Elements of the integral structure of personality in psychology. What is a personality in psychology, its structure and types? One of the sides that make up the structure of personality

Scientists have long sought to find in the content behind the concept of "personality" the main aspects of analysis, some components, "blocks", the orientation to which would help in the knowledge of a particular person. Of course, these aspects can only be abstractions that roughen reality, but without such roughenings of knowledge there is no cognition. This is the problem of personality structure. In fact, we have already touched on it when we talked about the personality structure proposed by Z. Freud. It can be assumed that a hint at the structure of personality is contained in the question we have just considered about the relationship between the concepts of "individual", "personality", "individuality".

In domestic psychology there are some special solutions to this problem, which we will partially present here.

S. L. Rubinshtein determined the study of “ mental appearance» personality with three questions:

What does a person want, what is attractive to him, what does he aspire to? It is a question of his orientation, his attitudes and tendencies, needs, interests and ideals.
What can a person do? This is a question about his abilities, talents.
What is a person? This is the question of “what of his tendencies and attitudes entered his flesh and blood and was fixed as the core personality traits. It's a question about a person's character."

Can this scheme help in thinking about a particular person? Certainly. Non-constructive ways of self-affirmation of a certain person, which significantly complicate his life, may stem from an internal conflict between his striving for great life goals (orientation) and the lack of the habit of working on developing the corresponding abilities in himself. And the very absence of this habit can be legitimately attributed to character.

In the context of concretizing the correlation of social and biological factors in personality development, one can refer to the solution to the problem of personality structure proposed by K. K. Platonov. There are four substructures of personality.

The substructure of the personality orientation, which includes the worldview, beliefs, interests, desires, drives. In the forms of orientation, both attitudes and moral qualities of the individual are manifested.
The substructure of experience, which manifests itself in knowledge, skills, abilities. It can also be called a substructure of readiness. It is through this substructure that the individual development of a person accumulates the historical experience of mankind.
Individual features of individual mental processes or mental functions. Here we can point to the fact that some people think quickly, but perhaps somewhat superficially, others - slowly, but they are more striving to comprehend the essence of phenomena. Similar features are found in other mental processes.
Biologically determined substructure. It includes properties associated with gender, age, type of nervous system, and organic changes.

When moving from the fourth substructure to the first, the value of the biological conditionality of personality properties decreases and the value of their social certainty increases. It is important that biologically determined properties are included in the personality structure. This fact is not consistent with the above statement by A. N. Leontiev about personality as a “special quality” of purely social origin. In his opinion, a person "reckons" with innate properties and uses them in organizing his activity. As for the structure of the personality, it is "a relatively stable configuration of the main hierarchized motivational lines within itself," which is produced from the hierarchy of the corresponding activities that make up the basis of the personality.

Against the background of these judgments, we present another solution to the question of the structure of personality. In this case, there are three hierarchical levels in the functioning of the personality: “Firstly, this is the core of the personality, which is a set of motivational structures that set the direction of the “movement” of the personality ... Secondly, this is the periphery of the personality, which determines the specific way of implementing the motivational core . The periphery of the personality is made up of personal meanings, traits, systems of constructs, social roles in which the subject is included, his personal history. At this level of discussion, it is possible to carry out a personality typology. Thirdly, this is the level of individual prerequisites for the existence of a person, which, in essence, are impersonal. Individual prerequisites (for example: gender, age, structure and properties of the nervous system, the nature of neurohumoral regulation, etc.) in themselves are not informative in relation to the individual, but determine the characteristics of the individual's interaction with the world and with himself. It turns out that the motivational sphere is the core of the personality, but the structure of the personality is not exhausted by it.

Consider another interesting solution to the problem of personality structure, which has practical significance. Three components of this structure are distinguished by A.V. Petrovsky.

First - intraindividual(or intra-individual) substructure. This is the organization of the personality of a person, represented by the structure of temperament, character, abilities.
At the same time, a person cannot be considered as something located only in the closed space of the individual's body. It reveals itself in the sphere of interindividual relations, in the space of interpersonal interactions. Hence the second substructure of personality - interindividual.
Third substructure - meta-individual(or superindividual). In this case, the focus is on the “contributions” that a person makes by his activity to other people. Thus, the personality not only moves beyond the limits of the organic body of the individual, not only moves beyond the limits of its cash, "here and now" existing connections with other people, but also continues itself in other people. This ideal representation of the personality in other people due to the "contributions" made to them is called personalization. Apparently, such "contributions" to a large extent determine the scale of the individual.

