For everything there is a time, and a time for every thing under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to destroy, and a time to build; a time to cry, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to scatter stones, and a time to gather stones; a time to hug, and a time to avoid hugs; time to seek, and time to lose; a time to save, and a time to throw away; a time to rend, and a time to sew together; a time to be silent and a time to speak; a time to love and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace. Ecclesiastes
Psychological time of personalityEvgeniy Golovakha
1. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
IN PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY
For the first time, the psychological patterns of man’s experience of time were strictly formulated by Kant. In the history of philosophy, the name of Kant is associated with the concept of the transcendental ideality of time as an a priori condition of sensory contemplation. This understanding of time is the property of the “critical” period of Kant’s philosophy. Its assessment in the light of modern natural science and social knowledge has received sufficient attention in the philosophical literature ( Askin
, 1966;
Loy
, 1978, etc.).
Kant's ideas, valuable for understanding psychological time, have not yet become the subject of special analysis. In his early works, he emphasized that the attitude to time and its experience depend on the nature of the activities of various subjects: “The need for time is something relative, which can be recognized and understood only by comparing the magnitude of the proposed task with the speed of its implementation. Therefore, the same period of time, which for one kind of being seems only a moment, for another can turn out to be a very long time, during which, thanks to the speed of action, a whole series of changes occur” ( Kant
, 1963, p. 255).
Although Kant used this position to prove the more subtle spiritual organization of beings who lived, according to his assumption, on other planets with a higher daily rotation rate than the Earth, it, as the further development of psychology showed, has a real human meaning. Firstly, the very concept of “time need” opens up a diachronic aspect of the study of human activity, since it focuses on the analysis of the duration and sequence of actions necessary to achieve any result, which means that the need for a certain object for its implementation presupposes, along with the formulation goals and the choice of means also form the need for time, which is the starting point that influences the characteristics of the further use and experience of time in the process of activity. Secondly, the formula proposed for measuring the magnitude of this need (direct dependence on the volume of necessary actions and inverse dependence on the speed of their execution) determines the fundamental possibility of the psychological “extensibility” of time, the manifestation of significant differences in the individual experience of intervals of equal chronological duration, but differently filled with activity . This pattern can be presented in the following form: the higher the intensity of activity, the more units of psychological time in the same chronological interval, or, in the figurative expression of A.P. Chekhov: “If you want to have little time, then do nothing” ( Chekhov
, 1980, p.
79). In Anthropology, Kant extends this pattern to the experience of time on the scale of human life and gives an “informational” interpretation of the paradoxical, at first glance, fact that a person who had been tormented by boredom for most of his life, to whom every day seemed too long, At the end of his life he complains about the shortness of life in general. The short duration of the past is explained by the lack of impressions preserved in the memory of an inactive person. Thus, the past tense “compresses” as the information content of memories of past years decreases. Time, however, can also “stretch”. In this regard, Kant puts forward an interesting hypothesis that in psychological time a person can and should live significantly more than in the number of years; it is in this that he sees the path to life satisfaction: “Many periods of time, which are distinguished in the last period of life by various and variable work, arouse in the old man the idea that he has lived much longer than the number of years; filling time with systematically increasing activity, which has as its result a great, predetermined goal, is the only sure means of being satisfied with life and at the same time feeling satiated with it” ( Kant
, 1966, p. 477).
Thus, saturating the future with meaningful goals is a prerequisite for saturating the present with activities, which in turn leads to filling the past with informative memories. Thus, according to Kant, a person achieves the fullness of his experience of time and, at the same time, satisfaction with life. This becomes possible on the basis of the ability to reproduce the past and future in the present in the process of “associating the representations of the past and future state of the subject with his present state... so that what no longer exists is combined in a coherent experience with what is not yet, through what exists at the present time” (ibid., p. 419). Kant (in accordance with the understanding of time as a subjective reality inherent in his philosophical system) considered the relationship between the past, present and future only in relation to human experience, to the psychological mechanisms of individual consciousness. For him, there is no problem of the relationship between objective and subjective (psychological) time, but only the problem of the relationship of time in various forms of perception of phenomena. Therefore, a consistent scientific concept of psychological time could not be created by Kant, although his specific observations and conclusions regarding the specifics of the subjective reflection of time are still valuable today. It is enough to point out the productive development of the problem of the need for time as the most important component of psychological time ( Sev
,1972, p.
