Functional approach in psychology. Functionalism

Functionalism is a philosophical movement that proclaims the priority study of practical properties thing, phenomenon or object. In this regard, functionalism is often contrasted with such schools of philosophy as historicism and structuralism, because functionalists believe that the ontological aspect of a thing takes precedence over issues of structure or development. From this we can conclude: supporters of functionalism believe that it is impossible to penetrate into the essence of an object without initially understanding why it is needed, what its function is in the reality around us.

In other words, the followers of the functionalist school adhered to a view briefly expressed in the following words: “How is it possible to understand the purpose and meaning of a corkscrew just by studying its physical signs and properties?” In addition, the functions of an object were considered an important property that drives its evolution and contributes to the formation or change of its structure.

Functionalism: the history of the movement and its founders

Functionalism as a philosophical and psychological movement of scientific thought developed in the United States of America at the end of the nineteenth century from the knowledge obtained by that time by experimental psychology. At that time, a popular view among psychologists was that each area of ​​the brain has its own specialization. The views of that era remained in the names of some areas of the brain, for example, Wernicke's area or Broca's area. To date, the views of functionalists have been largely edited by findings from research by neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists.

William James is considered the founder of functionalism, whose ideas were greatly influenced by the works of Herbert Spencer, Woodworth, Angell and John Dewey.

The basis of functionalism should be considered pragmatism, which at the end of the nineteenth century was the dominant movement in American philosophy and science, therefore the usefulness and applicability of ideas in practice was almost the only criterion that should guide philosophical and scientific activity and which met with almost unanimous approval.

The creation and development of the ideas of functionalism served as a powerful impetus for psychology. This moment for psychological science is considered a turning point and revolutionary, since functionalists actually split psychology into theoretical and applied.

Basic ideas of functionalism in psychology and research methods

Ideas

The main idea of ​​functionalism is the following: any state of mind can be explained in terms of the connections between cause and effect that exist between the state of mind being studied, the conditions of the surrounding reality that are the motivating reasons, and the behavior of the individual, which is a consequence of the action of the motivating reasons.

The attention of functionalists was primarily occupied by questions of how a person can adapt effectively to the reality around her, what mental functions she uses in this process and what needs to be done, what ways to find in order to improve adaptability.

In this regard, one cannot fail to mention the concept " reflex arc", which was first proposed by Dewey in 1896 and is considered a pillar of functionalism. The reflex arc includes the following parts with a specific purpose:

• Start;
• middle;
• end.

Dewey believed that a reflex is an act of coordination, holistic and unified, the purpose of which is to adapt the body to the conditions of the surrounding reality. The beginning of the arc characterizes the environmental conditions in which the organism is forced to function. The middle of the arc symbolizes how a living being analyzes these conditions and makes sense of them. The end of the arc means the reaction of the body, that is, those actions that it performs based on environmental conditions. From this Dewey concludes that the human psyche must be considered from the same angle as the reflex, namely: what useful role does it play for regulation of behavior individual.

As professional psychologists know, the word "psychology" is translated as "the science of the soul", but according to James, this science should not only think about what the soul is made of, how it works and why it can change, but also , what is its value for each individual human being, what purposes does it serve.

Regarding issues of consciousness, James' followers believed that it was necessary to deal not with the problems of the structure of consciousness, but with its role in human life and his survival. Thanks to such views, psychology has been enriched with a hypothesis that proclaims the role of consciousness to help the individual survive and adapt to the various situations that life puts before it. How does consciousness perform this function? In the following three ways:

• repetition habitual ways of responding to emerging situations;
• change habits that occur as a result of changes in circumstances;
• development and consolidation of new behavior patterns.

Functionalists have put forward an interesting point of view about essence of emotions, which was confirmed in the future after psychological research. They suggested that emotions are the result of changes that have occurred in an individual's physiology, so they cannot in any way be the cause of human behavior, but only a consequence.

Within the framework of functionalism in psychology, it was formulated postulate about ideomotor act, which stated that any thought of a person can lead him to action and result, if this thought is not actively interfered with by any other thought.

In the structure of personality, functionalists identified four facets of the human self:

1. Clean.
2. Material.
3. Spiritual.
4. Social.

A major contribution to modern psychology should be considered the idea of ​​the functionalists regarding individual self-esteem. They noticed that the degree to which a person respects himself depends on two quantities: on what the person considers success and its increase, as well as on the level of her aspirations.

Methods

Despite the fact that the attention of supporters of functionalism was paid primarily to the external manifestations of mental processes, in contrast to the structuralists who studied the internal side of human mental life, the main method of study for them was introspection.

Functionalist schools

Chicago school

Representatives of this school were John Dewey, Howard Carr and James Angell. The main views they held were as follows:

Columbia school

The most prominent representative of this direction of functionalism is Woodworth, who founded a branch in psychology, later called dynamic psychology. Supporters of this school adhered to the following views on the psyche of the individual:

1. The driving force behind an individual's behavior is internal motives.
2. Psychology should study not only consciousness, but also behavioral characteristics.
3. The strength and intensity of the reaction depends not only on the stimulus that affects the human nervous system, but also on the physiological characteristics of the body and the experience preserved in memory.
4. The observation method is suitable only for detecting and recording external manifestations of mental reactions. If a researcher needs to penetrate the depths of the psyche and find out what is happening there, it is necessary to use introspection.

Contributions of functionalism to psychology and other sciences

Functionalists put forward a revolutionary hypothesis for their time about emotions, which at the end of the nineteenth century were considered the source and cause of changes in the physiology of the human body, and suggested that emotions are nothing more than a consequence of processes occurring in the individual’s body.

The principles of functionalists are very similar to the principles used to analyze and study information processes, which allowed this philosophical and psychological movement to become the basis for the development of a computational theory of consciousness.

In the future, the ideas and scientific developments of functionalism became the basis for the emergence of a new movement in psychology called behaviorism.

In the Soviet Union, the ideas of functionalists were rejected by Soviet psychologists and branded as false and bourgeois.

At the origins of this direction, which at the beginning of the 20th century became one of the dominant ones in American psychology, was the Austrian psychologist Franz Brentano.

F. Brentano (1838-1917) began his career as a Catholic priest, leaving it due to disagreement with the dogma of papal infallibility and moving to the University of Vienna, where he became a professor of philosophy. Brentano's first work was devoted to the psychology of Aristotle, as well as its interpretation by medieval Catholic theologians, who developed the concept of intention as a special direction of thought. In his unfinished work “Psychology from an Empirical Point of View” (1874), Brentano proposed a new program for the development of psychology as an independent science, contrasting it with Wundt’s program that was dominant at that time.

He considered the problem of consciousness to be the main one for the new psychology. How does consciousness differ from all other phenomena of existence? Only by answering this question can we define the field of psychology. At that time, under the influence of Wundt, the prevailing opinion was that consciousness consists of sensations, perceptions, and ideas as special processes that replace each other. With the help of an experiment, they can be isolated, analyzed, and those elements or threads from which this special “fabric” of the internal subject is woven are found. Such a view, Brentano argued, is completely false, for it ignores the activity of consciousness, its constant focus on the object. To designate this indispensable feature of consciousness, Brentano proposed the term “intention.” It is initially inherent in every mental phenomenon and it is precisely because of this that it allows us to distinguish mental phenomena from physical ones.

