Cultural-historical psychology as a branch. Cheat sheet: Cultural-historical approach and its specificity at the present stage

It’s not news to anyone that research methods, techniques, and scientific disputes have their own historical origins and explanations. But it is often worth looking for them not in the history of a given science, be it linguistics, psychology, philosophy of knowledge, or even physics or chemistry, but in general - as they would say before - spiritual history. Spiritual history can be likened not to a flat projection of the “pure” history of science, but three-dimensional space scenes in which the multi-figured “drama of ideas” unfolds (Einstein).

Conflicts between their bearers cannot be reduced to clashes of theories or points of view: they are always also interactions between personalities. And a personality is one way or another determined by time and place: existing in historical time and space, it has the appropriate mentality - it shares not only specific ideas, but also the dominant ways of thinking and feeling in its environment, understanding the world and evaluating people. In this sense, it is customary to talk, for example, about the mentality of medieval chivalry or the mentality of Renaissance man. But the specific ideas and concepts that make up the content of mentality are not those ideas that are generated by individual consciousness, and not reflected spiritual constructs.

It is, rather, the life of such ideas and constructions in a certain social environment. Despite the fact that for the bearers of ideas themselves they remain unconscious. To enter the mentality of the wider circles - those whom historians, following the medieval intellectuals, call "simpletons" - these ideas must be simplified. And sometimes to be profane. Otherwise, they are doomed to remain the intellectual property of a highly educated minority.

One way or another, the collective mentality includes a set of certain ideas in an unconscious or incompletely conscious form. A scientist may be ahead of his era precisely as a researcher, but whatever the depth of his personal reflection, in the core aspects of his personality the scientist inevitably shares the mentality of his time. And new ideas born on historically changing soil are, to one degree or another, nourished by an already formed general mentality. This means that cultural innovation does not appear out of nowhere. They are always a response to the spiritual challenge of an era, and an era is the totality of the actions and thoughts of many, and by no means only the elite. Therefore, the history of ideas, as studied by philosophy and sociology, does not coincide with the “social” history of ideas - i.e. the history of the reception of ideas in the minds. It is useful to think about how the history of the development of certain scientific theories and schools correlates with the general atmosphere of social life in certain historical periods. The key mediating link here is precisely the types of mentality that dominate in society - recognition of this fact distinguishes serious intellectual history from various versions of the so often reviled “vulgar sociologism.” There are periods when the state of science and the state of society develop into a completely special configuration. This configuration is characterized by obvious or relatively hidden philosophical and social fluctuations; erosion of the usual structures of social and cultural life, including the structures of science itself. Important Feature This configuration also lies in the fact that sharply contrasting cultural stereotypes coexist within a relatively narrow circle of “leaders”, “generators of ideas”, people whom we call “cult figures”, “iconic characters”. These contrasts, already in a reduced, vulgarized form, are transmitted “down”, becoming the property of the “common people”. Then cultural disputes and conflicts arise, the essence of which is vague for the next generation. Their analysis is instructive for understanding further ways of emergence and development. scientific directions and clashes of minds.

An amazing example of such a configuration of ideas and social demands is scientific and intellectual life. Soviet Russia in the 20-30s. It was during these years that the flowering (and defeat) of the “formal method” in the science of literature, the flowering (and defeat) of attempts to create historical psychology, the flowering - and again defeat - of the Russian psychoanalytic school occurred. The biographies of scientists of this period are striking in their inconsistency: it seems that many people from relatively close academic circles, practically from the same cultural environment, lived in parallel worlds. I do not mean social exclusion and poverty of some in comparison with the well-being of others. More productive is the analysis of not so striking, but at the same time typical cases that reveal the types of mentalities of that era as important factor history of science. Why is this particularly important for the cognitive sciences?

Perhaps, in sciences that are completely established and established, it is possible to neglect the history of the formation of basic ideas and concepts without great losses. On the contrary, for sciences that are in a state of paradigm change, experiencing serious intra-scientific conflicts, it is extremely important to understand the genesis of ideas, methods and assessments. And then much of what seems illogical to us or, on the contrary, self-evident, will appear in a different light. From this perspective, we will consider some ideological and personal conflicts associated with the fate of L.S. Vygotsky and A.R. Luria, who considered himself a student of Vygotsky. For Soviet psychology, the name of Vygotsky still remains iconic, although Vygotsky died in 1934. However, between 1936 and 1956 little was said about Vygotsky; Unlike many, they didn’t even try to “expose” him. It simply wasn’t published and didn’t seem to be remembered. The situation changed dramatically during the heyday of structural linguistics and semiotics in the USSR, i.e. since the early 60s.

It was then that Vygotsky finally became one of the main cultural figures. Let us note that in the short term this “symbolic set” includes completely different characters: Propp with structural-functional analysis and “Morphology of a fairy tale”; Tynyanov and other “senior” formalists with their motto “How is it done?”; Bakhtin with his dialogue and carnivalization; the mystic Florensky - at first mainly with the “Iconostasis”; Eisenstein, who from now on should be seen not so much as a major film director, but as an original humanities theorist, and Vygotsky with his completely Marxist-oriented historical psychology. Looking at this “carousel” from today, a generation of aspiring humanists cannot understand where the juxtaposition of researchers with such different and often opposing positions came from.

We have to remind you that in the early 60s these were, first of all, “returned names” and bearers of a different mentality. Going into nuances and specifics back then was kind of out of hand. But, indeed, in the 60-70s, the reception of the ideological wealth of the 20-30s took place so hastily that much was absorbed, to use the terms of the famous opposition of Lévi-Strauss, rather “raw” than “cooked”. When the above-mentioned persons (as, indeed, many others) finally became “cult figures,” genuine involvement in their theories gradually began to be replaced, first by excessive quoting of their works, and later by authoritarian, or even purely ritual references. Therefore, it is worth rethinking some details of the life and works of L.S. Vygotsky and A.R. Luria, especially since their biographies are more mythologized than understood.

proposes to consider the social environment not as one of the factors, but as main source personality development. In the development of a child, he notes, there are, as it were, two intertwined lines: the first follows the path of natural maturation; the second is to master culture, ways of behavior and thinking.

According to Vygotsky’s theory, the development of thinking and other mental functions occurs primarily not through their self-development, but through the child’s use of “psychological tools,” by mastering a system of signs and symbols, such as language, writing, and the counting system.

Later, this idea of ​​Vygotsky was developed by a Soviet historian and social psychologist B.F. Porshnev in his communicative-influential concept. The key point of Porshnev’s concept is the statement that the worldview built by the human personality in the process of his communication with the world and the people around him is mainly formed on the basis suggestions. The conclusion is substantiated that the choice of trust in the inspired patterns of language and cultural concepts (including religious dogmas) was and remains the only justified behavior option for a person.

The development of thinking, perception, memory and other mental functions occurs through the stage of external activity, where cultural means have a completely objective appearance and mental functions act completely externally, intrapsychically. Only as the process progresses does the activity of mental functions collapse, interiorize, grow, move from the external to the internal plane, and become interpsychic.

In the process of working out and turning inward, mental functions become automated, conscious and voluntary. If difficulty arises in thinking and other mental processes, exteriorization is always possible - taking a mental function outside and clarifying its work in external, objective activity. The idea in internally can always be worked out by actions on the external plane.

