Personality structure. Basic approaches to understanding personality structure.

Personality structure (according to K.K. Platonov)

The structure of the subject’s personality is the internal state of a person’s readiness to perceive, evaluate and act in a certain way in relation to objects and phenomena of the surrounding reality.

In turn, the mechanism of installation is considered not at the level of unconscious activity, with the help of which a particular need is satisfied.

The structure of personality in the understanding of K.K. Platonov represents the relationship between the biological and the social at the level of four substructures.

Many theories of personality have examined in detail the problem of the life path (destiny) of the individual.

Essentially about fate, i.e. the history and development of man can be discussed with only personal qualities in mind.

Because it would be unfair to evaluate and analyze a person’s life path based on the properties of his temperament or character traits.

Fate is not given and cannot be determined on the basis of biological laws or psychological habits. A person creates his own destiny on a personal level. Moreover, this creative process is based on the choice of the meaning of life.

Many people wonder what is more important for personal development: receiving meaning or searching for it independently. Representatives of religion and representatives of science (philosophy) answer this question differently.

For the first, the development of personality is unthinkable without a person receiving the original meaning of existence provided from above; for the second - without acquiring meaning in the process of cognition of the essence of being.

From the point of view of the representative of humanistic psychology V. Frankl, “since life is a string of unique situations and a person is unique both in essence and in existence, the meaning of his life is also unique,” ​​i.e. “There is no such thing as a universal meaning in life, but only the unique meanings of individual situations.”

At the same time, it should still be remembered that there are meanings that are shared by many people or they are inherent to people of a certain society.

Such meanings are designated by values. Possessing values ​​is believed to facilitate the search for meaning. From the point of view of V. Frankl, the essential fact is that values, unlike meanings, are built on a hierarchical principle, and a person is free to choose values. Meanings are mediated by responsibility and conscience.

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“The true meaning should be sought with the help of conscience - an exclusively human phenomenon,” wrote V. Frankl.

He vividly expressed his position on the meaning of life in a psychotherapeutic conversation on death row with a condemned man, saying that “life either has meaning, in which case it does not depend on its duration, or it has no meaning, in which case it would be pointless.” continue it."

V. Frankl named the essential signs of a person’s existential existence that make him harmonious:

• spirituality;
• freedom;
• responsibility.

Spirituality reflects the moral side of life, forming personality traits aimed at the benefit of others.

Freedom represents freedom in relation to drives, heredity and environment.

Existential analysis recognizes man not only as free, but also as responsible . Man is primarily responsible for finding and realizing meaning and realizing values. According to V. Frankl, he is responsible for pleasure and value, attraction and meaning before conscience and God.

The above analysis of personality theories and the current situation in the field of clinical psychology shows that, along with the concept of harmonious character, it is permissible to talk about a harmonious personality.

By a harmonious personality we understand an individual who, in the process of socialization, has consciously formed as a person who has responsibility for his own destiny and actions, independence and autonomy in decision-making, who is guided in his life by moral laws.

It can be argued that a harmonious person lives in accordance with the motto: “Nobody owes me anything.”

This principle should be understood as a refusal to make claims to others (parents, children, the state, etc.) in cases of failure in life.

Within the framework of the psychology of abnormal and deviant personality development, all of the listed qualities appear inverse. Responsibility is replaced by obligation, independence by dependence, morality by immorality.

CONCEPT OF PERSONALITY A.N. LEONTIEV (1903-1979)

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Unlike many domestic concepts of personality, this one is characterized by a high level of abstraction. Its essence is that, according to A.N. Leontiev “a person’s personality is produced ¨C created by social relations.” It is obvious that the basis for ideas about personality is the Marxist postulate about it as a set of social relations. The category of the subject’s activity comes to the fore, since “it is the activity of the subject that is the initial unit of psychological analysis of the individual, and not actions, not operations or blocks of these functions; the latter characterize activity, not personality.” The subordination of various activities creates the basis of personality, the formation of which occurs in ontogenesis. A.N. Leontyev did not classify as a personality, first of all, the genotypically determined characteristics of a person: physical constitution, type of nervous system, temperament, affectivity, natural inclinations, as well as acquired skills, knowledge and abilities, including professional ones. All of the above constitutes the individual properties of a person. A.N. Leontyev manages to distinguish between the concepts of individual and personality. If an individual

¨C this is the integrity and indivisibility of an individual of a given biological species, and secondly, the characteristics of a particular representative of the species that distinguishes it from other representatives of this species.
Individual properties, including genotypically determined ones, can change during a person’s life, but this does not make them personal. Personality is not an individual enriched by previous experience. The properties of an individual do not transform into personality properties. Although transformable, they remain individual properties, not defining the emerging personality, but constituting the prerequisites and conditions for its formation. Personality
is also a holistic formation, but not given by someone or something, but produced, created as a result of many objective activities. So, the position about activity as a unit of psychological analysis ¨C is the first fundamentally important theoretical postulate of A.N. Leontyev.

