Conclusion

Concluding the book, we will try to realize what we managed to do in it and what problems and questions raised by the course of research remained unanswered.

The main result of the work, as he sees it to the author, consists in the introduction and development of the “critical situation - experience” categorical complex. The introduction of the category of a critical situation allowed separate psychological ideas about stress, frustration, conflict and crisis to be synthesized into a holistic, internally differentiated structure that distinguishes these extreme situations not as empirical "things", but as theoretical types. They differ mainly in the internal necessities of life, the realization of which in these conditions is psychologically impossible.

The experience does not lead directly to the realization of these necessities, it is aimed at restoring the psychological potential of the activity for their realization. If we compare a critical situation with the falling of a running man, then the efforts spent by him in order to get up on his feet and thereby receive the opportunity to continue running will correspond to the experience. This image seems appropriate only for external activities, but it is applicable to internal activities as well. For example, experiencing a conflict that makes impossible the internal activity of choice does not produce this choice, but merely rebuilds consciousness until it becomes subjectively possible. [ 67 ]

In the real life process, these two activities — experience and activity — can flow into each other and even be realized in the same act, but the task of psychological theory is precisely to dissect this immediate reality, establishing “pure” patterns, intertwined in a single process of life.

The same task of establishing "pure" laws, but no longer for separating activity and experience from each other, but for analyzing the process of experience itself, is building a typology of life worlds that led to the identification of four principles (pleasure, reality, value and creativity) governing the flow experiences.

I would like to emphasize the ideological meaning of identifying the last two principles as independent laws: it consists in demonstrating the fundamental, philosophical and methodological limitations of the psychoanalytic theory of defense processes, which knows only the principles of pleasure and reality and reduces the higher spiritual laws of mental life to them.

So, the main result of the research is the introduction and typology of the categories of a critical situation and experience-activity. Summing up the results would be incomplete if we limited ourselves to stating positive results and passed over in silence questions and problems that were updated by the course of the study, but which were not reflected in the book. It is impossible to discuss all these issues, the wording of which we owe to colleagues who have taken the trouble to read the book in manuscript. However, for the three most frequent and important of them, we would like to give at least the most brief explanations.

The first has grown like this: is it possible to talk about experiencing positive extreme events ? Specified in this form, he implicitly assumes that the book dealt with the experience of negative events. Most of our illustrations really suggest such an understanding, but, strictly speaking, an evaluative point of view on events creating a critical situation was not carried out in the text. If we include such a point of view in the analysis, the question immediately arises about the criteria for evaluating the event. It is clear that this criterion is, firstly, subjective (even the death of a close relative, as shown, say, by the example of Pushkin’s “young rake,” the event is not always negative), and secondly, it is changeable (such a joyous event as marriage Alas, it too often changes its sign in the minds of spouses), but the main thing is that this criterion is ambiguous due to the multiplicity of sources of assessment: what is positive on the basis of one vital need can create a critical situation with regard to another. For example, a great success in the implementation of a motive can lead to disorganization of the existing motivational and value integrity, and then this event, being directly emotionally positive, nevertheless requires the work of experiencing the restoration of disturbed inner unity. Professor Nikolai Stepanovich from Boring Story A. P. Chekhov thinks bitterly about his wife and daughter: "Such everyday disasters as fame, generality, the transition from contentment to living beyond their means, familiarity with the nobility, etc., barely touched me, and I remained safe and sound, the weak, unhardened wife and Lisa all fell down like a big snow block and squeezed them. "

So, the first answer to the question posed is as follows: yes, the so-called positive events also pose the task of experience to a person in so far as they, realizing one vital necessity, violate the realization of others, i.e. to the extent that they create a critical situation in the strict sense of the term.

But still, in the question under discussion, there remains one more, perhaps the most important, meaning: is a positive event to be experienced in a positive event? If we understand the experience most broadly, as an inner job of accepting facts and events of life, a job of establishing a semantic correspondence between consciousness and being, then the answer is, of course, affirmative. Here is how a fragment of this experience is described by the penetrating word of I. A. Bunin. Beginner poet Alexei Arsenyev, suddenly hitting "... in one of the most important Petersburg magazines, he found himself in the company of the most famous writers at that time, and he also received a postal agenda for this by as much as fifteen rubles." The young man decides to immediately go to the city.