As a rule, at this first stage of external activity, everything that the child does, he does together with adults. Exactly Cooperation with other people is the main source of child’s personality development. Hence, the most important feature of consciousness according to Vygotsky is dialogicality.

L.S. Vygotsky introduces the concept " zone of proximal development“This is the space of actions that the child cannot yet perform on his own, but can carry out together with adults and thanks to them. According to Vygotsky, only that training is good that anticipates development.

For Vygotsky, personality is a social concept, something that is introduced into it by culture. Personality " not innate, but arises as a result of cultural development" And " in this sense, the correlate of personality will be the ratio of primitive and higher reactions«.

Another aspect of the theory of L.S. Vygotsky’s idea of ​​development not as uniform and gradual, but as staged, stepwise process, where periods of smooth accumulation of new opportunities are replaced by stages of crisis. A crisis, for Vygotsky, is a stormy, sometimes dramatic stage of breaking down (or rethinking) old baggage and forming a new way of life. Crises can be painful, but, according to Vygotsky, they are inevitable. On the other hand, the obvious disadvantage of a child during a crisis is not a pattern at all, but only a consequence of the illiterate behavior of parents and other adults raising the child.

And one more important point, where L.S. Vygotsky turned out to be the pioneer, it seems, of this thesis about the activity of the child. What is it about? Typically, the child was considered as some object exposed to suggestions (suggestions), positive or negative reinforcements for his behavior. And even if in the works of B. Skinner, operant conditioning seems to speak of the activity of someone whose behavior is reinforced in one way or another, Skinner never considered the child as someone who actively influences the adult, often controlling him to a greater extent than the adult controls the child .

The cultural-historical approach studies personality as a product of an individual’s assimilation of cultural values. The author of the approach, L.S. Vygotsky saw " the key to all psychology", allowing for an objective analysis of the higher mental functions of the individual, in the meaning of the word. In his opinion, it is the word that is the primary sign both in relation to practical action and in relation to thinking. He even repeated someone’s aphorism: “ Speech thinks for a person" Operating with these “cultural” signs-words, the individual builds his personality.

The process of interiorization (humanizing in words) according to Vygotsky it looked like this.

In the beginning, man was an inseparable part surrounding nature, which “polished,” as the author puts it, his “natural” (innate, not requiring volitional conscious efforts) properties, giving him the opportunity to simply survive and adapt to the environment. Then he himself began to influence nature through tools, developing higher mental functions (“cultural”), allowing him to carry out conscious actions (for example, consciously remember some situation, sensation, object), useful from the point of view of creating favorable conditions of its existence. This approach considered as instruments of influence not those that have a material basis (stone, stick, ax, etc.), but so-called psychological signs. The sign could be a stick stuck into the ground and indicating the direction of movement. These could be notches in trees or stones folded in a certain way, reminiscent of something important, etc.

Item: psyche transformed by culture

Representatives: E. Durkheim, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Pierre Janet, Vygotsky, Lev Semenovich

For the first time, the question of sociality as a system-forming factor of the psyche was raised by the French sociological school. Its founder E. Durkheim (1858-1917) used the term “social fact” or “collective idea” to illustrate concepts such as “marriage”, “childhood”, “suicide”. Social facts are distinct from their individual embodiments (there is no “family” at all, but an infinite number of specific families) and have an ideal character that affects all members of society.

Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, using ethnographic material, developed a thesis about a special type of “primitive” thinking, which is different from the thinking of a civilized person.

Pierre Janet further deepened the principle of social determination, suggesting that external relations between people gradually turn into features of the structure of the individual psyche. Thus, they were shown that the phenomenon of memory consists in the appropriation of external actions of carrying out instructions and retelling.

The principle of cultural-historical psyche was most fully revealed in the works of L.S. Vygotsky, who developed the doctrine of higher mental functions. L.S. Vygotsky suggested the existence of two lines of development of the psyche:

• natural,
• culturally mediated.

In accordance with these two lines of development, “lower” and “higher” mental functions are distinguished.

Examples of lower, or natural, mental functions include the involuntary or involuntary functions of a child. The child cannot control them: he pays attention to what is brightly unexpected; remembers what was accidentally remembered. Lower mental functions are a kind of rudiments from which higher mental functions grow in the process of education (in this example - voluntary attention and random memory).

The transformation of lower mental functions into higher ones occurs through the mastery of special tools of the psyche - signs and is of a cultural nature. The role of sign systems in the formation and functioning of the human psyche is, of course, fundamental - it defines a qualitatively new stage and a qualitatively different form of existence of the psyche. Imagine that a savage who cannot count has to remember a herd of cows in a meadow. How will he cope with this task? He needs to create an accurate visual image of what he saw, and then try to resurrect it before his eyes. Most likely he will fail, miss something. You will just need to count the cows and subsequently say: “I saw seven cows.”

Many facts indicate that a child’s mastery of sign systems does not occur by itself. This is where the role of the adult comes into play. An adult, communicating with a child and teaching him, first “masters” his psyche. For example, an adult shows him something, in his opinion, interesting, and the child, at the will of the adult, pays attention to this or that object. Then the child begins to regulate his mental functions himself using the means that the adult previously used on him. Also, as adults, when we are tired, we can say to ourselves: “Come on, look here!” and really “capture” our elusive attention or activate the process of imagination. We create and analyze the replays of a conversation that is important to us in advance, as if replaying the acts of our thinking in speech terms. Then the so-called rotation or “interiorization” occurs - the transformation of an external means into an internal one. As a result, from direct, natural, involuntary mental functions become mediated sign systems, social and arbitrary.

The cultural-historical approach in psychology continues to develop fruitfully today, both in our country and abroad. This approach turned out to be especially effective in solving problems of pedagogy and defectology.

Cultural-historical psychology (eng. cultural-historical psychology)- a virtual (non-institutionalized) branch of knowledge and research, which can formally be considered a section of the equally virtual cultural psychology - a discipline that studies the role of culture in mental life (M. Cole). Regarding virtuality, there is a trace of cultural-historical psychology in scientific folklore. joke (Chaiklin S., 2001):

What's over 75 but still a baby?
- Cultural-historical psychology.

It is logical to consider that cultural-historical psychology is focused on global problem the role of culture in mental development both in phylogenesis (anthropogenesis and subsequent history) and in ontogenesis. At the same time, Cole prefers to use the term “Cultural-historical psychology” to designate one of the variants of cultural psychology, to which he and a number of people consider himself. psychologists (G.O. L.S. Vygotsky and his school). It is fundamentally wrong to identify K.-i. with historical psychology, which studies social history from a psychological point of view. and developing the problem of the psychological (including personal) factor in history.

