Chapter I psychology of family relationships as a branch of psychology, development of the science of family and historical changes in family and marriage. Textbook for universities - basics of family psychology and family counseling

For many people, family is the most important thing on earth. A warm home is a place where spouses long to find peace and tranquility. But sometimes, instead of positivity and peace, family life only brings mutual disappointment and anger. Why do most couples have so many problems living together? What is the reason for such a large number of divorces and unhappy marriages in modern society? What should you do to create a happy family?

Family psychology will help you understand these issues. This branch of psychology studies the building of harmonious and deep relationships between members of a social unit. First, let's figure out what a family is.

What is family?

A family is a group of people connected by kinship or marriage, living under the same roof, running a common household and having a common budget. The basis of the family is usually the spouses and their children. However, young people often live together with the parents of one of the partners. Each family member has his own responsibilities that he must fulfill for the common good.

What a family will be like is determined by a fairly wide range of factors. This is influenced by both the education of the spouses and their cultural level. Also of great importance is the ability of partners to understand each other, find joint solutions in conflict situations, and show care and patience.

Some reasons for an unhappy marriage

Many people complain that the partner with whom they started a family does not live up to their expectations. It turns out that the girl, who suffered throughout her childhood due to the fact that her father was an evil, selfish alcoholic, married the same scoundrel. Why did it happen so? The psychology of family life claims that the foundation of such relationships is laid in childhood.

It is the relationship between parents that creates in the child the image of what marriage should be like.

So it turns out that subconsciously a person is looking for a partner who is similar to one of his parents, continuing an endless cycle of the same mistakes. After all, the children of such people will create their own family, relying on the experience of their parents, continuing the negative traditions of their ancestors.

Another problem is that often people try to start a family without getting to know each other properly. They are driven by passion or an unexpected pregnancy. But most of these families break up in the first year of marriage. Family psychology teaches that before taking a relationship to such a serious level, you need to get to know your partner well and accept him as he is.

Love in the family

Initially, when choosing a partner, people are guided by a person’s sexual attractiveness and external qualities. Sweet speeches of romantics about the divine nature of their feelings in most cases are a pathetic attempt to embellish the harsh reality. Only after a strong emotional connection is formed between people and they properly get to know each other’s inner world does love arise. Everyone says that a family is built on love, but why then do so many people suffer from a lack of warmth and mutual understanding?

The fact is that rarely a person is loved simply for what he is, accepting all his advantages and disadvantages.

Usually love is presented as a reward for good deeds, with threats to deprive it if the partner does not correspond to some ideal model. The basics of family psychology are to love your partner with all his qualities, good and bad. Instead of constantly biting your spouse for his shortcomings, it is better to focus on his strengths, expressing his sympathy and care as often as possible.

Psychology of family life. Conflict resolution

Another problem of family life is improper resolution of conflict situations. Often, serious conflicts or contradictions in the family are resolved in favor of one of the spouses or are not resolved at all. This state of affairs leads to the accumulation of mutual dissatisfaction and dissatisfaction with each other. Family psychology recommends resolving controversial or conflict situations, listen to your spouse, respect his or her opinion. This way you will develop the skill of working together, you will learn mutual respect and take your relationship to the next level.

Psychology. Family counseling

If problems in the family cannot be solved on your own, but there are reasons to save the marriage, then going to a family psychologist can be a good help. An outsider will be able to more objectively assess the real state of affairs than angry spouses.

If you decide to turn to a specialist, then be honest with him, only then his help will have a chance of success.

It is better to contact a qualified psychologist, beware of dubious doctors who practice unscientific, suspicious methods. If you know a couple who have already been helped by a similar specialist, listen to their feedback and, if they are positive, contact the same person.

Independent problem solving

If you don’t want to wash your dirty laundry in public by involving strangers in your relationship, then you will need to independently clean up the psychological garbage accumulated over the years of living together. This is why family psychology exists. The family is considered in this science from all sides; hundreds of different methods have been created to strengthen marriage ties. Some of them are listed above.

Every young family faces many difficult periods, but going through them together will only make you closer to each other. The birth of children, aging, the appearance of grandchildren and many other stages of family life will pass like clockwork if mutual understanding is reached between the spouses. Address problems that arise in your marriage instead of simply putting them off. Then one day you will become a member of a harmonious and happy family. But while you don’t have much experience living together, family psychology will come to your aid.

