. For this reason, it cannot be assumed that the observed relationship between the characteristics of the upbringing of a child by parents and the warehouse of his personality is a simple causal relationship. In fact, the child's personality shapes the parenting style, which in turn further influences the child's personality. The evoked interaction occurs, as well as the reactive one, throughout life. We can observe that the favor of a person causes the favor of the environment,a a hostile person causes a hostile attitude towards himself in others.

As the child grows, he begins to go beyond the environment created for him by his parents and choose and build his own. This latter, in turn, shapes his personality. A sociable child will seek contacts with friends - The sociable nature pushes him to choose the environment and further reinforces his sociability. And what cannot be chosen, he will try to build himself. For example, if no one calls him to the cinema, he organizes this event himself. This type of interaction is called proactive. Proactive engagement is the process by which an individual becomes an active agent in the development of his or her own personality. A sociable child, entering into Proactive interaction, selects and builds situations that further contribute to his sociability, support it.

The relative importance of the types of interactions considered between personal gi and environment changes in the process of development. The connection between a child's genotype and his environment is strongest when he is small and almost completely confined to his home environment. As the child matures and begins to choose and construct its environment, this initial connection weakens and the influence of proactive interaction increases, although reactive and evoked interactions, as noted, remain important throughout life.

fanaticism of Christian culture, and only in the period of maturity is spiritual differentiation achieved, corresponding to the state of culture of the New Age.

Of course, we will not discuss the question of the truth of this or that approach. However, in our opinion, citing such analogies, one cannot but take into account the system of education and upbringing, which historically develops in every society and has its own specifics in each socio-historical formation. At the same time, each generation of people finds society at a certain stage of its development and is included in the system of social relations that has already taken shape at this stage. Therefore, in his development, there is no need for a person to repeat in a condensed form the entire previous history.

No one will dispute the fact that a person is born as a representative of a certain biological species. At the same time, after birth, a person finds himself in a certain social environment and therefore develops not only as a biological object,but also how representative of a particular society.

* Stern W. Fundamentals of human genetics. - M., 1965.

Of course, these two tendencies are reflected in the patterns of human development. Moreover, these two tendencies are in constant interaction, and it is important for psychology to clarify the nature of their relationship.

The results of numerous studies of the patterns of human mental development allow us to say that the initial prerequisite for the mental development of an individual is his biological development. An individual is born with a certain set of biological properties and physiological mechanisms, which act as the basis of his mental development. But these prerequisites are realized only when a person is in the conditions of human society.

Considering the problem of interaction and mutual influence of biological and social in the mental development of a person, we distinguish three levels of human organization: the level of biological organization, the social level and the level of mental organization. Thus, it must be borne in mind that we are talking about interaction in the triad "biological-psychic-social". Moreover, the approach to the study of the relationship between the components of this triad is formed from an understanding of the psychological essence of the concept of "personality". However, answering the question of what a person is in psychological terms is in itself a very difficult task. Moreover, this issue has its own history.

It should be noted that in various domestic psychological schools the concept of "personality", and even more so the relationship between biological and social in personality, their role in mental development, are interpreted differently. Despite the fact that all domestic psychologists unconditionally accept the point of view that the concept of "personality" refers to the social level of human organization, there are certain disagreements on the question of the degree of manifestation of social and biological determinants in the personality. Thus, we will find a difference in views on this problem in the works of representatives of Moscow and St. Petersburg universities, which are the leading centers of Russian psychology. For example, in the works of Moscow scientists, one can often find the opinion that social determinants play a more significant role in the development and formation of personality. At the same time, in the works of representatives of St. Petersburg University, the idea of equal importance for the development of the personality of social and biological determinants is proved.

From our point of view, despite the divergence of views on certain aspects of the study of personality, in general, these positions rather complement each other.

In the history of Russian psychology, the idea of the psychological essence of personality has repeatedly changed. Initially, the understanding of the personality as a psychological category was based on the enumeration of the constituent parts that form the personality as a kind of mental reality. In this case, personality acts as a set of qualities, properties, traits, features of the human psyche. From a certain point of view, this approach was very convenient, since it made it possible to avoid a number of theoretical difficulties. However, this approach to the problem of understanding the psychological essence of the concept of "personality" was called "collector" by Academician A.V. Petrovsky,because in this In this case, a person turns into a kind of receptacle, a container that takes in interests, abilities, traits of temperament, character, etc. From the position of this approach, the task of a psychologist comes down to cataloging all this and identifying the individual uniqueness of its combination in each individual person. This approach deprives the concept of "personality" of its categorical content.

