Leontiev and psychology. Leontyev Dmitry Alekseevich. Motive, purpose and meaning: semantic connections as the basis of motivation mechanisms
Leontyev Dmitry Alekseevich
(1960)
Psychology of meaning
Leontyev Dmitry Alekseevich - Russian psychologist, Doctor of Psychology, professor. Representative of the scientific dynasty of Russian psychologists: son of A. A. Leontiev, grandson of A. N. Leontiev.
Rethinking personality psychology proposed by D.A. Leontiev is an attempt to understand the level of human activity at which, in the words of L.S. Vygotsky, not only develops, but also builds itself. The main theses of the new, “possibility” theory of personality according to D.A. Leontiev:
1. Personality psychology covers a special group of phenomena that belong to the realm of the “possible”, and these phenomena are not generated by cause-and-effect patterns. These phenomena are not necessary, but they are not accidental either, i.e. are not purely probabilistic in nature.
2. A person only acts and functions as a person during some periods in his life, realizing his human potential, i.e. he can live either in the intervals of the “necessary” or in the intervals of the “possible”. In the 3rd edition of his book Psychology of Meaning, D.A. Leontyev presented in a generalized form the structure of regimes in which a person can live. These modes are placed on a scale from the completely determined person to the completely free, or “self-determined” person.
YES. Leontje: — “Man has everything that lower-organized animals have, thanks to which he can function on the “animal level”, without including his specific human manifestations. A person’s trajectory in the world is dotted, discontinuous, because segments of functioning at the human level are interspersed with segments of subhuman functioning.”.
3. The existence in human life, in addition to the necessary, of the sphere of the possible, introduces into it the dimension of self-determination and autonomy.
Even “meanings”, “values” and “truths” in human life are not automatic, self-acting mechanisms; they influence a person’s life only through his self-determination in relation to them as a subject.
4. Throughout a person’s life, the degree of determination of the same psychological phenomena may change.
5. Self-determination of one’s life activity by a person, as the subject’s voluntary influence on the cause-and-effect patterns affecting this life activity, becomes possible through the use of reflexive consciousness.
6. The level of personal development determines the nature of the relationship between variables in the individual: at a lower level, the nature of the relationship between variables is more rigid and is deterministic in nature; at a higher level of development, some act in relation to others only as prerequisites, without defining them unambiguously. “Personal development itself proceeds in the direction from genetically determined universal structures to less universal structures that initially exist in the modality of the possible.”
7. “An empirical indicator of action in the field of the possible, and not the necessary, is an unprovoked departure from the framework set by the situation.”
This exit occurs as the personality develops, increasingly towards the choice of meaningful and variable opportunities, as opposed to unambiguous needs.
8. As the forms and mechanisms of human life and psychological processes become more complex and improved, their causes begin to be increasingly replaced by prerequisites, which, unlike causes, generate not necessary consequences, but possibilities, while their absence is an impossibility.
9. “Recognition of psychological reality and the significance of the category of the possible takes us from a clear and clearly structured world to a world where uncertainty reigns, and coping with its challenge is the key to adaptation and effective functioning.” Understanding the world in which a person finds himself as predetermined is an existential worldview.
10. The introduction of the category of the possible supplements the description of the interaction of a person as a subject with the world with an existential dimension, and in such an “extended” description a place is found for both an orientation towards certainty and an orientation towards uncertainty.
11. “Opportunities are never actually embodied themselves, this happens only through the activity of the subject, who perceives them as opportunities for himself, selects something from them and makes his “bet”, investing himself and his resources in the implementation of the chosen opportunity.” At the same time, they accept responsibility for realizing this opportunity and give an internal commitment to themselves to invest efforts to realize it. In this transition, a transformation occurs: possible - valuable (meaningful) - due - goal - action.
The “possibility” theory of personality proposes to consider people as being on the path to self-realization, the measure of which is people’s own steps taken in this direction, as well as the efforts made. However, self-realization here is not the realization of what is laid down by heredity or environment, but the path of free decisions and choices of the person himself, not determined by environment and heredity.