Intention is not just activity. In it, together with the act of consciousness, some object always coexists. Psychology uses, in particular, the word “representation”, meaning by it the restoration in memory of imprints of what was seen or heard. According to Brentano, we should talk not about representation, but about representation, that is, about special spiritual activity, thanks to which the previous image is realized. The same applies to other mental phenomena. Speaking, for example, about perception, they forget that in this case there is not just a “popping up” of a sensory image, but an act of perceiving this content is performed. It is necessary to resolutely distinguish between act and content, not to confuse them, and then it will become absolutely clear that psychology is the science of acts of consciousness. No other science besides it studies these special intentional acts.

Describing and classifying the forms of these acts, Brentano came to the conclusion that there are three main forms: acts of imagining something, acts of judging something as true or false, and acts of emotional evaluation of something as desired or rejected. Outside the act, the object does not exist, but the act, in turn, arises only when directed towards the object. When a person hears a word, his consciousness rushes through the sound, material shell to the object in question. Understanding the meaning of a word is an act, and therefore it is a mental phenomenon. It is destroyed if we take separately the acoustic stimulus (sound) and the physical thing it denotes. The stimulus and the thing themselves do not belong to the field of psychology.

Brentano decisively rejected the analysis procedure adopted in the laboratories of experimental psychology. He believed that it distorts real mental processes and phenomena, which should be studied through careful internal observation of their natural course.

From Brentano's specifically psychological works, “Studies on the Psychology of Feelings” and “On the Classification of Mental Phenomena” are known. His other works are devoted to issues of philosophy and axiology. Of course, he considered obvious only mental phenomena given in internal experience, while knowledge about the external world is probabilistic.

The lessons of Brentano, who set out to describe how consciousness works, influenced various areas of Western psychological thought. Having established the principle of activity, Brentano became a pioneer of European functionalism. This was a direction that opposed the so-called structuralism in psychology, the leader of which was Wundt, who considered the task of the new psychological science to be the determination of those elements from which consciousness is composed, as well as the determination of the laws by which psychological structures are formed from them. This view of consciousness as a device “made of bricks and mortar” was opposed by the functionalists and their followers. Many psychologists studied with Brentano and were directly influenced by his ideas.

Brentano's ideas influenced Külpe and his Würzburg school. Among those who studied philosophy in Vienna with Brentano was Z. Freud. In his teaching, Brentano's concept of intention was transformed into a version of the “chaining” of psychic energy to external objects (including the individual’s own body).

The ideas of activity and objectivity of consciousness, although in an idealistic interpretation, became established thanks to Brentano in Western European psychology.

The German psychologist played an important role in the development of functionalism in its Western European version Karl Stumpf.

K. Stumpf (1848-1936) was a professor at the department of philosophy in Prague, Halle and Munich. Since 1894, he worked at the University of Berlin, where he organized a psychological laboratory. Under the influence of Brentano, he considered the subject of psychology to be the study of psychological functions, or acts (perception, understanding, volition), distinguishing them from phenomena (sensory or represented in the form of forms, values, concepts and similar contents of consciousness). Stumpf attributed the study of phenomena to a special subject area - phenomenology, connecting it with philosophy, and not with psychology.

Stumpf considered functions (or acts) to be the proper subject of psychology. Thus, what is subject to study is not the red color of the object (which, according to Stumpf, is a phenomenon, not a function of consciousness), but the act (or action) of the subject, thanks to which a person is aware of this color in its difference from others. Among the functions, Stumpf distinguished two categories: intellectual and emotive (or affective). Emotive functions consist of opposite pairs: joy and sadness, desire and rejection, desire and avoidance.

Certain phenomena that have been called “sensory sensations” can also acquire an emotional connotation.

Having been interested in music since childhood, Stumpf focused most of his experimental work on studying the perception of musical tones. These works were summarized in his two-volume work “Psychology of Tones,” which made the largest contribution to the study of psychological acoustics after Helmholtz. Polemicizing with Wundt, Stumpf considered it unnatural to divide the evidence of introspection into separate elements. Stumpf contrasted the results of those experiments conducted on psychologists of the Wundtian school, trained in introspective analysis, with the evidence of expert musicians as more trustworthy.

Stumpf viewed music as a cultural phenomenon. He created an archive of phonograms, which contained 10 thousand phonographic recordings of primitive music of various peoples. Stumpf took part in research on child psychology, organizing the German "Society of Child Psychology", as well as on animal psychology (proving, in particular, when discussing the sensational phenomenon of "clever Hans" - a horse that tapped out the "solution" of mathematical problems with its hoof - that the animal reacted to barely noticeable movements of the trainer). Stumpf facilitated the trip of his student W. Köhler to Africa to study the behavior of great apes. He had many other students who later became famous psychologists.

Despite all the interest in the works of Brentano and Stumpf, functionalism became most widespread in the USA, where it became one of the leading psychological movements. His program, as opposed to structuralism with its sterile analysis of consciousness, set out to study how the individual, through mental functions, adapts to a changing environment.

The development of functionalism in America is closely connected with the name William James.

V. James (1842-1910) graduated from Harvard University, receiving medical and artistic education. His psychological works set out not so much a holistic system of views as a set of concepts that served as the basis for various approaches in modern psychology - from behaviorism to humanistic psychology. James made psychology one of the most popular sciences in America. He was the first professor of psychology at Harvard University, the creator of the first American psychological laboratory (1875), and president of the American Psychological Association (1894-1895).

James dealt with many problems - from studying the brain and the development of cognitive processes and emotions to personality problems and psychedelic research. One of the main issues for him was the study of consciousness. James came up with the idea of ​​the “stream of consciousness,” i.e. about the continuity of the work of human consciousness, despite the external discreteness caused by partially unconscious mental processes. The continuity of thought explains the possibility of self-identification despite constant gaps in consciousness. Therefore, for example, when waking up, a person instantly becomes aware of himself and he “does not need to run to the mirror in order to make sure that it is him.” James emphasizes not only continuity, but also dynamism, the constant variability of consciousness, saying that the awareness of even familiar things is constantly changing and, paraphrasing Heraclitus, who said that you cannot enter the same river twice, he wrote, that we cannot have exactly the same thought twice.

Consciousness is not only continuous and changeable, but also selective, selective, acceptance and rejection always occur in it, the choice of some objects or their parameters and the rejection of others. From James's point of view, the study of the laws according to which consciousness works, according to which choice or rejection occurs, is the main task of psychology. This issue was the main reason for the disagreement between the school of functionalism of James and the American psychologist Titchener, who represented the school of structuralism. Unlike Titchener, for James the primary thing was not a separate element of consciousness, but its flow as a dynamic integrity. At the same time, Dzheme emphasized the priority of studying the work of consciousness, and not its structure. Studying the work of consciousness, he comes to the discovery of its two main determinants - attention and habit.

Speaking about human activity, the scientist emphasized that the psyche helps in his practical activities, optimizes the process of social adaptation, and increases the chances of success in any activity.

James's psychological views are closely intertwined with his philosophical theory of functionalism, which puts pragmatism at the forefront. Therefore, James paid great attention to applied psychology, proving that its importance is no less than theoretical psychology. Particularly important, from his point of view, is the connection between psychology and pedagogy. He even published a special book for teachers, “Conversations with Teachers about Psychology,” in which he proved the enormous possibilities of education and self-education, the importance of forming the right habits in children.