Cole, who dedicated his book Cultural-Historical Psychology, called it the science of the future, but, as follows from the history of culture, incl. and from the history of psychology, K.-i. etc. is also the science of the past. Moreover, it began with her practical psychology, which solved problems of managing people’s behavior and activities and arose long before scientific psychology. Such a statement only seems paradoxical. An example is mnemonics, which is well known and practiced at least since antiquity. Its tasks can be formulated in terms of K.-i. n. in Vygotsky’s version, as development and mastery symbolic means, which transform memory from a natural mental function into a cultural one, incl. higher mental function. At the same time, we were not talking about a notch, a tag or a “memory knot,” but about internal, ideal means of memorization that were developed during memory exercises. In the Phaedrus, Plato's Socrates talks about the meeting of the ancient deity Teuth with the king of Egypt Thamus. Teuth showed the king many of his inventions, incl. writings that will make the Egyptians wise and mindful, because... a remedy for memory and wisdom has been found. To which the king said: “You, the father of letters, out of love for them, gave them the opposite. meaning. They will instill forgetfulness in the souls of those who have learned them, because... Memory will be deprived of exercise: they will begin to remember from the outside, trusting the letter, according to extraneous signs, and not from the inside, by themselves. Therefore, you have found a means not for memory, but for recollection. You give your disciples imaginary, not true, wisdom. They will know a lot from hearsay, without training, and they will seem to know a lot, while remaining mostly ignorant, people difficult to communicate with; they will become falsely wise instead of wise.”

As we can see, this story is quite modern. For 2.5 thousand years, people (and psychologists!) still haven’t decided which is better? Rich memory or means of recall? Contemporary K.-I did not answer this question either. for which the concept of mediation has become central. But it was the same for dialectics (Hegel). Without the mediating role of the symbol, the transformation of a thing into an idea and an idea into a thing is impossible (P.A. Florensky). Non-mutually mediated, isolated or “pure” mental functions (if they occur in life and not in the laboratory) are mechanical and have no prospects for development. They, according to Hegel, remain a compound, a mixture, a heap. It must be said that this fully applies to mutually non-mediated knowledge, which represents a functional organ of the individual. Hegel writes about this unequivocally: “ Mechanical method ideas, mechanical memory, habit, a mechanical mode of action mean that what the spirit perceives or does lacks its inherent penetration and presence.” A dead mechanism is the process of interaction of objects, “which directly manifested themselves as independent, but that is why they are actually dependent and have their center outside themselves” (Hegel).

A peculiar reaction to the insufficient explanatory power of the schemes of interaction of mental functions proposed by classical psychology can be considered the appearance of calls for an organic worldview, the addition of the living epithet to mental functions, states, phenomena: “living image”, “living movement”, “living word-concept” , “living knowledge” (see. Knowledge is alive), even “living feeling”, “living memory”.

What is the merit of Cultural-Historical Psychology, if the inclusion of memory in the cultural context and its means have been thought about from time immemorial? Cultural-historical psychology has made a fruitful attempt to return mental functions torn from it by classical experimental psychology into the cultural and life context. It can be considered a new and logical stage in the development of psychology: if classical psychology had not accumulated material, had not studied isolated functions, and had not built an ontology of the psyche, there would have been nothing to cultivate and spiritualize, to return to life and culture. It is important that this return does not occur speculatively, but practically and experimentally. Hence the conceptual framework of K.-i. psychology, operating with the concepts of psychological tools, instruments, means, mediators, artifacts. The main psychological tools in Vygotsky’s teaching are signs (especially the word), which manifest themselves in sign-symbolic activity, various shapes which were the subject of his attention. The full list of mediators includes a sign (in a narrower sense), a word, a symbol (see. Cashirer E. , Florensky P.), meaning, myth. Huge role personalized mediators play in development, to which may. include Gods, parents, teachers, and generally significant others. This “instrumental set” of mediators clearly demonstrates the fundamentally interdisciplinary nature of the conceptual and methodological apparatus of K.-I. etc., with which, in fact, as a rule, chronic difficulties on the path to the institutionalization of this science are associated.

The main reason for the difficulties in the development of cultural-historical psychology is considered not to be the lack of a heuristic theoretical platform (in the opinion of, for example, Cole, Vygotsky’s concept may well serve), but the unpreparedness of psychologists for interdisciplinary cooperation, which, in turn, is associated with the deep fragmentation of scientific research. human knowledge. As Cole writes, psychologists “have difficulty keeping culture in focus because, when psychology was institutionalized as a social and behavioral science, the processes that play a decisive role in the formation of the psyche were divided among several disciplines: culture was relegated to anthropology, public life- to sociology, language - to linguistics, the past - to history, etc.” (Cole M., 1997). At the same time, Cole does not question Vygotsky’s interdisciplinary approach. Other authors also pointed out the advantages and fruitfulness of the latter (for example, Asmolov A.G., 1996; Verch D., 1996). Vygotsky, indeed, showed a lot of impressive examples of the use of historical-cultural, ethnographic, linguistic, defectological, pedagogical, neurological and psychiatric sources to interpret and reconstruct psychological facts. The ability of Vygotsky’s concept to serve as a theoretical and methodological basis for interdisciplinary calculus is not questioned. n. Nevertheless, for the development of K.-i. This turned out to be not enough. The working structure of human knowledge itself must be radically restructured, because, according to Cole, what developed in the 19th century. the division of sciences into social and humanities, whatever its achievements, has exhausted itself. This structure and the corresponding division of labor prevent the organization of cooperation between different branches of the “tree of knowledge” of man. This position is also supported by D. Wertsch (1996): the existing “division of labor leads to the creation of an overly complex puzzle with a huge number of parts that cannot be put together: the parameters of the phenomenon are defined in such a way that the principles and units of analysis of each parameter prevent their recombination into a more general one.” picture."

However, despite all the difficulties in the formation of K.-i. etc., the attitude towards it should be proleptic (see Prolepsis), by analogy with normal human attitude to infants: their future state must be hypostatized in the present and past, i.e. they must be treated as if they were already what they were meant to become. Cultural-historical psychology is the return of psychology to cultural origins. In Hegelian terminology, cultural-historical psychology is the search for a path from the abstract to the concrete, the reproduction of the concrete through thinking. Inside K.-i. p. the activity approach in psychology was born, in which many of K.-i’s ideas were developed. n. In the future, contacts are planned between K.-i. etc. and cognitive psychology, continuing analytical work, begun in classical psychology and seeking its own path to a holistic understanding of man and his psyche. (V.P. Zinchenko

Problems theoretical psychology

G.G. Kravtsov

CULTURAL-HISTORICAL APPROACH IN PSYCHOLOGY: CATEGORY OF DEVELOPMENT

From the position of the cultural-historical approach L.S. Vygotsky reveals the content of the category of development in psychology. The philosophical and worldview context in which this category was introduced into psychology is reconstructed. It is shown that development for a psychologist acts primarily as a way of existence for the individual. Only in development does a person realize the freedom attributed to him. This position is illustrated using specific psychological research.

Keywords: development, cultural-historical approach, personality, freedom, arbitrariness.

In the cultural-historical concept of L.S. Vygotsky's category of development is central. It should be noted that this is a relatively young category, appearing only in German classical philosophy. It was most fully worked out by G.V.F. Hegel. Hegel's dialectics is rightly called a philosophical theory of development. The old philosophy did not have this concept, and the Ancient world did not know the very idea of ​​development at all. It was introduced by Christianity. The commandment “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father” contains, along with the recognition of the imperfection of man as he is, the possibility and necessity of striving in the direction of improvement. This is the most important thing in the idea of ​​development, which is often overlooked by modern thinkers. And the ancient philosophers, in principle, could not deal with this concept due to the ideological attitudes characteristic of that time. The worldview of ancient people was holistic and organic in its mythological meaning. The world in which they lived was alive and elastic, but at the same time static and unchanging in its essence.