IN last years Interest in the family of specialists in various fields has increased significantly scientific knowledge, both theorists and practitioners. Essentially, the family is currently a field of multidisciplinary research. Interest in it is associated with the role it plays in the process of formation and development of the individual, and, consequently, the present and future society as a whole. Possessing stability and even some rigidity, the family nevertheless reacts very sensitively to the socio-economic and political processes occurring in society through changes in the system within family relations. The increase in the number of problem families during transitional, crisis periods of social development illustrates this dependence.

Supporting the family and strengthening its educational potential requires specialists working with the family to have deep systemic knowledge, the ability to identify points of application of professional efforts, and find adequate means and ways of interacting with it. In a textbook for future educational psychologists and social educators various domestic and foreign approaches to understanding the patterns of family functioning and development, as well as methods of psychological and pedagogical work with it, are systematized. While working on the manual, the authors tried to give a holistic picture of the family as a subject of psychological analysis and psychological and pedagogical practice. The central idea underlying it is to consider the family as a special system, characterized by a certain cyclical nature of the processes of formation and development, as well as a special space within which a person experiences various emotionally significant events and carries out creative activities to reproduce life.

The manual consists of seven chapters, each of which reveals the content of a separate aspect of the psychological analysis of the family and describes a certain area of ​​psychological and pedagogical influence on the family.

Due to the fact that Russia is a multinational state, one of the paragraphs is devoted to the peculiarities of the existence and functioning of the family, determined by ethnic and religious factors.

A separate chapter is devoted to a relatively new field of activity for domestic specialists - psychological counseling of families. It also discusses the approaches of the main psychological schools to working with families, including the experience of Russian psychologists.

The last chapter is devoted to the means of psychological and pedagogical diagnosis of the problem field of the family and ways of working with it. It proposes methods and technologies used in various stages work with families, which can be used to develop practical skills of future specialists.

At the end of each chapter, questions are suggested for discussion and a list of recommended readings is provided for deeper study of the topic.

CHAPTER 1
FAMILY AS AN OBJECT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH AND INFLUENCE

1. PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTENT OF THE CONCEPT OF “FAMILY”

Definitions of family in scientific literature quite a lot, and many definitions have entered the public consciousness so long ago that it is difficult to establish the authorship of these definitions.

Family is defined as social institution, as a unit of society, as a small group of relatives living together and leading a common household. However psychological approach to understanding the family (unlike, for example, sociological and economic approaches) has its own specifics. Within this approach the family is considered as a space of joint life activity, within which the specific needs of people related by blood and kinship are satisfied. This space is a rather complex structure, consisting of various kinds of elements (roles, positions, coalitions, etc.) and a system of relationships between its members. So the structure exists in accordance with the laws of a living organism, therefore it has natural dynamics, passing through a number of phases and stages in its development.

From the point of view of a famous family psychologist G. Navaitis, the definition of the psychological essence of the family must be correlated with the goals of family research and the goals of the psychologist’s interaction with the family. G. Navaitis discusses the concept of family, which is advisable to explore when consulting a family with a psychologist. He proposes to introduce the concept of a family as a small group that receives professional psychological help from specialists. Contents of the concept “family” is revealed through a number of provisions.

Family— a group that meets the needs of its members. These needs are most successfully satisfied in the unique interactions of specific people.

The main feature of family interaction is to combine the satisfaction of various needs.

To satisfy family-related needs, a structure of family roles is created.

Family structure and family functions are developing naturally.

Family psychological counseling helps to coordinate and satisfy family-related needs, optimize family structure and promote family development.

The need for family counseling increases as the family transitions from one stage of development to another.

The periodization of family development can be determined by the totality of relationships associated with the family and their significance.

At each stage of family development, there are specific tasks, without solving which it is impossible to move to a new stage.

Famous domestic psychologist V. Druzhinin offers a simple system of peculiar coordinates, relative to which the psychologist self-determinates in choosing the family as an object psychological research. He says that research approaches to the family can be placed on two conventional scales:

"normal— abnormal family";

"perfect— real family."

Considering the first scale, Druzhinin defines the concept of “normal family” as a family that provides the required minimum well-being, social protection and promotion to its members and creates the necessary conditions for the socialization of children until they reach psychological and physical maturity. This is a family where the father is responsible for the family as a whole. Druzhinin considers all other types of families where this rule is not followed to be anomalous.

Within the second scale, the concept "perfect family" is defined as a normative model of the family, which is accepted by society and reflected in collective ideas and culture, mainly religious.