480–481), a spatial three-dimensional interpretation of psychological time, which first appears in Kant as the coexistence of temporal modes ( Moiseeva
,
Sysuev
, 1981;
Yakovlev
, 1980;
Cottle
, 1976).
And finally, Kant was the first to attempt a scientific explanation of the problem of changes in the subjective speed of time in various conditions of functioning of the psyche, linking the acceleration or deceleration of time with the variety or monotony of activity ( Kant
, 1966, pp. 398–399).
In resolving the issue of the relationship between the past, present and future, Kant follows Augustine, who, through the subjectivization of time, its identification with the extension of the human spirit, tried to overcome the idea characteristic of ancient philosophy that the past no longer exists, the future does not yet exist, and only the moment of their mutual transition is real. - the present. Augustine considered it necessary to recognize the presence of the past and the future in the present, their coexistence. In this regard, he used the concepts of “present” relating to things of the “past”, “present” relating to things of the “future”, and “present” relating to things of the “present” ( Anthology
... 1969, p.
587). Each of these temporal modes corresponded to a specific psychological mechanism: memory, expectation, contemplation, thanks to the interaction of which time appears as a whole in the human mind. For the same purpose, Kant correlates the abilities to remember and foresee as conditions for the formation of a temporal connection of perceptions of the present ( Kant
, 1966, pp. 418–419).
We find a deep dialectical justification for the idea of the temporary unity of the psyche in Hegel when he analyzed the problem of the subject’s transition in the process of cognition from the stage of pure contemplation to the formation of ideas. As is known, Hegel criticized Kant’s subjectivism in understanding space and time and considered spatiality and temporality inherent in things in themselves, but in the very “sound” of these words he saw an indication of the limitations of material forms, which are overcome in the process of self-realization of the spirit. “Cognitive thinking,” Hegel emphasized, “does not dwell on these forms, but comprehends things in their concept, which contains within itself space and time, as something sublated” ( Hegel
,1956, p. 250). In this regard, spatiality and temporality, revealed to the subject at the stage of pure contemplation, act as forms of the externality of the spirit. However, when contemplation turns into representation, it does not become only past; in its removed form, it is also present in the present. Hegel illustrates this idea with the following example: “I saw it” in German literally means “I have it seen.” In this regard, he comes to the conclusion that these words “express not only the past, but at the same time the present; the past is only relative here - it takes place only when comparing direct contemplation with what we currently have in our minds” (ibid., p. 253). The most important point here is an indication of the relativity of the past, on the one hand, as already past and irrevocable, and on the other, as the real content of human consciousness and activity, captured in the present.
Although the dialectic of consistency and coexistence was interpreted idealistically by Hegel, it became one of the sources for the formation of Marxist views on the specific structure of human life, for a time as “the space of human development” ( Marx
, 1959, vol. 16, p. 147).
The Marxist analysis of the dialectics of necessity and chance, possibility and reality made it possible to consider the relationship between the past, present and future in their real relationship, to overcome the extremes of mechanistic determinism and teleologism in solving this problem. The objective nature of this relationship is due to the fact that the past and the future are not valid in the memory and imagination of the subject, but because the material processes carried out in the past determine the objectivity of the present, which contains real possibilities for directed development in the future. Since the diachronic picture of reality that forms in the consciousness of the subject is determined not by his arbitrariness, but primarily by the objective conditions and content of practical activity, the possibility of scientifically posing the problem of the temporary unity of human activity and consciousness opens up. This is the solution of the Marxist theory to the problem of goal setting: the goal as an ideal, desired image of the future acquires reality in the present to the extent that its implementation is possible in the specific conditions of the subject’s life.
Thus, revealing the relationship between the objective and the subjective in social time on the basis of the dialectically understood unity of the social and the individual, Marxist philosophy creates the prerequisites for solving the problem of psychological time, which is, on the one hand, a type of social time, conditioned by the objective structure and content of the social activity of the individual, and on the other hand, time, which takes on a specific form and specific properties due to the functioning of psychological mechanisms associated with cognitive and emotional-volitional processes that are actualized in consciousness under the influence of psychological states and fairly stable individual psychological properties of the individual.