Thus, we have considered a number of solutions to the question of the structure of personality. They differ significantly from each other due to the extreme complexity of the object of knowledge, as well as the versatility of approaches to it by researchers. However, together they help to comprehend the content that stands behind the concept of "personality".

In most of the most diverse psychological definitions, a person appears as a "set", "sum", "system", "organization", etc., i.e. as a certain unity of certain elements, as a certain structure. Both in foreign psychology of various directions, and in the domestic one, we can meet many specific developments of personality structures (3. Freud, K.G. Jung, G. Allport, K.K. Platonov, B.C. Merlin, etc.). At the same time, understanding the problem of personality structure from general theoretical positions and the subsequent consideration of the most important points in the construction of one's own concept is not so common. Examples of such developments are personality structures created by K.K. Platonov, G. Eysenck.

Platonov, having analyzed the philosophical and psychological understanding of the structure, defines it as the interaction of a real-life mental phenomenon, taken as a whole (in particular, personality), and its substructures, elements and their comprehensive connections. To describe the structure of personality, according to Platonov, it is necessary to establish what is taken as a whole, to delimit and define it. Then it is necessary to find out what constitutes the elements of this integrity, understanding by them the parts that are indecomposable within the framework of the given system and relatively autonomous of it. Moreover, it is necessary to take into account the fullest possible number of these elements. At the next stage, the most significant and general connections between the elements, between each of them and integrity should be revealed. Further, the necessary and sufficient number of substructures is revealed, which will fit all the elements of the analyzed integrity. Substructures and elements are classified. Next, it is important to explore the genetic hierarchy of component levels.

The result of such a structural analysis was the dynamic, functional structure of the personality of K.K. Platonov. It consists of four adjacent substructures:

substructure of orientation and personality relations;
knowledge, skills, abilities, habits, i.e. experience;
individual features of individual mental processes;
typological, age, gender personality traits, i.e. biopsychic.

Platonov also identifies substructures of character and abilities as superimposed on four main substructures.

The ideas of S.L. Rubinstein and V.N. Myasishchev, although specific structures were created by their followers.

A.G. Kovalev identifies the following components of the personality structure: orientation (a system of needs, interests, ideals), abilities (an ensemble of intellectual, volitional and emotional properties), character (synthesis of relationships and behaviors), temperament (a system of natural properties). B.C. Merlin created the theory of integral personality, he describes two groups of individual characteristics. The first group - "properties of the individual" - includes two substructures: temperament and individual qualitative features of mental processes. The second group - "personality properties" - has three substructures:

motives and attitudes;
character;
capabilities.

All substructures of the personality are interconnected due to the mediating link - activity.

B.G. Ananiev used a broader category of "man", which includes the whole range of private categories, such as an individual, a personality, an individuality, a subject of activity. He proposed the general structure of man. Each of the elements of this structure has its own substructure. So, in the structure of a person as an individual, there are two levels, and it includes age-sex properties, individual-typical (constitutional, neurodynamic features, etc.), psycho-physiological functions, organic needs, inclinations, temperament. Personality itself is organized no less complicated: status, roles, value orientations - this is the primary class of personal properties; motivation of behavior, the structure of social behavior, consciousness, etc. - secondary personal properties.

In foreign concepts of personality, much attention is also paid to the problem of structure. One of the most famous is the personality structure of 3. Freud. In the concept of K.G. Jung, in which the personality, like that of Freud, appears as a system, the following important substructures are distinguished: Ego, personal unconscious and its complexes, collective unconscious and its archetypes, persona, anima, animus and shadow. Within the framework of depth psychology, G. Murray, W. Reich and others also addressed the problem of personality structure.

A large group of foreign researchers considers traits as structural units of personality. G. Allport was one of the first to work in this direction. His theory of personality is called "theory of traits". Allport distinguishes the following types of traits: personality traits (or general traits) and personal dispositions (individual traits). Both are neuropsychic structures that transform a multitude of stimuli and cause a multitude of equivalent responses. But personality traits include any characteristics inherent in a certain number of people within a given culture, and personal dispositions - such characteristics of an individual that do not allow comparison with other people, make a person unique. Allport focused on the study of personal dispositions. They, in turn, are divided into three types: cardinal, central and secondary. The cardinal disposition is the most general, it determines almost all human actions. According to Allport, this disposition is relatively uncommon, and not seen in many people. The central dispositions are the bright characteristics of the personality, its building blocks, and they can be easily detected by others. The number of central dispositions on the basis of which a person can be accurately recognized is small - from five to ten. The secondary disposition is more limited in manifestation, less stable, less generalized. All personality traits are in certain relationships, but relatively independent of each other. Personality traits exist in reality, and are not just a theoretical invention, they are a driving (motivating) element of behavior. According to Allport, personality traits are united into a single whole by a specific construct, the so-called proprium.

