1. The Crisis of Psychology The more successful the experimental work in psychology was, the wider the field of phenomena studied by it became, the more rapidly grew dissatisfaction with the versions that the unique subject of this science is consciousness, and the method is introspection. This is

Lecture 1. Basic concepts and principles of conducting

Psychological research

Plan

1. Specifics of psychological research at different levels of methodology

2. The history of the formation of experimental psychology

3. General idea of ​​the methodology of science

4. Scientific research, types of psychological research

5. Theory in scientific research (scientific problem, hypothesis, its levels)

6. Basic general scientific research methods

The history of the formation of experimental psychology

Brief information from the history of the formation of experimental psychology.

Thousands of years of practical knowledge of the human psyche and centuries of philosophical reflection prepared the ground for the formation of psychology as an independent science. It takes place in the 19th century. as a result of the introduction of the experimental method into psychological research. The process of the formation of psychology as an experimental science takes about a century (mid-18th - mid-19th centuries), during which the idea of ​​the possibility of measuring mental phenomena was nurtured.

In the first quarter of the XIX century. German philosopher, teacher and psychologist I.F. Herbart (1776-1841) proclaimed psychology an independent science, which should be based on metaphysics, experience and mathematics. Despite the fact that Herbart recognized observation as the main psychological method, and not experiment, which, in his opinion, is inherent in physics, the ideas of this scientist had a strong influence on the views of the founders of experimental science.

psychology - G. Fechner and W. Wundt.

German physiologist, physicist, philosopher G.T. Fechner (1801-1887) achieved significant results in all these areas, but went down in history as a psychologist. He sought to prove that mental phenomena can be defined and measured with the same accuracy as physical ones. In his research, he relied on E.G. Weber (1795-1878) relationship between sensation and stimulus. As a result, Fechner formulated the famous logarithmic law, according to which the magnitude of sensation is proportional to the logarithm of the magnitude of the stimulus. This law is named after him. Exploring the relationship between physical stimulation and mental responses, Fechner laid the foundations of a new scientific discipline - psychophysics,

representing the experimental psychology of the time. He carefully developed several experimental methods, three of which are called "classical": the minimum change method (or bounds method), the average error method (or trimming method), and the method

constant stimuli (or method of constants). Fechner's main work, Elements of Psychophysics, published in 1860, is rightfully considered the first work on experimental psychology.

A significant contribution to the development of the psychological experiment was made by another German naturalist G. Helmholtz (1821–1894). Using physical methods, he measured the speed of propagation of excitation in the nerve fiber, which marked the beginning of the study of psychomotor reactions. Until now, his works on the psychophysiology of the senses have been republished: "Physiological Optics" (1867) and "The Teaching of Auditory Sensations as a Physiological Basis for Music Theory" (1875). His theory of color vision and

The resonance theory of hearing is still relevant today. Helmholtz's ideas about the role of muscles in sensory cognition were further creatively developed by the great

Russian physiologist I.M. Sechenov in his reflex theory. W. Wundt (1832–1920) was a scientist with broad interests: a psychologist, physiologist, philosopher, and linguist. He entered the history of psychology as the organizer of the world's first psychological laboratory (Leipzig, 1879), later transformed into the Institute of Experimental Psychology. This was accompanied by the publication of the first official document formalizing psychology as an independent discipline. From the walls of the Leipzig laboratory came such outstanding researchers as E. Kraepelin, O. Külpe, E. Meiman (Germany); G. Hall, J. Cattell, G. Munsterberg, E. Titchener, G. Warren (USA); Ch. Spearman (England); B. Bourdon (France).

Wundt, outlining the prospects for building psychology as an independent science, assumed the development of two directions in it: natural-scientific and cultural-historical. In "Fundamentals of Physiological Psychology" (1874), he points out the need to use a laboratory experiment to divide consciousness into elements, study them and clarify the connections between them. The subject of study in the experiment can be relatively simple phenomena: sensations, perceptions, emotions, memory. However, the area of ​​higher mental functions (thinking, speech, will) is not accessible to experiment and is studied by the cultural-historical method (through the study of myths, customs,

language, etc.). An exposition of this method and a program of corresponding empirical research are given in Wundt's ten-volume work "Psychology

peoples" (1900-1920). The main methodological features of scientific psychology, according to Wundt, are: self-observation and objective control,

for without self-observation psychology turns into physiology, and without external control the data of self-observation are unreliable.

One of Wundt's students E. Titchener (1867–1927) noted that psychological experiment- this is not a test of some strength or ability, but a dissection of consciousness, an analysis of a part of the mental mechanism, while psychological experience consists in self-observation under standard conditions. Each experience, in his opinion, is a lesson in self-observation, and the main task of psychology is an experimental study of the structure of consciousness. Thus, a powerful trend in psychology was formed, called

"structuralism" or "structural psychology".

Early 20th century characterized by the emergence of several independent and sometimes opposing trends (schools) in psychology: behaviorism, gestaltism and functionalism, etc. Gestalt psychologists (M. Wertheimer, W. Köhler, K. Koffka, and others) criticized Wundt's views on consciousness as a device consisting of certain elements. Functional psychology, based on the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin, instead of studying the elements of consciousness and its structure, was interested in consciousness as a tool for adapting the organism to the environment, that is, its function in human life. The most prominent representatives of functionalism: T. Ribot (France), E. Claparede (Switzerland), R. Woodworth, D. Dewey (USA).

A significant contribution to experimental psychology was made by another German

scientist - G. Ebbinghaus (1850-1909). Under the influence of Fechner's psychophysics, he put forward as the task of psychology the establishment of the fact that a mental phenomenon depends on a certain factor. In this case, a reliable indicator is not the subject's statement about his experiences, but his

real achievements in one or another activity proposed by the experimenter. Ebbinghaus' main achievements were in the study of memory and skills. His discoveries include the "Ebbinghaus curve", showing the dynamics of the process of forgetting. In Russia, I.M. Sechenov (1829-1905) put forward a program for building a new psychology based on an objective method and principle of the development of the psyche. Although Sechenov himself worked as a physiologist and physician, his works and ideas provided a powerful methodological basis for all of psychology. His reflex theory provided an explanatory principle for the phenomena of mental life.

Over time, the instrumental base of experimental psychology expands: a "test experiment" is added to the traditional "research" experiment. If the task of the first was to obtain data on a particular phenomenon or psychological patterns, then the task of the second was to obtain data characterizing a person or a group of people. Thus, the method of testing entered experimental psychology.

The American J. Cattell (1860–1944), who applied them in the study of a wide range of mental functions (sensory, intellectual, motor, etc.), is considered the ancestor of test methods. However, the idea to use the test to study individual differences goes back to the English psychologist and anthropologist F. Galton (1822–1911), who explained these differences by a hereditary factor. Galton laid the foundation for a new direction in science - differential psychology. To substantiate his conclusions, for the first time in scientific practice, he drew on statistical data and in 1877 proposed the method of correlations for processing mass data. However, the tests in his works were not fully formalized.

The introduction of statistical and mathematical methods in psychological research increased the reliability of the results and made it possible to establish hidden dependencies. The mathematician and biologist C. Pearson (1857–1936) collaborated with Galton, who developed a special statistical apparatus to test the theory of Charles Darwin. As a result, a method of correlation analysis was carefully developed, which still uses the well-known Pearson coefficient. Later, the British R. Fisher and C. Spearman joined in similar work. Fisher became famous for his invention of the analysis of variance and his work on experiment design. Spearman applied factor analysis of the data. This statistical method has been developed by other researchers and is now widely used as one of the most powerful means of identifying psychological addictions.

The first experimental psychological laboratory in Russia was opened in 1885 at the Clinic of Nervous and Mental Diseases of Kharkov University, then laboratories of "experimental psychology" were set up in St. Petersburg and Dorpat. In 1895, a psychological laboratory was opened at the psychiatric clinic of Moscow University. Unlike these laboratories, where research work was closely connected with medical practice, in Odessa, Professor N.N. Lange created a psychological laboratory at the Faculty of History and Philology. The most prominent figure in the domestic experimental psychology of the early twentieth century. can be considered G.I. Chelpanov (1862–1936). He put forward the concept of "empirical parallelism", which goes back to the psychophysical parallelism of Fechner and Wundt. In studies of the perception of space and time, he perfected the technique of experimentation and obtained rich empirical material. G.I. Chelpanov actively introduced experimental psychological knowledge into the training of experimental psychologists. Since 1909, he taught the course "Experimental Psychology" at Moscow University and at the seminary at the Moscow Psychological Institute. The textbook by G.I. Chelpanov "Introduction to experimental psychology" went through more than one edition.