The mechanisms of a personality’s transition from a mode of determination to a mode of self-determination are certain psychotechnical actions or “existential psychotechniques” developed in various cultures and conceptualized mainly by existential philosophy, existential psychology, as well as a dialogical approach to understanding a person and his life activity:
- A stop, a pause - between a stimulus and a reaction to enable and work reflexive consciousness, during which you can not react in a “natural” way, usual for yourself or the situation, but begin to build your own behavior.
- Look at yourself from the outside. The inclusion of reflective consciousness, and thoughtful comprehension and awareness of all options and alternatives leads to the ability to make any choice.
- The splitting of the sense of self, the awareness of the discrepancy in the fact that I am exactly like this. I as a person am what I choose to be, or what I make myself to be.
- Identification of alternativeness of any choices and search for non-obvious alternatives. The same applies to choices that have already been made, especially those that a person made without noticing it. A choice is not only what a person has yet to make, but what a person is actually already doing.
- Awareness of the price that has to be paid for each of the possible choices, i.e. — existential calculation.
- Awareness of responsibility and investing oneself in the chosen alternative.
The article examines the formation of the concept of motive in the theory of A.N. Leontiev in correlation with the ideas of K. Lewin, as well as with the distinction between external and internal motivation and the concept of the continuum of regulation in the modern theory of self-determination by E. Deci and R. Ryan. The distinction between external motivation, based on reward and punishment, and “natural teleology” in the works of K. Levin and (external) motive and interest in the early texts of A.N. is revealed. Leontyev. The relationship between motive, goal and meaning in the structure of motivation and regulation of activity is examined in detail. The concept of the quality of motivation is introduced as a measure of the consistency of motivation with deep needs and the personality as a whole, and the complementarity of the approaches of activity theory and self-determination theory to the problem of the quality of motivation is shown.
The relevance and vitality of any scientific theory, including the psychological theory of activity, are determined by the extent to which its content allows us to obtain answers to the questions that face us today. Any theory was relevant at the time when it was created, providing an answer to the questions that existed at that time, but not every theory retained this relevance for a long time. Theories that relate to the living are able to provide answers to today's questions. Therefore, it is important to correlate any theory with the issues of today.
The subject of this article is the concept of motive. On the one hand, this is a very specific concept, on the other hand, it occupies a central place in the works not only of A.N. Leontiev, but also many of his followers who developed the activity theory. Previously, we have repeatedly turned to the analysis of the views of A.N. Leontiev on motivation (Leontiev D.A., 1992, 1993, 1999), focusing on such individual aspects as the nature of needs, multimotivation of activity and the functions of motive. Here, having briefly discussed the content of previous publications, we will continue this analysis, paying attention primarily to the origins of the distinction between internal and external motivation found in activity theory. We will also consider the relationship between motive, purpose and meaning and correlate the views of A.N. Leontiev with modern approaches, primarily with the theory of self-determination by E. Deci and R. Ryan.
Basic provisions of the activity theory of motivation
Our previous analysis was aimed at eliminating contradictions in the traditionally cited texts of A.N. Leontiev, due to the fact that the concept of “motive” in them carried an excessively large load, including many different aspects. In the 1940s, when it was first introduced as explanatory, this stretchability could hardly be avoided; the further development of this construct led to its inevitable differentiation, the emergence of new concepts and, at the expense of them, a narrowing of the semantic field of the actual concept of “motive”.
The starting point for our understanding of the general structure of motivation is A.G.’s scheme. Asmolov (1985), who identified three groups of variables and structures that are responsible for this area. The first is the general sources and driving forces of activity; E.Yu. Patyaeva (1983) aptly called them “motivational constants.” The second group is the factors for choosing the direction of activity in a specific situation here and now. The third group is the secondary processes of “situational development of motivation” (Vilyunas, 1983; Patyaeva, 1983), which make it possible to understand why people complete what they started to do, and do not switch each time to more and more new temptations (for more details, see .: Leontyev D.A., 2004). Thus, the main question in the psychology of motivation is “Why do people do what they do?” (Deci, Flaste, 1995) breaks down into three more specific questions corresponding to these three areas: “Why do people do anything at all?”, “Why do people currently do what they do and not something else? » and “Why do people, once they start doing something, usually finish it?” The concept of motive is most often used to answer the second question.