A trait is also a basic category in R. Cattell's theory of personality. In his opinion, in order to gain knowledge about a person, three main sources can be used: registration data of real life facts (L-data), self-assessment data when

filling out questionnaires (Q-data) and data from objective tests (OT-data). Cattell and his collaborators have been conducting large-scale surveys of several age groups in different countries for several decades. These data were subjected to factor analysis in order to identify underlying factors that determine or control variation in surface variables. The results of this survey was the consideration of personality as a complex and differentiated structure of traits. A trait is a hypothetical mental structure that is found in behavior and causes a predisposition to act in the same way in different circumstances and over time. Traits can be classified in several ways. Central is the distinction between surface features and baseline features. A superficial trait is a series of behavioral characteristics of a person accompanying each other (in medicine this is called a syndrome). They do not have a single basis and are inconsistent. More important are the original features. These are some combined values or factors. It is they that determine the constancy of human behavior and are the "blocks of the personality building." There are 16 baseline traits, according to the results of Cattell's factor analysis. To measure them, the questionnaire "16 Personality Factors" (16 PF) is used. These factors are: responsiveness - alienation, intelligence, emotional stability - instability, dominance - subordination, prudence - carelessness, etc.

The initial traits can, in turn, be divided into two types depending on their origin: traits that reflect hereditary traits - constitutional traits; resulting from the social and physical conditions of the environment - traits shaped by the environment. The original features can be distinguished in terms of the modality through which they are expressed. Ability traits are related to the effectiveness of achieving the desired goal; temperament traits - with emotionality, speed, energy of reactions; dynamic traits reflect the motivational sphere of the personality. Dynamic traits are divided into three groups: attitudes, ergs and feelings. Cattell considers the complex interactions of these substructures, while he attaches special importance to the "dominant feeling" - the feeling of the I.

In the theory of G. Eysenck, personality is also represented as a hierarchically organized structure of traits. At the most general level, Eysenck distinguishes three types or super-features: extraversion - introversion, neuroticism - stability, psychotism - the power of the Super-Ego. At the next level, traits are surface reflections of the fundamental type. For example, extraversion is based on such traits as sociability, liveliness, perseverance, activity, striving for success. Below are the usual reactions; at the bottom of the hierarchy are specific responses or actually observable behavior. For each of the super traits, Eysenck establishes a neurophysiological basis. The severity of a particular super-feature can be assessed using specially designed questionnaires, the most famous in our country is the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire.

Just like G. Eysenck, J.P. Guilford viewed personality as a hierarchical structure of traits and was one of the first to study it using factor analysis. In personality, he singles out the sphere of abilities, the sphere of temperament, the hormic sphere, the class of parameters of pathology. In the field of temperament, for example, ten traits are factorially distinguished: general activity, dominance, sociability, emotional stability, objectivity, a tendency to think, etc.

The described classical studies of the structure of personality traits were a model and stimulus for subsequent numerous works on the empirical reproduction of one or another factor model or for the development of new grounds for a factor description of personality without a serious analysis of their relationships in a holistic concept of personality.

Are individuals born or made? What is this concept in general, and how is it interpreted by the science of man - psychology? Is every person a person, and if not, how to become one? Read about all this in the article.

William James is considered to be the founder of personality psychology. He owns the philosophical theory of pragmatism, from which many modern trends in psychology have emerged.

James is the first transpersonal psychologist. According to his theory, personality is the interaction of instincts and habits with the volitional qualities of a person.

However, the very term "personality" belongs to N. M. Karamzin. In his understanding, a person is the master of fate, life, a spiritually rich and original person who is responsible for his actions. Based on this, it can be argued that a person is not born, but becomes.

Personality is a product of the social in man. At birth, a person has only a biological element, but immediately begins his formation as a person, that is, he assimilates social experience.
However, there are many approaches to the interpretation of the phenomenon of personality. You can read more about this in the article.
In psychology, it is customary to distinguish the inner and outer world of the individual. You can read about the first element in the article. The outside world means the relationship of the individual with society, the social environment, education and formation as a subject of society.