Dzheme paid considerable attention to the problem of personality, understanding it as an integrative whole, which was fundamentally new in that period. He distinguished the cognizable and cognizing elements in personality, believing that the cognizable element is our empirical Self, which we recognize as our personality, while the cognizing element is our pure Self. The identification of several parts in the structure of the empirical personality was also of great importance - physical, social and spiritual personality. Describing them. James said that our empirical self is wider than the purely physical, since a person identifies himself both with his social roles and with his loved ones, expanding his physical self. At the same time, the empirical self can be narrower than the physical one, when a person identifies only with certain needs or abilities, isolating himself from other aspects of his personality.

James's description of those feelings and emotions that cause different structures and parts of the personality was also of great importance - first of all, the description of self-esteem (complacency and dissatisfaction with oneself), the role of which it was he who first spoke about. Dzheme derived a formula for self-esteem, which is a fraction in which the numerator is success, and the denominator is aspirations.

Self-esteem = success/aspiration

This formula underlies the hierarchy of individuals, their desire for self-improvement and success, their illnesses and neuroses, their assessment of themselves and the emotions they experience.

James developed one of the most famous theories of emotions (simultaneously with the Danish psychologist K. Lange). This theory points to a connection between emotions and physiological changes. James said that “we are sad because we cry, enraged because we hit another, afraid because we tremble,” i.e., he argued that physiological changes in the body are primary in relation to emotions. Despite the external paradox of this view, the James-Lange theory has become widespread due to both the consistency and logic of its presentation, and its connection with physiological correlates. James' ideas about the nature of emotions are partially confirmed by modern research in the field of psychopharmacology and psychocorrection.

James's attempt to go beyond the boundaries of the phenomena of consciousness and to include in the circle of scientific and psychological objects real, objective action that is not reducible to these phenomena and directed toward the external environment failed. It failed due to philosophical attitudes incompatible with the principles of scientific knowledge - indeterminism and subjectivism. Nevertheless, the problem of an adaptive motor act, alien to structuralists, was introduced into psychological theory, in connection with which Dzheme took a new approach to the problem of consciousness.

Remaining within the psychology of consciousness with its subjective method. James gave the interpretation of consciousness a new orientation, correlating it with bodily action as an instrument of adaptation to the environment and with the characteristics of the individual as a system that cannot be reduced to a set of sensations, ideas, etc.

James's desire to interpret personality as a spiritual totality that creates itself “out of nothing” later turned out to be consonant with the mindset of adherents of existentialism. “It was James who today we should call an existentialist,” says one of the American authors.

James did a lot for the development of psychology as an independent science, independent of medicine and philosophy. Although he is not the founder of a psychological school or system, he developed many trends in the productive development of psychological science and outlined a broad plan for the necessary transformations and directions in this development. He is still considered the most significant and outstanding American scientist who has had a huge influence not only on psychological science, but also on philosophy and pedagogy.

Along with James, the forerunner of the functional direction is considered to be John Dewey(1859-1952). Having gained great fame as a philosopher and educator in the 19th century, Dewey began his career as a psychologist. His book Psychology (1886) was the first American textbook on the subject. But it was not she who determined his influence on psychological circles, but a small article “The Concept of the Reflex Act in Psychology” (1896), where he sharply opposed the idea that reflex arcs serve as the main units of behavior.

No one in psychology defended this idea. Nevertheless, Dewey demanded to move to a new understanding of the subject of psychology, to recognize as such an integral organism in its restless, adaptive activity in relation to the environment. Consciousness is one of the moments in this continuum. It occurs when coordination between the organism and the environment is disrupted, and the organism, in order to survive, strives to adapt to new circumstances.

In 1894, Dewey was invited to the University of Chicago, where under his influence a group of psychologists was formed who soon declared themselves functionalists in opposition to the followers of Wundt and Titchener. Their theoretical credo was expressed by James Angell (1869-1949) in his presidential address to the American Psychological Association - “The Field of Functional Psychology” (1906). Here, functional psychology was defined as the doctrine of mental operations as opposed to the structuralist doctrine of mental elements. Operations act as intermediaries between the needs of the body and the environment. The main purpose of consciousness is “accommodation to the new.” The organism acts as a psychophysical whole, and therefore psychology cannot be limited to the area of ​​consciousness. It should strive in different directions to the whole variety of connections of the individual with the real world and, perhaps, come more closely together with other sciences - neurology, sociology, anthropology, pedagogy.

These general considerations did not represent either a new theory (Angell did not claim to create one) or a new research program. However, they attracted a large number of students to Chicago who wanted to major in psychology. The so-called Chicago School emerged, from which dozens of American psychologists emerged. After Angell, it was headed by Harvey Carr (1873-1954). The positions of the school are captured in his book “Psychology” (1925), where this science was defined as the study of mental activity. This term, according to Carr, is "a general name for such activities as perception, memory, imagination, thinking, feeling, will. Mental activity consists of acquiring, imprinting, storing, organizing and evaluating experience and its subsequent use to guide behavior."

As for methods, the Chicago school considered it appropriate to use introspection, objective observation (the experiment was interpreted as controlled observation), and analysis of the products of activity. The Angell-Carr School of Chicago was scientific and educational in the sense that it trained a large number of researchers. She did not put forward significantly new theoretical ideas and methods and did not become famous for her discoveries. Her ideas went back to James, who did not engage in experiments and, by his own admission, hated laboratory classes.

Functional psychology examined the problem of action from the angle of its biological-adaptive meaning, its focus on solving problem situations that are vital for the individual. But in general, functionalism (both in the “Chicago” version and in the “Columbia” version) turned out to be theoretically untenable. The concept of “function” in psychology (as opposed to physiology, where it had a solid real basis) was not productive. It was neither theoretically thought out nor experimentally substantiated and was rightly rejected. After all, a function was understood as an act emanating from the subject (perception, thinking, etc.), initially aimed at a goal or problem situation. The determination of a mental act, its relationship to the nervous system, its ability to regulate external behavior - all this remained mysterious.

In an atmosphere of increasing weakness of functionalism, a new psychological movement was emerging. American functionalism is being replaced by behaviorism.

Department of Psychology.

Test

Subject: History of psychology.

On the topic: Functional approach of W. James.

Work completed:
4th year student
correspondence department of the faculty
pedagogy and psychology
Kornilova Yu.Yu.
The work was checked by: Associate Professor,
Candidate of Philology
Gorbunova O.I.

Shuya 2011
Work plan.

I.
1. Crisis in psychology. Causes of the crisis.

2. Representatives of functionalism in American psychology.
2.1. F. Bretano.
2.2. K. Stumpf.
2.3. W.James.

II.
1. Personality of W. James and his contribution to the development of functionalism.

2. Followers of W. James and the further development of functionalism.

Conclusion.

List of used literature.

Introduction.

Modern scientific knowledge about the psyche, about the mental life of a person, is developing in two directions: on the one hand, it tries to answer questions about the structure and value of this life today, on the other hand, it returns to many past answers to these questions. Both directions are inseparable: behind every problem of today's scientific psychology there are achievements of the past.

On the winding, sometimes confusing paths of the history of science, the supporting structures of the entire system of ideas about behavior and consciousness, conditioned by logic and experience, were erected.

There is a certain logic in the change of scientific theories and facts, which is sometimes called the “drama of ideas” - the script of this drama. At the same time, the production of knowledge always takes place on a specific social basis and depends on the internal, unknown mechanisms of the scientist’s creativity. Therefore, in order to recreate a full picture of this production, any scientific information about the mental world must be considered in a system of three coordinates: logical, social and personal.

Familiarity with the history of science is important not only in cognitive terms, i.e. from the point of view of acquiring information about specific theories and facts, scientific schools and discussions, discoveries and misconceptions. It is also full of deep personal, spiritual meaning.