© Kravtsov G.G., 2009

The movement of change was linear and cyclical at the same time. Along with the fact that “you cannot step into the same river twice” and “everything flows, everything changes,” it was argued that “there is nothing new under the sun” and “everything returns to normal.” The world is as it is, and nothing fundamentally new can appear. The series of deaths and births in the flow of life suggests that everything repeats itself. The Moira goddesses weave their yarn and both mortals and immortals are powerless before the fate prepared for them.

A breakthrough in this closed worldview was made by Christianity. Man is imperfect, sinful, mortal, but he can change, and he must be equal to the perfection of the Creator of the world and man himself. Awareness of what must be overcome and the desire for improvement are the driving force of the development process. For ancient thinkers, man was a part of nature and his natural essence remained unchanged. Christianity snatches man from the power of natural forces. However, the pursuit of improvement requires personal effort. As you know, “the kingdom of heaven is taken by force.” These efforts and searches are an essential moment of the development movement.

Development is rightly understood as the highest form of movement. However, even elementary physical movement cannot be conceptually represented. Zeno's aporia still has no solution. It is not possible to consistently represent in concepts the change in the location of a body in space. Therefore, Hegel made contradiction the original precise point of dialectical reflection. In addition, he took the highest and most complex form of movement - development - as the subject of philosophical understanding, suggesting that if we understand the highest, then an understanding of the elementary will follow.

Hegel realized that development is a free, and therefore self-determined, movement. Externally conditioned movement is forced and is not development. Classical science is subject to the laws of formal logic, including the law of excluded middle, which does not allow contradictions. Hegel had to go beyond formal logic. Only a system closed on itself, having “inputs” and “outputs” in itself, is capable of self-determined movement, as V.V. noted. Davydov1, which Hegel called totality. Neither the Subjective Spirit nor the Objective Spirit meets this requirement. Neither the individual nor the culture is self-sufficient. The individual in the Hegelian system is finite, limited, and is characterized by bias, and therefore subjectivity in Hegel is characterized as bad subjectivity. The objective spirit, which includes culture, is not capable of

neither to movement, much less to self-movement, since in objective embodiment it freezes in immobility and needs to be melted in the crucible of subjectivity. Hence follows the need for the Absolute spirit - that totality that has not a conditioned, but a true self-existence. Development in Hegel appears as self-knowledge of the Absolute Spirit. Everything else is just moments of this movement.

Hegel's philosophical system received meaningful content in psychological theories. Often the authors of psychological theories are not aware that they are implementing a certain philosophical system of views in their work. Nevertheless, the logic of historical formation psychological science is such that first a philosophical idea and a corresponding system of views appear, and then a psychological theory is developed. Theoretical basis Psychology lies largely in philosophy.

The Hegelian approach to the problem of personality can be seen in the works of E.V. Ilyenkova2. His assessment of the role of human individuality reproduces Hegel's attitude towards subjectivity.

The subjective spirit is nothing more than a moment and a means of self-propulsion of the Absolute spirit. The individuality of a person is only a random originality of traits formed into a unique pattern.

The real core of personality, according to Ilyenkov, is the ability to create, which is socially significant.

The psychological theory of P.Ya. is built on the same logical and philosophical basis of objective idealism. Halperin, although it is unclear to what extent the author recognized himself as a Hegelian. But V.V. Davydov was a conscious and consistent adherent of Hegelian philosophy. In the article “The relationship between the concepts of “formation” and “development” in the psyche”3 he concludes that the concept of development is not applicable to the individual. The individual only appropriates in the process of training and education what exists objectively, internalizes social experience, the normative content fixed in culture. This is the logic of the Hegelian philosophical system, according to which the individual is not a totality capable of the movement of self-development4.

The key question of development theory is the question of the object of self-development. K. Marx noted that after the rarefied atmosphere of Hegelian abstractions, the philosophy of L. Feuerbach seemed like a breath of fresh air. The materialist Feuerbach returned to the human individual the status of a source of development. Everything that exists in culture, everything that has been created in the history of mankind, all of this is drawn from the depths of subjectivity. The only trouble is that the individual

Feuerbach understood it abstractly, taken in itself, that is, in isolation, and therefore naturalistically. Marx has a call to overcome naturalism in understanding the essence of man, according to which it is high time to stop contrasting abstractly understood society and the individual. The individual is directly a social being. It would seem that this is a very simple formula, but, as history shows and current state psychology, it is very difficult to adopt it. But only on this path can one avoid the dead ends of naturalism, biologization, sociologization, eclecticism of theories of the convergence of two factors and various types reductionism in psychology.

There is a lot behind this formula. Firstly, it means that there are not and cannot be contradictions and conflicts between the individual and society, simply because in essence they are one and the same. The concepts of “individual” and “clan”, “man” and “humanity”, “personality” and “society” are equivalent and even identical in their essential core. Secondly, the concepts of society and society are qualitatively different. Society is a collection of individuals, that is, it is an abstractly understood society. No matter how large such a social association, that is, a community of individuals, may be, it is finite, whereas the concept of society implies the entire human race. Therefore, the individual is not equivalent to either the work collective, or the party, or even the people. Contradictions and conflicts can arise between the individual and society. Thirdly, the concept of social consciousness needs clarification in the sense that it characterizes individual consciousness. An abstractly conceived society has no brain, which means there is no supra-individual social consciousness. True, an individual may or may not be a bearer of one or another form of social consciousness.

From these positions, conclusions that are significant for psychological science follow. Thus, the concept of socialization, widely used in psychology, looks like a dubious term. Behind it stands the idea, characteristic of convergence theories, of the domestication of a natural individual in ontogenesis. This idea is consistent with the concept of L.S. Vygotsky, who argued that the newborn is the most social creature. This position of Vygotsky cannot be understood from the standpoint of naturalism, but it is the only one the right decision in the light of the definition of man as a directly social and potentially universal being. Marx associated the universality of man with his self-direction. This means that it is the individual who is the totality that is capable of development as self-development, but the individual should not

understood naturalistically. What develops is not a child taken by itself, that is, in isolation, nor an abstractly understood society, not a culture, which, according to P.A. Florensky, is also not self-sufficient. In the same way, it is not possible to model the process of development in the dialectical movement of concepts as a drama of relationships between the Subjective, Objective and Absolute spirit, playing out in history. The totality capable of development as self-development is precisely the individual, a specific person, but considered not as a natural individual, not as an isolated individual, but as directly public person, that is, as a person. It is not the abstractly understood child that develops, the diado-monad “child-adult”, “child-mother”. The child develops in the place and to the extent that the adult close to him develops.

In the light of what has been said, many seemingly insoluble problems of psychology receive a self-evident solution. Thus, the question of the point of birth of the individual on the time axis of ontogenesis is removed from the agenda as not having much meaning. From birth, a person is a person simply because he is capable of development. Recognizing a baby and even a newborn as a person looks absurd from the standpoint of common sense. However, the scientific view of reality is different in that it is not based on common sense, and often runs counter to his evidence. We can say that if from the very beginning you do not see a personality in a child, then this very personality will not appear from anywhere later. Of course, the personality of an infant is qualitatively different from that of an adult. For the time being, the personality of the baby is dissolved in the personality of the adult and exists within the deeply intimate, personal community of both. The process of development of the child’s personality in this case is described not in terms of specialization, but is revealed in terms of individualization and changing forms of communication.