In order to become a person, you need to make a lot of effort:

master speech;
with its help - motor, intellectual and sociocultural skills.

The formation of a person as a person is the result of his socialization. The more a person perceives and assimilates information, value orientations, traditions, the more developed personality he will become.

The concept of personality is closely related to the concept of the individual and individuality:

An individual is a person as a representative of his species.
Personality is the totality of a person's unique characteristics.

But what is interesting: a person can be an individual, but not be a person at the same time. Each person is unique, but not everyone becomes a person.

Thus, if we speak of a person as a person, then we mean a social element in our nature. While when discussing a person as an individual, the biological element plays an important role.

The process of personality formation is a holistic and interconnected process of formation, interests, worldview, beliefs and ideals of a particular person.

Personality structure

The structure of personality includes orientation, temperament, character, features of the flow of cognitive processes and feelings.

Personal orientation

It consists of:

interests,
tendencies,
needs,
motives,
ideals.

Orientation determines the activity of the individual and the levels of its development. The main component of the orientation of the personality is a worldview (a system of views on the development of society, nature, consciousness, beliefs). You can read more about this element in the article.

Temperament

This is a set of individual personality traits that characterize the dynamic and emotional side of its activities and behavior. You can read more about temperaments.

Character

A complex of individual, most pronounced, stable traits. Through them, a person's attitude to reality is manifested. Behavior depends on character.

Capabilities

These are the properties of the psyche and its systems, expressed in different ways. The success of the development and implementation of activities depends on them.

Motivational-need sphere as the basis of personality

Needs - the motivating force of the activity of the individual.

Need - the need of the body in certain conditions, without which life is impossible.
A motive is an objectified need.
The set of motives aimed at the goal is motivation.

The need to know the world is the most important for a person. It releases a person from the captivity of fears, misunderstandings and superstitions, allows you to be the creator of life.

Other spiritual needs are no less significant for the individual:

in aesthetic pleasure;
in labor;
in social activities;
in communication.

The development of needs (from the lowest to the highest) is a condition for the development of the personality.

Aspects of personality

the properties of the person himself, or the intra-individual aspect;
features of the interaction of the individual with other people, or the interindividual aspect;
the impact of personality on other people, or the meta-individual aspect.

Through the analysis of these aspects, one can characterize the inner world of a person.

A person is a representative of a particular society or social group, engaged in a specific type of activity, aware of his attitude to the world around him and having certain individual psychological characteristics.

Difficulties in understanding a person as a person

The complexity of a clear representation and description of the phenomenon of personality lies in the ambiguity of the theory. The following problem areas can be identified:

Often a person is identified with an individual.
Sometimes a person is called a part of the inner world or features of the mental structure.
The personality is regarded as a certain component, which includes something given from birth, and some unattainable ideal, and a set of social relations.
How many sciences that study a person and researchers who ask this question exist, so many definitions of the term "personality" exist.

The personality is characterized by the system of its conscious relations. Recently, it has become popular to talk not only about the influence of social and biological factors, but also about the role of the situation as a deterrent element of the personality.

Afterword

Despite the fact that most scientists are of the opinion that individuals are made, not born, the question of whether all people are individuals continues to gather controversy and ambiguous opinions around itself.

The questions of whether a child can be considered a person are controversial, although humanistic pedagogy claims that, of course, it is possible and necessary.
Just as controversial is the understanding of a mentally ill person or a criminal as a person.
Don't the phrases "asocial personality" or "degraded personality" look ridiculous?

As a result, everyone chooses which side he belongs to in these matters. In my opinion, each person (especially important for young children during education) can be treated as a potential personality, that is, they can be given a few points head start. However, this is possible until the person proves otherwise.

The term "personality" has several different meanings. The word "personality" in English comes from the Latin "persona". Initially, this word denoted the ritual masks of the Etruscans. In Rome, this word began to denote first the role depicted by the mask, then the role itself (“father person”). In fact, the term originally indicated a comic or tragic figure in a theatrical act. Thus, from the very beginning, the concept of “personality” included an external, superficial social image that an individual takes on when he plays certain life roles. Personality was also considered as a combination of the most striking and noticeable characteristics of individuality. In the understanding of most psychologists, the term "personality" does not imply an assessment of a person's character or his social skills. Most definitions emphasize individuality or individual differences. Personality contains such special qualities, thanks to which this person differs from all other people. Understanding what specific qualities or combinations of them differentiate one person from another can only be done by studying individual differences.