Another equally important postulate is addressed by A.N. Leontiev's position S.L. Rubinstein about the external, acting through internal conditions. A.N. Leontyev believed: if the subject of life has “an independent force of reaction” (activity), then it is true: “internally (the subject) acts through the external and thereby changes itself.”

So, personality development is a process of interactions of many activities that enter into hierarchical relationships with each other. Personality acts as a set of hierarchical relations of activities. Their peculiarity is their “detachment” from the states of the body. “These hierarchies of activities are generated by their own development, they form the core of the personality,” notes A.N. Leontyev.

For the psychological interpretation of “hierarchies of activities” A.N. Leontiev uses the concepts of “need”, “motive”, “emotion”, “meaning” and “meaning”. Let us note that the very content of the activity approach changes the traditional relationship between these concepts and the meaning of some of them.

In essence, the need is replaced by a motive, i.e. the hierarchy of activities turns into a hierarchy of motives.

Within the framework of the activity approach, emotions do not subordinate activity, but are its result and the “mechanism” of its movement. The peculiarity of emotions, says A.N. Leontiev, is that they reflect the relationship between motives (needs) and success or the possibility of successful implementation of the subject’s activities. “They (emotions) arise after the actualization of the motive before the subject’s rational assessment of his activities.” The rational assessment that follows the experience gives it a certain meaning and completes the process of recognizing the motive, comparing it and matching it with the purpose of the activity. It is the personal meaning that expresses the subject’s attitude to the objective phenomena he is aware of. Thus, the place of motive is taken by the so-called motive-goal, a concept introduced by A.N. Leontyev.

The hierarchy of motives constitutes the motivational sphere of the individual, central in the structure of A.N.’s personality. Leontyev. In his opinion, “personality structure is a relatively stable configuration of motivational lines. The internal relations of the main motivational lines form, as it were, a general psychological profile of the individual.”

All this allows A.N. Leontiev identified three main personality parameters:

the breadth of a person’s connections with the world (through his activities);

the degree of hierarchization of these connections, transformed into a hierarchy of meaning-forming motives (meanings-goals);

The general structure of these connections, motives and goals.

The process of personality formation according to A.N. Leontiev is the process of “formation of a coherent system of personal meanings.”

The general approach to understanding the problem of personality, outlined by A.N. Leontiev, found its development in the works of A.V. Petrovsky and V.A. Petrovsky.

CONCEPT OF PERSONALITY B.G. ANANYEVA (1907-1972)

According to B.G. Ananyev, the unity of the biological and social in a person is ensured through the unity of such macro-characteristics as the individual, personality, subject and individuality.

The carrier of the biological in man is mainly the individual. A person as an individual is a set of natural, genetically determined properties, the development of which occurs during ontogenesis, resulting in the biological maturity of a person.

The social is represented in a person through the personality and the subject of activity. In this case, we are not talking about the opposition of the biological and the social, if only because the individual in the course of life is socialized and acquires new properties. On the other hand, a person can become a person and a subject of activity only on the basis of certain individual structures.

A person is not only an individual and a personality, but also a bearer of consciousness, a subject of activity, producing material and spiritual values. Man as a subject appears from the side of his inner, mental life, as a bearer of mental phenomena. The structure of a person as a subject of activity is formed from certain properties of the individual and personality that correspond to the subject and means of activity.

Thus, each person appears in the form of a certain integrity ¨C as an individual, personality and subject, conditioned by the unity of the biological and social. As an individual, he develops in ontogenesis, and as a person, he goes through his life path, during which the socialization of the individual takes place.

However, it is obvious that we differ from each other in our temperament, character, style of activity, behavior, etc. Therefore, the concept of individuality is used. Individuality is a unique combination in a person of his traits from three substructures (individual, personality, subject of activity) of the psyche.

