19. DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHE IN ONTOGENESIS. THE MOVING FORCES OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF A MENTAL CHILD

The impetus to the development of the human psyche is the presence of cultural, social, activity factors surrounding a person in everyday life and being an integral part of the surrounding world. The development and formation of the human psyche takes him out of the category of animals into the category of reasonably minded. And the transfer of historical and cultural knowledge and experience of mankind, which constitute the process of the formation of the psyche, radically change the structure of human activity, its personal component.

The process of development of the psyche implies the passage by the human individual of the following stages:

1) mastering the methods of manufacture and use of items that increase the functionality of the human body (tools);

2) the acquisition of the ability to use the cultural achievements of mankind;

3) the study and application of sign-speech means for the structuring of consciousness and the rational management of mental and emotional processes;

4) mastering the methods of personal organization, the regulation of their own behavior;

5) mastering the ways of interpersonal and social interaction.

The level of a person’s cognitive development often implies a person’s ability to use acquired experience to organize interpersonal and social interactions, apply known information in the form of symbolic and symbolic means.

A person can be called a person who is able to set goals with their subsequent achievement, using the acquired wide range of knowledge and developed interpersonal interaction.

Mastering a wide range of skills and knowledge in humans occurs in the process of training and education.

In the course of the child's development, under the influence of the specific circumstances of his life, the place that he occupies in the system of human relations changes. According to A. N. Leont'ev , preschool childhood is sometimes life when the surrounding world of human reality is opened to the child. It is now that he penetrates into the surrounding world, masters it in an effective form. During this period, the child experiences his dependence on the people around him, his life needs are met by adults, and he must take into account the requirements that the people around him make to his behavior. During this period of a child’s life, the world of the people around him breaks up into two circles for him. The first circle consists of those close people, the relationship with which is determined by its relationship with the rest of the world. The second circle is made up of all other people, the attitude to which is mediated for the child by his relationship, established in the first, minor circle. This happens not only in the conditions of raising a child in the family. Even if a preschooler who was raised at home is sent to kindergarten, and the child’s lifestyle changes, the child’s psychological activity remains the same in its basic features. Attitudes of children of this age to a teacher are peculiar, for a child her attention is necessary to him personally, he often resorts to her mediation in his relations with peers. Therefore, we can say that the relationship to the teacher includes a small, intimate circle of his communication.

A preschooler child may be able to read well, his knowledge may be relatively great. But this does not erase and cannot erase in it the childish, truly preschool. If the child’s main attitudes towards life are rearranged, for example, the little sister is on his hands, and the mother turns to him as her assistant, a participant in adult life, the overall mental image of the child will change. In normal cases, the transition from preschool childhood to the next stage in the development of mental life occurs in connection with the child’s entry to school. The significance of this event is very great, the whole system of the child’s life relations is being rebuilt. Now he has responsibilities not only to parents and caregivers, but also responsibilities to society. These are the duties on whose fulfillment his place in life, his social function and role, and hence the content of all his future life will depend. Usually the child knows about this long before the start of the exercise. However, these requirements acquire a valid and psychologically effective sense for him only when he begins to learn, and initially they also appear in a very concrete form - in the form of teacher requirements. When a child sits down to prepare lessons, he feels occupied with a truly important task. The real place that a child occupies in everyday life, surrounding adults, in the life of his family is changing.