The human personality is extremely complex and unique. According to B.G. Ananyev, the unity of the biological and social in a person is ensured by the unity of such macrocharacteristics as individual, personality, subject and individuality.

Individual- a person as a single representative of the biological species homo sapiens and a separate type distinguished within its framework. The system of individual characteristics of a person: temperament, inclinations, constitution, sexual characteristics, biogenic needs, sensorimotor coordination, metabolism, neurodynamics.

Personality- a person as a representative of any type of social community. The system of personal traits of a person: orientation, inclinations, sociogenic needs, communication structure, social status, claims, social roles, ethnic characteristics.

Subject- a person as a subject of a certain type of activity; characterization of a person through the structure of various types of human activity (labor, communication, knowledge, play, sports). The system of subjective signs of a person: character, abilities, structure of activity, psychogenic needs, conative, creative, cognitive, emotive processes.

Individuality- a person as a single variant of the realization of those opportunities that met on his life path; a unique, unique combination of traits as an individual, personality and subject. The system of individual characteristics of a person: conscience, self-consciousness, self-realization, self-determination, self-regulation, self-identification, well-being, self-esteem.

Man as an integrity - as an individual, personality and subject, due to the unity of the biological and social in him.

There are different approaches to the structure of personality.

S.L. Rubinstein proposed the following personality structure:

1) orientation); 2) knowledge, skills and abilities; 3) individual characteristics of a person, manifested in temperament, character, abilities.

The concept of the dynamic functional structure of the personality, developed by K.K. Platonov, explains the variety of properties and characteristics of the individual by six substructures, four of them are basic, two are imposed. The fourth biologically determined substructure includes temperament, properties of higher nervous activity, age and gender characteristics, and pathologies. The third substructure is responsible for mental processes: gnostic - sensation, perception, attention, memory, ideas, imagination, thinking, speech; emotional and volitional processes. The second substructure combines knowledge, skills, abilities, habits of behavior, i.e., the social experience of the individual. The first substructure - orientation - is the most socially conditioned, it covers the needs, drives, motives, desires, interests, inclinations, ideals, beliefs, worldview that determine the social behavior of a person, his main value orientations. The substructures "Abilities" and "Character" integrate the content of the four substructures listed above, which characterize character traits to a different extent, as a set of the most stable individual personality traits that manifest themselves in activity and communication, and determine ways of behavior. As well as abilities, as individual psychological characteristics of a person that determine the success of training or activity. The allocation of substructures is relatively conditional, because all elements of the personality structure are interconnected and interdependent. The fourth substructure is formed by training (multiple repetition), the third - by exercise (training with feedback), the second - by training, the first - by education.

In the process of personality formation, its self-consciousness develops, its three stages are distinguished:

Stage I (from birth to three years) - awareness of the boundaries of your body. Up to a certain point, the baby can play with his leg, hurt himself and not understand that he himself is a source of discomfort. Later, the child develops the ability to act independently with objects, and he perceives himself as an active subject. By the age of three, he uses the pronoun "I", which finally consolidates self-awareness.

Stage II (preschool age) is a long period of development of self-esteem, based initially on the opinion of significant adults (parents and educators). The preschooler's self-image is situational, unstable and emotionally colored.

Stage III (school age) - logical thinking develops, the role of friends and their opinions increases, the circle of contacts expands. A teenager compares different opinions about himself and, on their basis, develops his own opinion. Estimates become more and more generalized, stable, along with affective components of behavior, rational ones appear, on this basis moral self-esteem is formed.

As a result of the development of self-consciousness, a person develops " I"-concept.

"I" concept a system of a person's attitudes about himself, a generalized idea of himself. "I"-concept is formed, develops, changes in the process of socialization of the individual, in the process of self-knowledge. Ways of self-knowledge leading to the formation of the "I"-concept , diverse: self-perception and introspection, comparison of oneself with others (identification), perception and interpretation of reactions to oneself by others (reflection), etc. It should be noted that a person's ideas about himself seem convincing to him, regardless of whether they are based on objective knowledge or subjective opinion, whether they are true or false. Under the influence of various external or internal factors, the “I”-concept changes, i.e. "I"-concept is a dynamic formation.

Traditionally, there are three modalities of the "I"-concept: “I” is real, “I” is ideal, “I” is mirror.

"I" is real – representations related to how a person perceives himself: appearance, constitution, abilities, social roles, status, etc .; that is, his ideas of what he really is.