Therefore, when starting to characterize a person psychologically, it is necessary to give a psychological characterization of a person as an individual, a person himself, a subject of activity and individuality.

CONCEPT OF PERSONALITY A.V. PETROVSKY

The definition of personality given by A.V. Petrovsky in his textbook on General Psychology: “Personality in psychology denotes a systemic social quality acquired by an individual in objective activity and communication and characterizing the level and quality of representation of social relations in the individual.”

The concept of personality

refers to certain properties belonging to an individual, and this also refers to the originality, uniqueness of the individual, i.e.
individuality. The concepts of individual, personality and individuality
are not identical in content: each of them reveals a specific aspect of a person’s individual existence. Personality can only be understood in a system of stable interpersonal connections mediated by the content, values, and meaning of the joint activities of each participant.

Interpersonal connections that form a personality in a team externally appear in the form of a relationship or subject-subject relationship along with the subject-object relationship characteristic of objective activity. With a more specific examination, it turns out that direct subject-subject connections exist not so much on their own, but in mediation by some objects (material or ideal). This means that the relationship of an individual to another individual is mediated by the object of activity (subject ¨C object ¨C subject).

The personality of each person is endowed only with his own inherent combination of traits and characteristics that form his individuality

¨C a combination of psychological characteristics of a person that make up his originality, his difference from other people. Individuality is manifested in character traits, temperament, habits, prevailing interests, in the qualities of cognitive processes, in abilities, and individual style of activity. Just as the concepts individual and personality are not identical, personality and individuality, in turn, form unity, but not identity. The individual characteristics of a person do not appear in any way until a certain time, until they become necessary in the system of interpersonal relations, the subject of which is the given person as an individual. So, individuality is only one of the aspects of a person’s personality.

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Levels of personality functioning. Who are neurotics, borderline and psychotics?

It happens that people, in search of the reasons for their emotional state and behavior, find information about neuroses, put the stamp of a neurotic on themselves, believing that now they only need to see a psychiatrist.

Let's figure out what's what?

There are 3 levels of personality functioning or development:

• neurotic,
• border,
• psychotic,
• + healthy.

Healthy (according to Freud) is when a person retains the ability to love, work and play (some kind of interest, besides work, hobby), i.e. it can function successfully.

Neurotic - a person has an experience that he cannot cope with, a certain “symptom” due to which the quality of his life suffers (eg attacks of anger, anxiety, addictions, a tendency to manipulate, psychosomatics, mood swings, etc.) , the person’s psychological defenses turn on, but in general everything is more or less okay with him.

Thus, we can say that most people at different periods of life were or are at this level, i.e. are neurotic. A psychologist and non-medical psychotherapist (art therapist, gestalt therapist, body therapist, etc.) work with neurotics.

Borderline, i.e. is on the border of neurotic and psychotic levels.

The borderline-organized psyche is characterized by:

1. Polarization, or black and white thinking. For example, politicians are thieves; get divorced - a traitor; the boss is always bad; promoted - careerist, etc.

Emotionally, polarization is expressed in stability in the neurotic and em. storm at the border guard.

Neurotic: annoyance, regret, pleasure, confusion, anxiety, satisfaction.

Borderline: rage, despair, euphoria, emptiness, insignificance, manic enthusiasm, severe depression.

A less disturbed person is able to appreciate what already exists and not destroy everything, but change what needs changing, as a result he is left with more experience, knowledge, wisdom, money and more peace of mind. Compare the “both this and that” and “either this or that”/”all or nothing” way of living.

1. Contradiction and fragmentation.

For example, the child’s relationship with the closest person, the parent, was not trusting, but aggressive; instead of love, the child received ridicule and pokes. That. distrust was formed and retaliatory aggression was dissociated, because the child cannot contrast his aggression with the parent’s, different weight categories. To dissociate means to split aggression from the sensory sphere with the psyche, as in this example, and separate it from consciousness. As an adult, trying to create a close relationship with a partner, the border guard will dissociate aggression, and instead of trust and love, show distrust and unconsciously aggression towards the partner.

Fragmentation is expressed by the fact that the border guard thinks, feels and acts from one part of the self, and then is horrified, ashamed, and feels guilty from another part. For example, having made a mistake, the internal dialogue of the border guard will be similar to a guilty child and a strict parent: “Why did I do that! After all, I knew where this would lead!”

A healthier personality is based on an adult attitude - taking responsibility, the intention to take care of oneself and others.