A person cannot live and act meaningfully if his existence is not mediated by some stable values, incomparably stronger than his individual self. Such values ​​include those created by science: they are reliably preserved when the thin thread of individual consciousness is broken. By becoming familiar with the history of science, we feel involved in a great cause that has occupied noble minds and souls for centuries and which is unshakable as long as the human mind exists.

In this work, I consider it necessary to briefly review the history of psychology, because one’s own research must be organically connected with the history of the issue being studied, for there is no problem in modern science that could be solved without taking into account previous history. “The history of the issue directly goes into the formulation of the research problem. The latter must flow organically from the former. The depth and fundamental nature of this part of the research is currently one of the most necessary conditions in psychological science that determines the scientific value of this work,” wrote B. M. Teplov. We will also look at the personality of W. James and the development of his theory, since the scientist’s creative thought moves within the framework of “cognitive networks” and “communication networks.”

The object of this work is the functional approach of W. James.

The subject of this work is the basic theories, concepts and essence of functionalism.

Purpose: to become familiar with the causes of the crisis in psychology, the history of the emergence of functionalism, and to study the features of W. James’s approach.

1. Briefly consider the crisis in psychology, the causes of the crisis

2. Familiarize yourself with the main trends that arose as a result of the crisis.

2. Overview of the personality of W. James and his contribution to the development of psychology.

3. The essence of the functional approach of W. James.

I.
1. Crisis in psychology. Causes of the crisis.

The more successful the empirical work in psychology was, dramatically expanding the field of phenomena studied by psychology, the more obvious became the inconsistency of its versions about consciousness as a closed world of the subject, visible to him alone thanks to trained introspection under the control of the experimenter’s instructions. Major advances in new biology radically changed views on all vital functions of the body, including mental ones.
Perception and memory, skills and thinking, attitudes and feelings were now interpreted as a kind of “tools” that allowed the body to effectively “operate” in life situations. The idea of ​​consciousness as a special closed world, an isolated island of the spirit, collapsed. At the same time, new biology directed the study of the psyche from the point of view of its development. Thus, the zone of cognition of objects inaccessible to introspective analysis (the behavior of animals, children, mentally ill people) radically expanded. The collapse of the original ideas about the subject and methods of psychology became more and more obvious.
The categorical apparatus of psychology experienced profound transformations. Let us recall its main blocks: mental image, mental action, mental attitude, motive, personality. At the dawn of scientific psychology, as we remember, the initial element of the psyche was considered to be the readings of the senses - sensations. Now the view of consciousness as a device of atoms - sensations - has lost scientific credit.
It has been proven that mental images are wholes that can only be split into elements artificially. These wholes were designated by the German term “gestalt” (form, structure) and under this name they were included in the scientific glossary of psychology. The direction that gave Gestalt the meaning of the main “unit” of consciousness
established itself under the name of Gestalt psychology.
As for mental action, its categorical status has also changed. In the previous period, it belonged to the category of internal, spiritual acts of the subject. However, advances in the application of the objective method to the study of the relationship between the organism and the environment have proven that the field
psyche also includes external bodily action. A powerful scientific school emerged that elevated it to the subject of psychology. Accordingly, the direction that chose this path, based on the English word “behavior” (behavior), came out under the banner of behaviorism.
Another area opened up by psychology gave consciousness a secondary meaning instead of a primary one. The sphere of unconscious drives (motives) that drive behavior and determine the uniqueness of the complex dynamics and structure of personality was recognized as determining for mental life. A school appeared that gained worldwide fame, the leader of which was S. Freud, and the direction as a whole (with many
branches) is called psychoanalysis.
French researchers focused on analyzing the mental relationships between people. In the works of a number of German psychologists, the central theme was the inclusion of the individual in the system of cultural values. A special innovative role in the history of world psychological thought was played by the doctrine of behavior in its special version, which arose on the basis of Russian culture.
As a result of the crisis, such movements as structuralism, the Würzburg school and functionalism appeared.

2. Development of functionalism.

At the origins of this direction, which at the beginning of the 20th century became one of the dominant ones in American psychology, was the Austrian psychologist Franz Brentano.

2.1. F. Brentano (1838-1917) began his career as a Catholic priest, leaving it due to disagreement with the dogma of papal infallibility and moving to the University of Vienna, where he became a professor of philosophy. Brentano's first work was devoted to the psychology of Aristotle, as well as its interpretation by medieval Catholic theologians, who developed the concept of intention as a special direction of thought. In his unfinished work “Psychology from an Empirical Point of View” (1874), Brentano proposed a new program for the development of psychology as an independent science, contrasting it with Wundt’s program that was dominant at that time.

He considered the problem of consciousness to be the main one for the new psychology. How does consciousness differ from all other phenomena of existence? Only by answering this question can we define the field of psychology. At that time, under the influence of Wundt, the prevailing opinion was that consciousness consists of sensations, perceptions, and ideas as special processes that replace each other. With the help of an experiment, they can be isolated, analyzed, and those elements or threads from which this special “fabric” of the internal subject is woven are found. Such a view, Brentano argued, is completely false, for it ignores the activity of consciousness, its constant focus on the object. To designate this indispensable feature of consciousness, Brentano proposed the term “intention.” It is initially inherent in every mental phenomenon and it is precisely because of this that it allows us to distinguish mental phenomena from physical ones.

Intention is not just activity. In it, together with the act of consciousness, some object always coexists. Psychology uses, in particular, the word “representation”, meaning by it the restoration in memory of imprints of what was seen or heard. According to Brentano, we should talk not about representation, but about representation, that is, about special spiritual activity, thanks to which the previous image is realized. The same applies to other mental phenomena. Speaking, for example, about perception, they forget that in this case there is not just a “popping up” of a sensory image, but an act of perceiving this content is performed. It is necessary to resolutely distinguish between act and content, not to confuse them, and then it will become absolutely clear that psychology is the science of acts of consciousness. No other science besides it studies these special intentional acts.

Describing and classifying the forms of these acts, Brentano came to the conclusion that there are three main forms: acts of imagining something, acts of judging something as true or false, and acts of emotional evaluation of something as desired or rejected. Outside the act, the object does not exist, but the act, in turn, arises only when directed towards the object. When a person hears a word, his consciousness rushes through the sound, material shell to the object in question. Understanding the meaning of a word is an act, and therefore it is a mental phenomenon. It is destroyed if we take separately the acoustic stimulus (sound) and the physical thing it denotes. The stimulus and the thing themselves do not belong to the field of psychology.

Brentano decisively rejected the analysis procedure adopted in the laboratories of experimental psychology. He believed that it distorts real mental processes and phenomena, which should be studied through careful internal observation of their natural course.

From Brentano's specifically psychological works, “Studies on the Psychology of Feelings” and “On the Classification of Mental Phenomena” are known. His other works are devoted to issues of philosophy and axiology. Of course, he considered obvious only mental phenomena given in internal experience, while knowledge about the external world is probabilistic.

The lessons of Brentano, who set out to describe how consciousness works, influenced various areas of Western psychological thought. Having established the principle of activity, Brentano became a pioneer of European functionalism. This was a direction that opposed the so-called structuralism in psychology, the leader of which was Wundt, who considered the task of the new psychological science to be the determination of those elements from which consciousness is composed, as well as the determination of the laws by which psychological structures are formed from them. This view of consciousness as a device “made of bricks and mortar” was opposed by the functionalists and their followers. Many psychologists studied with Brentano and were directly influenced by his ideas.