The development of the problem of social and psychological time in philosophy, the emergence of psychology as an independent science, prepared the ground for the development of concrete scientific research into time relations in the human psyche. It should also be noted that by the time the first psychological laboratories emerged, the efforts of physiologists (Helmholtz, Donders, Exner, etc.) had proven that psychological processes are characterized by a certain reaction time, which includes the time of conduction of the nerve impulse as a physiological component and the delay time of the response to the stimulus, due to mechanisms for processing information received by the brain. A special device was created - the Hipp chronoscope, which recorded the reaction time of subjects to stimuli with an accuracy of thousandths of a second ( Yaroshevsky
, 1976, p. 215–217). These studies had a significant impact on the first steps of experimental psychology, within which attempts were made to connect the patterns identified when measuring reaction time with the specifics of various mental processes. N. Lange’s work on the analysis of motor and sensory reactions showed the dependence of the duration of reaction time on the level of mental activities; Measuring reaction time in an associative experiment was used by Galton and Wundt to study mental processes, since it was assumed that differences in the time required to establish certain verbal associations make it possible to judge the peculiarities of the formation of ideas corresponding to different types of associations. Although the heuristic capabilities of chronoscopic studies turned out to be extremely limited in the study of higher mental functions, thanks to them, time was firmly established in the young psychological science as an essential factor in the mental activity of an individual and became the object of experimental study. However, the analysis of reaction time did not directly lead to the formulation of the problem of psychological time, since it was based on the traditional idea of time as pure chronological duration, serving as an external quantitative equivalent of internal processes.
Specific patterns of psychological time began to clearly manifest themselves in experimental studies of auditory perception. It has long been noted that, although successive elements of a sound series cannot be simultaneously represented in the consciousness of an individual, this does not affect the integrity of the perception of a melody or a certain rhythm. Experiments with a metronome carried out in Wundt's laboratory showed that the actual volume of consciousness includes not one sound element, but a certain series that forms a complete auditory image. Continuing these experiments, Titchener came to the conclusion that the alternative of sequence and simultaneity, existing in physical time, must be revised in relation to the time of psychological processes. Indeed, several units of a sound series are sequential in the sense that they follow each other in a certain order accessible to perception, but at the same time they are simultaneous, since they form an integral structure of the auditory image. In this regard, Titchener suggests the existence of two dimensions of psychological time - sequence and simultaneity, forming a single time field of a certain duration.
The scientific formulation of the problem of psychological time already at the first stage of the development of psychology as an independent science required the study of the genesis of temporal representations in their connection with the formation of spatial representations. The attempt of the English associationists, led by Spencer, to substantiate the primacy of temporal relations in the evolution of the space-time structure of human consciousness did not receive wide recognition. More convincing was the position of those psychologists who believed that temporal representations are historically and ontogenetically formed on the basis of spatial ones. M. Guyot provides numerous arguments in favor of this concept in the monograph “The Origin of the Idea of Time,” which played a significant role in the study of time as a psychological problem. “To wish, like Spencer, to construct space with the help of time,” writes M. Guyot, “consequently, falls into contradiction with the true laws of evolution, for, on the contrary, only with the help of space do we come to the representation of time” ( Guyo
, 1899, p.
24). Subsequently, the spatial nature of primary time representations was confirmed in psychological and cultural studies. Thus, J. Piaget showed that comparative estimates of the time of movement of two objects in young children are formed not on the basis of an objective ratio of the durations of this movement, but by comparing the speed of their movement or the length of segments of space traversed by objects during a given time ( Piaget
, 1966).
Only gradually does an abstract idea of duration form in the child’s mind, regardless of the spatial dimensions of the movement of various objects ( Marder
, 1974, p. 97).
Analysis of temporal relations in the structure of mythological consciousness also indicates the spatiality of temporal concepts characteristic of traditional cultures ( Gurevich
, 1972, p.
84); these spatial representations are still preserved in temporary vocabulary ( Steblin-Kamensky
, 1976, p. 43).