1. Poor ability to contain emotions.

Containment is available to border guards to a small extent, and for processing some feelings it is not available at all due to dissociation.

1. Problems with creating and maintaining boundaries.

The border guard may perceive refusal as rejection, because of the polarization “you will save” or “you will destroy”, “black” or “white”, other options seem to not exist.

1. Defenses: denial, isolation, projection, omnipotent control, dissociation, introjection, primitive idealization and devaluation, projective identification, splitting (I will make a separate post about defenses).
2. Psychosomatic diseases.

Border guards are susceptible to psychosomatic diseases, because are forced to process some of the feelings with the body, due to the fact that some feelings are dissociated (separated from the emotional sphere), and it is not possible to process them with the psyche.

1. Strong affects. For example, outbursts of aggression.

Psychotic is when the border of reality is lost, a person does not know what is really happening to him and what is not.

Signs:

• hallucinations and delusions, impaired reality testing;
• a complete image in the story of such people about something does not add up.

The film “A Beautiful Mind” illustrates this level; the main character had a hallucination - special. agent and a little girl, but by the end of the film he has an adaptive mechanism, he tests reality by asking people: do you see a man with a girl there? And through the answer of another ch. the hero distinguished what was real and what was not.

Help with a psychotic level of personality functioning can only be provided by a psychiatrist.

But even in a more or less mentally healthy person, during a stressful situation (for example, the death of a loved one), a psychotic episode can occur - “the figure of death appears”, or in an altered state of consciousness “demons are attacking”; reality testing will distinguish him from a psychotic person.

Thus, at a healthy level of personality functioning/development, regression to a neurotic, borderline, psychotic level under stress can occur. In chronic traumatic conditions, a person is fixed at a borderline level, but there is a chance to improve the functioning of life with long-term therapeutic work. The psychotic level is subject to psychiatric and medicinal support.

Personality structure

When studying and analyzing personality as a complex social phenomenon of society, it is important to highlight its structure, which is based on the following elements:

• biological level : it includes natural qualities inherent to all humanity (anatomical structure of the body, gender, character, etc.);
• psychological level : includes the psychological state of the individual such as the manifestation of feelings, freedom of choice, memories, way of thinking. Such features are closely related to hereditary personality traits;
• The social level is usually divided into the following sublevels:

1. The sociological proper determines a person’s behavior in society, as well as his personal interests and pursued goals.
2. Cultural-specific shows personal values, as well as behavioral factors corresponding to the norms of society.
3. The moral sublevel demonstrates the moral qualities of a person, which he is guided by in any of his choices.

Definition of personality in different sciences

In sociology, the concept of personality is studied in the process of relationships between people, as well as as a separate element of the social system. In addition, sociology conducts the study of personality when it is still being formed, in the process of its formation and the acquisition by an individual of certain qualities characteristic only of him. In contrast to legal science, which looks at this as a completely ready-made and formed concept.

In jurisprudence, a person is understood as an individual who has certain rights, freedom of action and obligations as an ordinary person and as a citizen in general. This concept refers to the personality of a specific person who has a number of socially important qualities that manifest themselves in relationships with other people.

Basic approaches to studying personality

There are many different theories of personality in the social sciences. Among them, the following main approaches can be distinguished:

1. Dialectical-materialistic approach , according to which the personality develops according to a dialectical process determined by the following factors: the origin of the individual, the society surrounding him, upbringing and self-education skills. From the very beginning, a person is considered a social being, his personality is formed in the process of interaction with society, that is, when a person interacts with the world around him in the process of his formation and self-awareness.
2. Anthropological approach . In this approach, the concept of personality is perceived as the bearer of the characteristic properties of all humanity. Personality is equated with the individual. This approach compares the understanding of personality, person and individual. He ignores the fact that the social environment plays an important role in shaping personality.
3. Normative approach . According to this approach, the concept of personality is associated with the acquisition of good qualities that relate to a person's consciousness and actions.
4. Sociological approach . Its essence lies in the fact that every person is an individual, regardless of his socially significant characteristics. The concept of personality in this approach is considered as an object and products of relations with society.
5. Personal approach . In contrast to the anthropological and sociological approach, this concept makes it possible to understand personality as an individual and unique organism independent of any factors.
6. Biological-genetic approach . According to this approach, it is believed that such behavior in people is embedded in their genes. What can be considered primitive determinism. This approach neglects the importance of social conditions and cultural heritage in the formation of an individual in society.