"I" is perfect – ideas about what a person would like to be. I-ideal reflects the goals that a person associates with his future.

"I" is a mirror associated with ideas about how he is seen and what others think of him.

The "I"-concept, understood as a system of attitudes (attitudes) regarding one's personality, has a complex structure in which three components are distinguished, as in the attitude: cognitive, emotional-evaluative and behavioral.

cognitive component - these are the main characteristics of self-perception and self-description of a person, which make up a person's ideas about himself. This component, the components of which are: “I” is physical, “I” is mental, “I” is social , often call The image of "I".

"I" - physical includes ideas about one’s gender, height, body structure, and one’s appearance in general (“bespectacled”, “beauty”, “fat man”, “dead man”, etc.). Moreover, the most important source of the formation of the physical Image of the “I”, along with gender identification (and, as psychologists note, it retains its significance throughout life and is the primary element of the “I”-concept) are the size of the body and its shape. A positive assessment of one's appearance can significantly affect the positivity of the "I" concept as a whole. The importance of appearance is determined by the fact that the body is the most open, obvious part of the personality and often becomes the subject of discussion.

"I"-psychic – a person's idea of the features of his cognitive activity: memory, thinking, imagination, attention, etc.), about his mental properties (temperament, character, abilities, etc.); about their capabilities in general (“I can do everything”, “I can do a lot”, “I can’t do anything”).

"I" - social – representation of their social roles (daughter, sister, girlfriend, student, athlete, etc.), social status (leader, performer, outcast, etc.), social expectations.

Emotional-evaluative component – self-assessment of the Image of "I", which may have a different intensity, since individual traits, features, personality traits can cause various emotions associated with satisfaction or dissatisfaction with them. Even such objective characteristics as height, age, physique, can have different meanings not only for different people, but also for one person in different situations. For example, a forty-year-old person may feel like he is in his prime or an old man. It is known that excessive fullness is undesirable, and full people often feel inferior, since a person has a tendency to extrapolate even slight external shortcomings of his Self to the person as a whole. Self-esteem reflects the degree of development of a person's sense of self-esteem, a sense of his own value and a person's attitude to everything that is included in the Image of "I".

Claim level personality - the desire to achieve goals of the degree of complexity for which a person considers himself capable. In the classical concept of W. James, self-esteem is defined as the mathematical ratio of the real achievements of the individual to the level of claims.

Self-esteem = success / level of aspirations.

Self-esteem may be low (underestimated ) or high (inflated) , adequate and inadequate.

Low self-esteem involves rejection of oneself, self-denial, negative attitude towards oneself as a person, blocking the realization of the need for self-respect and respect, leads to intrapersonal conflicts, discomfort. Ways to compensate for low self-esteem, a negative attitude towards oneself can be different (lower the level of claims to one's capabilities and thus increase self-esteem and change one's attitude towards oneself, change one's attitude to the situation and behavior).

A high self-evaluation demonstrates a person's confidence in himself, his abilities, strengths. It is important that high self-esteem correspond to the capabilities of a person, that is, be real.

Adequate self-esteem testifies to the correspondence of self-assessment to the real possibilities of the subject and its assessment by other subjects.

Inadequate self-esteem- unrealistically high / low self-esteem leads to negative consequences, often accompanied by social maladjustment of the individual, creates the basis for both intrapersonal and interpersonal conflicts.

Behavioral the component of the "I"-concept is the actual or potential behavior of a person, which can be caused by the image of the I and the self-esteem of the individual. As K.Rogers notes, the “I”-concept, having relative stability, determines rather stable patterns of human behavior.

A person uses defense mechanisms to protect his "I" from shame, guilt, anger, anxiety, conflict, i.e. any danger. The purpose of protective mechanisms is an urgent easing of tension, anxiety. The theory of defense mechanisms was first developed by 3. Freud. The main mechanisms of protection are distinguished:

Crowding out - involuntary removal of unpleasant or unlawful desires, thoughts, feelings from consciousness into the unconscious sphere, forgetting them.

Negative - avoiding reality, denying an event as untrue or reducing the severity of the threat (non-acceptance, denial of criticism, assertion that this does not exist, etc.).

Rationalization - a way to rationally justify any actions and actions that are contrary to norms and cause concern. This is the justification of one's inability to do something by unwillingness, the justification of undesirable actions by objective circumstances. An example unconstructive behavior may be rationalization, pseudo-rethinking of the situation. If it is not possible to achieve goals, a person calms himself, “seeing” in unattainable goals a lot of shortcomings that were previously ignored, or refuses them as unworthy of such large expenses (“green grapes”). Rationalization of the “sweet lemon” type is aimed not so much at discrediting an inaccessible object as at exaggerating the value of an existing one.