20th century - century of rapid development of experimental psychology. However, the emergence of more and more new psychological disciplines led to the "pulling apart" of experimental psychological problems in different sections of psychological science and the blurring of its boundaries as an independent discipline, as already mentioned above.

Ethical principles of psychological research. As we already know, psychology develops largely due to the fact that psychologists carry out experimental studies, and then, based on their results, draw conclusions about the work of the human psyche. However, psychology has a certain specificity that makes special demands on research. These requirements, in particular, are related to the fact that the “object” of study in psychology is people. The study of people is fundamentally different from the study of objects of the physical world, but only at the end of the twentieth century. Psychological scientists began to develop a respectful approach to the people who take part in their experiments, that is, they began to think about the ethical standards that psychologists must observe. The development of ethical norms and standards is carried out by professional public organizations that unite psychologists from different countries.

The norms that psychologists must adhere to when conducting psychological research are mainly related to the need to ensure that experimenters have due respect for the people who are the objects of research. Psychologists conducting research have an obligation to protect their participants from harm that may be inflicted on them as a result of the experiment. This means that measures must be taken to ensure that research participants do not experience pain, suffering, and also to exclude any possible negative consequences of a long-term nature. If a psychologist wants to investigate a phenomenon that poses a potential danger to the participants in the experiment, he must apply to his professional organization for permission to conduct research.

These rules apply not only to physical damage, but also to psychological trauma.

Another ethical aspect that researchers should consider is that subjects should, if possible, not be placed in conditions where they are deliberately misled. If temporary deception is necessary, the researcher should apply for permission to do so from the ethics committee of their professional body.

Even if deception is admittedly acceptable for a short time, the experimenter

is obliged to disclose it to the subjects after the completion of the study.

One of the first ethical standards of psychologists in 1963 published

American Psychological Association. Since then, this document has been amended several times.

The main provisions of the Code of Ethics of the British Society of Psychologists, published in 1990, are very consonant with these standards. It defines the following ethical principles for researchers.

1. Researchers should always consider the ethical and psychological implications for research participants.

2. Researchers are obliged to inform the participants of the experiment about the objectives of the research and obtain their consent, which they give on the basis of full information.

3. Hiding information or misleading research participants is unacceptable. Deliberate deception should be avoided.

4. After the end of the research, a conversation should be held with their participants so that they fully understand the essence of the work done.

5. Researchers should draw the attention of the participants of the experiment to the fact that they have the right to refuse further work at any time.

7. Researchers have an obligation to protect research participants from physical and psychological harm, both during the conduct of research and resulting from it.

8. Observational research must respect the privacy and psychological well-being of the people being studied.

9. Researchers must exercise caution.

10. Researchers share responsibility for ethical issues and should encourage others to change their minds if necessary.

Most psychology students do psychological research as part of their course of study, and ethical conventions hold just as much force for them as they do for professional psychologists. The Psychology Education Association of Britain has developed a set of standards for students doing psychological research.

When conducting educational research, ask yourself the following questions.

Should I do this kind of research at all?

What method of research is most acceptable from the point of view of ethics?

Am I competent enough to conduct this study?

Did I inform the subjects of everything they needed to know before they took part in the study?

Do these people volunteer to participate in the study?

How will I ensure the anonymity and confidentiality of all participants in the experiment?

How will I ensure that the research is carried out professionally, and

protection of the rights of those who take part in it?

These ethical questions are fundamental to the planning of psychological research and should be asked early in the process.

At present, there are several authoritative public organizations of psychologists in Russia. This is primarily the Russian Psychological Society (the successor to the Society of Psychologists of the USSR), as well as public organizations of educational psychologists, internal affairs bodies and

etc. Each of these public organizations creates ethical codes that define the norms and rules of professional activity.

The Code of Ethics of the Russian Psychological Society (RPS), adopted at the III Congress of the RPS in 2003, provides for the norms and rules for the scientific and practical activities of psychologists, defines the requirements for a psychologist, the norms of the relationship between a psychologist, a customer of a psychologist and a client, norms of social and scientific behavior psychologist. This document also formulated the main ethical principles and rules for the activities of a psychologist: the principle of not causing harm to the client (the rule of mutual respect between the psychologist and the client, the rule of safety for the client of the methods used, the rule of preventing dangerous actions of the customer regarding the client); the principle of psychologist's competence (the rule of cooperation between the psychologist and the customer, the rule of professional communication between the psychologist and the client, the rule of the validity of the results of the psychologist's research); the principle of the impartiality of a psychologist (the rule of the adequacy of the methods used by the psychologist, the rule of the scientific nature of the results of the psychologist's research, the rule of the balance of information transmitted to the customer by the psychologist); the principle of confidentiality of the psychologist's activities (the rule for coding information of a psychological nature, the rule for controlled storage of information of a psychological nature, the rule for the correct use of research results); the principle of informed consent.

Thus , anyone planning to conduct psychological research should carefully consider methods, approaches that are supposed to be used. There are many different methods

conducting psychological research, and all of them, to one degree or another,

pose ethical issues.

Plan
1. Introduction
2. Wundt
3. Lange
4. New techniques
5. Ebbinghaus
6. Brian and Harter
7. Conclusion
8. References