“I drove especially hard. Did I think, did I definitely dream of something? But in those cases when something important or at least significant happened in a person’s life, you need to draw some kind of conclusion from this or make some the decision, a person thinks little, gives himself more readily to the secret work of the soul. And I remember well that all the way to the city my somehow bravely excited soul worked tirelessly on something. What? I didn’t know yet, only again I felt a desire then changes in life, freedom from something, and striving somewhere ... "

In this description, we easily recognize experience as the work of transforming the psychological world. But we are bound by our own definitions, resembling, in particular, that experience is the answer to a situation of impossibility, or meaninglessness. There is nothing like this in the above example; on the contrary, the situation in which the hero finds himself can be called a situation of “superpower”. There is an abundance of possibilities in it, an excess of meaningfulness, which overwhelms the hero's soul and cannot fit in a specific goal and pour out in a concrete action.

It is possible to make the assumption that the need for experience is created not only by the situation of impossibility, but also by the situation of super possibility. This is not the place to go into a detailed analysis of the similarities and differences between these two situations. We only indicate that both in the activity plane are characterized by the absence of an externally oriented action resolving them, for the task in both cases is not external, but internal, semantic.

It is quite probable that each type of situation of impossibility corresponds to the type of situation of super possibility. For example, an athlete, whose main goal and purpose of life was to achieve the title of world champion, is facing a life crisis in the event that, due to injury, this plan becomes unrealizable; but it can lead to a state of crisis and absolute success, realizing his life plan to the end. The idea that organized and comprehended his whole life, becoming incarnate, is exhausted and dies as such, confronting a typical crisis task of finding a new concept and the meaning of life as a whole.

With these preliminary assumptions, we are forced to complete consideration of the question of "positive" experiences, knowing that the detailed development of this topic may require significant additions, and even changes in the general category of experience.

The second question we would like to dwell upon was once asked to the author in this form: “Does the concept of experience you entered are completely independent of the traditional concept of experience or does it just reveal some new background of this traditional concept?” In other words, the question casts doubt on the categorical nature with which we opposed our concept to that which exists in psychology.

Responding to this doubt, we remain convinced of the need for a strict distinction between these concepts. At the scientific and conceptual level, as opposed to lively everyday speech, these two terms are no more than homonyms. But by contrasting them as concepts that embrace various aspects of reality, we get the opportunity to compare them, to raise the question of real relations and interrelations of these aspects.

The concept of experience-activity fixes first of all the “economic” aspect of the transformations of the psychological world, distracting, at least initially, from the specific forms in which these transformations are reflected in consciousness and by which they are mediated (for the function of consciousness in relation to activity and to activity experiences including, consists in mediating this activity reflection of itself, its material, conditions, means, products, etc.). The concept of experience-contemplation, as we have established, means a certain mode, or level, of the functioning of consciousness as a system, existing and acting along with other modes - reflection, consciousness (presentation) and the unconscious (see pp. 17-18). Experience-activity is mediated in the general case by the whole multi-level system of consciousness as a whole.

These provisions allow us to put forward a hypothesis about a multilevel construction of the experience on the model of the ideas of I. A. Bernshtein about the level construction of movement. In each specific case of the activity of experiencing, the listed levels of consciousness for the realization of this process form a unique functional unity in which this or that level assumes the role of master. For example, in the example cited above from The Life of Arsenyev, I. A. Bunin, the activity of experience was based primarily on the unconscious level ("the secret work of the soul") with the active participation of the level of direct experience * ("the desire for some kind of change in life, freedom from something and striving somewhere "). When all these "some", "something", "somewhere" begin to be positively defined, to present themselves in consciousness, this indicates that the level of awareness is included in the work. In the creative resolution of the so-called "problem-conflict" situations, the processes of the reflexive level are especially important (140).

Referring to the problem of representation of the activity of experience in consciousness, one cannot ignore the problem of representation in the consciousness of a critical situation that is closely related to it. Not every situation, which from an external (for example, psychotherapeutic) position can be qualified as critical, is realized by the subject as such. This inaccuracy of awareness is often not just a defect of perception and understanding, i.e. something negative, and a positive product of the unconscious protective experience, which in psychotherapeutic terms sometimes requires special efforts to destroy the existing protective illusion that the situation is still solvable given the internal and external conditions. In other words, it is sometimes necessary to artificially bring the patient to the realization that his hopes for direct and immediate problem solving are unfounded in order to redirect his consciousness to another activity adequate to the situation - the activity of conscious experience instead of the inadequate activity of the subject-practical action. From the point of view of the hypothesis of multilevel construction of experience, it is in these cases about the psychotherapeutic change of the leading level of experience, about transferring it from the unconscious register to registers of consciousness, experience-contemplation and reflection.

