Psychology emerged as an independent science in the middle of the 19th century. But a completely logical question arises: didn’t there exist psychological phenomena such as stress and neuroses before that, didn’t people communicate and conflict, didn’t there exist personal problems? Were. But this was in the nature of folk wisdom and observations. Before scientific psychology there was everyday psychology.
What is everyday psychology
Everyday psychology - facts obtained through personal observations. This is a subjective understanding of the psychological patterns and characteristics of the world. In another way, everyday psychology is called wisdom.
Sources of everyday psychology:
- everyday communication and interaction;
- Team work;
- people who meet along the path of life.
Examples of everyday psychology: rituals, traditions, folk tales, sayings, proverbs, legends, beliefs and other folk art. Many public pages on the social network VKontakte or websites on the Internet are the result of everyday psychology. That is, this is someone’s personal experience, everyday observations, the story of the life or success of this particular person. Nowadays it is fashionable to understand psychology and talk about self-improvement.
Everyday psychology has an arsenal of tools. For example, art. Through paintings, music, books we get to know the inner world of other people. Each viewer develops his own subjective idea of the author and his life. No terms or theories - only everyday psychology and personal perception. But the main method of everyday psychology is “trial and error.”
Everyday psychology is personal experience and ways of living that suit one person. This is exactly the case when we say “I do this, but it’s not a fact that it will suit you.”
Thanks to everyday psychology, a person knows how to communicate with his own parents, friends, sisters and brothers. However, without certain scientific knowledge, a person does not know how to behave with a new acquaintance. For example, children who are accustomed to manipulating their parents with the help of tears are at a loss when this technique does not work on another adult.
Good everyday psychologists are drivers, security guards, bartenders. They communicate with a large number of people every day, listen to their problems and draw appropriate conclusions.
Everyday or pre-scientific psychology
If we talk about psychology as a form of everyday knowledge, then it appeared along with human society. Worldview in everyday or pre-scientific psychology grew out of the everyday practice and life experience of primitive man. By interacting with each other, people learned to distinguish mental qualities hidden in behavior. Behind the actions performed, the motives and characters of people were guessed.
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Psychological knowledge arose in the process of understanding specific situations. The content of this knowledge was limited to the conclusions that could be drawn by analyzing simple events, and the reasons underlying them were easily traced. People recorded all the conclusions made in proverbs and sayings, for example, “repetition is the mother of learning,” “measure seven times, cut once,” “if you don’t know the ford, don’t go into the water,” etc.
What is certain is that pre-scientific psychology could not rise to a holistic assessment of existence and was limited only to a symbolic explanation of its individual fragments. The psychological knowledge of primitive people corresponded to a non-systematic, fragmented worldview that arose and existed in conditions of underdevelopment of rational methods of mastering reality. It is called topocentric because the content was limited to knowledge only of the place where the clan or tribe lived. And yet, covering all spheres of life of primitive man, this knowledge could be quite extensive.
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Modern psychologists believe that the emergence of this knowledge was caused by such obvious manifestations of the human psyche as:
- Dreams;
- Mental states such as joy, fear, sadness, etc.;
- Mental qualities - benevolence, hostility, cunning, all of them are manifested in the communication of people.
The phenomena that ancient people observed and, making attempts to explain them, led to the conclusion that the soul can leave the human body. At the moment of death, it leaves the body forever. This is how the most ancient and widespread doctrine of the transmigration of the soul from one body to another appeared in India.
This does not mean at all that ordinary forms of psychological knowledge, despite their simplicity, turned out to be false. Some of these ideas have retained their significance to this day and have entered the treasury of modern psychological science:
- Everything psychological exists within man;
- The soul remains to live forever and does not die with the person.
The immortality of the soul today appears differently compared to the ancient Egyptians, who believed that the soul of a deceased person turns into a bird and lives on his grave.
Eternity, the immortality of the soul, according to the ideas of modern man, is associated with good deeds performed by him during his life. Even Seraphim of Sarov (1754-1833) argued that if you save yourself, then thousands around you can be saved.
The idea that appeared to primitive man about the eternity of the soul, thus, continues to live in the public consciousness today, albeit in a slightly different form.
Psychology had to begin with the idea of the soul, believed the domestic psychologist L.S. Vygotsky. This idea became the first scientific hypothesis of ancient man and a huge achievement of thought.