Introduction

With the introduction of experiment into psychology, its chronicle as an independent science opens up. It is thanks to the experiment that the search for causal relationships and dependencies in psychology has gained solid ground. The prospect of mathematically precise (and not imaginary, as in Herbart's) psychological regularities opened up.
Experience has radically changed the criteria for the scientific character of psychological knowledge. Requirements for reproducibility under conditions that can be re-created by any other researcher began to be imposed on him. Objectivity, repeatability, verifiability become the criteria for the reliability of a psychological fact and the basis for classifying it as scientific.
The centers of psychological work are special laboratories that have arisen in various countries. Initially, priority belonged to German universities. In parallel, intensive research was carried out in Russia and the United States of America and the Scandinavian countries. Directions were cultivated in concrete research practice, the combination of which equipped the young science full of offensive spirit with experimental weapons (psychophysiology of the sense organs, psychophysics, psychometry).
Most of the experimental work was devoted to the study of sensory functions. The union of psychological knowledge with physiological knowledge is especially strong in this area. For everything that was done in the field of the study of visual sensations and perceptions, Helmholtz's Physiological Optics served as a model. Description of psychologists. Peripheral and binocular vision (Kirschmann, E. Titchener, and others), visual adaptation (G. Aubert, A. V. Volkman), contrast, sequential images, color perception, etc. were studied in the wundt and other laboratories. In 1894, I. Chris discovered the difference in the functions of rods and cones and in the same year A Koenig - the role of visual purple.
The second authority after Helmholtz in the field of physiology of the sense organs, for a long time, was Ewald Hering (1834-1918), professor of physiology in Prague. He invented a number of instruments and devices. Included in the mandatory minimums. He argued with Helmholtz on the fundamental issues of the theory of visual sensations and perceptions, opposing Helmholtz's empiricism (the visible image is the product of experience, etc.) with the theory of nativism, according to which the retina was initially endowed with the ability of spatial vision. Each of its points, according to Hering, has three local signs that allow, regardless of the exercise (eye movements), to perceive height, left and right positions and depth. To explain stereoscopic vision, he suggested that the local sign for depth could be either positive or negative.
Goering also put forward a new concept of color perception. Hering based his explanation of color perception on the dissimilation and assimilation of several chemical substrates that cause the sensation of white-black, red-green and yellow-blue. With dissimilation, one of the sensations arises, with assimilation, the opposite of it. The variety of colors was derived, as in Helmholtz, from various combinations of physiological processes. Both theories satisfactorily explained certain groups of phenomena, but encountered insurmountable difficulties in trying to explain other phenomena. Both have been at the center of discussions regarding the problems of color vision for decades.
Wundt
The divergence between researchers of different methodological orientations was clearly revealed. Instructive in this regard is the conflict between the disciples of Wundt and Brentano. Both those and others advanced in line with introspectionism. And this meant concentrating on the phenomena of cognition. But Wundt and his followers strictly adhered to the course of artificial analysis, the search for the primary elements of consciousness, discovered by sophisticated introspection. Brentano believed that the phenomena of consciousness should be observed in their immediate reality, without the subject's special work on this material. Starting to study auditory sensitivity, K. Stumf chose musicians as subjects. Their self-observation provided different information than that of the subjects trained according to Wundt's instructions.
Stumf rejected the data of Wundt's laboratory as artificial, not corresponding to the reality of consciousness. A controversy broke out between him and Wundtf. Stumf outlined the results of his research in a fundamental two-volume work on the psychology of the perception of musical sounds (1883 - 1890). The clash between Wundt's and Stumpf's laboratories is curious in the sense that the original program of splitting consciousness into its structural components began to collapse in the very practice of research, and not because of the weakness of the theoretical scheme. Persons engaged in professional activities in a particular area of ​​culture were trusted more than "pure" psychologists. The analysis of consciousness was made dependent on a new variable - the real activity of the individual.
In the 1990s, Skriptchur and Kruger began to study auditory sensations in the Wundtian laboratory. Of the sensations of other modalities, the attention of experimenters was attracted to skin and tactile (Blix, Goldscheider, Frey, etc.). In the same period, there appeared critical works on olfactory (Zwaardemaker) and gustatory (Kizov) sensations.
The study of the functions of receptors lay on the border with physiology. Wundt and other psychologists sought to connect to this transcendental level and were more difficult to control experimentally; their research proceeded in an indirect way, through sensorimotor acts, where it was possible to objectively fix both parts of the process - both its “input” and “output”. The most typical and developed in this regard was an experiment for determining the reaction time. First, his scheme was applied to the pre-speech level (the beginning of the reaction - sensory signals of various modalities, the end - motor responses). Then a step forward was taken: a word was included in the scheme of experience - a specific human stimulus.
The German psychologist Ludwig Lagge (1825-1885) established in Wundt's laboratory a distinction between VR in responses which he called sensory and muscular. In the first case, attention turned out to be directed to the stimulus (VR is longer), in the second, to the upcoming movement. The work of L. Lange became the object of many years of research. Its historical effect was to reveal the role of the subject's pre-setting in attention.
However, the attention factor itself needed to be explained. Wundt considered it to be a manifestation of apperception as an immanent force of the soul. Such an explanation contradicted the basic, causal tendency of experimental psychology. Therefore, it was not accepted by most psychologists, including those who studied with Wundt. Among them were "probationers" from Russia, a country where, in an atmosphere of sharp polarization of social forces, questions of psychology aroused such burning interest and such burning discussions as in no other country. It was here that Sechenov's teaching, which most consistently expressed the natural-scientific aspirations of world psychological thought, took shape and received unconditional support from progressive circles of society. In a number of Russian laboratories, the scientific understanding of the psyche was associated with the name of Sechenov, with his teaching on the reflex nature of the psyche. The same views were held by V.M. Bekhterev, S.S. Korsakov, A.A. Tokarsky - the first enthusiasts of experimental psychology in Russia. True, Wundt's program also found its adherents in Russia, and it was precisely among the opponents of Sechenov's program. (G.I. Chelpanov and others)
Lange
At the Novorossiysk University in the physiological laboratory of Sechenov's closest student, A. Spiro, in the 80s he began work as a psychologist and experimenter. N.N. Lange, who returned from Germany, where he studied with Wundt. Following the established tradition, he chose the definition of VR as the initial scheme of his experiments. However, both the first and second members of the “stimulus-reaction” relationship were interpreted in a new way. Under the stimulus was understood the perceived object, under the reaction - an act of an adaptive nature, which has a complex history in the life of the organism. The interpretation of the stimulus as an object of reaction directed N. Lange's thought to an experimental analysis of how the image of this object is built, i.e. What are the operations involved in the process of perception? He puts forward a hypothesis about the phases (steps) of perception, which he called the law of perception: “The process of any perception consists in an extremely rapid change in a number of moments or steps, each previous step representing a mental state of a less concrete, more general nature, and each subsequent one is more private. and differentiated. According to Lange, the duration of VR can serve as an indicator of what stage the perception is at at the moment. The longer the BP, the higher the step.
Based on this post. N. Lange also explained the difference in the types of reactions discovered by his namesake - motor and sensory: VR with a motor type is shorter not because attention is directed (attitude) to muscle movement as such, but due to the fact that the stimulus for this movement is undifferentiated “push” in consciousness (the first phase of perception). The reaction, attributed by Ludwig Lange to the sensory type, presupposes a dissected sensory image. (subsequent phases of perception).
The principle of the dependence of movement on feeling, familiar to us from Sechenov's theory, is again manifested, as well as the principle of the complication of feeling in the course of the evolution of consciousness. Just as important was the conclusion about the participation of the muscle in the awareness of the image; N. Lange's motor theory of attention is based on this conclusion. It is the opposite of the indeterministic interpretation of attention expressed by Wundt's theory of apperception. According to Lange, the initial and fundamental is the involuntary reactivity of the organism, which has a biological meaning (optimization of the conditions for the perception of external objects).
N. Lange made the involuntary fluctuations of attention noticed by Urbancic during visual and auditory perceptions the subject of careful experimental study. This phenomenon and its explanation proposed by N. Lange in 1888 caused a lively discussion in the psychological literature (Wundt, James, Selley, Baldwin, Ribot, and others).
N. Lange outlined the results of his experiments in "Psychological Research" (1893) - a book that testifies to the major shifts in experimental psychology that have occurred since Wundt proclaimed the first program for its development. Genetic and biological approaches are beginning to be introduced into experimental psychology. One of the pioneers on this path was N. Lange. Both perception and attention - two categories of mental acts that were then at the center of the interests of the psychological laboratory - were introduced by him into the mainstream of biological determination with its main principle - adaptation to the environment. It is this principle, according to Lange, that determines the transition from undifferentiated to dissected perception, and from reflex attention to volitional. It is easy to see that the direction in which Lange worked had as its ultimate goal to overcome the gap between "lower" and "higher" mental processes, the inevitability of which for experimental psychology Wundt considered an axiom.
The reorientation of laboratory research, begun in the works of N. Lange, was based on a different assessment of introspection than Wundt's. Psychic reality acted as an independent object of experimental study (in contrast to physiological reality) not only on the basis of its introspective givenness. The role of introspection as a source of information about mental life was not rejected. But the object studied in the laboratory turned out to be not the phenomena of “direct experience”, but the adaptive psychomotor actions of the subject as a being with an ordinary and individual history. It was assumed that traces of this history in the form of phases of perceptions and types of attention could be revealed with the appropriate organization of the experiment.
The works of N. Lange, expressing new trends in experimental psychology, had a certain influence on Western European researchers, in particular on T. Ribot (1839-1916), who, following N. Lange, put forward the motor theory of attention.
However, it should be noted that the VR model with which Lange worked (and which generally occupied one of the places of honor in the psychological laboratory at that time) could not provide an experimental causal study of more complex mental forms than those for the analysis of which it was invented. The VR model was encouraging with the prospect of an experimental, quantitative analysis of the dynamics of mental phenomena, but the results of its use in all laboratories of the world for two decades brought disappointment. Even in physiological processes to determine the speed of nerve processes in the peripheral parts of the nervous system, inconsistent results were obtained.
The data of countless experiments testify not only to the unreliability of the subjective-psychological method cultivated by the Wundt school, but also to the fundamental impossibility of obtaining reliable indicators if those real psychological factors that here and there declared themselves in the reactions of the subjects are ignored. From the point of view of the criteria of scientific objectivity, it could not be about the exclusion of the subject as a subject of research, but about a new method of its objective study - other than introspective.
One cannot think that the work spent on finding out and testing VR was useless. The scheme of experience (it was prompted by the practice of human activity) was fruitful, making it possible to subject an act of human behavior to an experimental and, to a certain extent, deterministic analysis. A new line was outlined when speech components (the word stimulus and the word reaction) became the main terms of the original scheme. Quite natural was the transition to an experimental study of speech associations. Since the time of Hobbes and Gartley, words have been interpreted as links in associative chains that determine human behavior. The transition to experiment immediately gave rise to the idea of ​​the possibility of experimental verification of speech associations.
New methods
The associative experiment became widely known only after the experiments of Francis Galton. (1822-1911), the results of which were published in 1879. He made lists of 75 words, put them under the book, and as soon as he perceived the first word, he turned on the stopwatch. After the word caused any representation (several representations), he stopped the stopwatch and wrote down the result. Compared with the previous VR fixation system, Hamilton's technique was much less perfect, but it extended chronometry to the inner plane of mental activity. Hamilton's introspective attitude (the subject observed the facts of his own consciousness) was quite consonant with the views of Wundt, who immediately used this technique, although he considered "higher" functions not subject to experiment (in Galton, in essence, behind the vague expression "association of ideas" were thought processes ).
Wundt simplified the structure of experience by using Hipp's chronoscope. The chronoscope was turned on simultaneously with the stimulus word. The subject had to, at the moment when, under the impression of the presented word, he had some idea (that is, other than the meaning of the stimulus word), press the key as quickly as possible. The chronoscope hands stopped and the dial showed the time it was supposed to take to establish an association between the performances. Time turned out to be different, which was attributed to the nature of the associations. And not the individual characteristics of the subjects or any other factors.
Summarizing the results obtained in these experiments (they were carried out by Trautschold, 1883), Wundt proposed a classification of the main types of associations: a) verbal, arising as a result of an established connection of words; b) external and c) internal (based on logical relationships of values). With the appearance in the experimental psychological laboratory of such an object as the word, important changes began in the nature and direction of its work.