Let's start with the main provisions of the theory of motivation by A.N. Leontiev, discussed in more detail in other publications.
- The source of human motivation is needs. A need is an objective need of the organism for something external - an object of need. Before meeting the object, the need generates only undirected search activity (see: Leontyev D.A., 1992).
- A meeting with an object - the objectification of a need - turns this object into a motive for purposeful activity. Needs develop through the development of their objects. It is precisely due to the fact that the objects of human needs are objects created and transformed by man that all human needs are qualitatively different from the sometimes similar needs of animals.
- A motive is “the result, that is, the object for which the activity is carried out” (Leontyev A.N., 2000, p. 432). It acts as “...that objective, what this need is (more precisely, a system of needs. - D.L.) is specified in given conditions and what the activity is directed towards as what motivates it” (Leontyev A.N., 1972, p. 292). A motive is a systemic quality acquired by an object, manifested in its ability to motivate and direct activity (Asmolov, 1982).
4. Human activity is multimotivated. This does not mean that one activity has several motives, but that one motive, as a rule, embodies several needs to varying degrees. Thanks to this, the meaning of the motive is complex and is determined by its connections with different needs (for more details, see: Leontyev D.A., 1993, 1999).
5. Motives perform the function of motivating and directing activity, as well as meaning formation - giving personal meaning to the activity itself and its components. In one place A.N. Leontiev (2000, p. 448) directly identifies the guiding and meaning-forming functions. On this basis, he distinguishes two categories of motives - meaning-forming motives, which carry out both motivation and meaning-formation, and “motive-stimuli”, which only motivate, but lack a meaning-forming function (Leontyev A.N., 1977, pp. 202-203).
Statement of the problem of qualitative differences in motivation: K. Levin and A.N. Leontyev
The distinction between “sense-forming motives” and “stimulus motives” is in many ways similar to the distinction, rooted in modern psychology, between two qualitatively different and based on different mechanisms types of motivation - internal motivation, conditioned by the process of activity itself, as it is, and external motivation, conditioned by benefit, which a subject can receive from the use of alienated products of this activity (money, marks, offsets and many other options). This breeding was introduced in the early 1970s. Edward Deci; The relationship between internal and external motivation began to be actively studied in the 1970-1980s. and remains relevant today (Gordeeva, 2006). Deci was able to most clearly formulate this distinction and illustrate the consequences of this distinction in many beautiful experiments (Deci and Flaste, 1995; Deci et al., 1999).
Kurt Lewin was the first to raise the question of qualitative motivational differences between natural interest and external pressures in 1931 in his monograph “The Psychological Situation of Reward and Punishment” (Lewin, 2001, pp. 165-205). He examined in detail the question of the mechanisms of the motivational effect of external pressures, forcing the child “to carry out an action or demonstrate behavior different from the one to which he is directly drawn at the moment” (Ibid., p. 165), and about the motivational effect of the opposite “situation” , in which the child’s behavior is controlled by a primary or derivative interest in the matter itself” (Ibid., p. 166). The subject of Levin's direct interest is the structure of the field and the direction of the vectors of conflicting forces in these situations. In a situation of immediate interest, the resulting vector is always directed towards the goal, which Lewin calls “natural teleology” (Ibid., p. 169). The promise of reward or the threat of punishment creates conflicts in the field of varying degrees of intensity and inevitability.
A comparative analysis of reward and punishment leads Lewin to the conclusion that both methods of influence are not very effective. “Along with punishment and reward, there is also a third opportunity to evoke the desired behavior - namely, to arouse interest and arouse a tendency towards this behavior” (Ibid., p. 202). When we try to force a child or an adult to do something based on carrots and sticks, the main vector of his movement turns out to be directed to the side. The more a person strives to get closer to an undesired, but reinforced object and begin to do what is required of him, the more the forces pushing in the opposite direction grow. Levin sees a fundamental solution to the problem of education in only one thing - in changing the motivation of objects through changing the contexts in which the action is included. “The inclusion of a task in another psychological area (for example, transferring an action from the area of “school assignments” to the area of “actions aimed at achieving a practical goal”) can radically change the meaning and, therefore, the motivation of this action itself” (Ibid., p. 204).