Brentano's ideas influenced Külpe and his Würzburg school. Among those who studied philosophy in Vienna with Brentano was Z. Freud. In his teaching, Brentano's concept of intention was transformed into a version of the “chaining” of psychic energy to external objects (including the individual’s own body).

The ideas of activity and objectivity of consciousness, although in an idealistic interpretation, became established thanks to Brentano in Western European psychology.

An important role in the development of functionalism in its Western European version was played by the German psychologist Karl Stumpf.

2.2. K. Stumpf (1848-1936) was a professor at the department of philosophy in Prague, Halle and Munich. Since 1894, he worked at the University of Berlin, where he organized a psychological laboratory. Under the influence of Brentano, he considered the subject of psychology to be the study of psychological functions, or acts (perception, understanding, volition), distinguishing them from phenomena (sensory or represented in the form of forms, values, concepts and similar contents of consciousness). Stumpf attributed the study of phenomena to a special subject area - phenomenology, connecting it with philosophy, and not with psychology.

Stumpf considered functions (or acts) to be the proper subject of psychology. Thus, what is subject to study is not the red color of the object (which, according to Stumpf, is a phenomenon, not a function of consciousness), but the act (or action) of the subject, thanks to which a person is aware of this color in its difference from others. Among the functions, Stumpf distinguished two categories: intellectual and emotive (or affective). Emotive functions consist of opposite pairs: joy and sadness, desire and rejection, desire and avoidance.

Certain phenomena that have been called “sensory sensations” can also acquire an emotional connotation.

Having been interested in music since childhood, Stumpf focused most of his experimental work on studying the perception of musical tones. These works were summarized in his two-volume work “Psychology of Tones,” which made the largest contribution to the study of psychological acoustics after Helmholtz. Polemicizing with Wundt, Stumpf considered it unnatural to divide the evidence of introspection into separate elements. Stumpf contrasted the results of those experiments conducted on psychologists of the Wundtian school, trained in introspective analysis, with the evidence of expert musicians as more trustworthy.

Stumpf viewed music as a cultural phenomenon. He created an archive of phonograms, which contained 10 thousand phonographic recordings of primitive music of various peoples. Stumpf took part in research on child psychology, organizing the German "Society of Child Psychology", as well as on animal psychology (proving, in particular, when discussing the sensational phenomenon of "clever Hans" - a horse that tapped out the "solution" of mathematical problems with its hoof - that the animal reacted to barely noticeable movements of the trainer). Stumpf facilitated the trip of his student W. Köhler to Africa to study the behavior of great apes. He had many other students who later became famous psychologists.

Despite all the interest in the works of Brentano and Stumpf, functionalism became most widespread in the USA, where it became one of the leading psychological movements. His program, as opposed to structuralism with its sterile analysis of consciousness, set out to study how the individual, through mental functions, adapts to a changing environment.

The development of functionalism in America is closely connected with the name of William James.

II.
1. The personality of W. James and his contribution to the development of functionalism.

V. James graduated from Harvard University, receiving medical and artistic education. His psychological works set out not so much a holistic system of views as a set of concepts that served as the basis for various approaches in modern psychology - from behaviorism to humanistic psychology. James made psychology one of the most popular sciences in America. He was the first professor of psychology at Harvard University, the creator of the first American psychological laboratory (1875), and president of the American Psychological Association (1894-1895).
James dealt with many problems - from studying the brain and the development of cognitive processes and emotions to personality problems and psychedelic research. One of the main issues for him was the study of consciousness. James came up with the idea of ​​the “stream of consciousness”, i.e. about the continuity of the work of human consciousness, despite the external discreteness caused by partially unconscious mental processes. The continuity of thought explains the possibility of self-identification despite constant gaps in consciousness. Therefore, for example, when waking up, a person instantly becomes aware of himself and he “does not need to run to the mirror in order to make sure that it is him.” James emphasizes not only continuity, but also dynamism, the constant variability of consciousness, saying that the awareness of even familiar things is constantly changing and, paraphrasing Heraclitus, who said that you cannot enter the same river twice, he wrote, that we cannot have exactly the same thought twice.
Consciousness is not only continuous and changeable, but also selective, selective, acceptance and rejection always occur in it, the choice of some objects or their parameters and the rejection of others. From James's point of view, the study of the laws according to which consciousness works, according to which choice or rejection occurs, is the main task of psychology. This issue was the main reason for the disagreement between the school of functionalism of James and the American psychologist Titchener, who represented the school of structuralism. Unlike Titchener, for James the primary thing was not a separate element of consciousness, but its flow as a dynamic integrity. At the same time, Dzheme emphasized the priority of studying the work of consciousness, and not its structure. Studying the work of consciousness, he comes to the discovery of its two main determinants - attention and habit.
Speaking about human activity, the scientist emphasized that the psyche helps in his practical activities, optimizes the process of social adaptation, and increases the chances of success in any activity.
James's psychological views are closely intertwined with his philosophical theory of functionalism, which puts pragmatism at the forefront. Therefore, James paid great attention to applied psychology, proving that its importance is no less than theoretical psychology. Particularly important, from his point of view, is the connection between psychology and pedagogy. He even published a special book for teachers, “Conversations with Teachers about Psychology,” in which he proved the enormous possibilities of education and self-education, the importance of forming the right habits in children.
James paid considerable attention to the problem of personality, understanding it as an integrative whole, which was fundamentally new in that period. He distinguished the cognizable and cognizing elements in personality, believing that the cognizable element is our empirical Self, which we recognize as our personality, while the cognizing element is our pure Self. The identification of several parts in the structure of the empirical personality was also of great importance - physical, social and spiritual personality. Describing them. James said that our empirical self is wider than the purely physical, since a person identifies himself both with his social roles and with his loved ones, expanding his physical self. At the same time, the empirical self can be narrower than the physical one, when a person identifies only with certain needs or abilities, isolating himself from other aspects of his personality.
James's description of those feelings and emotions that cause different structures and parts of the personality was also of great importance - first of all, the description of self-esteem (complacency and dissatisfaction with oneself), the role of which it was he who first spoke about. Dzheme derived a formula for self-esteem, which is a fraction in which the numerator is success, and the denominator is aspirations.
Self-esteem = success/aspiration
This formula underlies the hierarchy of individuals, their desire for self-improvement and success, their illnesses and neuroses, their assessment of themselves and the emotions they experience.
James developed one of the most famous theories of emotions (simultaneously with the Danish psychologist K. Lange). This theory points to a connection between emotions and physiological changes. James said that “we are sad because we cry, enraged because we hit another, afraid because we tremble,” i.e., he argued that physiological changes in the body are primary in relation to emotions. Despite the external paradox of this view, the James-Lange theory has become widespread due to both the consistency and logic of its presentation, and its connection with physiological correlates. James' ideas about the nature of emotions are partially confirmed by modern research in the field of psychopharmacology and psychocorrection.
James's attempt to go beyond the boundaries of the phenomena of consciousness and to include in the circle of scientific and psychological objects real, objective action that is not reducible to these phenomena and directed toward the external environment failed. It failed due to philosophical attitudes incompatible with the principles of scientific knowledge - indeterminism and subjectivism. Nevertheless, the problem of an adaptive motor act, alien to structuralists, was introduced into psychological theory, in connection with which Dzheme took a new approach to the problem of consciousness.
Remaining within the psychology of consciousness with its subjective method. James gave the interpretation of consciousness a new orientation, correlating it with bodily action as an instrument of adaptation to the environment and with the characteristics of the individual as a system that cannot be reduced to a set of sensations, ideas, etc.
James's desire to interpret personality as a spiritual totality that creates itself “out of nothing” later turned out to be consonant with the mindset of adherents of existentialism. “It was James who today we should call an existentialist,” says one of the American authors.
James did a lot for the development of psychology as an independent science, independent of medicine and philosophy. Although he is not the founder of a psychological school or system, he developed many trends in the productive development of psychological science and outlined a broad plan for the necessary transformations and directions in this development. He is still considered the most significant and outstanding American scientist who has had a huge influence not only on psychological science, but also on philosophy and pedagogy.