What is scientific psychology
Scientific psychology is material obtained through experimentation and research. Psychology in scientific terms and theories.
Sources of scientific psychology:
- books, scientific articles and other publications;
- experiments;
- teachers and mentors passing on theoretical experience (university studies in psychology).
The basis of scientific psychology is everyday psychology. Only after noticing something in practice do scientists decide to find a scientific explanation and determine the scale of the process.
Scientific psychology provides general guidelines for interaction. For example, it is known that all people are infected by the emotions of the group; Every person’s brain reacts by increasing their mood to a forced smile. And bright colors excite the psyche of each individual, cold shades make you sad, etc. This means that you can safely use these techniques in everyday life.
Differences between everyday and scientific psychology
The scientific type analyzes the similarities and differences between the two types of psychology. But among the studies it is impossible to find a single list of differences. However, general points can be highlighted:
- Object of study. Scientific psychology studies mental processes, everyday psychology studies a specific person or condition. For example, everyday psychology says that all people are different, and scientific psychology explains this by the characteristics of the mental system (temperament).
- Generalization. Everyday psychology describes specific people and specific conditions. Often this is abstract and figurative in nature or represented by a stereotype. Scientific psychology generalizes, classifies, systematizes.
- A way to gain knowledge. Everyday psychology uses only unorganized observation and introspection. Scientific psychology uses a lot of tools: specially organized observation, experiment, tests, surveys, diagnostics and more.
- Method of knowledge transfer. Everyday psychology is transmitted mainly orally, for example, from grandmothers to grandchildren. Or through folk art. Scientific psychology is transmitted through specialized literature, textbooks, and universities.
- Facts, arguments, awareness. Everyday psychology does not provide point-by-point explanations. The person simply says that he suddenly realized something or simply knows that it works. Scientific psychology will explain why this works: what hormones are turned on, what lobes of the brain are involved, what mental property is used.
- Language. Scientific psychology operates with terms and concepts. Everyday psychology explains something “in its own words,” in a simple way.
Topic 1. Everyday, scientific and practical psychology
1. Origin and definition of the concept of “psychology”.
Psychology is the science of patterns, features of the generation, functioning and development of the psyche
The word “psychology” translated from ancient Greek literally means “the science of the soul” (psyche - “soul”, logos - “concept”, “teaching”). The term “psychology” first appeared in scientific use in the 16th century. Initially, it belonged to a special science that studied the so-called mental, or mental, phenomena, that is, those that every person easily detects in his own consciousness as a result of introspection. Later, in the XVII -XI X centuries. the area studied by psychology is expanding and includes not only conscious, but also unconscious phenomena. Thus, psychology is the science of the psyche and mental phenomena.
2. When and by whom were the first attempts made to theoretically understand the phenomenon of the human psyche?
The term “psychology” was first introduced into the philosophical language in the 18th century by the German philosopher Christian Wolf (1679-1754) in his books “Rational Psychology” and “Empirical Psychology” in 1732-1734.
3. The main stages in the development of psychology as a science.
Psychology has come a long way in development; there has been a change in the understanding of the object, subject and goals of psychology. Let us note the main stages of its development.
- Stage I - psychology as the science of the soul. This definition of psychology was given more than two thousand years ago. They tried to explain all the incomprehensible phenomena in human life by the presence of a soul.
- Stage II - psychology as a science of consciousness. It appears in the 17th century in connection with the development of natural sciences. The ability to think, feel, desire was called consciousness. The main method of study was a person's observation of himself and the description of facts.
- Stage III - psychology as a science of behavior. Appears in the 20th century. The task of psychology is to set up experiments and observe what can be directly seen, namely: behavior, actions, human reactions (the motives causing actions were not taken into account).
- Stage IV - psychology as a science that studies objective patterns, manifestations and mechanisms of the psyche.
Psychology is defined as the scientific study of behavior and internal mental processes and the practical application of the knowledge gained.
Psychology studies the world of subjective (mental) phenomena, processes and states, conscious or unconscious of the person himself.
4. What was considered the subject of studying psychology at the first stage of its formation?
Initially, the subject of study is the so-called mental or mental phenomena, i.e. those that every person easily detects in his own consciousness as a result of introspection.