Rice. 1. Scheme of psychological studies of real families

This means, in particular, that psychological structure a normative Orthodox family (the structure includes features of the distribution of power, responsibility and emotional closeness between father, mother and children) differs significantly from the structure of Catholic, Protestant and Muslim families. Types of ideal families are studied mainly by cultural scientists. Under real family a specific family is understood as a real group and object of study. Druzhinin emphasizes that when mentioning the family as a subject of research, it is necessary to clearly understand what type of family we are talking about. Thus, psychologists study real families from the point of view of their deviations from the norm.

This can be illustrated by Figure 1, where the circle is a graphic representation of the space of psychological research.

2. FAMILY AS A SPACE OF LIFE

In science the word "life" used in various meanings. It denotes all organic (living) nature, in contrast to inorganic (nonliving) nature. Life, being the opposite of death, is the totality of all human life processes.

The realization that life can be defined in relation to a person, and specifically to an individual, came to late XIX- early 20th century This awareness is associated with the philosophy of individualism.

It is then that the concept appears and is legally enshrined "private life". To illustrate this phenomenon, the author refers to fiction of that time, mentioning in particular the novel D. Galsworthy"The Forsyte Saga".

This novel is a kind of chronicle of one English family over several generations. Birth, marriage, divorces, funerals, transactions become a private matter of this family clan, strictly separated from the lives of “others”. A typical representative of the family is Some Forsythe. His family tragedy is the irreparable tragedy of a man who does not love his wife and understands this. The wife suffers because of the death of her lover - and Soames Forsythe’s entire behavior in this situation is determined only by the desire to tightly close the doors of his house in order to resolve the dramatic family situation.

...And suddenly he saw that the door of his house was open and on the threshold, blackened against the backdrop of the illuminated hall, with his back to him, a man was standing. His heart trembled, he quietly approached the entrance.

And he asked sharply:

— What do you want, sir?

The stranger turned around. It was young Jolyon. “The door was open,” he said. —Can I see your wife? I have an errand for her.

Some looked at him sideways.

“My wife doesn’t accept anyone,” he muttered gloomily.

Young Jolyon answered softly:

I won't detain her.

Some pushed past him, blocking the entrance.

She doesn't accept anyone— he said again, and a sound like a growl escaped from his throat...

This is my home,” he said.— I will not allow anyone to interfere in my affairs. I have already told you, and I repeat again: we do not accept.

And he slammed the door on Jolyon.

Highlighting privacy as basic concept inevitably entails the idea of family boundaries as a special space for life.

A very accurate illustration of intra-family boundaries dividing the family space into male and female spheres of influence (more precisely, the spheres where the power of father and mother extends) can be found in the famous writer F. Iskander in the story "Big Day in the Big House". He describes with humor and love the life of a large Abkhaz family living in a mountain village and preserving all the customs and traditions of the patriarchal way of life. The description begins with the moment when the father and sons hoe corn.

...The mother came out of the kitchen and, approaching the fence, shouted towards the field:

My boys, have lunch.

Let's go!— the brothers laughed merrily, not hiding the joy of the transition from the hard power of their father to the soft power of their mother.

About ten minutes later the brothers cheerfully entered the yard. The father, as if temporarily deposed, slowly entered after them. The brothers abandoned their hoes at the kitchen veranda. The father, picking up each of them in turn, tried with his hand whether the blades were firmly held on the handles. It seemed that he was gradually preparing for the time when his power would come...

After dinner, which, in the father’s opinion, went on too long, he, irritated about the lost time of his power, hurries his sons: “Why are you sitting there? Can't you see where the sun is? We missed the sun, the sun!...”

The brothers, chuckling, reluctantly stood up and, taking their hoes, followed their father.

— He’s as dry as hell, and he doesn’t let the children pass,” the mother remarked grumpily, without raising her head, as her sons passed by. But it was clear from her voice that the time of her power for a long time, until dinner, was gone and nothing could be done about it.

Life activity is understood in two aspects: as the experience of various emotionally significant life events and as a life-creative activity to reproduce life. Outstanding philosopher and psychologist E. Fromm, speaking about love as an active force, he notes that for a creative person “giving is more joyful than taking” not because it is deprivation, but because in the process of “giving” there is the highest manifestation of individual vitality.

Existence in the family space allows a person to satisfy the need for a symbolic continuation of life after death. In existential psychology, there is the idea that the consciousness of death (“the horror of death”) is an important determinant of human experience and behavior.

There are several ways in which a person tries to achieve symbolic immortality.

First way— biological. It involves the continuation of one’s own life through offspring, through an endless chain of biological connections. The family, as a space where a man and a woman live together, reduces the anxiety of death, allowing them to overcome the painful fear of non-existence through the birth of children and grandchildren.