The methods and experimental setups with which the life of psychology as an experimental science began had a physiological origin. They were designed to study sensorimotor acts. Available for monitoring and control by their peripheral link. Of course, the word also includes a sensorimotor phase: it is perceived through the sense organs and reproduced in the form of a muscular reaction. But it cannot become a word without going beyond the sensitivity and reactivity of the organism. The available facilities of the psychological laboratory were suitable only for the study of these functions. What lay between them - the area of ​​human consciousness in its originality that opens up to the subject - was out of experimental control. It was all the easier for Wundt and his followers to argue that the requirement for psychology of such an objective method that would exclude introspection is nonsense.
Following the sensual images that served as the primary material of analysis, speech components of consciousness fell into this unsteady sand of self-observation. These components are always endowed with meaning, therefore not only those speech associations that Wundt placed in the category of internal ones, but also all the rest are connected by semantic relations. Meanwhile, it was the semantic moment that determined the ambiguity of the results. After all, experimental psychology did not have any means for its objective accounting and analysis. In order to impart objectivity to the study of speech associations, it was first necessary to remove meaning from them, to obtain them in a “pure” culture.
Ebbinghaus
This problem was solved by the German psychologist German Ebbinghaus (1850-1909), whose work On Memory (1885) opened a new era in the development of experimental psychology. Ebbinghaus himself believed that he owed his main ideas to Fechner, whose "Elements of Psychophysics" prompted him to think about the experimental mathematical study of memory. This evidence is instructive for understanding the factors of scientific progress. Fechner's psychophysics did not hold the key to revealing the phenomena of memory, but it contained something more than specific methods for determining the correspondence between stimuli and sensations - a general principle of approach to the mental. It had not only special-methodological, but also scientific-methodological significance; it created an intellectual "regime" in which later work began in other areas that were separated from it. It can be seen that the same methodological, and not only methodological, was the effect of research and Ebbinghaus himself.
The material for these studies was the so-called meaningless syllables - artificial combinations of speech elements (two consonants and a vowel between them), formed in such a way. so as not to cause any semantic associations. Quasi-speech “quanta”, purified from meaning, only superficially resembled the actual elements of human speech. But in order to penetrate into the realm of higher mental processes. It was necessary first to isolate the moment of learning, assimilation common to all of them. Only after that it was possible to develop concepts covering their specifics.
The strength of the associative theory lay in the fact that it captured the most general laws governing the acquisition of experience by the organism, comprehending them initially in “mechanical” categories. The frequency of repetitions and their temporal order - these were the coordinates in which the diversity of experience was located. And these coordinates are not fiction - they are really universal for all behavioral processes. The weakness of associationism was due to the fact that, without distinguishing between the general and the specific, he identified them in a straightforward manner. With each new encounter with the specific, dissatisfaction with the original picture flared up, giving reason to the opponents of the causal view to question it as a whole.
Ebbinghaus' invention made it possible to move from theory to experiment. In essence, it was the first proper psychological method created by a psychologist, since other areas, mainly physiology, supplied experimental psychology with all the previous methods. For centuries, psychology has been guided by the doctrine of association. Now it has entered the laboratory for experimental verification.
Hamilton and Wundt took up this test almost simultaneously with Ebbinghaus, and published the results of their tests even before him. But on the side of Ebbinghaus there was a fundamental advantage. It consisted in the transition to an objective method. Wundt considered the removal of introspection from psychology as nonsense. Ebbinghaus decided on such "nonsense".
Demands to transfer powers to the objective method to the unlimited were put forward even before it. He first developed this method as an experimental one. It can be seen that in his theoretical views he did not at all renounce introspectionist ideas, but, on the contrary, it was on them that he built his psychological system. (“Fundamentals of Psychology” (1897-1902), “Essay on Psychology” (1908)). But the self-consciousness of the researcher and his real actions (as well as the introspection of a person and the actual meaning of his mental acts are not always unambiguous. When studying associations in the Wundtian and other laboratories, experiments were performed on numerous subjects. Ebbinghaus conducted all the research on himself. He applied in relation to an objective method in an age when subjects were subjected to subjective methods, and after compiling a list of more than 2,300 meaningless syllables, he proceeded to assimilate them using several methods.
The learning method was as follows. After a single reading of a number of syllables, an attempt was made to reproduce them. In case of failure, she repeated as many times as required for error-free reproduction. The number of repetitions was taken as the memorization coefficient. With another method (it was called the savings method), after a certain period of time, after the series had been memorized, an attempt was again made to produce it. When a known number of syllables could not be retrieved from memory, the row was repeated again until it was exactly reproduced. The number of repetitions (or time) it took to regain full knowledge of the series was compared with the number of repetitions (or time) during the initial memorization.
Other methods were developed both by Ebbinghaus himself and by psychologists who continued the line of experimental study of memory he had outlined. Among the latter, G. Müller (1850-1934), head of the laboratory in Göttingen, the second most important in Germany (after Wundt's), stands out.
After fundamental works on psychophysics (“On the foundation of psychophysics”, 1878), G. Müller, together with Schumann, based on the achievements of Ebbinghaus, carried out a series of equally fundamental works on memory (“Experimental materials for the study of memory”, 1893).
Ebbinghaus and those who followed him were studying the association between meaningless sensorimotor elements of speech, not conscious phenomena. Therefore, the results obtained by them did not depend on the introspection of the subjects and, therefore, satisfied the requirement of the requirement of objectivity. The subject did not introspect - he acted. And his actions were reflected in the curves showing the real dependence of the number of learned units on the frequency of their repetition, distribution in time, the amount of material being memorized, etc. Such was, in particular, the famous “forgetting curve” of Ebbinghaus, which said that the greatest percentage of the forgotten falls on the period that follows immediately before memorization. This curve acquired the value of a methodological sample, according to the type of which the curves for developing a skill, solving the problem, etc. were built in the future.
The highest appraisal of Ebbinghaus's work in terms of its impact on experimental psychology cannot be exaggerated. Even such a staunch introspectionist as Titchener considered "meaningless syllables" to be the most important development in psychology after Aristotle himself. Regardless of the intentions of Ebbinghaus himself, his method radically changed the character of the experimenter's activity, who began to be interested not so much in the statements of the subject (a report on the composition of his own consciousness), but in his real actions. A gap opened up in introspectionism, rapidly widened by a flood of new experiments.
Ebbinghaus paved the way for the experimental study of skills. In essence, after all, he himself was already at its origins, for, as already mentioned, the associations he chose as the object of memorization were as much sensory as motor. They covered the most general aspect of the acquisition by the body of new combinations of sensorimotor reactions as a result of a specially organized exercise. But at the same time, they were not yet components of behavior, which are true skills, because behavior is always objective, i.e. is organized according to the objects that are significant for the organism and their connections.
Ebbinghaus eliminated the category of meaning of the word. This was the reason for his success. The study of sensory processes aimed to discover the primary elements - sensations, which in themselves have no objective value. They were supposed to acquire it only through additional operations of consciousness. The problem of meaning did not exist for psychophysics, the most important component of the experimental psychology of that era, since all patterns were established on non-objective phenomena - sensations as such.
As for the work on VR, here, too, from the scheme that developed at the observatory in the course of studying the significant activity of an observer-astronomer, there remained a contour suggesting an abstract non-objective reaction to an abstract non-objective stimulus (N.N. Lange, who attempted to connect VR with the stages of perception , remained alone).
Brian and Harter
The situation described above was decisively changed by the experiments of the American psychologists Brian and Harter in developing the habit of receiving and sending telegrams. Their work was the second most important milestone in the path of experimental study of the learning process, after the experiments of Ebbingas. With the approach of the dynamic XX century, the real model for psychology is not the reaction of an astronomer who fixes the movement of stars, but the activity of a person included in communication systems, in which the speed of information transfer acts as an essential factor in socio-economic progress.
Brian and Harter obtained a curve that showed how the skill of a telegraphist is formed: how many units of telegraphic text he can send and receive in a unit of time. These experiments, as it were, brought the experiments on VR closer to those of Ebbinghaus: both urgent motor reactions to sensory signals and work experience were required. But with real activity, new factors also entered the experiment.
The subjects of Bryan and Harter operated with significant signals, the process of assimilation of which proceeded in a peculiar way. Progress was achieved not by gradual increase in achievements, but by leaps and bounds. Periods were found when the curve was horizontal (the so-called plateau). An analysis of these periods showed that they serve as a phase of preparation for the subject for a qualitatively different system of operations, the mastery of which made it possible to move forward. If, for example, the subject initially operated with individual letters, then the degree of “letter” skill was replaced by the level of “verbal” skill, when words were grasped as integral units. But what is this unit, larger than a single letter, if not a complex that has a meaning. The next step, leading up from the plateau, is in turn achieved by mastering even more complex structures - combinations of words, etc.
In these experiments, another important feature of behavior also appeared, which escaped under the prevailing introspectionism. It turned out that the success of the skill depends on the ability to perceive a piece of text that has not yet become the object of a reaction, but will become one at the next moment in time. Consciousness, as it were, runs ahead, blocking the sensory field outside the signal directly causing the motor reaction and organizing behavior in accordance with these.
The conclusions from the experiments of Bryan and Harter converged in a number of points with what was then established in the classical experiments of the American psychologist D.M. Cattell (1860-1944), who studied attention span and reading skill in the 1990s.
With the help of a tachytoscope, Cattell determined the time needed to perceive and name various objects - shapes, letters, words, etc. The volume of attention fluctuated within five objects. It remained the same even when these objects were not separate scattered letters, but whole words and even sentences familiar to the subject, i.e. speech or semantic units, consisting of a much larger number of letters or signs. When experimenting with reading letters and signs. When experimenting with reading letters and words on a rotating drum, Cattell, like Brian and Harter, fixed the phenomenon of anticipation, “running” of perception forward. New results influenced not only the status of experimental psychology theory, for both directions are always inseparably linked.
Distrust of introspection has been repeatedly expressed by many philosophers and naturalists. But the negative attitude towards her in itself could not yet deprive her of the main role, since she alone “worked” in the psychological laboratory. Now the situation has changed. Results important for theory and practice were obtained without recourse to introspection. Thus, experimental psychology reached boundaries independent of the subjective method.
The Bryan-Harter curve, as it were, demonstrated the limitations of the Ebbinghaus curve. The “plateau” indicated that assimilation is not only a function of the number of repetitions and time. An additional factor was the mastery of techniques, methods of action.
Conclusion
Thus, it is clear that the work of Ebbinghaus, Kettel. G. Muller, N.N. Lange, Bryan, Harter, and others formed the basis of a direction distinct from Wundt's physiological psychology. The new direction has opened the actual psychological phenomena and regular connections between them, the specificity of which is based on the objective features of human activity. Thus, the position of psychology as a science was significantly strengthened. This trend was not based on physiological concepts, but even in the Wundtian school they did not have any explanatory power, and if they were used, it was only to give credibility to shaky subjective psychological hypotheses.
Wundt's school built its experimental program according to a scheme drawn from the psychophysiology of the sense organs and psychophysics, interpreting the "stimulus-reaction" formula as the only standard of experimental work, and according to Wundt's interpretation of this formula, only its second part belongs to the field of the psyche - the reaction, under which the fact of consciousness given in self-observation was understood. Its supposed uniqueness served as the main argument in favor of the independence of psychological research from physiological research. The new experimental direction, on more solid objective foundations, asserted the independence of psychological concepts, their irreducibility to physiological ones.
In experimental psychology, a stratification took place in this way, which is important for the future of this science. Wundt's successors - Külpe (Wurzburg school) and Titchener (structural psychology) continued to cultivate the subjective approach of the method. But next to him, the objective method successfully defended its rights. The method of studying phenomena, as the history of science teaches, is inseparable from the understanding of their nature. Being established in the laboratory, the objective method led to a change in views on the psychological fact itself.
The experimental method was established in psychology at the turn of the 20th century everywhere, in all its branches. It is applied to various objects and to solve various problems. The experiment begins to determine the character of psychological science as a whole.