From these positions, there is no mystery in the phenomena associated with deprivation of communication. It is known that children do not fully develop if there is no communication of the appropriate quality. At the same time, lag and even deep underdevelopment is observed not only in the mental, but also in the physical sphere. Extremely pronounced degrees of communication deprivation, for example, called hospitalism, are accompanied by the fact that children under three years of age cannot hold their heads up, and the mortality rate among them is many times higher than the statistical average for this age. It should be noted that workers in orphanages and other similar institutions are aware of communication deprivation and its manifestations, work intensively with children, and pay increased attention to them. One can only say, “but things are still there.”

Teachers work with children, and do not live a joint, common life with them. They are at work, and not in their family, so their professional pedagogical position is updated, and not the unconditional and absolute acceptance of the child as he is, which distinguishes real family. And these are precisely the “vitamins” of communication that children who grow up without family warmth, without that “umbrella” of absolute acceptance that provides the child with a sense of security and emotional well-being, lack. However, children growing up in families may also experience deprivation phenomena. Nowadays there is more and more talk about deprivation in the wider social environment. A child may have both parents, grandparents, material wealth, and adult education, but underdevelopment associated with deprivation nevertheless occurs. The reason is not the quality of communication that has been established in the child’s family.

So, the unit capable of self-development is a person as an individual. At the same time, development is a way of individual existence. Development and personality are two sides of the same coin. Only in development does a person realize the freedom granted to him, which constitutes the essential core of his personality. Development has its own laws, but it is internally determined, therefore, free movement. The philosophical concept of freedom must be conceptualized and specified in personality psychology. The first step on this path will be the adoption of a certain interpretation of the concept of “freedom”. The philosophical depth and complexity of this concept can lead into metaphysical jungle. Nevertheless, it can be quite reasonably argued that the definition of freedom as the ability to do what you want will be erroneous. This is not freedom, but arbitrariness. Here the question immediately arises: how free is a person in his desires? In this regard, it will be much more interesting to define freedom as the opportunity not to do what you don’t want to do, but such a negative definition also cannot be the starting point of analysis. The difficulties in defining this concept arise from the fact that freedom is not given to us as something present, as something that we have, such as arms, legs and a head. Freedom is given to man as an opportunity. You have to strive for it, make efforts, you have to fight for it, defend it. If a person stops this movement, then he loses freedom and himself as an individual. In the most general form, an action that is consistent with the internal essence can be considered free. acting person and with essence outside world. According to F. Schelling, “...only that which acts in accordance with the laws of its own essence is free”5. This is an abstract definition, but nevertheless it

presupposes, on the one hand, a vector of consciousness directed towards oneself, that is, reflection and self-control, and on the other hand, a vector of consciousness directed outwards, towards objective assessment the actual state of affairs. The subject of free action is the source of movement and recognizes himself as such and at the same time acts reasonably, taking into account all objective and essential circumstances. These properties of free action are characteristics of a volitional act. Will can be defined as meaningful initiative. The will is the instrument of free action. It should be noted that the usual phrase “free will” is actually tautological, since non-free will simply does not exist. At the same time, realizing himself as a “free individuality” (K. Marx), a person necessarily uses the volitional functions of the psyche. The development of the volitional sphere turns out to be the main line of personality development. From these positions, the concepts of “freedom”, “personality”, “will” and “development” turn out to be interdependent and closely related.

As already noted, ancient people had neither personal self-awareness nor the idea of ​​development. However, it cannot be said that in Ancient world there were no personalities and no development. This is a contradiction A.F. Losev removes this by distinguishing the concepts of substantial and attributive personality6.

Ancient man was an attributive, but not a substantial person. He possessed properties and characteristics that distinguished personality, but these were external characteristics of personal existence. People of that time could not have had an internal, substantial core of personality. According to Losev, slavery in Ancient Greece made the existence of a substantial personality impossible. We can say: how a person treats another person is how he treats himself. A slave owner, who is formally a free and financially independent person, is in reality no better than a slave, since he sees in another person a “talking instrument” and not a free individuality. My attitude towards another is an unambiguous characteristic of myself.

There are a number of other moments and circumstances in the life of ancient people, which are indicated by studies of antiquity, making personal existence in its substantial quality impossible. Ancient man was not concerned with what is now commonly called inner life. The inhabitants of the ancient Greek city-polises valued primarily civic virtues. What was essential was what characterizes a person as a citizen - whether he is free or a slave, financially wealthy or

poor man, what forces and means he can provide to defend the city from enemies, can one rely on his word, how well will he cope with the responsibilities of an elected position if elected, etc. This does not mean that people of that time did not know mental suffering and internal struggle. So, if a person began to be visited by the evil goddess of retribution Erinyes, then he became the most unfortunate of mortals. However, the inherent to modern man People of that time did not know intellectual soul-searching. This was not interesting to them, and they simply would not understand a person living in intense personal reflection. The exception that proves the rule is the figure of Socrates. In his own words, attested by Plato, he differed from other people in that he had his own personal Daimon. Socrates listened to this inner voice (and never regretted it), which did not tell him what exactly to do, but warned him against wrong actions. Thus, Socrates lived not according to his natural inclinations and inclinations, but according to the voice of conscience and contrary to his own natural predispositions. He was a substantial personality, and although he actually lived in ancient times, he psychologically belonged to another historical era, thousands of years ahead of his contemporaries.

It should be noted that the division into attributive and substantial personalities can be extended to ontogeny. This distinction allows us to remove the problem of the birth point of personality in the time of ontogenesis. From these positions, every person, even a newborn, is a person, since he is human and capable of development. At the same time, only an adult can become a substantial personality if he has gained inner freedom and “stands on his own feet” (K. Marx), that is, he owes his personal existence to himself. Widely used phrases “mental development”, “ physical development", etc. record only the moments, or sides, of the actual process personal development, in which they are included. All these types of progressive changes are conditioned aspects of the total movement of personal formation associated with the development of the volitional sphere.

Here the question arises: is it possible to talk about the will of an infant or a preschooler? Indeed, there is no explicit will not only in early ages, but throughout childhood ontogenesis. Will explicitly as special function psyche appears when the subject of volitional action appears. This means that a person becomes able to voluntarily use his will when he needs it. From this point of view

will is not the property of all adults. The lack of formation of the subject of volitional action in this case can be compensated by other mental functions that have a volitional nature, for example, a developed imagination.

So, children have no will as such. At the same time, without the participation of will, neither development nor the formation of personality is possible. This contradiction is eliminated by the fact that in childhood the will manifests itself in special, transformed forms, not as “pure will,” but as a function of the psyche that has a volitional nature. L.S. Vygotsky pointed out that speech is a volitional function. At an early age, when active word use first appears, a qualitative leap in development occurs. The appearance of speech affects the entire course of mental development. A space of speech meanings and meanings opens up before the child. Speech rebuilds perception, making it truly human, and changes the child’s entire behavior. At the same time, speech cannot be imagined as a natural process. From the very beginning it is the highest, cultural function of the psyche. Speech is initially voluntary, controlled by the child’s consciousness. The same can be said about other volitional functions that consistently arise during ontogenesis - imagination, attention, reflection. There is reason to include among these volitional functions the very first volitional function that arises in ontogenesis - apperception. All these functions are distinguished by the fact that they are formed during life and from the very beginning are higher, cultural, consciously controlled.