2. Further development of functionalism.

Along with James, John Dewey (1859-1952) is considered to be the forerunner of the functional direction. Having gained great fame as a philosopher and educator in the 19th century, Dewey began his career as a psychologist. His book Psychology (1886) was the first American textbook on the subject. But it was not she who determined his influence on psychological circles, but a small article “The Concept of the Reflex Act in Psychology” (1896), where he sharply opposed the idea that reflex arcs serve as the main units of behavior.
No one in psychology defended this idea. Nevertheless, Dewey demanded to move to a new understanding of the subject of psychology, to recognize as such an integral organism in its restless, adaptive activity in relation to the environment. Consciousness is one of the moments in this continuum. It occurs when coordination between the organism and the environment is disrupted, and the organism, in order to survive, strives to adapt to new circumstances.
In 1894, Dewey was invited to the University of Chicago, where under his influence a group of psychologists was formed who soon declared themselves functionalists in opposition to the followers of Wundt and Titchener. Their theoretical credo was expressed by James Angell (1869-1949) in his presidential address to the American Psychological Association - “The Field of Functional Psychology” (1906). Here, functional psychology was defined as the doctrine of mental operations as opposed to the structuralist doctrine of mental elements. Operations act as intermediaries between the needs of the body and the environment. The main purpose of consciousness is “accommodation to the new.” The organism acts as a psychophysical whole, and therefore psychology cannot be limited to the area of ​​consciousness. It should strive in different directions towards the whole variety of connections between the individual and the real world and, as closely as possible, come closer to other sciences - neurology, sociology, anthropology, pedagogy.
These general considerations did not represent either a new theory (Angell did not claim to create one) or a new research program. However, they attracted a large number of students to Chicago who wanted to major in psychology. The so-called Chicago School emerged, from which dozens of American psychologists emerged. After Angell, it was headed by Harvey Carr (1873-1954). The position of the school is captured in his book “Psychology” (1925), where this science was defined as the study of mental activity. This term, according to Carr, is “a general name for such activities as perception, memory, imagination, thinking, feeling, will. Mental activity consists of acquiring, imprinting, storing, organizing and evaluating experience and its subsequent use to guide behavior.”
As for methods, the Chicago school considered it appropriate to use introspection, objective observation (the experiment was interpreted as controlled observation), and analysis of the products of activity. The Angell-Carr School of Chicago was scientific and educational in the sense that it trained a large number of researchers. She did not put forward significantly new theoretical ideas and methods and did not become famous for her discoveries. Her ideas went back to James, who did not engage in experiments and, by his own admission, hated laboratory classes.

Conclusion.

William James did a lot for the development of psychology as an independent science, independent of medicine and philosophy. Although he is not the founder of a psychological school or system, he developed many trends in the productive development of psychological science and outlined a broad plan for the necessary transformations and directions in this development. He is still considered the most significant and outstanding American scientist who has had a huge influence not only on psychological science, but also on philosophy and pedagogy.

His psychological works set out not so much a holistic system of views as a set of concepts that served as the basis for various approaches in modern psychology - from behaviorism to humanistic psychology. James made psychology one of the most popular sciences in America. He was the first professor of psychology at Harvard University, the creator of the first American psychological laboratory (1875), and president of the American Psychological Association (1894-1895).

Functional psychology examined the problem of action from the angle of its biological-adaptive meaning, its focus on solving problem situations that are vital for the individual. But in general, functionalism (both in the “Chicago” version and in the “Columbia” version) turned out to be theoretically untenable. The concept of “function” in psychology (as opposed to physiology, where it had a solid real basis) was not productive. It was neither theoretically thought out nor experimentally substantiated and was rightly rejected. After all, a function was understood as an act emanating from the subject (perception, thinking, etc.), initially aimed at a goal or problem situation. The determination of the mental act, its relationship to the nervous system, its ability to regulate external behavior - all this remained mysterious. In an atmosphere of increasing weakness of functionalism, a new psychological movement was emerging. American functionalism is being replaced by behaviorism.

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Functionalism as one of the main trends in American psychology of the late 19th - early 20th centuries, it was the result of bringing the scientific system of knowledge into line with the objective needs of human development and his social environment, that is, the result of the interaction of the logic of the development of science with real social practice. The heightened sensitivity of time to the possibility of using the achievements of psychology in various sociocultural spheres of human life and society served as an essential prerequisite for the separation of functionalism from the emerging system of psychological knowledge.

This direction took shape against a rather contradictory background: the cult of practicality and enterprise created by the growing capitalist state machine was reflected in American psychological functionalism. At its origins stood William James (1842-1910)- American psychologist and philosopher, popularizer of psychology as a science, creator of the first psychological laboratory in the United States. The main emphasis in the concept of the phenomena of consciousness of W. James is transferred from image to action, which determined his leadership in pragmatism and significant influence on the birth and development of functionalism and behaviorism in psychology.

Psychology was presented to them as a natural biological science, the subject of which is “psychic (mental) phenomena and their conditions.” When analyzing the conditions, the relationship between the mental and the physical and the importance of the researcher of consciousness turning to the findings of physiology are emphasized. James considered consciousness based on evolutionary theory as a means of adaptation to the environment. Consciousness “comes into play” when adaptation difficulties arise (problem situation), and regulates the individual’s behavior in a new situation (filters and selects stimuli, regulates the individual’s actions in unusual conditions). He rejected the division of consciousness into elements. Exists "mindflow", dividing which is as meaningless as “cutting water with scissors.” Thus, the position was put forward about the integrity and dynamics of consciousness, realizing the needs of the individual. James correlated consciousness not only with bodily adaptive actions, but also with the nature (structure) of personality. In the theory of personality, James identifies four forms of “I”: 1) “I” is material: body, clothes, property; 2) “I” social: everything connected with a person’s claims to prestige, friendship, positive assessment from others; 3) “I” spiritual: processes of consciousness, mental abilities; 4) “I” is pure: a sense of personal identity, the basis of which is organic sensations. The social “I,” according to James, is determined by the conscious reactions of others to my person and indicates the individual’s inclusion in a network of interpersonal relationships. Each person has several social “I”, which occupies a middle position in the designated hierarchy.

Raising the question of a person’s self-esteem and a person’s satisfaction (dissatisfaction) with life, James proposed a formula: self-esteem is equal to success divided by aspirations. This implied an increase in the individual’s self-esteem both with actual success and with the renunciation of the desire for it.

Based on the indicated attitudes, the source of genuine personal values ​​is in religion: the empirical social “I” is contrasted with the “special potential social” “I”, which is realized only in the “social mind of the ideal world” in communication with the Almighty - the Absolute Mind.

Thus, W. James takes a step forward from the purely epistemological “I” to its systemic psychological interpretation, to its level-by-level analysis. In his analysis, he put forward a number of provisions that anticipated modern ideas about the level of aspirations, the motive for achieving success, self-esteem and its dynamics, the reference group, and others. His thoughts about the personal level were “swallowed” by a mystical fog.