Bibliography

1. Yaroshevsky M.G. “Psychology in the XX century”, M, 1974
2. Lazursky A.F. “General and experimental psychology”, M., Sp.B, 1912.
3. Vvedensky N.E. “On modern trends in physiology”, Selected products, M., 1952
4. Bekhterev V.M. “General foundations of reflexology”, L. 1954.

The development of psychology at the end of the 19th and during the 20th century. The main directions of modern psychology and the differences between them.

Structuralism

The first version of psychology as an independent science was physiological psychology. W. Wundt (1832-1920). He began his research in the field of perception. Wundt develops ideas about psychology as an experimental science. Along with the experiment, he names the analysis of the products of the human spirit as a source of psychological research. These ideas outlined the task of the psychology of peoples that he subsequently developed. Yes, by the early 1960s. a program of psychology is being formed that combines two methods - experimental and cultural-historical.

Released in 1874 Wundt's Foundations of Physiological Psychology was the beginning of psychology as an independent science. Its object is those processes that are accessible to both external and internal observation and have both a physiological and a psychological side and therefore cannot be explained either only by physiology or only by psychology: these are sensations and the simplest feelings. By method, physiological psychology is experimental psychology.

In 1879 in Leipzig At the university, he created a psychological laboratory, on the basis of which, two years later, the Institute of Experimental Psychology was created, which from the very beginning turned into an international center for the training of psychologists. This is how the Wundt school was formed, from which the history of psychology as an independent science begins.

Having subjected to critical analysis the previous understanding of the subject matter of psychology (as the science of the soul and inner experience), Wundt defines psychology as the science of direct experience. Object and subject act in an inseparable unity: every object is a represented object.

A single experience can be viewed from two points of view. Experience, taken in abstraction from the cognizing subject and aimed at revealing the connections of objective phenomena, studies natural science. This is a mediated experience. Experience, considered in its relation to the subject and in the properties that the subject ascribes to it, is direct experience, which psychology studies. Psychology, defined as the science of direct experience, is, according to Wundt himself, a kind of empirical psychology, since it must show the connection of the contents of experience in the form in which it is given to the subject. Thus, consciousness remains the object of study in psychology. In his description, however, Wundt introduces new features. In contrast to the intellectualism of all previous psychology, Wundt considers the mental as a process. Here the will is taken as a typical process. Wundt calls his psychology voluntaristic, at the same time emphasizing the difference between his system and the philosophical voluntarism of Schopenhauer.