Projection - attributing to other people their own negative qualities, states, desires, and, as a rule, in an exaggerated form.

substitution expressed in the partial, indirect satisfaction of an unacceptable motive in some other way, motive.

Sublimation – transformation of the energy of suppressed, forbidden desires into other types of activity, i.e., the transformation of inclinations. The main forms of sublimation are usually described as intellectual activity, artistic creativity.

Intellectualization - the process by which the subject seeks to express in a discursive way his conflicts, emotions, in order to master them.

Reaction formation - suppression of unwanted motives of behavior and conscious maintenance of motives of the opposite type.

The concept of personality is one of the key in psychology. In scientific psychology, the terms denoting representatives of the human species have slightly different meanings and indicate different functional features:

Man is the broadest concept denoting any member of the Homo sapiens species.

An individual refers to a specific member of the species Homo sapiens.

Personality indicates the social essence of a person, because it can be formed only in society, acquiring characteristics associated with the interaction of a person with the world of people: sociability, accentuation of character, organizational skills

Individuality is a single, unique manifestation of personality, characteristic only for this particular individual (for example, speech).

Personality is a person taken in the system of his psychological characteristics that are socially determined, manifested in social connections and relationships by nature, are stable, determine the moral actions of a person that are of significant importance for himself and those around him.

Personality structure:

Abilities (understood as individually stable properties of a person that determine his success in various activities)

Temperament (includes qualities on which a person's reactions to other people and social circumstances depend)

Character (contains qualities that determine a person's actions in relation to other people)

Volitional qualities (cover several special personality traits that affect a person’s desire to achieve their goals)

Emotions (experiences)

Motivation (inducements to activity)

Social attitudes (beliefs and attitudes of people)

Orientation of personality - interests, ideals, beliefs, worldview.

Personality theory of A.N. Leontiev:

According to A.N. Leontiev, “a person’s personality is created by social relations.” Personality, in his opinion, is a psychological formation of a special type generated by a person’s life in society. The subordination of various activities creates the basis of a personality, the formation of which occurs in the process of social development ( ontogeny).

The concept of "personality" Leontiev did not include the genotypic conditioned features of a person - physical constitution, type of nervous system, temperament, biological needs, efficiency, natural inclinations, as well as knowledge, skills and abilities acquired in vivo, including professional ones. The categories listed above, according to in his opinion, constitute the individual properties of a person. The concept of "individual", according to Leontiev, reflects, firstly, the integrity and indivisibility of a particular person as a separate individual of a given biological species and, secondly, the features of a particular representative of a species that distinguish him from other representatives of this species. In his opinion, individual properties, including genotypically determined ones, can change in the course of a person’s life. But this does not make them personal, because a person is not an individual enriched by previous experience. An individual’s properties do not turn into personality properties. , they remain individual properties, not determining the emerging personality, but the composition stating only the prerequisites and conditions for its formation.

Personality development appears as a process of interactions of many activities that enter into hierarchical relations with each other. Personality acts as a set of hierarchical relations of activities. “These hierarchies of activities are generated by their own development, they form the core of the personality,” the author notes.

For the psychological interpretation of the "hierarchies of activities" A.N. Leontiev uses the concepts of "need", "motive", "emotion", "meaning" and "meaning". .Leontiev as a structural element of the future framework of the personality. There are incentive motives, i.e. motivating, but devoid of a sense-forming function, and sense-forming motives or motives-goals, which also encourage activity, but at the same time give it a personal meaning. The hierarchy of these motives is motivational the sphere of personality, which is central in the structure of A.N. Leontiev’s personality, since the hierarchy of activities is carried out through an adequate hierarchy of motives-goals. lines ... form, as it were, a general "psychological" profile of the personality.

All this allows A.N. Leontiev to single out three main personality parameters:

The breadth of a person's connections with the world (through his activities);

The degree of hierarchy of these connections, transformed into a hierarchy of motives-goals;

The general structure of these connections, or rather motives-goals.

According to A.N. Leontiev, the process of becoming a personality is the process of “becoming a coherent system of personal meanings”.

5. PERSONALITY AND ITS PSYCHOLOGICAL STRUCTURE. FOREIGN THEORY OF PERSONALITY .

The subject is an indication of a specific, living, animated carrier of psychological phenomenology, activity and behavior.