It would, of course, be wrong, based on the above, to believe that the specificity of psychological time can be reduced to spatial representations. Psychological science of the second half of the 19th century took an important step in the study of psychological time as an independent scientific problem. However, the question of the levels and scale of individual time remained practically unexplored. The experiment as an objective method of studying the psyche was used in a laboratory situation and was aimed at identifying the elementary mechanisms of perception, memory, and attention. Although even in these conditions the specificity of the time of mental processes manifested itself, it was only a time of direct, situational experience. There were no methods for studying the socio-cultural content and structure of a person’s consciousness, with the exception of various modifications of introspection, and therefore it was impossible to experimentally substantiate or refute the patterns of a person’s psychological time derived in the process of self-observation on a scale beyond the limits of direct experience, and to reveal the mechanisms underlying these patterns.
There were no discoveries in the study of the general laws of psychological time; it was rather about new formulations of known truths. Although P. Fress believes that the following laws were discovered during this period: “The more you age, the shorter time seems” (James) and “Whenever we turn our attention to the passage of time, it seems longer” (Wundt) ( Fress
, 1978, p.
115, 123), however, we find the indicated patterns in a slightly different formulation in the works of Kant (1966, pp. 475–477). There is an opinion that James was the first to draw attention to the paradoxical fact that periods of time that are not filled with impressions pass very slowly, but when remembered, they seem to flash quickly, while time filled with various activities passes unnoticed, but is later assessed as very long ( James
, 1905, p. 239). And here the priority belongs to Kant, who assumed that this kind of phenomenon can be explained by differences in the number of impressions preserved in the memory of time intervals filled with different events.
M. Guyot puts forward the hypothesis that duration is subjectively measured by the number (and not the chronological duration) of sensations, and as evidence he cites observational data on measurements of the duration of dreams, which can be chronologically very short-term, and subjectively assessed as longer, which, according to him opinion, is associated only with the number of events that make up the content of the dream ( Guyo
, 1899, p.
57). Based on this, he makes a fair conclusion that the mechanisms of subjective measurement of duration cannot be considered a priori, which he sees as a decisive argument against Kant’s aprioristic concept of time ( ibid
., p. 58). However, as we have seen, Kant also connected estimates of duration with the number of impressions, which did not prevent him from considering time an a priori form of sensory intuition. The inconsistency of Kant's position in posing the problem of time is well known, but in this case it indicates that Kant the scientist did not always follow Kant the philosopher. This allowed him to discover patterns in the field of psychological time research, which psychologists came to more than half a century later.
Why did the psychology of that period, having quite clearly understood the specifics of psychological time in comparison with physical time, be unable to take a step forward in the discovery of new patterns and the study of the mechanisms of formation of temporary experiences and conceptual representations of the individual? The main reason was that in the field of research into personality psychology, the subjective method dominated, the supporters of which were Wundt, Titchener, and representatives of the Würzburg school, who were firmly convinced that there were no other ways to study human consciousness, and, consequently, a person’s awareness of temporary relationships. . Although an objective method of studying mental activity began to be established in psychology, its capabilities were limited, since the connections between acts of consciousness and behavior of an individual recorded in the experiment were not supported by theoretical understanding of these phenomena from the position of the dialectical unity of external forms of activity and internal mental processes, the formation of the psyche in practical activity person. Because of this, some attempts at a materialistic explanation of the characteristics of a person’s experience of time based on an analysis of objective physiological processes and human motor activity (I.M. Sechenov) could not become widespread in the psychology of that period.
As a result of the fact that experimental psychologists were unable to explain the mechanisms of formation of time representations of personality, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, the concepts of time put forward by Dilthey and Bergson became widespread. The positions of these philosophers are similar in that “both contrast time as a reality, fixed by the inner sense and given directly, to the “abstract time” of mathematics and natural science” ( Gaidenko
, 1969, p.