Since all sciences study the same subjects, but from different points of view, "no fundamental difference between psychological and natural scientific methods can be admitted." Therefore, in psychology, too, experimental methods should be used, "with the goal of carrying out an accurate analysis of mental processes, similar to the analysis undertaken by natural science when applied to natural phenomena." The experiment does not cancel self-observation, it remains the only direct method in psychology. Objective phenomena - behavior, activity Wundt excluded from psychology. Man himself - not as he appears from without, but as he is given immediately to himself - is the proper problem of psychology. The experiment only makes self-observation more accurate.

However, not all minds lend themselves to experimental study. Wundt limited the experiment to the area of ​​the simplest mental processes - sensations, ideas, reaction time, the simplest associations and feelings. The study of higher mental functions and mental development requires other methods. As such, Wundt considered the analysis of the products of the human spirit, which are the product of communication of many individuals: language, myths, customs. He called this part of psychology the psychology of peoples, contrasting it with individual experimental psychology. With the introduction of two psychologies by Wundt, differing in content and methods, differently oriented towards natural science and the sciences of the spirit, a split of a single science occurs, which was one of the causes and a characteristic feature of the open crisis that broke out in psychology at the beginning of the second decade of the 20th century.

Wundt's psychological system included the study of the elements (sensations and feelings), the analysis of the connections between the elements and the products of these connections, and the study of the laws of mental life. In this program, Wundt's atomism, characteristic of associative psychology, clearly stands out: the simplest elements, sensory in nature, are primary, complex formations are secondary. However, Wundt struggles with the extremes of associationism: in the products of associations, he draws attention to the emergence of a new quality that is not reducible to the sum of the properties of the original elements. Wundt subdivides all associations into simultaneous and sequential ones, which in turn have several forms: simultaneous ones exist in the form of fusion, assimilation - dissimilation and complication, sequential ones - recognition and memories. Behind these kinds of associations are perception and memory. Wundt fights against the functionalism of the old psychology and considers them as the result of a single mechanism of associations. At the same time, associations are characterized as a passive process that proceeds without the active participation of the subject. In Wundt's psychology there is no subject, no personality.

In addition to associative, Wundt distinguishes apperceptive connections. They are formed with the active participation of consciousness. Apperception is a special function of consciousness, which manifests itself in the activity of the subject and is externally expressed in attention. From the totality of contents that are in consciousness, i.e., simply perceived, apperception, or attention, singles out the object, as a result of which its perception becomes clearer and more distinct; it enters a clear point of consciousness - apperceives. When apperception on r is directed to choose between different reasons in preparation for action, it is will. Wundt brings together the concepts of apperception, attention and will, and even identifies them. The product of apperception are apperceptive combinations of representations. Thinking and imagination are functions of apperception. Acting as an explanation of the complex phenomena of mental life, apperception itself is not explained: its source is in consciousness itself.

The last section of Wundt's psychology is the doctrine of the laws of mental life. They reflect an attempt to go beyond the description, to reveal the own properties of the subjective world - Wundt calls them independent mental causality, in contrast to the physiological mechanisms of mental processes.

Simultaneously with Wundt in Russia, a program for the construction of psychology was presented by I. M. Sechenov (1829-1905). The result of Sechenov's work was a new understanding of the psyche and the tasks of psychology as a science. Sechenov can rightly be considered the founder of Russian scientific psychology. His most important works on psychology: "Reflexes of the brain", in which the reflex theory is formulated in connection with the problem of voluntary and involuntary movements; “To whom and how to develop psychology”, here in the general program for the construction of psychology, views on the subject, method and tasks of psychology are outlined; "Elements of Thought", here the natural scientific development of thinking is given as a result of the study of cognitive processes, etc.

In Reflexes of the Brain, Sechenov set the task of "proving the possibility of applying physiological knowledge to the phenomena of mental life." The solution to this problem resulted in the reflex theory of the mental. According to Sechenov, the ability to perceive external influences in the form of representations (visual, auditory, etc.) develops in experience according to the type of reflexes; the ability to analyze these concrete impressions, memory, all these mental acts develop by means of a reflex. The scheme of the mental process is the same as the scheme of the reflex: the mental process originates in an external influence, continues with a central activity and ends with a response activity - movement, deed, speech. The mental process arises and ends in the process of interaction of the individual with the outside world, which means that the influence from the outside in the form of feeling is primary. Motives, abstract ideas are not the original causes of our actions. In explaining the psyche, one must proceed not from the psyche.

Sechenov makes an attempt to “pull out” psychology from the closed world of inner consciousness and explain how mental processes occur, to trace the formation of consciousness in ontogenesis. Thus, the reflex principle does not mean reducing the mental to the physiological. We are talking about the similarity between them in structure and origin. The reflex approach also involves the study of the brain mechanisms of mental processes. Thus, with the help of the reflex principle, the psychic receives its causal explanation, while retaining a qualitative, not reducible to physiological, characteristic.

M. Sechenov formulated the task of psychology: "Scientific psychology ... cannot be anything other than a series of teachings on the origin of mental activities." To explain the origin means to show the course of a mental act: its beginning, central phase and end. In this interpretation of the task of psychology, there is a requirement to go beyond the limits of consciousness into the system of objective relations of a person with the world, to reveal the conditions that determine this or that nature of human actions, to describe the external manifestations of mental phenomena, i.e., to attribute them to the facts of consciousness scientifically, objectively.

Pointing to the futility of the introspective method, Sechenov develops the ideas of the genetic approach in psychology. At the same time, Sechenov demands not to be limited to a description, but to look for a “real-psychic lining” of the studied phenomena of consciousness.

Sechenov develops materialistic ideas about the active, active nature of sensory cognition. So, he calls looking an action: the eye releases “feelers” that can greatly lengthen or shorten so that their free ends, converging with each other, touch the object being considered at the moment. Sechenov's program led to the study of holistic behavior.

From the very beginning of the existence of psychology as an independent science, there have been various approaches to understanding its subject, methods and tasks. Wundtian traditions developed E. Titchener (1867-1927) and the psychologists who clustered around him at Cornell University in the United States. This university, thanks to the efforts of Titchener, became a major psychological center and one of the first to lay the foundation for experimental psychology in the United States. Titchener basically shares Wundt's understanding of the subject matter of psychology as the science of direct experience. He called his psychology structural psychology, contrasting his approach with the functionalism of American psychology. According to his point of view, psychology should study the structure - the matter of consciousness as a set of individual elements that are no longer amenable to analysis, simple in nature. It is necessary to study consciousness in terms of elements, that is, in contrast to all functional relations, from their role in behavior, only in connection with the nervous substrate: it was believed that physiological foundations explain mental processes.

Consciousness forms a special inner world. It can only be penetrated through the method of analytical introspection. This method is one of the variants of introspection. In contrast to this understanding of it, in accordance with which the contents of things, i.e., not psychological facts, are revealed in the phenomena of consciousness, analytical introspection provides material about psychological facts proper; from the introspective report, Titchener demanded that everything related to the physical nature of the stimulus be excluded from the meaning, since these points are not revealed in self-observation. Leave in the self-report exclusively the "pure content of consciousness", for only it can be perceived introspectively. In an introspective report, the subject should not substitute the mental phenomena for the object that causes these phenomena, i.e., not make “stimulus errors”. For example, instead of saying “the road is uneven,” the psychologist should say “the pressure on the soles of my feet is becoming more and more uneven,” i.e., name only his immediate sensations. Requirements for self-observation were developed: it is necessary to create good conditions in order to exclude external influences, carefully monitor the course of consciousness, express its phenomenon in words, try not to be distracted, internally imbued with the task, etc. The method of analytical introspection is limited to the area of ​​one's own consciousness. Everyone knows only his own soul directly.