Personality - 1) a person who develops in society and interacts and communicates with other people using language.

2) a conscious individual who freely and responsibly plays his social role (father, mother, son, worker, etc.) and occupies a certain position / status in society.

The psychological structure of a personality is an integral system, a model of qualities and properties that quite fully characterizes the psychological characteristics of a personality (a person, an individual, a subject).

Psychological structure of personality:

1. Temperament and character

2. Abilities and inclinations

4. "I-concept" - the inner "I" in a person, on the basis of which self-esteem, self-attitude, self-government, self-education, self-education are formed

5. Features of the manifestation of all other mental processes and states.

6. Mental experience of the individual

The psychoanalytic theory of Z. Freud (1856-1939) is an example of a psychodynamic approach to the study of human behavior, in which it is believed that behavior is controlled by unconscious psychological conflicts.

In order to describe the degree of accessibility of mental processes to awareness, Freud singled out three levels of consciousness: consciousness, preconscious and unconscious. In Freud's theory, a person's personality includes three structural components: Id (It), Ego (I) and Super-Ego (Super-I).

The id, which is the instinctive core of the personality, is primitive, impulsive and subject to the pleasure principle. The id uses reflex reactions and primary representations in order to obtain immediate satisfaction of instinctive urges.

The ego is the rational part of the personality and is governed by the reality principle. Its task is to develop for the individual an appropriate plan of action in order to meet the requirements of the Id within the limits of the social world and the consciousness of the individual. The ego solves this problem with the help of secondary processes of representation.

The super-ego, which is the last to form in the process of personality development, is its moral side. The super-ego consists of two structures - conscience and the ego-ideal.

Defense mechanisms: denial, suppression, rationalization, reaction formation, projection, intellectualization, substitution.

Freud's theory of motivation is based on the concept of instinct, defined as an innate state of arousal that seeks release. In the theory of psychoanalysis, two categories of instinct are distinguished: the instinct of life (Eros) and the instinct of death (Thanatos). The instinct has four main parameters: source, target, object and stimulus.

Freud's explanation of the stages of psychosexual development is based on the premise that sexuality begins at birth and develops through a series of biologically defined erogenous zones until maturity. In Freud's view, the development of personality passes through the following stages: oral, anal, phallic and genital. The latent period is not a stage of psychosexual development. Freud assumed that in the process of psychosexual development, unresolved conflicts lead to the fixation and formation of certain types of character. Thus, adults with fixation in the anal-retention stage become inflexible, boring, and compulsorily tidy.

Opened the unconscious; proposed a method for its study; offered psychotherapeutic methods.

Minimized the action of the conscious; exaggerated the importance of libido.

The psychological structure of a personality is a set of features and properties of a person's character, which are formed in the process of his interaction with the outside world. Personality research in psychology is carried out in two main directions, the first of which is based on the establishment of psychological traits, and the second - on the definition of personality types.

Individual personality traits

The psychological structure of the personality includes individual psychological characteristics of the personality, which can be divided into several subgroups:

affective sphere. It is a complex of mental processes associated with the desires, motivation and needs of a person, as well as with his emotional and sensory perception of the world.
Cognitive sphere. Includes memory, thinking, knowledge and skills of a person.
Worldview. Man's perception of the world around him. The worldview can be realistic, mystical, positive, negative, etc.
Life experience. It includes the totality of knowledge, skills and habits of a person acquired by him as a result of interaction with the world.
psychological type. The main components of this subgroup are the model of behavior and ways of responding to a person.
Temperament. It is characterized by the dynamics of the behavior of the individual, as well as the intensity of his emotional reactions. There are 4 types of temperament: sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, melancholic.
Body drawing. It represents individual features of body movements (gait, gestures, etc.).

Personal orientation

The psychological structure of the personality also contains the motives and desires of the individual; his ability to achieve his goals on his own. The combination of such psychological phenomena is called personality orientation. Since a person's life is conditioned by constant interaction with society, the formation of his personal orientation, to a large extent, has a social basis. Thus, the orientation of the personality well demonstrates the ideology and level of development of the society in which the individual resides. The interaction of people with different orientations often leads to a lack of mutual understanding between them, as well as to the development of conflict situations. However, the differences between people are multifaceted: at each stage of development there are clashes of opposing biological, mental and social interests, beliefs and goals. The study of personality traits allows you to achieve the most complete understanding of the mechanisms of the human psyche.