241). This approach played an important role in the final approval of the idea of the non-identity of physical time and time given in experience. However, this difference was seen in the fact that time in the physical sense is an abstraction, but it is real only as a phenomenon of life and consciousness. Dilthey and Bergson denied the possibility of objective rational knowledge of time. According to Bergson, a person is helped to penetrate into his essence by creative intuition, based on the unity of the mechanisms of memory and perception, as a result of which the experience of duration is formed: “the instant of the present, being always a transition, an elusive boundary between the immediate past, which no longer exists, and the immediate future, which has not yet arrived, would turn into a simple abstraction, if there were not a moving mirror that continuously reflects perception in the form of memory” ( Bergson
, 1915, p. 105).
For Dilthey, the main thing in the problem of time was not the knowledge of the connection between the past and the present as pure duration, but the socio-cultural, historical content of this connection. Therefore, he believed that time cannot be known within the framework of explanatory psychology, modeled on the natural sciences, since it strives to “construct such great long-term connections as space, time, causality, from some of the elementary processes of association, fusion, apperception that it studies.” ( Dilthey
, 1980, p. 273). To comprehend time as a “living connection of the soul” in its formation and development is possible, in his opinion, only within the framework of descriptive psychology. If an experimental method is appropriate in explanatory psychology, then descriptive psychology can be built on the basis of the method of “understanding,” which involves “understanding someone else’s human mental life,” as well as “using the objective products of mental life.”
In addition to Bergson's intuition and Dilthey's philosophy of life, the problem of time in its human meaning and content was actively developed in Husserl's phenomenology and Heidegger's existentialism. The most important point of these concepts was the final subjectivization of time, the identification of its unity in the past, present and future with the temporal unity of consciousness ( Loy
, 1978;
Gaidenko
, 1965]. The phenomenologization of time clearly manifested itself in Western psychology, when the subject of research in it became the psychological time of the individual on a scale that goes beyond the limits of situational experience. The very concept of “horizon of being” as a characteristic of the temporality of consciousness played an important role in the development of concepts that reflect the main characteristics of psychological time on a biographical scale: time perspective, time horizon, time orientation of the individual.
Ten children ago I didn’t live, but wasted time
Time seems to go by so slowly, but it passes so quickly. It's amazing - just a few years ago I seemed to be a different person. I have the same name, the same body, but my perception of the world, my approach to life in general has been turned upside down.
Ten years ago, at 19, I considered myself a mature person, a mature person who understood everything about myself and others. How wrong I was! In fact, then I was like a chick in an egg, which “understood” very well only in its own small world, limited by a hard shell. This is a shell formed by parental upbringing, the environment formed since childhood and certain events.
When the shell cracked under the pressure of life's circumstances and trials that befell me, I found myself face to face with a huge world, unprepared for real life, scared and devastated. I learned to live again. I recognized myself as a stranger. I was looking for air to breathe, soil on which to rest my feet, and wind in the flow of which I could spread my wings. At times I thought that was it. That further, beyond this limit, there is no life. It's too late to start again...
But now I know: NOTHING IS LATE as long as we are alive! Change for the better, give love to loved ones, do good that is within our power, fulfill our dreams and set new goals! I am grateful to Life for all the pain that I have experienced over the past 10 years. I experienced moving halfway across the country and found myself far from family and friends. I got married and experienced betrayal. To my surprise, I discovered that I was brave and not ready to go back, even if everything was vague in the future. I learned to make decisions and learn from failures. Now it’s not just an older me, but I’m completely different.
Ten years ago I couldn’t cook, not at all, but now I’m an excellent cook and really love to do it. Ten years ago I did not think about marriage and hated children - now I am a loving wife and mother of a wonderful daughter. I was feminist back then, but now I am cultivating my femininity and blossoming day by day. And I really like it! Ten years ago it was like I didn’t live, really. I was wasting my time. If someone had explained to me what I am now learning myself from the very beginning, perhaps my life would have turned out completely differently... But, apparently, everything comes in its own time, when we ourselves are ready.
Now I continue on my way. I still have a lot to learn, a lot of difficult problems to solve. And, most likely, if I try to imagine myself in another ten years, I will be very far from reality. Maybe I will succeed or lose everything I have, or maybe I will no longer exist. Time will show. One thing I know for sure is that everything that happens is given to us to bring GOOD. And it depends only on us whether we can reveal and accept this benefit. With thanks. Accept and move on, renewed, wiser, more whole.