A. N. Leontiev pointed out that changing the place occupied by the child in the system of social relations is the first thing that should be noted when trying to approach the question of the driving forces for the development of his psyche. However, this place in itself does not determine development; it only characterizes the cash that has already been achieved. What directly determines the development of the child’s psyche is his very life, the development of the real processes of this life, in other words, the development of the child’s activities, both external and internal. Leontiev believed that in studying the development of the psyche of a child, one should proceed from an analysis of the development of his activity, since it is formed in the given concrete conditions of his life. Only with such an approach can the role of both the external conditions of the child’s life and the dispositions that he possesses be clarified. Life or activity in general does not add up mechanically from particular types of activity. Some activities are leading at this stage and are of greater importance for the further development of the personality, others are less. Some play a major role in development, others - a subordinate. Therefore, it is necessary to talk about the dependence of the development of the psyche not on activity in general, but on leading activity. A sign of transition from one stage to another is precisely the change in the type of activity leading the child’s attitude to activity. Sign of leading activities are not purely quantitative indicators. Leading activity is not just the activity most often encountered at this stage of development. Leading reality is an activity that is characterized by the following feature: it is an activity in the form of which other, new activities are differentiated and within which. For example, learning, in the closer sense of the word, which first appeared already in preschool childhood, first appears in the game, that is, precisely in the activity that is leading at this stage of development. The child begins to learn by playing.

Leading activity is an activity in which private mental processes are formed or rebuilt. For example, in the game for the first time, the processes of active imagination of the child are formed, in the teaching - the processes of abstract thinking. It does not follow from this that the formation or restructuring of all mental processes occurs only within the leading activity. Some mental processes are formed and rearranged not directly in the leading activity itself, but in other activities genetically related to it. For example, the processes of abstraction and generalization of color are formed at preschool age not in the game itself, but in drawing, color application, etc., that is, in those activities that are only in their origin connected with game activity.

Leading activity is an activity on which the main psychological changes in the personality of a child observed in a given period of development closely depend. For example, a preschooler child defends social functions and the corresponding norms of human behavior in the game, and this is an important moment in the formation of his personality.

Thus, as A. N. Leontyev points out, the leading activity is such an activity, the development of which causes the most important changes in the mental processes and psychological characteristics of the child's personality at this stage of his development.

The developmental stages of the child’s psyche are characterized not only by a certain content of the child’s leading activity, but also by a certain sequence in time, that is, a certain relationship with the age of the children. Neither the content of the stages nor their sequence in time is something once and for all given and unchanging. Like any new generation, so does every single person belonging to this generation find already known living conditions ready. They make this or that content of its activity possible. Therefore, although it may be noted a certain stadial nature in the development of the child’s psyche, the content of the stages is by no means independent of the concrete historical conditions in which the child’s development proceeds. It depends above all exactly

from these conditions. The influence of concrete historical conditions affects both the specific content of one or another separate stage of development, and the whole course of the process of mental development as a whole. For example, the duration and content of that period of development, which is the preparation of a person for his participation in social and working life, the period of upbringing and education, were not always historically the same. This duration varied from epoch to epoch, lengthening as the demands of society for this period increased. This means that although the developmental stages are distributed in a certain way in time, their age limits depend on their content, and this, in turn, is determined by the specific historical conditions in which the child’s development takes place. Thus, it is not the age of the child as such that determines the content of the developmental stage, but the age limits of the stage themselves depend on their content and change with the change in socio-historical conditions. These conditions determine what kind of activity the child becomes leading at a given stage of development of his psyche. The mastery of objectively surrounding child activity, a game in which a child masters a wider range of phenomena and human relations, systematic teaching at school and then special preparatory or labor activity — such is the consistent change of leading activities leading to relationships that can be stated.

The leading type of activity of the child and the real place that the child occupies in the system of social relations are interrelated. Changing this place and changing the child’s leading activities are also closely interrelated. According to A. N. Leont'ev, the most general form of the answer to this question is that in the course of development, the former place occupied by the child in the world of human relations surrounding him begins to be recognized by him as not corresponding to his capabilities, and he seeks to change him . An open contradiction arises between the child’s way of life and its possibilities, which have already determined this way of life. In accordance with this, its activity is restructured. Thus, the transition to a new stage in the development of his mental life takes place.

Crises - a crisis of 3 years, 7 years, a crisis of adolescence, a crisis of youth - are always associated with a change of stages. In a bright and obvious form, they show that there is precisely the internal necessity of these shifts, of these transitions from one stage of the child to another. (According to the materials of A. N. Leontiev.)