Second way— "creative". It represents a symbolic continuation of life through one's works, through a lasting personal impact on other people. Parents, drawing personal support from the family, pass on their experience and beliefs to their children, giving rise to an endless chain of transmission of interests and values.

Third way— the transcendental path of inner experience. This path involves achieving symbolic immortality through deep immersion in both one's own emotions and the emotions shared with the “other.” Man seems to lose himself through an experience so intense that time and death disappear, and he remains living in the “continuous” present. The family, by establishing the boundaries of private life, provides the opportunity to gain the bodily and emotional experience of merging with another person (for example, a mother “loses” herself in symbiosis with her child, and spouses “live the present” during a love merger).

Essentially, the family makes it possible to satisfy the needs that underlie personal development. The most famous classification of these needs is the classification proposed by one of the founders of the humanistic theory of personality A. Maslow. According to Maslow (1999), there are five groups of human needs that are grouped into a hierarchical structure:

physiological needs(needs for food, clothing, shelter, sleep, rest, sex, etc.). To mutually satisfy these needs in the family, there are conditions: territory of joint residence, common household, sexual relations between spouses, etc.;

safety and security needs. These include the needs for organization, stability, predictability of events, avoidance of contact with fears, illnesses and chaos. To satisfy these needs, a child, for example, needs to live in a family where there is a certain, stable routine.

With a permissive, permissive attitude of parents regarding sleep time, meals, and the absence of clearly formulated prohibitions, the child loses a sense of stability, begins to worry, and seeks a more stable living environment. The most destructive factors blocking the satisfaction of the need for security are events such as quarrels, divorces, separations, death;

the need for belonging and love. It is the family, for the first time in life, that gives a person the feeling of belonging to a group of people united with him by blood ties and emotional ties that provide love and psychological comfort. People with a deprived need for love, who grew up in a problematic, dysfunctional family (or outside the family in an orphanage), find themselves unable to establish deep close relationships in the future, feeling lonely and abandoned by everyone. The most important condition the formation of a sense of belonging to the family is the creation relationships of intimacy, existing within the family space. Relationships of intimacy are created in the first stages of family life due to a special type of communication of a married couple (for example, the use of a special intra-family language, the meaning of the words is known only to family members), the existence of some family “secret” and marking the boundaries of private life. Thanks to this, each real family acquires its own uniqueness;

need for respect (self-esteem). The family can directly and indirectly satisfy a person's need for self-esteem and respect from others. The very fact that a person has a family makes him socially successful. People who do not have a family, children, or who have not maintained a family (divorced) are traditionally perceived as socially ineffective. An illustration of this socio-psychological phenomenon is, for example, any election campaign: a person counting on winning elections in order to occupy a socially significant post cannot afford not to have a family.

Direct satisfaction of the need for respect is possible due to the fact that each family member can feel useful and important in this group. In harmonious, functional families, each person knows his place, role and has the opportunity to influence the family system as a whole;

need for self-actualization. Maslow described self-actualization as a person's desire to become who he can become in order to fully realize his own creative potential. According to Maslow, children raised in a friendly, loving, safe atmosphere strive for personal growth. Parents get the opportunity to realize themselves in raising their children. The family can become exactly the environment in which the abilities of its members are revealed. To do this, it must have a number of characteristics: there must be love and mutual respect in the family, there must not be symbioses and coalitions within which one of the family members exploits the other.

It can be noted that the subjective value of a family is determined by the extent to which the existing relationships in it allow the reproduction of situations that are emotionally significant for a person. These situations allow him to experience certain desired and familiar states. Moreover, for some people this role will be played by positive, constructive states and emotions (for example, such as tenderness, joy, fusion, intimacy), and for others - negative, destructive states and emotions (such as anger, resentment, guilt , fear). That is why family unions can be created and exist for a long time, within which spouses create conditions for the mutual satisfaction of the so-called “neurotic needs.” For example, a wife allows her husband to feel at times like a carefree, out-of-control “child” who is punished for having sexual relations with other women. This behavior of the husband, in turn, allows the wife to realize her hidden need for dominance and moral superiority over the man.

This kind of interaction is quite fully and psychologically accurately described and analyzed by an American psychotherapist and psychoanalytic theorist, the founder of transactional analysis E. Bern.

The main provisions of Berne's theory can be presented as another approach to understanding the basic types of human needs that can be satisfied within the family space of life. From Berne's point of view, the basic needs are the following.

