What functions does the psyche perform from the point of view of psychological methodology?
The psyche performs certain functions: reflecting the influences of the surrounding reality, regulating the behavior and activities of people, and making them aware of their place in the world around them.
1. Reflection of the influences of the surrounding reality.
Mental reflection has its own characteristics:
This is a process that is constantly developing and improving, creating and overcoming its contradictions;
With the mental reflection of objective reality, during which any external influence (i.e., the influence of objective reality) is always refracted through previously established characteristics of the psyche, through specific human states;
Mental reflection is a correct, true reflection of reality (the emerging images of the material world are snapshots, casts, copies of existing objects, phenomena, events).
The subjectivity of mental reflection and the active transformation of what is reflected, characteristic of a person, in no way deny the objective possibility of correctly reflecting the surrounding world. In real life, a person, with the help of his psyche, reflects the influences of reality, records and comprehends them, forming in his mind a real picture of the world, in accordance with which he acts. Mental processes, states, formations and properties of people, having a certain flexibility. Allow them to adapt to the current conditions of life and activity, transform them in accordance with their needs and interests.
2. Regulation of behavior and activity. The human psyche and consciousness reflect the influences of the external environment, adapt to it, on the other hand, regulate this process, making up the internal content of activity and behavior. The latter cannot but be mediated by the psyche, since it is with its help that a person realizes motives and needs. Sets goals and objectives for activities. Develops ways and techniques to achieve its results. Behavior in this case acts as an external form of manifestation of the psyche.
3. A person’s awareness of his place in the world around him
This function, on the one hand, ensures correct adaptation and orientation of a person in the objective world. On the other hand, with the help of the psyche. Consciousness, a person recognizes himself as a person endowed with certain individual and socio-psychological characteristics, as a representative of a particular society, social group, different from other people and in a unique interpersonal relationship with them. A person’s correct awareness of his personal characteristics helps him adapt to other people, properly build communication and interaction with them, achieve common goals in joint activities, and maintain harmony in society as a whole.
What is psychic reflection?
Psychic reflection is the most complex and most developed type of reflection. At its lower stages, the animal psyche reaches the most advanced forms of its development, called intellectual behavior (for example, the complex instincts of animals). At its highest stage, in the course of the long evolution of man himself, the consciousness and self-awareness of people were formed and took a modern form, and the specificity of their manifestation in social and economic relations with each other was improved. This stage of reflection is characterized by:
Reflection as a way for a person to understand himself. Your activities and behavior;
Reflection as self-control and self-education;
Reflection as a way for a person to understand other people;
Reflection as a way for people to understand social life and social relations.
What are the main methods used in psychology?
Observation, experiment, method of generalizing independent characteristics, surveys and tests.
Observation - with the help of it, psychological phenomena are studied in various conditions without interfering with their course. Observation can be everyday and scientific. Included and not included.
Everyday observation is limited to recording facts and is random and unorganized.
Scientific observation is organized, involves a clear plan, recording the results in a special diary.
Participant observation involves the participation of the researcher in the activity being studied. This is not required in non-participant observation.
An experiment is a method that involves the active intervention of a researcher in the activities of a subject in order to create the best conditions for specific psychological phenomena. The experiment could be:
laboratory (takes place in specially organized conditions);
natural (research in natural conditions);
ascertaining, when only necessary psychological phenomena are studied;
formative, during which certain qualities of the subjects develop.
The method of generalizing independent characteristics involves identifying and analyzing opinions about certain psychological phenomena and processes obtained from various people. It may also involve collecting and then summarizing oral or written characteristics of various individuals about the people being studied.
Analysis of performance results is a method of indirectly studying psychological phenomena based on practical results and objects of work, in which creative forces and abilities are embodied to carry out the practical tasks assigned to them. How they feel about the assigned work, what results they achieve depending on certain conditions of their activity, all the data received is recorded and then summarized.
Survey method. Presuming the subjects' answers to specific questions from the researcher. It can be a written survey), when questions are asked on paper; or oral 9conversation), when questions are posed orally; or in the form of an interview. During which personal contact is established with the subject.
Testing method. During the application of which, subjects perform certain actions on the instructions of the researcher. There are:
Projective testing examines various manifestations of the psyche of individuals (includes the use of constitutive, impressive, expressive and adaptive techniques).
Psychocorrectional testing (involving the use of behavioral and cognitive correction techniques, psychoanalysis, gestalt and body-oriented therapy, psychodrama, psychosynthesis and transpersonal approach).