In the theory and periodization of child development L.S. In Vygotsky, a special place is occupied by central psychological new formations. It is the neoplasms in L.S. Vygotsky are the basis and criterion for identifying psychological ages, both stable and critical. “The most significant content of development at critical ages lies in the emergence of new formations, which, as specific research shows, are highly original and specific”7. Neoplasms affect all mental processes and affect the entire course of development. However, at every age there is one mental function that is initially natural, which lies on the main line of development. This function transforms from natural to higher, and other processes of mental development are associated with it. Thus, at an early age, under the influence of emerging speech, the child’s sensory processes are restructured, turning into a higher function - perception, which is now distinguished by objectivity, constancy, meaningfulness, and arbitrariness. In turn, thanks to the qualitatively new

level in the development of perception, the child acquires relative independence from the existing natural situation and the perceived ontic field, and the initial abilities of imagination and arbitrariness of action are formed. In preschool age, under the influence of intensive development of the imagination function, awareness of emotions occurs. According to L.S. Vygotsky, to realize means to master.

Situationally determined emotions towards the end preschool age are transformed into higher functions, become supra-situational, objectively related, “smart”. The emergence of a generalization of experiences and intellectualization of affect, which characterizes the crisis of seven years, means the beginning of differentiation of the external and internal world, the emergence of a logic of feelings and arbitrariness of behavior in general.

So, proposed by L.S. Vygotsky’s division of mental processes into natural and higher can be supplemented by the fact that higher functions, in turn, are divided into those that arise from elementary, natural processes, and into those that are initially higher and have a volitional nature. The latter include age-related central neoplasms of stable periods of development. These functions relate to the volitional sphere and are a kind of manifestation of will, including at the earliest stages of a child’s development. Here the question arises about the sources of will and the uniqueness of the development of the volitional sphere. We are forced to admit the presence of volitional inclinations from the very beginning of ontogenesis. Development cannot be understood and reflected in concepts otherwise than as a bidirectional process, going “from below” and “from above” - simultaneously. Processes “from below” are the transformation of the natural psyche into a higher, cultural one, and processes “from above” are the manifestation of the volitional principle in those specific age-related forms that reveal themselves as central new formations. The child, considered naturalistically, that is, abstractly, taken in isolation as he is in himself, also has natural functions. He has processes of an affective nature, he has mnemonic processes and elementary sensory skills, he has a natural intellect, without which the chaos of impressions will not turn into images of reality. All these abilities can be called natural gifts. However, there is no volitional principle among them, since this is a supernatural gift. Therefore, to understand the origins of will, it is necessary to overcome naturalistic views in child psychology. Even a newborn must be considered as a “directly social being.” Only in the diado-monad “child-adult” as a unit of self-development

development, one can discover the origins of the volitional sphere of personality. Consciousness of the “prime-we” type is called L.S. Vygotsky's central neoplasm of infancy. This is precisely the initial basis of the human path of development. “Children’s psychology did not know, as we have seen, the problems of higher mental functions, or, what is the same, the problems of the cultural development of the child”8. The old psychology was naturalistic, and from our point of view, naturalism in psychology can be opposed only by a cultural-historical approach.

The construction of a psychology capable of correctly posing the problem of personality and taking the developmental process as the subject of study presupposes the creation of an autonomous theory of will. L.S. Vygotsky divided all theories of will into autonomous and heteronomous. Autonomous theories proceed from the fact that a person has will as a special psychological function, and heteronomous theories reduce will to other mental processes, being, in essence, reductionist interpretations of will. In the most general form, there are only two such reductionist solutions. Will is reduced to either affective or mental processes. An example of the reduction of will to the emotional-need sphere is the interpretation of will as a struggle of motives in the theory of activity of A.N. Leontyev. Examples of reduction to the mental sphere are the interpretations of the principle of free will, widespread in psychological and legal literature, as the possibility of choosing from behavioral alternatives and making a decision. Heteronomous theories are unsatisfactory because, as noted by L.S. Vygotsky, they lose the most essential thing in will - freedom, arbitrariness as such. A person turns out to be determined either by his own deepest drives or by external circumstances that he has to take into account when making a decision.

The lack of development of the autonomous theory of will, apparently, became one of the reasons why put forward by L.S. Vygotsky’s principle of the unity of affect and intellect has not yet received a proper solution in psychology, which was pointed out by D.B. Elkonin9. According to him, psychology itself turned out to be split into a deep-personal one, and personality in these theories is unjustifiably reduced to the motivational-need sphere, and an intellectualistic, cognitive one. The integrity of the individual, which is its essential property, is lost in this case, and the development process remains outside of psychological research.

To a first approximation, as already noted, we define will as a meaningful initiative. This abstract definition contains two opposing tendencies. The first is related to the subjectivity of the volitional act, without which no

freedom, nor personal responsibility. “Where we feel ourselves to be the source of movement, we attribute a personal character to our actions...”10 The second side of volitional action is characterized by its rationality and meaningfulness. Meaningfulness is ensured by the presence of a reflexive moment in a volitional act, which allows one to objectively assess the state of affairs and all significant circumstances. It is well known that usually a person either acts or thinks. As a rule, one excludes the other. In the famous parable, the centipede could not take a single step when it wondered which leg it should now move. The subject of action is usually incompatible with the subject of reflective consciousness. An act of will is an exception to this rule. In it, the personality is integral, and reflection and action are organically fused. In manifestations of will there is always effort and aspiration, and the effort may not be associated with overcoming obstacles, as will is often characterized. Effort is required primarily to maintain the integrity of oneself. Thus, in the most primary, initial situations where the volitional principle can be detected, there is the integrity of the personality that distinguishes the will. In communication between an adult and an infant, one can observe the total intensity of this communication on both sides. Often, an adult who is enthusiastically busy with a child does not hear calls to him from others, since he is completely involved in this communication. The will of an adult reveals itself in love and tenderness for a child, and the embryo of the volitional principle in little man manifests itself in retaining the image of an adult in consciousness and in the immediate joy of communication. There is no overcoming obstacles here, and volitional aspiration is accompanied by joyful feelings. In the same way, there is neither overcoming obstacles nor internal struggle in the highest manifestations of human spiritual life. Thus, the state of prayer requires a high concentration of volitional abilities, but they are not aimed at fighting, but at maintaining inner silence and peace in the soul.