Need for recognition (“hunger for recognition”) is satisfied in the family through “strokes.” The author calls stroking any action that involves recognizing the presence of another person. It can be realized in any form: from intimate physical contact and touch to affectionate verbal treatment, etc. In a harmonious, functional family, a special atmosphere of intimacy and emotional closeness is created, which fully satisfies the “hunger for recognition.” In a dysfunctional family, when interacting, its members exchange not strokes, but "blows". The blows are actions that involve ignoring or devaluing a partner (beatings, insults, criticism, ridicule, refusal of physical contact, etc.). This kind of family atmosphere, which blocks the satisfaction of the need for recognition, is the source of suffering and many psychological problems from family members.

The need for time structuring (“structural hunger,” the satisfaction of which allows one to avoid boredom) can be satisfied in various forms: rituals, pastimes, activities, games, intimacy. The family space allows for the implementation of all forms of interaction between people identified by Berne. Each real family will be characterized by which of the above forms of time structuring it prefers more than others. For example, “structural hunger” can be satisfied by observing family rituals in the form of unchanging, formalized traditions. For example, these could be traditional Sunday lunches, mandatory visits relatives, standard verbal turns and kisses with which the wife sees her husband off to work every day, etc. Even sex in such a family becomes ritualized and is carried out in accordance with the “once and for all established” order of actions.

Pastime not as formalized and predictable an interaction as a ritual, but it does have some repeatability. For example, it is customary for families to spend weekends together at the dacha.

Each family member knows well what he will do and what he will say and what the others will do and say (mom will again make fun of dad’s appetite, grandfather will fall asleep while reading the newspaper, children will fight over a bicycle, but will make up while swimming, grandmother will complain for health, etc.). Pastime as a form of satisfying “structural hunger” requires adherence to some rule - you can only talk on acceptable topics and in an authorized style. Communication between family members takes on a superficial, “secular” character, which does not involve the exchange of real and deep experiences. However, it allows the family to feel stable.

Family life can also be based on different types of games. Under game Bern understands the surrogate of true intimacy. All games represent some manipulation of the state and behavior of another person. They contain a “bait” that uses one of human weaknesses (envy, greed, temper, sexual intemperance, stupidity, etc.). Typically, experienced players are well aware of the weaknesses of their family partner. Bern described a large number of marital games, the most famous of which are “If it weren’t for you”, “Frigid woman”, “Harried housewife”, “See how hard I tried”, “Well, gotcha, scoundrel!”, “ Alcoholic".

Activity- this is what Bern calls work. There are families that build communication around a certain form of activity. For example, all family members are employees of one private company. All free time the family devotes itself to jointly solving production problems. This can also happen when spouses are colleagues, doing the same thing, working, for example, on the same scientific project.

Proximity defined by Berne as a sincere relationship between people with free interchange, excluding manipulation. True intimacy, which exists in harmonious families that are not afraid of sincere communication, makes it possible to fully satisfy both the “structural hunger” and the “hunger for recognition” of all family members.

3. FAMILY AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION AND SMALL GROUP

The relationship between the concepts of “marriage” and “family”

The family survived all the tests of time and space. Today the family exists in all parts of the world, and its history goes back many millennia. The importance of family in the life of an individual and society cannot be overestimated. But every generation comprehends this truth anew.

The science of family is developing in the context of the diversity of family structures and the diversity of people’s ideas about family and marriage. Every inhabitant of our planet considers himself competent in the field of marriage and family relations. People are very willing to talk about love, marriage, children, in-laws, and share with each other “recipes” for solving family problems. A teacher or psychologist also has a personal concept of family, which from time to time may be inconsistent with their professional position. Accumulation of everyday knowledge and search for reliable scientific facts united by a common goal: to understand how to ensure the stability of the institution of marriage and family, how to make family life successful and happy.

IN ordinary consciousness the concepts of “marriage” and “family” can be identified, but in science it is customary to distinguish between them. The first term reflects the socio-legal aspects of family and kinship relations. Marriage is a social institution that regulates relations between the sexes. A man and a woman appear in it both as individuals and as citizens of the state. The social nature of marriage is manifested, first of all, in the public form of its conclusion, in the socially controlled choice of marriage partners, V inheritance of family property.

Philosophical encyclopedic Dictionary interprets marriage as a historically conditioned, sanctioned and regulated by society form of relationship between a woman and a man, establishing their rights and responsibilities in relation to each other and to children. By sanctioning marriage, society assumes obligations to protect it and imposes on partners responsibility for material support and raising children, and thereby for the future of the family. Society can provide financial assistance to the family, which is integral part socio-demographic policy of any state.