5. Why did consciousness become considered the subject of psychology?
At the end of the 19th century. R. Descartes put forward a postulate stating that the first thing a person discovers in himself is his own consciousness. The existence of consciousness is the main and unconditional fact, and the main task of psychology is to analyze the state and content of consciousness. Thus, the “new psychology”, having adopted the spirit of Descartes’ ideas, made consciousness its subject. Consciousness, according to Descartes, is the beginning of all principles in philosophy and science.
6. Representatives of which psychological school declared behavior to be the subject of study of psychology?
Let us consider, first of all, the so-called structural school - a direct heir to the direction whose leader was W. Wundt. Its representatives called themselves structuralists, since they considered the main task of psychology to be the experimental study of the structure of consciousness. The concept of structure presupposes elements and their connection, so the school’s efforts were aimed at finding the initial ingredients of the psyche (identified with consciousness) and ways to structure them
7. How is the subject of psychological science understood at the present stage of development?
Currently, there are two views on the subject of psychology. According to the first of them, the subject of study of psychology is mental processes, mental states and mental properties of the individual. According to the second, the subject of this science is the facts of mental life, psychological laws and mechanisms of mental activity.
psychology –
the science of the laws of development of the psyche, i.e. the science
subject
is the psyche of an animal or a person.
8. When and why did psychology receive the status of a science?
Developing at first as one of the philosophical disciplines, psychology then, having adopted a number of ideas from experimental physiology, emerged as an independent science, which set the task of studying the soul, which at that time was understood as consciousness (and consciousness as what a person is directly aware of). This happened at the end of the 19th century, and the symbolic date of birth of psychology as an independent discipline is considered to be 1879, when Wilhelm Wundt opened a laboratory of experimental psychology at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Leipzig, and soon on its basis - the world’s first psychological institute, which still exists today. Soon, similar laboratories and institutes began to open in leading countries of the world (in Russia, the USA, France, and other cities in Germany) - the so-called academic psychology began to take shape, that is, research psychology, which set itself actual cognitive tasks.
9. What areas of scientific knowledge had the greatest influence on the development and establishment of psychology as a science?
The emergence of psychology as an independent, truly scientific discipline also occurred against the background of discoveries that were made within the framework of natural science research. Psychology arose at the intersection of two large areas of knowledge - philosophy and natural sciences, and it has not yet been determined whether to consider it a natural science or a humanities one.
Among the sciences, modern psychology occupies an intermediate position between the philosophical, natural and social sciences. It integrates all the data of these sciences and, in turn, influences them, becoming a general model of human knowledge. The focus of psychology always remains the person, whom all the above-mentioned sciences study in other aspects.
10. Due to the presence of what features is psychology considered a science?
The identification of psychology as a separate science and psychological practice began in the second half of the 19th century (especially in the 60s and 70s). Empirical methods for studying psychic phenomena, especially experiment, acquired great importance. In psychological research, measurements were increasingly used, which became an important criterion for scientificity. After the organization of the first psychological laboratory in Leipzig, such laboratories began to open throughout Germany, and then in other cities in Europe and the USA. Outstanding scientists who contributed to the formation of psychology as an independent science were: Fechner, Ebbinghaus, Wundt, Titchener, Lazursky, Bekhterev, Brentano, Stumpf, James, Sechenov, Pavlov, Freud.
11. What are the specific features of psychology as a science.
A person, his mental, conscious life is at the same time here both a subject (as in other sciences) and an object of knowledge. It follows from this that a certain knowledge of the laws established by science has already been given to the object being studied in its internal experience, representation - “on itself”.
12. The difference between scientific knowledge and other types of knowledge.
SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE
This is a special type of cognitive activity aimed at developing new, systematized, objective knowledge, the process of transition of the logic of being (essence, laws) into the logic of thinking, during which new knowledge is acquired. Cognitive activity is a process of active reflection of reality by a social subject, and not its mechanical, mirror copying. Scientific knowledge is based on the principles of scientific rationality, is carried out by professionally trained people (see scientific community), and is based on strictly defined rules, norms, and methods for a specific area (see methods of scientific knowledge, paradigm, research program). The results of scientific research, in contrast to the knowledge of everyday life, are universal; they reveal the essence of the subject being studied, the laws of its functioning and development. Unlike esoteric knowledge, scientific knowledge has a universally valid character and is devoid of dogmatism (see levels of scientific knowledge, forms of scientific knowledge). Scientific knowledge is carried out according to the laws of objective reality. The universal (dialectical) laws of the development of being and scientific knowledge (thinking) are two series of laws, identical in essence and different in their expression. Man, as a subject of scientific knowledge, applies these laws consciously, while in nature they are implemented unconsciously.