In the 60s. 20th century on the agenda was the question of structuring numerous personal qualities. From the mid 1960s. Attempts began to be made to elucidate the general structure of personality. Very characteristic in this direction is the approach of K. K. Platonov, who understood a certain biosocial hierarchical structure as a personality. The scientist singled out the following substructures in it: orientation; experience (knowledge, skills, abilities); individual characteristics of various forms of reflection (sensation, perception, memory, thinking) and, finally, the combined properties of temperament.

It should be noted that the approach of K. K. Platonov was subjected to certain criticism.co side of domestic scientists, and above all representatives of the Moscow psychological school. This was due to the fact that general structure personality was interpreted as a certain combination of its biological and socially determined features. As a result, perhaps the main problem in the psychology of the individual was the problem of the relationship between the social and the biological in the individual. In contrast to the opinion of K. K. Platonov, the idea was expressed that the biological, entering the personality of a person, becomes social.

By the end of the 1970s, in addition to focusing on a structural approach to the problem of personality, the concept of a systematic approach began to develop. In this regard, the ideas of A. N. Leontiev are of particular interest.

Let us briefly characterize the features of Leontiev's understanding of personality. Personality, in his opinion, is a psychological formation of a special type, generated by a person's life in society. The subordination of various activities creates the basis of personality, the formation of which occurs in the process of social development (ontogenesis). The concept of "personality" Leontiev did not include genotypically determined features of a person - physical constitution, type of nervous system, temperament, biological needs, affectivity, natural inclinations, as well as acquired knowledge, skills and abilities, including professional ones. The categories listed above, in his opinion, constitute the individual properties of a person. The concept of "individual", according to Leontiev, reflects, firstly, the integrity and indivisibility of a particular person as a separate individual of a given biological species and, secondly, the features of a particular representative of the species that distinguish him from other representatives of this species. Why did Leontiev divide these characteristics into two groups: individual and personal? In his opinion, individual properties, including those determined by genotinism, can change in many ways in the course of a person's life. But from this they do not become personal, because a person is not an individual enriched by previous experience. The properties of the individual do not pass into the properties of the personality. Even transformed, they still remain individual properties, not defining the emerging personality, but constituting only the prerequisites and conditions for its formation.

The approach formulated by Leontiev to understanding the problem of personality found its further development in the works of domestic psychologists - representatives of the Moscow school, including A. V. Petrovsky. In the textbook "General Psychology", prepared under his editorship, the following definition of personality is given: "In psychology, a personality is a systemic social quality acquired by an individual in objective activity and communication and characterizing the level and quality of representation of social relations in an individual"*.

What is a personality as a special social quality of an individual? First of all, one should proceed from the fact that the concepts of "individual" and "personality" are not identical. Personality is a special quality that is acquired by an individual in society in the process of entering into public relations by nature. Therefore, very often in Russian psychology, a person is considered as a “supersensory” quality, although the bearer of this quality is a completely sensual, bodily individual with all his innate and acquired properties.

To understand the foundations on which certain personality traits are formed, it is necessary to consider the life of a person in society. The inclusion of an individual in the system of social relations determines the content and nature of the activities performed by him, the range and methods of communication with other people, i.e., the features of his social life, lifestyle. But the way of life of individual individuals, certain communities of people, as well as society as a whole, is determined by the historically developing system of social relations. And this means that a person can be understood or studied only in the context of specific social conditions, a specific historical era. Moreover, it should be noted that for the individual, society is not just an external environment. The personality is constantly included in the system of social relations, which is mediated by many factors.

Petrovsky believes that the personality of a particular person can continue in other people, and with the death of an individual, it does not completely die. And in the words "he lives in us even after death" there is neither mysticism nor pure metaphor, it is a statement of the fact of the ideal representation of the individual after his material disappearance.

Considering further the point of view of representatives of the Moscow psychological school on the problem of personality, it should be noted that in most cases the authors include in the concept of personality certain properties that belong to the individual, and they also mean those properties that determine the originality of the individual, his individuality. However, the concepts of "individual", "personality" and "individuality" are not identical in content - each of them reveals a specific aspect of the individual being of a person. Personality can only be understood in a system of stable interpersonal relationships mediated by the content, values, and meaning of the joint activity of each of the participants. These interpersonal connections are real, but supersensible in nature. They are manifested in specific individual properties and actions of people who are part of the team, but are not reduced to them.