Major specialist in the field of family sociology A.G. Kharchev understood marriage as historically changing social form relationship between a man and a woman, through which society orders and sanctions them sex life and establishes their marital and parental rights and responsibilities.

S.I. Hunger draws attention to the fact that marriage represents, in general, historically diverse mechanisms of social regulation (taboo, custom, tradition, religion, law, morality) of sexual relations between a man and a woman, which is aimed at maintaining the continuity of life. The social purpose of marriage is reproduction. This leads to the conclusion that same-sex marriage is nonsense, and homosexual relationships are a reality. At the same time, in specific conditions the social goal of marriage may not be realized.

The meaning of marriage in Everyday life people can be secured by its church sacrament. Marital relations are sanctified by the church, which means their inseparability, constancy, and durability.

Currently, in most cases, marriage acts as a voluntary union of a man and a woman, based on mutual inclination and personal agreement, formalized in the manner prescribed by law, aimed at creating and preserving a family. Thanks to legal protection marriage and consanguineous relations ensure the social security of the individual. However, not all couples resort to legal registration of marriage.

Along with the freedom to enter into marriage, there may also be freedom to dissolve it, which is expressed in divorce. Therefore, the area of ​​marital behavior also includes the actions of partners leading to separation (i.e., the gradual alienation of spouses from each other) and divorce.

IN modern world There is significant variability in the patterns of marital relations, and marriages are being formed that are alternatives to classical monogamy.

Concept "family" is intended to characterize the complex system of relationships between spouses, their children, and other relatives. This approach is expressed in the laconic formulation of S.I. Hunger considering family as a set of individuals consisting of at least one of three types of relationships: consanguinity, generation, property.

Let's give traditional definition of this concept, found in many reference books. Family — this is the most important form of organization of personal life, a type of social community, a small group based on a marital union, family ties or adoption, i.e. on multilateral relationships between husband and wife, parents and children, brothers, sisters, other relatives living together and running a common household. However, life makes some adjustments to this understanding of the family. In particular, a “guest” (regularly separated) marriage is developing, which involves the separation of spouses for a fairly long period of time.

Many experts use the definition of family proposed by A.G. Kharchev: “family— this is a historically specific system of relationships between spouses, between parents and children, it is a small social group whose members are connected by marriage or parental relationships, a common life and mutual moral responsibility, the social necessity of which is determined by the need of society for the physical and spiritual reproduction of the population.”

Essay on the basics of social sciences

I. Temperament dictates behavior

For a successful family life great importance has both physiological harmony and psychological compatibility. Living together poses many problems for people, which are associated not only with upbringing and assessment of the surrounding reality, but also with temperament - the disposition of the highest nervous activity, which is due to heredity. From this definition it is clear that it is extremely difficult to change a person’s temperament.

A certain type of nervous system may correspond to its own types of temperament and sexual constitution. But this doesn't always happen. The type of nervous system may not coincide with the sexual constitution. Hippocrates wrote about human differences in psychological makeup several thousand years ago. He wrote the characters of a cheerful sanguine person, an imperturbable phlegmatic person, a hot-tempered choleric person, and a passive melancholic person. Hippocrates explained the difference in temperaments by the combination of various juices in the body. This was a naive explanation. Now we know that temperament depends on the type of higher nervous system - the set of basic properties of the nervous system: strength, balance and mobility of the processes of excitation and inhibition.

It is incorrect to assume that one temperament is of a “higher” grade, and the other is of a “lower” variety. Among people of very different temperaments one can find not only talented, but also brilliant people. It is believed that sanguine and phlegmatic people have the greatest working capacity. Among famous commanders and political figures there are almost no melancholic people, while among scientists and people of creative work there are many of them. Their doubts and withdrawal into emotional experiences bear good fruit here.

Back in the 18th century. Professor of Moscow University S.G. Zabelin gave a very accurate description of different types of temperament. So about phlegmatic people, he wrote that they “as if drunk with water, passions are not only extreme, but also moderate, they rarely live in them,” they are prone to “phlegmatic, long-term diseases.” Cholerics “have a sharp, insightful, but often rash mind. Tendency to diseases with an acute course, with a febrile state.” About melancholic people S.G. Zabelin wrote that “everywhere in advance they look for difficulties that do not exist, and imagine misfortunes that are doubtful to everyone and fearful.”