As the primary elements of consciousness, Titchener singles out sensations, images, feelings. Sensations have quality, intensity, distinctness and duration. They constitute the characteristic elements of perceptions. Images are traces of former sensations, from which they differ in less distinctness. Compose the characteristic elements of the representations of memory and imagination. Feelings - love and hate, joy and sadness - have quality, intensity, duration. These are elements of spiritual movements. The task of psychology is to describe these elements using an experiment that refines the data of self-observation, to explain them mainly in terms of physiology, and to show that, grouped and distributed in a certain way, they form the various complex processes of which our consciousness. Attention, thinking have a sensory nature and do not contain a new elementary process similar to the three considered.

Titchener argues with the Würzburg psychologists on the issue of imageless thinking and puts forward a contextual theory of meaning. Titchener's system is a concentrated expression of an introspective interpretation of the psyche. The psychic is limited here to the sphere of the conscious and is studied as a consciousness closed in itself. The testimony of self-observation is accepted as what they claim to be, i.e., the thesis is advanced about the direct knowledge of the psychic, about the coincidence of phenomenon and essence in psychology.

Functionalism

The reaction to this direction was functionalism. The discrepancy between the structural and functional approaches in American psychology was also characteristic of European science and, perhaps, comes from it: the ideological source of functional psychology is F. Brentano's psychology of the act. F. Brentano (1838-1917) put forward a program that opposed both associative psychology and the new psychology of Wundt.

Brentano opposes Wundt's experimental method, the meaning of which, like measurements, from his point of view, is very limited for psychology, the internal perception of mental phenomena. Brentano's method was a variant of the subjective method of self-observation. The main thing for him was the question of the essence of the mental as a subject of psychological research. He opposes psychology as the science of the contents of consciousness. The true psychological reality is not they, but the acts of our consciousness.

Brentano contrasts mental phenomena with physical ones. Thus, the subject of psychology is mental phenomena as acts - visions, hearings, judgments, etc. But an act has no meaning if it is not directed at an object. An act intentionally contains something as the object to which it is directed. Therefore, the main characteristic of psychological acts, according to Brentano, is that they have an immanent objectivity, that is, they are always directed towards an object. Consciousness is always "consciousness about". But each act contains the object as its object in a special way: “In representation, something is presented, in judgment something is recognized or rejected, in love it is loved, in hate it is hated, in desire it is desired, etc.”

Objects in the sense of Brentano have not real material, but intentional being. These are ideal objects that are themselves in the soul. Brentano, as it were, places the entire objective world in the human soul. According to the way of relating to the subject, Brentano classifies spiritual acts into three types: acts of representation, acts of judgment, acts of feeling. In representation, the object is - is presented - to consciousness. The modifications of this act are perception, imagination, concept. Among all mental acts, representation plays a leading role. Judgment is another kind of relation to an object. In contrast to traditional associationism, in which a judgment is understood as a combination or separation of representations, according to Brentano, in a judgment, an object is perceived as true or false. In acts of feeling, the subject relates to his object as good or evil. This class of psychic phenomena also embraces desire and will. Brentano put the doctrine of feelings as the basis of his ethical ideas.

Singling out three types of acts, Brentano emphasized their unity in an integral mental life, in contrast to the physical world, in which objects can exist as separate things. Brentano compares consciousness in the unity of its acts to a river in which one wave follows another.

In the psychology of intentional acts, three important questions of the psychology of consciousness are raised - objectivity, activity, and unity. In these properties, according to Brentano, the specificity of mental phenomena appears. However, due to idealistic positions, consideration of consciousness in isolation from the practical activity of a person, Brentano could not reveal the actual content of these real characteristics of consciousness.

The real experimental development of Brentano's theory of the act received in the psychology of functions K. Stumpf (1848-1936). Stumpf's students at various times were E. Husserl, as well as K. Koffka, W. Köhler, M. Wertheimer, K. Levin, later founders of Gestalt psychology.

The central concept of Stumpf's psychology is the concept of function, which corresponds to the concept of Brentano's act. Stumpf distinguishes between the phenomena of consciousness, mental functions, their products (for example, the concept as a product of understanding). In this case, it is the functions that constitute the most essential thing in mental life and the task of research. Phenomena are only material for the work of the soul organism. It is depending on the function that we notice in the integral phenomenon of its part, for example, a certain tone in a chord. Stumpf makes a classification of functions. Their experimental study was carried out on the material of auditory perceptions, in particular music.

On the American continent, the ideas of the psychology of the act turned into a large independent trend - functionalism. Psychology is at the root of it. W. James (1842-1910). He rejects the atomism of contemporary psychology. Personal self-observation, which psychology must follow, shows each person that these hypothetical elements are inaccessible to him. In self-observation, it is not these atoms that are revealed to us, but some integral concrete states of consciousness. They are changeable: the past state of consciousness cannot reappear and literally repeat itself. It is the object we perceive that is identical, and not our sensations. That is why it is wrong to look at mental life as a shuffling and association of the same ideas. Psychic life is a constant change of qualities. There are no connections in the mind. It flows continuously. The constant change of qualities constitutes the stream of consciousness. In its continuous flow, some transitional states stand out. Like the flight of a bird, it is composed, as it were, of alternating flights and landings. The places of rest are usually occupied by some kind of sensual images, the places of flight are filled with thoughts about the relations that exist between objects observed during periods of relative rest. These states, that is, awareness of the relationships between the phenomena of consciousness - spatial, temporal, similarities, differences - cannot be grasped by self-observation.

A characteristic feature of the stream of consciousness is the presence of mental overtones, vague images, vague and indistinct phenomena of consciousness. Consciousness is distinguished by selectivity, i.e., selectivity: in it, one state always moves forward, the other, on the contrary, fades into the background in accordance with what is needed, important, interesting for this individual. Selectivity distinguishes our experiences, in the external world all objects have the same degree of reality.

The question of the connection between states and the brain is solved by James in his theory of mental automatism, which is a variation of the concept of psychophysical parallelism. All mental processes are a function of brain activity, changing in parallel with the latter and relating to it as an action to a cause. However, this theory is contrary to common sense, which says that we have consciousness and once it has arisen, then, like all other functions, it is expedient. The same is true of the theory of evolution. All descriptive psychology rests on this point of view. Therefore, in the description of consciousness, according to James, it is necessary to follow the traditional terminology.

In connection with reflections on the essence of consciousness, he outlined a new approach to its study. “I deny consciousness as an essence, as a substance, but I will sharply insist on its significance as a function ... This function is cognition. The necessity of consciousness is caused by the need to explain the fact that things not only exist, but are not yet noted and known.

This is most strikingly and consistently widespread in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. the direction is represented by psychologists of the Chicago School (J. Dewey, J. R. Angell, A. W. Moore, J. G. Mead, G. Carr, and others). They argued that the elements usually distinguished - stimulus and response - do not really exist as separate ones. They are inside the coordination and correspond to its different phases. By analogy with the reflex, the psyche must also be considered in connection with its useful function in behavior. The practical usefulness of ideas was considered the main property of ideas.

Functionalism, instead of analyzing consciousness from the side of content in terms of its constituent elements, required consideration of consciousness from the side of its function in behavior. Instead of analyzing consciousness according to the “what” type, analysis of consciousness according to the “how”, “why” type of mental operation is performed, how the mind works when it deals with the outside world, what are the operations through which consciousness solves certain tasks in one or another adaptive act . The subject of study is a function, i.e. an operation. To study a function means to reveal its coordination, on the one hand, with the organism, with the state of the need that it satisfies, and with the external environment to which this function is directed. The mental function, considered from the point of view of its usefulness in practical situations, is an instrument of adaptation to the environment.

Psychologists of this direction opposed Titchener's ideas about psychology as a pure science. On the contrary, the functionalist "finds some pleasure in the social application of his work." What structuralism abstracted from - meaning, value, relation - should not be excluded from psychology just because they are unobservable. The next requirement of the functionalists was not to be limited only to the field of consciousness, but to consider the whole organism in the unity of mind and body.

The antithesis of functionalism is structuralism as the main content of the theoretical struggle in the foreign psychology of consciousness in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. highlighted the one-sidedness of each of these approaches. Structuralism built its research, abstracting from the role of consciousness in behavior, while the psychology of the act and functionalism underestimated the content side of consciousness.

Psychology has entered a period of open crisis.