Just as the concepts "individual" and "personality" are not identical, personality and individuality, in turn, form a unity, but not an identity.

* General psychology: Proc. for students ped. in-tov / Ed. A. V. Petrovsky. - 3rd ed., revised. and additional - M.: Enlightenment, 1986.

If personality traits are not represented in the system of interpersonal relations, they turn out to be insignificant for assessing the personality and do not receive conditions for development, just as only individual traits that are most "drawn" into the leading activity for a given social community act as personal traits. Until a certain time, the individual characteristics of a person do not manifest themselves in any way until they become necessary in the system of interpersonal relations, the subject of which will be this person as a person. Therefore, in the opinion of representatives of the Moscow psychological school, individuality is only one of the aspects of a person's personality.

Thus, two main points can be traced in the position of representatives of the Moscow psychological school. First, the personality and its characteristics are compared with the level of social manifestation of the qualities and properties of a person. Secondly, the personality is considered as a social product, not connected in any way with biological determinants, and therefore, it can be concluded that the social influences the mental development of the individual to a greater extent.

The idea of the problem of personality, formed within the framework of the St. Petersburg psychological school, is most clearly represented in the works of B. G. Ananiev. The first distinguishing feature of Ananiev's approach to considering the problem of personality psychology is that, unlike representatives of the Moscow psychological school, who consider three levels of human organization "individual - personality - individuality", he distinguishes the following levels: "individual - subject of activity - personality - individuality" . This is the main difference in approaches, which is largely due to different views on the relationship between biological and social and their influence on the process of human mental development.

According to Ananiev, a person is a social individual, an object and a subject of the historical process. Therefore, in the characteristics of a person, the social essence of a person is most fully revealed, that is, the property of being a person is inherent in a person not as a biological being, but as a social one. At the same time, a social being is understood as a person of a specific socio-historical era in the totality of his social relations. Consequently, the St. Petersburg psychological school, like the Moscow one, includes the social characteristics of a person in the concept of “personality”. This is the unity of positions in domestic psychology in relation to the problem of a person's personality. The difference in views between these schools is revealed when considering the structure of personality.

According to Ananiev, far from all psychophysiological functions, mental processes and states are included in the structure of the personality. Of the many social roles, attitudes, value orientations, only a few are included in the structure of the personality. At the same time, this structure can also include some properties of the individual, repeatedly mediated by the social properties of the individual, but themselves related to the characteristics of the human body (for example, the mobility or inertia of the nervous system). Consequently, as Ananiev believes, the structure of personality includes the structure of the individual in the form of the most general and relevant complexes of organic properties for life and behavior.

Thus, the main difference between the representatives of the two leading Russian psychological schools lies in the divergence on the question of the participation of biological determinants in the formation of personality. Ananiev emphasizes that the position of K. K. Platonov, who singled out four substructures in the personality structure, is quite close to him: 1) biologically determined personality traits; 2) features of her individual mental processes; 3) the level of her preparedness (the experience of the individual); 4) the socially conditioned qualities of the individual. At the same time, Ananiev notes that personality changes both in the process of human history and in the process of individual development. A person is born as a biological being, and becomes a person in the process of ontogenesis by assimilating the socio-historical experience of mankind.

In addition, Ananiev believes that all four main aspects of personality are closely related to each other. However, the dominant influence always remains with the social side of the personality - its worldview and orientation, needs and interests, ideals and aspirations, moral and aesthetic qualities.

Thus, representatives of the St. Petersburg school recognize the role of biological determinants in the mental development of an individual with the dominant role of social factors. It should be noted that disagreements on this issue cause certain differences in views on the nature of individuality. So, Ananiev believes that individuality is always an individual with a complex of natural properties, but not every individual is an individuality. To do this, the individual must become a person.

Secondly, it should be borne in mind that one of these concepts was formed within the framework of the biological sciences, and the other - within the framework of the social sciences. However, both of them simultaneously refer to a person and as a representative of the species.But that S ar i epya, and as a member of society. At the same time, each of these concepts reflects different systems of human properties: in the concept of the organism - the structure of the human individual as a biological system, and in the concept of personality - the inclusion of a person in the life of society.

Fourth, the formation and development of the individual must be regarded as the assimilation of the social programs that have developed in a given society at a given historical stage. At the same time, it must be borne in mind that this process is directed by society with the help of special social institutions, primarily the system of upbringing and education.

Biological and social factors

Biological and social in man and their unity

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