Each temperament corresponds to a certain facial expression. For example, there is such an expression as “omega melancholics”. This concept includes an expression of feelings of grief - raised and knitted eyebrows reminiscent of the Greek letter omega. It is believed that the rays of wrinkles around the eyes indicate a cheerful character. The lower part of the orbicularis oculi muscle is called the “affability muscle.” Knitted eyebrows and wrinkles on the forehead indicate volitional tension and effort.

Muscles usually very accurately reflect a person’s experience and thoughts. Often, muscle contractions or relaxations are so small that they can be difficult to detect. However, some very sensitive and trained people catch them, striking others with “mind reading” and not only in a contact way (holding the hand), but also at a distance. No matter how a person tries to restrain his emotions, muscle groups react. This reaction is directly dependent on the type of nervous system and temperament.

Temperament leaves a certain imprint on the actions and behavior of spouses in family life. Although this behavior is not fatally predetermined, it is quite possible to predict how people with different temperaments will behave in certain conditions.

Let's try to model the behavior of a person with one or another temperament in family life. Of course, very schematically, because in their pure form these types of higher nervous activity are rare.

I.I. Melancholic

The melancholic person is touchy and painfully sensitive. It seems to him that they want to offend him, humiliate him; he has a quiet voice; He perceives life's adversity and troubles as a tragedy. He loves to remember the past, which seems better to him than the present, and thinks about the future with anxiety. Often complains about a life that has not gone well, failures at work, illness. He experiences any harsh conversation between spouses for a long time and suffers.

I.II. Phlegmatic person

The phlegmatic person maintains equanimity even in the most difficult situations, but experiences everything within himself. You can't read anything on his face. He is conservative, rarely changes his habits, has few familiar friends, has difficulty getting along with people, but you can rely on his loyalty. He is hardworking, persistent in achieving goals, thorough, and often monogamous. During family quarrels, he remains equanimous, but remembers them for a long time.

I.III. Choleric

The choleric person is active, persistent, and sensitive, but these qualities are not constant. Often intemperate and impatient. Self-control is weak. Sometimes he achieves his goal without stopping at anything. Mood changes are so frequent that it is difficult to predict what will happen in a minute or two. He can be rude and insulting, but then quickly moves away. He deeply worries about his incontinence and asks for forgiveness. Such instability of behavior leads to frequent quarrels in the family.

I.IV. Sanguine

Living in a family with a sanguine person is calm and fun. He is energetic, efficient, hardworking, actively involved in housekeeping - this is not a problem for him. In society he behaves calmly and confidently, gets along with people easily, is not offended by little things, evaluates life “in the grand scheme of things”, loves humor. A sanguine person does not delve into the past and does not think too much about the future - he lives in the present day. During family conflicts, he behaves calmly and carefully, without trying to offend his partner. Easily adapts to the environment.

When starting a family, differences in temperaments should not be underestimated. Let’s imagine that a choleric person and a melancholic person started their family life. Most likely, a choleric person with his unstable and unrestrained character will offend his partner so many times in the very first time, and the partner will feel these insults so deeply that nothing good can be expected. Or let's imagine that the husband and wife are melancholic - it will be a boring and gray life, all concerned about their health, with care for illness. Well, what if both are choleric? There is no doubt that there will be not only quarrels, but also fights.

The most successful combination for family life will be such temperaments as sanguine and melancholic, phlegmatic and choleric, sanguine and choleric. A partner with any temperament can live successfully with a sanguine person, because a sanguine person will find the opportunity to adapt to the partner and adjust family life in the right way.

Temperament is closely related to a person’s actions and behavior. It is temperament that dictates behavior. Often intelligent women, who behave extremely modestly and chastely in public, show complete disinhibition with the man they love and have a wide range of acceptable actions. Of course, this only happens in cases where a woman is confident that a man will understand her and correctly evaluate her behavior. Otherwise, this woman, feeling the man’s condemnation or bewilderment, will withdraw and become constrained - and the path to disharmony is open.

Determining the type of nervous activity of a future spouse is not an easy problem, but it is especially difficult to determine your own temperament. A person often considers his character to be quite acceptable and good. That is why, before deciding to take such a serious step as registering a marriage, it is useful to take a look at yourself and your future partner from the outside, because you will have to live together for many years. When determining your future wife and husband, you need to look not for your own kind, but for that very “half”, without which it is impossible to create a single whole.

Thus, there is no doubt that living together between people with diametrically opposed temperaments poses serious psychological problems for them.

II. The role of father and mother in the family

A person always thinks about what will remain after society, every man prepares to become a husband, a father, him when he passes away. It is not for nothing that it has been noted that a person is like a tree, powerful with his roots. Therefore, when getting married, a man takes on a huge responsibility - to be a father, a supporter in the family.