In the doctrine of emotions, James proposed to consider emotion not as the root cause of physiological changes in the body, not as a source of physiological changes in various systems (muscular, vascular, etc.), but as a result of these changes. An external stimulus causes trumpets in the body (muscular and internal organs), which are experienced by the subject in the form of emotional states: “We are sad because we cry, enraged because we hit someone else.”

In his search for the bodily mechanism of “human passions,” James deprived emotions of their long-recognized role as a powerful stimulant of behavior. Emotions were derived from the class of phenomena to which motivation belongs. Instead, when creating this hypothesis, the category of action was affirmed. Emotions were also denied (in their Darwinian interpretation) an adaptive function.

The action of the interested subject is the supporting link of both the entire psychological system of W. James and his concept of emotions, considered in the context of the possibility of controlling the internal through the external: in the event of unwanted emotional manifestations, the subject is able to suppress them by performing external actions that have the opposite direction. But the final causal factor in the new physiological scheme, which affirms the feedback between the motor act and emotion, was the ancient “willpower”, which has no basis in anything except in itself. One of the goals of studying emotional states was to transform them into an object accessible to natural scientific experiment and analysis. The solution to this problem was carried out by reducing the subjective experience to the bodily.

Another talented representative of functionalism was John Dewey (1859-1952) - a famous psychologist at the beginning of the 20th century, later a philosopher and teacher. His book "Psychology" (1886) is the first American textbook on this subject. But his article “The Concept of a Reflex Act” had a greater influence on psychological views. V psychology" (1896), in which he opposed the idea that reflex arcs serve as the main units of behavior. Dewey demanded a move to a new understanding of the subject of psychology - whole organism in his restless, environmentally adaptive activity.

Consciousness, according to Dewey, is one of the moments of this activity; it arises when coordination between the organism and the environment is disrupted and the organism, in order to survive, strives to adapt to new circumstances. In 1894, Dewey was invited to the University of Chicago, where, under his influence, a group of psychologists was formed who declared themselves functionalists. Their theoretical credo was expressed by James Angel (1849-1949).

In his presidential address to the American Psychological Association, “The Field of Functional Psychology” (1906), he emphasized: psychology is the study of mental (mental) operations; it cannot limit itself to the doctrine of consciousness, it should study the diversity of the individual’s connections with the real world in collaboration and rapprochement with neurology, sociology, pedagogy, anthropology; operations act as intermediaries between the needs of the body and the environment; the purpose of consciousness is “accommodation to the new”; the organism acts as a psychophysical whole.

Formed in the functionalist tradition, the Chicago School attracted dozens of psychologists to its ranks. After D. Angel it was headed Harvey Carr (1873-1954), who reflected his positions in the book “Psychology” (1925). This science was defined in it as the study of mental activity (mental activity): perception, memory, imagination, thinking, feelings, will. “Mental activity consists,” wrote G. Carr, “of acquiring, imprinting, storing, organizing and evaluating experience and its subsequent use to guide behavior.” The Chicago School strengthened the influence of the objective method in psychology. It was considered appropriate to use introspection, objective observation (the experiment was interpreted as controlled observation), and analysis of the products of activity (language, art).

The Colombian school, headed by Robert Woodworth (1869-1962). His main works are “Dynamic Psychology” (1918), “Dynamics of Behavior” (1958). He considered himself an eclectic. The novelty of his psychological concepts lay in the fact that an important variable, the organism, was introduced into the “stimulus-response” formula popular in the 20s: 5 - O - Z. He separates motivation and the mechanism of behavior. The mechanism consists of two links: preparatory (installation); “consummatory” (the final reaction through which the goal is achieved). Motivation, in his opinion, activates the mechanism and puts it into action. After the need is satisfied, the use of the mechanism can acquire motivational force. Reflected approaches turned means into ends, which led from a vague interpretation of action as a function of consciousness to a concrete scientific development of this category.

Thus, functionalism sought to consider all mental processes from the point of view of their adaptive - adaptive character. This required determining their relationship to environmental conditions and the needs of the body. Understanding mental life on the model of biological life as a set of functions, actions, and operations was directed against the mechanical scheme of structural psychology. Hence functional psychology is interpreted as a "stream of consciousness" theory.

Proponents of the trend made significant contributions to experimental psychology. The natural-scientific interpretation of mental functions was supported by famous psychologists I. Ribot (France), N. Lange (Russia), E. Claparède (Switzerland), the idealistic one - K. Stumpf (Germany), representatives of the Würzburg school. The determination of the mental act, its relationship to the nervous system and the ability to regulate external behavior remained uncertain in functionalism. The very concept of “function” was neither theoretically nor experimentally substantiated and tended to merge with ancient teleologism.

The developing young psychology borrowed its methods from physiology. She didn’t have her own until a German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850 -1909) did not begin the experimental study of associations. In the book “On Memory” (1885), he outlined the results of experiments conducted on himself in order to derive the exact mathematical laws by which learned material is stored and reproduced. Taking up this problem, he invented a special object - nonsense syllables(each syllable consisted of two consonants and a vowel between them, for example, “mon”, “pit”, etc.).

To study associations, Ebbinghaus first selected stimuli that did not evoke any associations. He experimented with a list of 2,300 nonsense syllables for two years. Various options were tried and carefully calculated regarding the number of syllables, memorization time, number of repetitions, the interval between them, the dynamics of forgetting (it acquired a reputation as a classic "forgetting curve" showing that approximately half of what is forgotten falls in the first half hour after memorization) and other variables.

In various variants, data were obtained regarding the number of repetitions required for subsequent reproduction of material of varying volumes, forgetting of various fragments of this material (the beginnings of a list of syllables and its ends), the effect of overlearning (repetition of a list more times than required for its successful reproduction) and etc. Thus, the laws of association appeared in a new light. Ebbinghaus did not turn to physiologists for an explanation. But he was not interested in the role of consciousness either. After all, any element of consciousness (be it a mental image or an act) is initially meaningful, and the semantic content was seen as an obstacle to the study of the mechanisms of pure memory. Thus, the memorization method and the savings method were used, which made it possible to estimate: a) the number of repetitions necessary for the test subject to accurately reproduce the proposed sequence; b) the level of increase in the speed of re-learning supposedly completely forgotten material.

Ebbinghaus formulated the experimental data in several laws of memory: the volume of memorized after a single presentation is 6-8 meaningless syllables; with a slight increase in material, the number of repetitions for memorization increases many times. Therefore, an increase in memory load leads to a decrease in performance; it is advisable to distribute the time required to memorize the material over several periods separated by intervals (for example, if the material requires 30 repetitions, then 3 days 10 times is better than 30 times in one day); an older association is more strengthened by repetition and is better updated than a newly formed one; after the material has been learned, it must be repeated; forgetting immediately proceeds quickly, then the process slows down and stops after a certain time (“forgetting curve”); “edge factor or effect” - at the beginning and at the end the material is remembered better than in the middle of the presentation; a difference was recorded between memorizing meaningless and meaningful material: for memorization, it is not the number of elements that matters, but the number of independent semantic units (that is, memory is a meaningful process); training in memorizing one type of material leads to improved memorization of other types of material.