Being initially the highest mental function, will provides the possibility of free action and free self-existence of a person. Freedom and non-freedom are directly experienced as a special subjective state, and it is quite possible to talk about a special “feeling of freedom.” L.S. Vygotsky pointed to it as one of the criteria that distinguishes volitional action. Criticizing heteronomous theories of the will, he wrote: “The difficulties of the theories we mentioned were that they could not explain the most essential thing in the will, namely the volitional nature of acts, arbitrariness as such, as well as the internal freedom that a person experiences when accepting this or that decision, and external

It is the structural diversity of action by which volitional action differs from involuntary action”11. Will, freedom and arbitrariness turn out to be closely related concepts. In the psychological literature, the question of the relationship between will and voluntariness is resolved in different ways. Thus, in the concept of V. A. Ivannikov (1998), arbitrariness turns out to be fundamental in relation to will. He interprets will as the voluntary regulation of motives of behavior and activity. Elements of arbitrariness, according to V.A. Ivannikov, can also be observed in animals12. In the works of E.O. Smirnova (1990) considers will and volition as qualitatively heterogeneous and relatively independent psychological realities. You can be a strong-willed, but not sufficiently arbitrary person, and vice versa, a high degree of development of arbitrariness, from the point of view of E.O. Smirnova, says nothing about strong-willed qualities13.

The connection between will and volition is essential for understanding the “nature” of such a supernatural phenomenon as will, and allows us to shed light on the study of development processes. From our point of view, true voluntariness, which is distinguished by a directly experienced sense of freedom, is always derived from and stems from will, which can be seen in the very sound composition of the word “voluntariness.” This is also evidenced by the data experimental research volitional sphere and its manifestations in preschool age14. Free, consciously controlled and relatively easy to perform action in its genesis presupposes volitional aspiration and effort inherent in volitional action. We can say that arbitrariness is the area of ​​actual freedom conquered by the will. However, unlike volitional action, in voluntary action a person may not be whole, but internally differentiated and partial, realizing himself as a special subject of action. For example, an experienced driver can perform a complex system of actions to drive a car, monitoring the changing traffic situation, and at the same time talk with the passenger sitting next to him. However, all drivers remember well the time when they were just mastering driving skills under the guidance of an instructor. There was no talk of any ease of driving then. The situation required extreme effort, concentration and simultaneous distribution of attention, adequate action in an instantly changing information field, including taking into account far from flattering comments from the instructor. It was a purely volitional action, which necessarily preceded the voluntary one with the ease and freedom of execution that distinguishes it.

nia. Arbitrariness is derived from will, however, the volitional action itself is directly aimed not at achieving future voluntariness, but at achieving a very specific goal of a practical nature. This is the case with mastering any complex skill that requires volitional effort. A novice cyclist is concerned about driving around a stone lying on the road and not falling into a ditch along with his bike. The student solves the problem posed by the teacher and aims to ensure that the result he receives matches the answer. He does not realize that the end result is not the correct answer, but mastery of a system of arithmetic operations. Arbitrariness in cycling and arbitrariness in arithmetic operations will come later, as if by themselves, although behind this there is intense work of the will to create a special subject of the corresponding system of voluntary actions. The search and development of an internal position adequate to a particular activity constitutes the prerogative and most important function of the will.

The development process, which is always personal self-development, can be interpreted as an expansion of the sphere of voluntariness, as the acquisition inner freedom. If we use the terminology of L.S. Vygotsky, then this will be the transformation of the elementary, natural psyche into a higher, cultural one. Development can be defined in other, quite legitimate conceptual aspects. Thus, development can be interpreted as an expansion and qualitative growth of consciousness, since freedom and voluntariness imply mastery and conscious control. In the same way, development can be presented as a process of individualization, the revelation of a person’s true individuality, which is the essential core of his personality and is part of the source of free, initiative action. Free action is inimitable and unique, bearing the original imprint of a person’s personality. In addition, development can be understood as a change in forms of communication, an increase in the level and quality of communication. According to L.S. Vygotsky, as a person communicates, so he generalizes, and the level and nature of generalizations, as follows from the idea of ​​the systemic and semantic structure of consciousness, constitute an internal characteristic of human consciousness.

All these definitions and interpretations of the concept of development are consistent with the principles of the cultural-historical approach and represent different aspects of the description of a single process. The methodology of the cultural-historical approach allows us to avoid erroneous decisions when studying development processes. The main mistakes along this path are related to reductionism in the original understanding

the subject of psychology and in the corresponding explanatory principles of reductionist theories. In general, as already noted, reductionism in psychology has two ways: positing the explanatory principle of theories, either emotional sphere, or in the intellectual. In the first case psychological theories have an internal tendency to degenerate into biologization, and in the second, theories are adjacent to sociologization in psychology. In both cases, the will is initially left out of research interests, and, accordingly, there is no possibility left for constructing an autonomous theory of the will. In biologizing concepts, development is reduced to maturation processes and similar preformist ideas, according to which development is the unfolding and actualization of programs biologically specified in the body. In sociologizing concepts, the content of the concept of development coincides with the processes of an individual’s assimilation of social experience. Psychoanalysis can serve as a classic image of the biologizing approach, and both behaviorism and many cognitivist-intellectualistic theories can be attributed to the sociologizing branch. Attempts to overcome the shortcomings of these approaches through compromise solutions such as the theory of convergence of two factors do not lead to anything good, but turn into obvious or disguised epleptina. It is noteworthy that a reductionist split can also be observed in a seemingly unified scientific school, for example in the Moscow psychological school, named after Vygotsky. Thus, in the theory of activity of A.N. Leontiev declared the affective-need (motivational) sphere to be the essential core of personality, which classifies this theory as a biologizator. And in the theory of the gradual formation of mental actions and concepts P.Ya. Galperin’s system-forming concept is the concept of internalization, which is behind the individual’s assimilation in the learning process of normative activities fixed in culture. This is undoubtedly a sociologizing branch of the activity approach.

Coverage of the methodology of the cultural-historical approach requires special research, but some key points, including those outlined by L.S. himself. Vygotsky, it should be noted, since they are directly related to the category of development. Cultural-historical psychology of Vygotsky, with the light hand of D.B. Elkonin, rightly began to be called a non-classical science, just as in physics this status was assigned quantum mechanics N. Bora. However, this term requires clarification in the sense that classical physics itself, originating from the works

G. Galileo, was also once a non-classical science in relation to the then generally accepted physics of Aristotle. Therefore, “non-classicality” is not an absolute characteristic, but a historically transitional attitude to a fundamentally new meaning and a new attitude in the consciousness of researchers. "We can express it in the form general position the idea that any fundamentally new approach to scientific problems inevitably leads to new methods and methods of research. The object and method of research are closely related to each other. Therefore, research takes on a completely different look and flow when it is associated with finding a new, adequate new problem method; in this case, it is fundamentally different from those forms in which study simply applies methods developed and established in science to new areas.

This difference can be likened to the difference that exists between equations with one and two unknowns. The study we have in mind is always an equation with two unknowns. The development of the problem and method proceeds, if not in parallel, then, in any case, moving forward together. The search for a method becomes one of the most important tasks of research. The method in such cases is both a prerequisite and a product, a tool and a result of the research”15.