Fatherhood is also a test of a man’s social and moral maturity. There are always young people who get married, but are afraid of fatherhood or are not ready for it. A child is a great test of the strength of a family. In practice, there are couples who lived normally before the birth of their first child, but after his birth their communication worsened. The husband is increasingly absent from home and avoids his child and wife. This may indicate the absence, underdevelopment of paternal feelings or paternal culture, although unpleasant, but not being something pathological.

Being close to children, the father shows his best qualities, such as kindness, loyalty, and responsiveness. In this sense, only the father raises children, but also the children of fathers.

The family needs a father not only for punishment and education, but also to help the children in all his affairs, he must be a friend to his child.

In raising children, the living example of a father is very important. Sons largely copy the way of life and thoughts of their fathers: they adopt their gait, manner of speaking, gestures, etc. From their fathers they perceive such traits as fortitude, strength, masculine reliability, enterprise, and attitude towards the opposite sex. A son whose father is attentive to his mother, having married, considers it the only possible way to treat his chosen one in the same way. If the father withdraws from work, then the children also adopt the same habit.

But the role of the father is not limited, as already mentioned, only to raising children. Together with his mother, he provides the family with everything they need. He is responsible to the family for the organization of everyday life. Apartment renovation, labor-intensive household chores, food supply, etc. - This is, first of all, the responsibility of the father.

Fundamentals of family psychology and family counseling: textbook Posysoev Nikolay Nikolaevich

1. Psychological content of the concept of “family”

There are quite a lot of definitions of family in the scientific literature, and many definitions have entered the public consciousness so long ago that it is difficult to establish the authorship of these definitions.

The family is defined as a social institution, as a unit of society, as a small group of relatives living together and leading a common household. However, the psychological approach to understanding the family (unlike, for example, sociological and economic approaches) has its own specifics. Within this approach family is considered as a space of joint life activity, within which the specific needs of people connected by blood and family ties are satisfied. This space is a rather complex structure, consisting of various kinds of elements (roles, positions, coalitions, etc.) and a system of relationships between its members. So the structure exists in accordance with the laws of a living organism, therefore it has natural dynamics, passing through a number of phases and stages in its development.

From the point of view of a famous family psychologist G. Navaitis, the definition of the psychological essence of the family must be correlated with the goals of family research and the goals of the psychologist’s interaction with the family. G. Navaitis discusses the concept of family, which is advisable to explore when consulting a family with a psychologist. He proposes to introduce the concept of a family as a small group that receives professional psychological help from specialists. Contents of the concept« family "is revealed through a number of provisions.

A family is a group that satisfies the needs of its members. These needs are most successfully satisfied in the unique interactions of specific people. The main feature of family interaction is to combine the satisfaction of various needs.

? To satisfy family-related needs, a structure of family roles is created.

? Family structure and family functions are developing naturally.

? Family psychological counseling helps to coordinate and satisfy family-related needs, optimize family structure and promote family development.

? The need for family counseling increases as the family transitions from one stage of development to another.

? The periodization of family development can be determined by the totality of relationships associated with the family and their significance.

? At each stage of family development, there are specific tasks, without solving which it is impossible to move to a new stage.

Famous domestic psychologist V. Druzhinin offers a simple system of unique coordinates, relative to which the psychologist self-determinates in choosing a family as an object of psychological research. He says that research approaches to the family can be placed on two conventional scales:

? « normal - abnormal family»;

? « ideal - real family».

Considering the first scale, Druzhinin defines the concept of “normal family” as a family that provides the required minimum of well-being, social protection and advancement to its members and creates the necessary conditions for the socialization of children until they reach psychological and physical maturity. This is a family where the father is responsible for the family as a whole. Druzhinin considers all other types of families where this rule is not followed to be anomalous.

Within the second scale, the concept “ perfect family"is defined as a normative model of the family, which is accepted by society and reflected in collective ideas and culture, mainly religious. This, in particular, means that the psychological structure of a normative Orthodox family (the structure includes features of the distribution of power, responsibility and emotional closeness between father, mother and children) differs significantly from the structure of Catholic, Protestant and Muslim families. Types of ideal families are studied mainly by cultural scientists. Under real family a specific family is understood as a real group and object of study. Druzhinin emphasizes that when mentioning the family as a subject of research, it is necessary to clearly understand what type of family we are talking about. Thus, psychologists study real families from the point of view of their deviations from the norm.