13. Characteristics of everyday psychology.
They have the following main distinctive characteristics:
· Specificity
, i.e. attachment to specific situations, specific people, specific tasks of human activity;
· Intuitiveness
, indicating a lack of awareness of their origin and patterns of functioning;
· Limited
, i.e. weak human ideas about the specifics and areas of functioning of specific psychological phenomena;
· Based on observations and reflections
, which means that ordinary psychological knowledge is not subject to scientific comprehension;
· Lack of material
, i.e. a person who has certain everyday psychological observations cannot compare them with similar ones from hundreds of other people in order to draw the right conclusions.
relying on life experience and common sense
the plausibility and usefulness of this knowledge in life situations
fragmentation of everyday psychological knowledge - intuitive nature, accessibility of presentation and clarity, imprecision of the concepts used
14. Whom did the German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey consider to be good everyday psychologists?
The German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) believed that good psychologists are writers, historians, and actors. He hoped for the emergence of a psychology capable of capturing in the network of its descriptions what was contained more in the works of poets and writers than in the teachings about the soul that existed at that time.
15. Ordinary psychology.
Everyday (or ordinary) psychology is psychological knowledge gleaned by people from everyday life.
16. Characteristics of scientific psychology.
Scientific psychology is stable psychological knowledge obtained in the process of theoretical and experimental study of the psyche of people and animals. Scientific psychology has its own characteristics:
Generality,
those. the meaningfulness of a specific psychological phenomenon based on the specifics of its manifestation in many people, in many conditions, in relation to many tasks of human activity;
Rationalism
, indicating that scientific psychological knowledge has been maximally researched, conscious and justified by laws;
Unlimited
, i.e. the ability of knowledge to be used by many people;
Experimental basis
, scientific psychological knowledge has been studied in various conditions, based on numerous experiments and experiments and proven;
Sufficiency of materials
, this means that knowledge about the laws and patterns of mental functioning was obtained based on the study of a huge number of people;
Har-ka N.P.: objectivity, support and empiricalness (experience), scientific facts rationality and awareness empirical and logical evidence generalization and identification of general patterns systematicity in the description of the facts of psychological life reliance on scientific concepts
17. Is there a connection between everyday and scientific psychology?
Fundamental scientific psychology interacts quite closely with everyday psychology: suffice it to say that at first almost the entire terminological minimum of psychological science was taken from natural language.
18. Can psychology be characterized as a purely theoretical or applied science?
19. Characteristics of psychology as a field of scientific activity (academic psychology).
Scientific (academic) psychology is generalized, natural knowledge about people, obtained by a group of people - scientists who tested this knowledge for reliability using special methods.
20. Characteristics of psychology as a field of practical activity (practical psychology).
Practical (applied) psychology is a direction of scientific psychology, the subject of which is individuality, the uniqueness of a person in the specific circumstances of his life, and the goal is to provide psychological assistance to a specific person on the basis of generalized scientific knowledge.
Speaking about the tasks of practical psychology, one should distinguish their different levels:
1) research tasks are related to solving problems of studying the patterns of development and personality formation in order to develop methodological foundations for the activities of a practical psychologist, ways, means and methods of professional application of psychological knowledge in the conditions of various social systems;
2) applied tasks of practical psychology are dictated by the need for psychological support for the optimal functioning of institutions and organizations, the work of personnel and individuals, which involves the preparation of special training programs, the creation of textbooks and teaching aids on practical psychology, the development of psychological recommendations and methodological materials, training and retraining programs personnel, psychological justification for the activities of practical psychology services, creation of draft normative documents for such activities;
3) practical tasks are determined by specific problems directly at the place of professional activity of the psychologist: in institutions and organizations of various profiles, in specialized psychological offices and centers - in the form of providing psychological assistance to specific people.
21. What place does parapsychology occupy among modern sciences?
applied Science