Russian psychology

In pre-revolutionary Russia the official psychology was idealistic psychology. It distinguishes 2 options: speculative-philosophical and empirical. The speculative-philosophical line was presented by university psychologists - the neo-Kantian A.I. Vvedensky, L. M. Lopatin, intuitionist N. O. Lossky, S. L. Frank.

A. I. Vvedensky proclaimed a refusal to discuss any philosophical - metaphysical - questions in psychology: psychology studies mental phenomena in an invaluable way as facts of internal nature, in contrast to ethics, aesthetics, pedagogy, logic, etc. Its task is to investigate the composition of each mental phenomenon, how elementary phenomena it develops, how it changes depending on the change of elements, how different mental phenomena influence each other (memory - on thinking, thinking - on will, etc.). Thus, in the name of psychology preserving its specificity, the refusal or study of the mental in its relations with the external world was proclaimed. This idealistic approach has received a particularly vivid expression in the so-called “law of the absence of objective signs of animation”: the psychic has no external materially expressed signs, since they can be without psychic accompaniment. From this followed the conclusion about introspection as the only method of study in psychology. The question of the limits of animation was declared unresolvable: both the assumption of animation, for example, of plants, i.e., universal animation, and its opposite, i.e., the denial of mental life, are irrefutable. Outside of empirical knowledge, the question of the existence of someone else's animation was declared. This is an "unprovable opinion", which, however, is forced by the presence of a moral feeling, which is impossible in a soulless object.

The empirical line in idealistic psychology was distinguished by adherence to Locke's empiricism and English associationism, attention to the methods of empirical research, in particular, a positive attitude towards experiment.

MI Vladislavlev opposed materialism and physiological research methods, considering them fruitless for psychology. For the first time in Russian science, he gave a broad historical overview of the development of psychological knowledge since antiquity.

M. M. Troitsky spoke supporter of English empiricism. He criticized German idealistic psychology for its separation from empiricism and propagated in Russia the English line on empiricism.

Successor Troitsky N. Ya. Grotto expresses a number of considerations of a general psychological nature. In accordance with the evolutionary point of view of G. Spencer, he considers mental life as one of the types of interaction between the organism and the environment. His theory of mental turnover deserves attention. In each mental act, he identifies 4 phases, together they make up a turnover, which is the regulator of the interactions of the organism with the environment. The turnover includes: external impressions on the organism, their processing into internal ones (this, in particular, includes feelings), the internal movement caused by this internal impression, then the external movement of the organism towards the object. Groth himself emphasized the novelty of his approach: he introduced the concept of "activity" into the number of basic psychological concepts.

A large place in idealistic psychology belongs to G. . I. Chelpanov (1862-1936). His main merit is in the creation of the Psychological Institute, pedagogical activities for the training of psychological personnel and the popularization of psychology. Chelpanov criticizes materialism, which in psychology was understood as a reduction of the mental to the physiological. In the interpretation of the psyche, he stood on idealistic positions, psycho-physiological parallelism, that is, he recognized the autonomy of the mental and its correspondence to physiological processes.

He played a significant role in Russian psychology G. G. Shpet (1879-1940). His scientific and pedagogical activity belongs to different areas: in addition to psychology, he acted in the field of philosophy, logic, art history, and literature. Together with Chelpanov, he participated in the development of the project of the Psychological Institute. Of Shpet's psychological research, his ideas in the field of ethnic psychology are the most studied.

The materialistic line in the psychology of pre-revolutionary Russia developed in line with natural-science materialism and, being a continuation of Sechenov's ideas, was aimed at the objectivity of psychological research. V. M. Bekhterev and N. N. Lange were prominent representatives of this trend. I. P. Pavlov's research also played a major role in it.

N.N. Lange (1858-1921) defended the biological approach and opposed epiphenomenalism in its various variants. "The psyche is not an epiphenomenon, but a real fact." Experimental studies of perception led him to the theory of perception as a phase process. Perception does not occur instantly in its entirety; 4 steps are distinguished in it, from the change of which Lange deduced the law of perception: a sensual image is formed gradually - from a holistic impression to a detailed distinction of its properties. These steps are conditioned by the whole course of biological development. A conclusion was made about the objectivity of human perception. Experimental studies of attention led him to the motor theory of attention: attention is a motor reaction of the body that improves the conditions of perception. The intermittency of muscular movements explains the fluctuations in attention. Attention has three forms: reflex, instinctive, volitional. The volitional form of attention is the product of experience, and not some independent fortitude, such as Wundt's apperception. Lange's research introduced objective methods into science and experimentally substantiated the materialistic view of the psyche.

In the direction of objectivity in psychology, the activities of V. M. Bekhterev (1857-1927) developed. The central idea of ​​Bekhterev is the unification of various branches of neurology: neurosurgery, neuropathology, physiology and psychology. In psychology, Bekhterov in the first period of his activity used the objective methods of experimental research by Wundt. In the second period, at the beginning of the 20th century, he created an objective psychology, in which, on the basis of objective studies of man, he proposed a new system of concepts of psychology and a new terminology.

He considers mental activity as reflex, and various aspects and forms of this activity as its various types: attention is a reflex of concentration, mental activity is symbolic reflexes, etc.

In the third - Soviet period Bekhterev creates the general foundations of reflexology. On the basis of experimental work on the study of combinational, i.e., motor reflexes developed in an individual during his lifetime, in animals and humans, the totality of which he called correlative activity, Bekhterev concluded that it was this activity that should become the object of study as the embodiment of a strictly objective approach to mental activity. He sought to extend this concept to all branches of psychology, including child psychology.

Questions of social conditioning of behavior and development constituted "Collective reflexology". Its task was to study the ways and manifestations of collective reflexes, which in their totality form collective activity, in comparison with individual reflexes or individual activity. Here Bekhterev tried to establish universal laws to which the inorganic, organic and social world is subject. The laws of gravity, inertia, relativity, etc., he extended to the understanding of the psyche and social phenomena.

Heiress B . M. Bekhtereva was the Leningrad psychological school. V.N. Myasishchev, A. V. Yarmolenko, B. G. Ananiev, who made up its core were direct students of Bekhterev.

I. P. Pavlov (1849-1936) did not create his own psychological concept, but the influence that he had on the development of psychology, both world and domestic, is undoubtedly great and fruitful.

For the first time, the physiologist Pavlov turned to mental phenomena in connection with his work on the study of the activity of the digestive glands. It turned out that the work of the digestive glands can be determined not only by purely physiological factors (irritation of the oral cavity), but also by the type of food, its smell, i.e., facts of a mental nature. Pavlov called the secretion of the salivary gland to these factors "psychic secretion", but interpreted it in physiological terms. The explanation of these facts laid the foundation for the theory of conditioned reflexes.

All further work of IP Pavlov was aimed at studying conditioned reflex connections: the conditions for their formation, development, extinction. The biological meaning of conditioned reflexes was emphasized: they serve to balance the organism with the external environment. Conditioned stimuli have a signal value: they are signals of external stimuli of unconditioned reflexes. In Pavlov's experiments, the need for reinforcement and an orienting reflex for the formation of a new connection emerged.

Describing the features of human higher nervous activity, Pavlov outlined the doctrine of the second signal system as an addition to the mechanisms of higher nervous activity.

Pavlov hoped that his objective research would make it possible to analyze adaptation from its simplest forms up to its highest manifestations, i.e., mental phenomena in animals and consciousness in humans. Pavlov recognized the reality of the subjective world and psychology as a science that studies it.

But Pavlov was convinced that subjective psychology, as the science of the phenomena of consciousness, does not provide knowledge of them. Speaking of the need to merge physiology and psychology, he had in mind the use of physiological data to understand the subjective world.

Development of experimental psychology

The separation of psychology into an independent science was accompanied by the intensive development of experimental research. Psychological laboratories and institutes for experimental and applied research are being set up in all countries. Despite the limitations that were introduced for the experiment by its founder Wundt already in the 80s. it is being extended to the study of higher mental functions. Started them G. Ebbinghaus (1850-1909) with his work on memory, to which the works G. E. Müller (1850-1934) and employees. Psychologists of the Würzburg School in the first decade of the 20th century. began an experimental study of thinking and will. Experimental research merges with medical, pedagogical, industrial, and other practice, and applied fields of psychology emerge.