4. CONCEPT OF CHARACTER

Character (from the Greek. Charactor - “printing, chasing, notching”) is a personality substructure, formed by an individually-peculiar complex of stable personal characteristics (features, dispositions) that determine the typical forms and ways of achieving goals (personal manifestations of character) and self-expression in personalities communicating with other people (expressive manifestations of character).

Etymologically, the word "character" is used in three meanings:

1) in relation to any objects and phenomena (the nature of the process, the nature of the landscape) as denoting their “figurative identity”, something “characteristic” of them;

2) in relation to animals and man as denoting their spiritual (mental) identity;

3) applies only to a person as characterizing him not only from the psychological, but also from the moral and ethical side (good or bad, strong or weak character, “with character” or characterless).

The science of character in the psychological meaning of the word — characterology — has a history as long as psychology itself. For millennia, characterology as a sphere of science, art, and worldly wisdom sought to solve two main tasks: typology of characters (temperaments) and character determination (or temperament) according to certain external features (or “psycho-diagnostic”) ( V. Stern ).

Differences of human characters, as the most essential properties and features of a person, determining his appearance and behavior (individual differences in a broad sense), from ancient times attracted the attention of philosophers and doctors.

The oldest known typology of characters, based on 12 astrological signs, which designate the peculiarities of life and the associated behavioral properties of different animals, is attributed to the ancient Babylonian sage Akkader (XXX century BC). The astrological typology was further developed in the work of K. Ptolemy "Tetrabiblos", which stated that the position of the stars at the time of birth of a person has a decisive influence on his individual characteristics and determines his destiny throughout his life, while the diversity of characters and fates was described by those the 12 main types, which have not changed much to date.

The foundations of character as a type of social behavior were laid by Plato , who, on the basis of his theory of the structure of the soul, described five main types of characters: normal, timothic, oligarchic, democratic, tyrannical.

Plato's typological tradition was continued and developed by the disciple of Aristotle Theophrastus (4th – 3rd centuries BC) in the famous “Characters” - a treatise, considered the first real study of characters. Starting from one dominant trait, Theophrast described the type of character: mocker, idle talker, saint, talker, dumbass, snapper, grumbler, coward, etc. He carried out the extended transfer of Theophrastus to the New Era in the 17th century. his translator and popularizer La Bruyere in his own "Characters".

Representations of medical science about the types of characters are closely intertwined with the doctrine of temperament and the constitution as a somatic type of structure of the human body. The specific type of temperament, as well as character, could be explained, for example, by the predominance of a certain “ humor” in the body ( Hippocrates , Galen ), blood composition ( Aristotle ), influence of cosmogonic factors ( Paracelsus ), addition type ( Kretschmer ), peculiarities of will ( Klages) and so on. d. The typologies of characters, which are based on inherent in the ancient doctrine of temperaments, united in their morphological basis of the idea (constitution) and physiological ( "juices", blood and so on.) mental conditioning of human identity, Bole than 2,000 years before the present time we have not undergone anything really new.

In modern times, the psychological understanding of character as the mental (internal) identity of a person was established. The idea was established that individuals differ from each other not by external socially significant signs of behavior, but above all by invisible properties that are their cause and form a person’s character.

Since the XIX century. Characterology acquires the features of a systematic scientific discipline, designed to study the essential differences of a person, reducing them to a certain simple form (type) or focusing on the uniqueness of their combination in a particular individual. By the beginning of the twentieth century. the palette of explaining character differences and understanding of the nature of character was extremely expanded. Understanding of character, not as a type, but as the uniqueness of a particular individual, was formulated in German characterology. Understanding of character as a type in French characterology was based mainly on a morphophysiological basis. Since the XIX century. the problem of objectively measured formal human differences (as simple as intelligence, memory, attention, etc., and more complex ones such as creative and organizational skills, professional suitability, etc.) is separated from more speculative characterology. Developed in the works of the English by Charles Darwin , G. Mendel , Galton , American J. M. Cattel , Germans G. Ebbingauz , V. Wundt and others, French A. Binet , A. Simon , having received theoretical substantiation in the works of V. Stern (1911), formed a separate discipline - differential psychology . The immediate predecessor of differential psychology was psycho- psychology, the main task of which was, firstly, to establish relations between externally perceived states, movements and appearance of a person and his individual mental originality, and secondly, to recognize individual individuals' characters on the basis of these connections. The empirical direction of psycho-psychology is represented by the constitutional approach, physiognomy, phrenology and graphology, as well as philosophical-literary characterology.