Ebbinghaus opened a new chapter in psychology not only because he was the first to venture into the experimental study of mnemonic processes, more complex than sensory ones. His unique contribution was determined by the fact that for the first time in the history of science, through experiments and quantitative analysis of their results, the actual psychological patterns, acting independently of consciousness, in other words - objectively. The equality of the psyche and consciousness (accepted as an axiom in that era) was crossed out.

What in the European tradition were designated as processes of association soon became one of the main directions of American psychology under the name "learning". This direction brought the explanatory principles of Darwin’s teachings into psychology, where a new understanding of the determination of the behavior of an entire organism and thereby all its functions, including mental ones, was established. Among the new explanatory principles, the following stood out: the probabilistic nature of reactions as a principle of natural selection and the adaptation of the organism to the environment in order to survive in it. These principles formed the contours of a new deterministic (causal) scheme. The former mechanical determinism gave way to biological determinism. At this turning point in the history of scientific knowledge, the concept of associations acquired a special status. Previously, it meant the connection of ideas in consciousness, but now it means the connection between the movements of the body and the configuration of external stimuli, on adaptation to which the solution of problems vital for the body depends.

The association acted as a way of acquiring new actions, and in the terminology that was soon adopted - learning. The first major success in transforming the concept of association came from experiments on animals (mainly cats) Edward Thorndike (1874 - 1949), American psychologist, researcher of learning problems and patterns of adaptation of the body. He used so-called problem boxes.

An animal placed in a box could get out of it and receive feeding only by activating a special device - by pressing a spring, pulling a loop, etc. The animals made many movements, rushed in different directions, scratched the box, etc. until one of the movements accidentally turned out to be successful. “Trial, error and accidental success” - this was the formula accepted for all types of behavior, both animals and humans. Thorndike explained his experiments using several laws of learning. First of all, the law of exercise (the motor reaction to a situation is associated with this situation in proportion to the frequency, strength and duration of repetition of connections). It was joined by the law of effect, which stated that of several reactions, those that are accompanied by a feeling of satisfaction are most strongly combined with the situation.

Thorndike assumed that the connections between movement and situation correspond to connections in the nervous system (i.e., a physiological mechanism), and connections are reinforced due to feeling (i.e., a subjective state). But neither the physiological nor the psychological components added anything to the “learning curve” drawn by Thorndike independently of them, where repeated trials were marked on the abscissa, and the time spent (in minutes) was marked on the ordinate. Thorndike's main book was called "The Intelligence of Animals. A Study of Associative Processes in Animals" (1898).

Before Thorndike, the originality of intellectual processes was attributed to ideas, thoughts, and mental operations (as acts of consciousness). In Thorndike they appeared in the form of motor reactions of the body independent of consciousness. In earlier times, these reactions belonged to the category of reflexes - mechanical standard responses to external irritation, predetermined by the very structure of the nervous system. According to Thorndike, they are intellectual, because they are aimed at solving a problem that the body is powerless to cope with using its existing supply of associations. The solution is to develop new associations, new motor responses to an unusual - and therefore problematic - situation.

Psychology attributed the strengthening of associations to memory processes. When it came to actions that became automated through repetition, they were called skills. Thorndike's discoveries were interpreted as the laws of skill formation.

Meanwhile, he believed that he was exploring intelligence. To the question: “Do animals have minds?”, a positive answer was given. But behind this there was a new understanding of the mind that did not need to appeal to the internal processes of consciousness. By intelligence we meant the body’s development of a “formula” for real actions that would allow it to successfully cope with a problematic situation. Success was achieved by accident. This view captured a new understanding of the determination of life phenomena, which came to psychology with the triumph of Darwinian teaching. It introduced a probabilistic style of thinking. In the organic world, only those who manage, through “trial and error,” to select the most advantageous response to the environment from many possible ones survive. This style of thinking opened up broad prospects for the introduction of statistical methods into psychology. The main achievements in the development of these methods in relation to psychology are related to creativity Francis Galton (1822 -1911). Deeply impressed by the ideas of his cousin Charles Darwin, he attached decisive importance not to the factor of adaptation of an individual organism to the environment, but to the factor of heredity, according to which the adaptation of a species is achieved through genetically determined variations of the individual forms that form this species. Based on this postulate, Galton became a pioneer in the development genetics of behavior.

Thanks to his tireless energy, the study of individual differences. These differences constantly made themselves felt in experiments to determine sensitivity thresholds, reaction time, dynamics of associations and other mental phenomena. But since the main goal was the discovery of general laws, differences in the reactions of the subjects were neglected. Galton placed the main emphasis on differences, believing that they are genetically predetermined.

In the book “Hereditary Genius” (1869), he argued, citing many facts, that outstanding abilities are inherited. Using available experimental psychological techniques, adding to them those invented by himself, he put them at the service of the study of individual variations. This applied to both physical and mental signs. The latter were considered to be no less dependent on genetic determinants than, say, eye color. In his laboratory in London, anyone could, for a small fee, determine their physical and mental abilities, between which, according to Galton, there are correlations. About 9,000 people passed through this anthropological laboratory. But Galton, sometimes called the first practicing psychologist, had a more global plan. He expected to cover the entire population of England in order to determine the level of the country's mental resources.

He designated his tests with the word “test,” which has widely entered the psychological lexicon. Galton pioneered the transformation of experimental psychology into differential psychology, which studies differences between individuals and groups of people. Galton's enduring merit was the in-depth development of variation statistics, which changed the face of psychology as a science that widely uses quantitative methods.

Galton used tests to study the functioning of the senses, reaction time, figurative memory (by finding, for example, the similarity of visual images in twins) and other sensory-motor functions. Meanwhile, practice required information about higher functions in order to diagnose individual differences between people regarding the acquisition of knowledge and the performance of complex forms of activity.

The first solution to this problem belonged to the French psychologist Alfred Binet (1857-1911), the founder of the first psychological laboratory in France at the Sorbonne (1889). He began with experimental studies of thinking (his two daughters served as subjects). However, soon, on instructions from government agencies, he began to look for psychological means by which it would be possible to separate children who were capable of learning and were not lazy from those who suffered from birth defects. Experiments to study attention, memory, and thinking were carried out on many subjects of different ages. Wiene turned experimental tasks into tests, establishing a scale, each division of which contained tasks that could be performed by normal children of a certain age. This scale has gained popularity in many countries.

In Germany William Stern introduced the concept "IQ"(English I-Q). This coefficient correlated “mental” age (determined by the Binet scale) with chronological (“passport”) age. Their discrepancy was considered an indicator of either mental retardation (when the “mental” age is lower than the chronological one) or giftedness (when the “mental” age is higher than the chronological one). This direction, under the name of testology, has become the most important channel for bringing psychology closer to practice. The technique of measuring intelligence made it possible, based on psychological data (and not purely empirically), to solve issues of training, personnel selection, professional suitability, etc.

The achievements of the experimental and differential directions, most clearly embodied in the work of these researchers, but made possible thanks to the work of the entire generation of young professionals, latently and inevitably changed the subject area of ​​psychology. This was a different area than that outlined in the theoretical schemes from which psychology began its journey as a science proud of its originality. The subject of analysis was not the elements and acts of consciousness, unknown to anyone except the subject who had refined his inner vision. They became bodily reactions studied by an objective method. It turned out that their connections, which in the past were called associations, arise and are transformed according to special psychological laws. They are discovered by experiment in combination with quantitative methods. To do this, there is no need to turn to either physiology or self-observation.

As for the explanatory principles, they were drawn not from mechanics, which supplied psychological thought for three centuries with the principle of causality, but from Darwinian teaching, which transformed the picture of the organism and its functions.