Placing the problem of development at the center of research interests required the author of the cultural-historical concept to develop a new method psychological research. However, “before we study development, we must find out what is developing”16. From our point of view, such a unit capable of development as self-development can only be a person as an individual. Therefore, the currently legalized independence of personality psychology and developmental psychology can hardly be justified. We are dealing with the same psychological reality. The principle of integrity, specified by L.S. Vygotsky as the principle of the unity of affect and intellect is rigorous for both psychology. The need for a holistic approach to the study of personality was felt by A.F. Lazursky, who proposed a “natural experiment”. Dissatisfaction with academic science and laboratory experiment with its artificial conditions, which make it possible to obtain abstract knowledge about abstract processes, but not about human personality, required new methodological solutions. They were proposed by L.S. Vygotsky. The equation with two unknowns, with which he compared his method, means the inseparability of the researcher from the object of study. The researcher himself, together with the example

the methodological arsenal he employs turns out to be an object of research interest for himself. The position of the researcher, the method he uses and the experimental conditions become the same object of study as the object itself in its own meaning. So, for example, regarding the study of N. Akha, who used the technique for the onset of satiation in work with normally developing and mentally retarded children, L.S. Vygotsky noticed that Akh, having established the level of satiety in both children, stopped at the very interesting place. Vygotsky repeated Ach’s experiment and then continued it, making the experimental conditions themselves the subject of his search. He began to change the subject and semantic situation of the experiment, actively join in its course, and vary the instructions, which, of course, is absolutely unacceptable for the method of classical science, where the experimenter deliberately takes the position of a detached observer. For Vygotsky, the object of study, the method and the subject-experiment itself are not separated from each other, but form the subject of research reflection carried out at every step of the research. Therefore, in the works of L.S. For Vygotsky, what can be called the research kitchen with its searches, the development of working hypotheses and negative results, are not bracketed, but included in the text of the works.

Sometimes doubts are expressed about the fundamental novelty and non-classical nature of L.S.’s method. Vygotsky due to the fact that the traditional method of science is characterized by reflection on itself and on the experimental conditions. For example, in the elementary procedure of measuring the temperature of water in a glass using a conventional thermometer immersed in water, the experimenter needs to take into account that the thermometer may have a different degree of heating than the water in the glass, and, therefore, the procedure itself for measuring the temperature of the water in the glass will influence on the result obtained. It should be noted here that the correction of the influence of the measurement tool and procedure on the result obtained, which is necessary in the above example, allows us to avoid errors and artifacts, but nothing more. This is simply taking into account distorting moments in the measurement procedure itself, which does not say anything about the essence of the object being studied, in particular about what heat is. The situation is fundamentally different in studies classified as non-classical science. Thus, in quantum mechanics, light appears either as a particle or as a wave, depending on experimental method, used by the researcher. But a particle and a wave are mutually exclusive things, and related to the very essence and nature electromagnetic vibrations, which includes visible light. Contribution of the subject and the method he/she uses

has a direct bearing on the essential properties of the object being studied. Therefore, the question of what light is in itself and in fact - a particle or a wave, simply does not make sense in quantum mechanics.

Similarly, in cultural-historical psychology L.S. Vygotsky’s question about the biological, natural/social, cultural determinacy of the human psyche does not make much sense. Personality as a free individuality cannot be understood in the paradigm of biosocial relations. This requires a new attitude of the researcher’s consciousness and a new, non-classical method of cognition. This method is qualitatively different from the traditional one, including in the matter of communication scientific research with practice. Its use eliminates the usually difficult to solve implementation problem scientific achievements into practice, since from the very beginning and throughout, such research is directly woven into the fabric of practice and, in some ways, even identical with it. For example, research led by D.B. Elkonin and V.V. Davydov in the field of psychology educational activities, conducted on the basis of the 91st school in Moscow, from our point of view, are a continuation and development of the experimental genetic method of L.S. Vygotsky and demonstrate the coincidence of scientific research with practice. For the students and teachers of this school, the long-term experiment of a formative type was not an academic science, divorced from practice, but real school life. The situation was exactly the same in our research related to the development and implementation educational program“Golden Key” for institutions such as “kindergarten-primary school”. Children and teachers simply lived an interesting and meaningful life together, although this was the implementation of scientific research.

It is noteworthy that research in line with the experimental genetic method, which in our works is called the design method, can have experimental confirmation even on the basis of a single fact, only such a fact must be comprehended in the entire context and scope of the research being conducted. The design method does not deny the use of mathematical statistics where it is appropriate and justified, but does not put it at the forefront in terms of justifying the reliability of the results obtained, as is usually the case in traditional methods of psychology. A single fact does not require mathematical processing, but acquires evidentiary force when it is revealed and comprehended in the development movement to which it belongs.

As an example, we can cite the following: for our research team, in many years of experimental work related to the implementation of the “Golden Key” program, much more revealing was not even the fact that 100% of the children in the experimental class had formed primary school full-fledged educational activity, but the fact that such activity developed in one girl from this class. But the fact is that this girl, upon entering school, was given a medical diagnosis - mental retardation. The fact that this diagnosis is unlikely to be erroneous was evidenced by the facial dysplasia visible to the naked eye in this girl and her behavioral reactions. Special work with this child, the inclusion of this girl in the meaningful life of the educational community led to the desired result. This girl not only began to cope with everyone study assignments, but also learned to learn, appropriating all the components of educational activity. Since we were well aware of all the circumstances and the entire course of the individual development of this child, the achieved result became for us the most convincing evidence that in research work We managed to identify and create the necessary and sufficient conditions for the formation of educational activities in children.

The opportunity to study the actual process of development opens up for the researcher only if there has been a “decisive departure beyond the methodological limits of traditional child psychology,” as L.S. pointed out. Vygotsky17. Traditional method psychological science is limited to identifying the hidden properties of the object being studied, which, according to the initial research guidelines, are immanent to it. This means that such psychology is initially limited to the sphere of existence. “Therefore, the central and highest problem of all psychology still remains closed to her - the problem of personality and its development”18. Even the formative method does not allow us to take personality, development, consciousness, and will as the subject of study, since all these psychological realities are associated with human freedom. A person’s personality is not only what he is, but also what he strives for, what he can and should become in free self-realization. From our point of view, today only a design method that follows the principles of the cultural-historical approach “can lead us to the study of the development of that very highest mental synthesis, which with with good reason must be named as the child’s personality”19.

Notes

1 Davydov V.V. The relationship between the concepts of “formation” and “development” in the psyche // Training and development (symposium materials, June-July 1966). M., 1966.

2 Ilyenkov E.V. What is personality? // Where does personality begin? 2nd ed. M., 1984.

3 Davydov V.V. Decree. op.

5 Quoted. by: Kuzmina E.I. Psychology of freedom: theory and practice. St. Petersburg: Peter, 2007. P. 37.

6 Losev A.F. Philosophy. Mythology. Culture. M.: Politizdat, 1991.

7 Vygotsky L.S. Psychology. M., 2000. P. 900.

8 Ibid. P. 538.

9 Elkonin D.B. On the problem of periodization of mental development in childhood // Questions of psychology. 1977. No. 4.

Vygotsky L.S. Collection cit.: In 6 volumes. M.: Pedagogika, 1984. T. 4. P. 227.

11 Vygotsky L.S. Psychology. P. 821.

12 Ivannikov V.A. Psychological mechanisms of volitional regulation. 2nd ed., rev. and additional M., 1998.

13 Smirnova E.O. Development of will and arbitrariness in early ontogenesis // Questions of psychology. 1990. No. 3.

14 Kozharina L.A. The formation of voluntary behavior in preschool age // Humanization of education and training of preschool children. Rivne, 1992; Kravtsov G.G. Psychological problems primary education. Krasnoyarsk, 1994.

15 Vygotsky L.S. Psychology. P. 539.

16 Ibid. P. 557.