Physiognomy was already practiced by Pythagoras (6th century BC). Anaksagor selected his students in the form of a hand. Aristotle is considered the founder of European physiognomy. A more specific method of character determination was to appeal to constitutional and physiological factors. Already Hippocrates, in explaining temperaments, partly relied on the structural features of the body. The constitutional-characterological approach received a complete expression in the works of E. Krechmer (1921) and V.

G. Sheldon (1927). In the XIX century. “physiognomy of functions” appears, according to which character manifests itself in unconscious expedient and functionally determined movements. This position is widely represented in German characterology through the analysis of facial expressions ( F. Lersch , A. Wellek ), speeches ( I. B. Riffert ), general expression ( L. Klages ), gait, etc. Currently, this trend is developing in in line with socio-psychological studies of attraction, non-verbal communication, attribution theory, etc.

A common disadvantage of all psycho-logical methods is the arbitrary selection of one of the many groups of external signs as the only means of knowing nature.

With the development in the 10-30s. Twentieth century. Personality psychology has a problem of the relationship between the concepts of personality and character. In post-war American academic psychology, the concept of character has practically become obsolete, having remained only in clinically oriented approaches as denoting belonging to one or another type. At the same time, in European psychology (Germany, France) the concept of character is preserved as one of the most important general psychological concepts, and in the German tradition it includes elements of spirituality in its definition, and in French it is interpreted as a combination of characteristic forms of affective responses inherent in personality.

In Russian psychology, the foundations of the theory of character were laid by A. F. Lazursky , who interpreted character as a set of inherently spiritual inherent human inclinations. Later, in the 50s. XIX century. the character was identified with the individually peculiar personality as opposed to the socially typical.

A new surge of interest in the problem of character arose in the 80s. XIX century., When a number of authors began to consider it as a substructure of personality, relying on the ideas of L. S. Vygotsky , who opposed the traditional idea of ​​character, as an invariable type, the idea of ​​him as a dynamically developing functionally expedient structure that participates in the processes of an individual's adaptation to the world and emerging in the course of this adaptation.

According to modern domestic views, character appears as a form of manifestation of personality in the narrow sense of the word (content or semantic sphere of personality), as a person’s readiness to carry out in certain types of situations under certain conditions certain fixed forms or methods of behavior. It acts as a protective shell, mediating both the effects of the external environment on a person (softening or aggravating them), and the effects of a person on the environment, giving the actions of the subject certain instrumental or expressive properties (assertiveness, softness, impulsivity, openness, caution, etc. ).

Ideas about character in clinical psychology, in particular in the context of the problem of psychopathy, develop mainly in the traditions of typologically oriented characterology ( P. B. Gannushkin, K. Leonhard, A. E. Lichko ).

In social psychology, concepts of social and national character are also used.

The concept of a social nature , introduced by E. Fromm , means a set of stable personality traits inherent in the members of a certain social group and formed as a result of the basic experience and way of life common to this group. The concept of national character means a set of features that characterize representatives of one nation or ethno-cultural community, unlike the other. Problems of national character was devoted to the 50-80-ies. XIX century. a large number of experimental studies in which it was not possible to find significant and stable characterological differences between nations; thus, the problem of national character has shifted to the plane of socio-psychological stereotypes.

Peculiarities of behavior consist in the fact that a person acts, obeying only impulses, without thinking at all about his actions. This distinguishes children from adults, who, in turn, act consciously. A child can be easily distracted. If a couple of minutes ago he was crying bitterly in pain, then the next minute he can laugh for joy, picking up his favorite toy. It is at this age that a child begins to form love for close people - for the mother, the father.

At preschool age, communication between boys and girls plays a special role. The child begins to feel their belonging to the female or male. Boys try to imitate men, and girls try women. In families, they are inspired by the generally accepted norms of behavior. They depend specifically on the national culture of education. In general, girls are expected to be kind and sincere, while boys are allowed to show more aggression. This is enhanced by the introduction to the activity. Children begin to understand that boys should do “male” work, and girls - “female”.

Psychological attainment of sex begins precisely at preschool age, but develops throughout life.

First, the child begins to appropriate, copy the behaviors of adult men and women, their interests. It has been experimentally proved that, starting from the age of four, children are aware of their belonging to the female or male sex. And this awareness is very important for the further formation of the personality and therefore a role model is necessary: ​​for girls it is the mother, for boys it is the father with whom the children could identify themselves.

The thinking of children in this period is at the level of specific operations, i.e. it is visual-figurative.