Returning now to the question posed above, it can be said that the concept of experience-activity is independent as a category from the traditional concept of experience * and at the same time it reveals a special background in this last, namely: experience-contemplation is one of the levels of building experience-activity , with the level, in most cases, the most "loaded" because of its "intermediate" position between the unconscious and consciousness. In particular, emotional experience *, as the most important type of experience-contemplation (the latter, as we remember (see p. 17), can be not only emotional), taken in this aspect, acts as a fragment of the whole activity of experience - a fragment, a role , the meaning and function of which are clarified only in the system of concurrently and consistently current unconscious, “conscious” and reflexive processes, which mediate in aggregate some vital spiritual work. This is the way in which you can finally get rid of the still tenacious prejudice about the epiphenomenality of emotions. Emotion is not only a reaction, but also an action, it is not only an “appraiser” of life situations, but also an “employee” who contributes to the psychological resolution of these situations. (44; 237)

Finally, the last question (more precisely, the half-question-half-question) is connected with the absence of practical recommendations in the book. How can you help another person cope with critical life situations? This question was not directly reflected in the book for the simple reason that the author’s own experience in practical psycho-correctional work seems to him to be completely insufficient to take the risk of giving any specific guidelines. To do this, based primarily on theoretical considerations, it would be at least irresponsible. Psychocorrectional, and especially psychotherapeutic, practice (which is the prerogative of the doctor) is so complex and multifaceted that in principle it cannot fit into one, even the most coherent, scheme. The author himself outlined in the book helps the construction in his immediate practical work, they are useful for a clearer and clearer understanding of the life situations of patients, for understanding the direction and course of their attempts to survive these situations and for the psychocorrectional “leveling” of their experiences. But this, of course, does not prove anything, for psychocorrection and psychotherapy are too art to even explain obvious success cases by the truth of the theoretical schemes that guided the psychotherapist, and obvious failures by their falsehood.

In order for the connection between the theoretical concepts of experience and the results of psychocorrection to be not random, but necessary and systematic, the problem of the method must be posed and solved. The lack of a method leaves the most consistent and reasoned theory of speculation in the air, since the method is the only bridge on which mutually enriching exchanges between theory and practice can occur. As for the method, adequate to the theory of experience, it is quite obvious that it cannot be purely research, realizing only the cognitive relation to its object. It must be psychotechnical . We see a sample of this kind of method in Soviet psychology in the theory of phased, formation of mental actions of P. Ya. Halperin, where the subject under study, in the words of famous Marxist theses, is taken not only in the form of an object, or a form of contemplation, but as human sensual activity, practice In which the researcher himself is actively included.

The development of such a method, like the whole problem of experiencing from the theoretical and practical side, is a multidimensional, interdisciplinary matter. Psychology is not able to cover the whole problem by itself. The reader could see this with the example of our study, where we, trying to hold only the psychological point of view, were forced to abstract from many important aspects of the holistic theme. Due to the fundamental limitations of a purely psychological approach, I would like to draw attention to the problem of experiencing representatives of other disciplines, especially the humanitarian cycle, who could make an irreplaceable contribution not only to the theory of experiencing, but also to the practice of psychological assistance. The efforts of psychotherapists, psychologists, and suicidologists are not enough here.An ethnographer, folklorist, a specialist in scientific atheism and the history of religions could provide psycho-correctional practice with a wealth of material on the techniques, methods, and methods of social organization of human experience at different stages of social development and in different types of cultures. A sociologist and a historian could help this practice by studying the phenomena of mass psychology during periods of social crises, turning points in the history of society. A philosopher can play a very important role. The “schematisms of consciousness” that mediate human experience are special systems of meanings in which certain components appear as the social ideology of psychology at the level of individual consciousness. Since the task of philosophy, as formulated by K. Marx, is not only to explain the world, but also to change it,and the most important part of changing the world is the formation of a new man, then inthe practical solution of the problem of experiencing Marxist-Leninist philosophy can contribute to the creative creation of “schematisms” that are organically derived from the communist worldview and are capable of filling human life with meaningfulness even in the most severe crises.

Psychology, of course, cannot pretend to set tasks for other disciplines. This is just a call for cooperation in the development of the theory and practice of psychological assistance. The author can only hope that his work will be useful for specialists who are already helping a person in overcoming critical life situations.