Deductive approach

For the deductive approach and the methods of psychotherapy associated with it, firstly, the reality under study is not separated from the researcher, it includes his own individual features. The laws discovered in it are now subordinated not by someone “different”, but, like any person, “you yourself”. The principle that each individual person is capable (like a researcher) of trying to understand the objective laws of their individual development and use them as a means of mastering and controlling it becomes fundamental. The essence of the therapeutic effect is not reduced to individual measures of adaptation to the environment, but to the possibility of an independent active restructuring of the individuality and corresponding behaviors. Thus, this approach deals not with the patient - the object of external influence, designed to change its “nature”, but with the subject - a person who can change himself.
Secondly, the deductive approach to the construction of individual types presupposes the concept of a norm, and one that certainly exists must exist. The definition of the norm constitutes the sought principles of the organization of various types of character, the conditions of their formation. And, thirdly, the allocation of specific individual features of a particular type is associated with an explanation of their necessary purpose and genesis, beyond whose understanding it would lose all meaning.
Deductive approach is often called theoretical. However, such “theories” not only cannot be created without reliance on reality, 5 but have a very special status for scientific discoveries: they immediately become the basis for a system of means for organizing human behavior in everyday life. After all, an appeal to a person who is capable of independent change is completely special. It is assumed that he already has (they cannot but be) some means of self-determination, and the task of the researcher is to help him realize these tools, uncover them at a new level and teach them to reuse them.
Interestingly, the very linguistic expression of “theoretical” statements becomes special, metaphorical. In principle, understandable even for the uninitiated, their content may perplex empirical scientists who require a direct description of the facts. This happens because the meaningful definitions of character and their consequences are not aimed at describing mental reality as such, but are prescriptions, rules for its active construction.
A vivid historical illustration can be found in the definition of character and temperament of one of the founders of this approach, the German philosopher Kant, who is interesting to present through his “unexpected” everyday consequences.
Thus, Kant insistently asserts that it is impossible in principle to confuse types of character (and temperament), as different modes of behavior, feelings in everyday life (although, if we understand empirically, we meet with almost every one of us). Hence, he also considers it impossible to build one’s character by selecting and combining - “selection” —the most positive traits of other people, like the desired, but incredible “growing up” of the groom for the famous Gogol bride6. Finally, according to Kant, one should not count on the fact that a character can be formed gradually, in parts, it arises (if it occurs) only immediately (which, it would seem, also does not correspond to everyday ideas).
It is obvious that all these statements about the character have a certain allegorical meaning. If we succeed in uncovering it, we will understand that, according to Kant, character is a holistic education, which is not a gift of nature, but is formed by man himself as a result of a special directed effort, which requires full responsibility and independence. “Just to have character,” wrote Kant, “means to possess that property of will, thanks to which the subject makes for himself practical principles which he prescribes to himself as something unchanging with his own mind.” 7 Of course, since a person does not have full knowledge of all possible life situations, no one guarantees him adequacy, the "correctness" of his own fundamental actions always and everywhere, but that is why they must be acts according to the rules.8 And the character itself is not acquired by man once and for all he argues (and, in this sense, it seems to arise) each time anew during the next life trials as a means and result of an independent conscious effort to create (or restructure) his individuality.