One can see direct continuity with this work of Lewin that took shape in the 1940s. ideas of A.N. Leontiev about the meaning of actions given by the holistic activity in which this action is included (Leontiev A.N., 2009). Even earlier, in 1936-1937, based on research materials in Kharkov, an article was written, “Psychological study of children’s interests in the Palace of Pioneers and Octobrists,” published for the first time in 2009 (Ibid., pp. 46-100), where in detail not only the relationship between what we call today internal and external motivation is studied, but also their interconnection and mutual transitions. This work turned out to be the missing evolutionary link in the development of A.N.’s ideas. Leontyev about motivation; it allows us to see the origins of the concept of motive in activity theory.
The subject of the study itself is formulated as the child’s relationship to the environment and activity, in which an attitude towards the matter and other people arises. There is no term “personal meaning” here yet, but in fact it is the main subject of study. The theoretical task of the study concerns the factors of formation and dynamics of children's interests, and the criteria of interest are behavioral signs of involvement or disinvolvement in a particular activity. We are talking about October students, junior schoolchildren, specifically second-graders. It is characteristic that the work sets the task not of forming specific, given interests, but of finding general means and patterns that allow stimulating the natural process of generating an active, involved attitude towards various types of activities. Phenomenological analysis shows that interest in certain activities is due to their inclusion in the structure of relationships that are significant for the child, both objective-instrumental and social. It is shown that the attitude towards things changes in the process of activity and is associated with the place of this thing in the structure of activity, i.e. with the nature of its connection with the goal.
It was there that A.N. Leontyev uses the concept of “motive” for the first time, and in a very unexpected way, contrasting motive with interest. At the same time, he states the discrepancy between the motive and the goal, showing that the child’s actions with the object are given stability and involvement by something other than interest in the very content of the actions. By motive he understands only what is now called “external motive,” as opposed to internal. This is “the driving cause of activity external to the activity itself (i.e., the goals and means included in the activity)” (Leontyev A.N., 2009, p. 83). Younger schoolchildren (second graders) engage in activities that are interesting in themselves (its purpose lies in the process itself). But sometimes they engage in activities without interest in the process itself, when they have another motive. External motives do not necessarily come down to alienated stimuli such as grades and adult demands. This also includes, for example, making a gift for mom, which in itself is not a very exciting activity (Ibid., p. 84).
Further A.N. Leontyev analyzes motives as a transitional stage to the emergence of genuine interest in the activity itself as one becomes involved in it thanks to external motives. The reason for the gradual emergence of interest in activities that previously did not arouse it is A.N. Leontyev considers the establishment of a means-end connection between this activity and what is obviously interesting to the child (Ibid., pp. 87-88). In essence, we are talking about the fact that in the later works of A.N. Leontyev received the name personal meaning. At the end of the article A.N. Leontyev speaks of meaning and involvement in meaningful activity as a condition for changing the point of view on a thing and attitude towards it (Ibid., p. 96).
In this article, for the first time, the idea of meaning appears, directly associated with motive, which distinguishes this approach from other interpretations of meaning and brings it closer to Kurt Lewin’s field theory (Leontiev D.A., 1999). In the completed version, we find these ideas formulated several years later in the posthumously published works “Basic Processes of Mental Life” and “Methodological Notebooks” (Leontiev A.N., 1994), as well as in articles of the early 1940s, such as “ Theory of development of the child’s psyche”, etc. (Leontyev A.N., 2009). Here a detailed structure of activity already appears, as well as an idea of motive, covering both external and internal motivation: “The object of the activity is at the same time what motivates this activity, i.e. her motive. ... Responding to one or another need, the motive of activity is experienced by the subject in the form of desire, desire, etc. (or, conversely, in the form of the experience of disgust, etc.). These forms of experience are forms of reflection of the subject’s attitude to the motive, forms of experiencing the meaning of activity” (Leontiev A.N., 1994, pp. 48-49). And further: “(It is the discrepancy between the object and the motive that is the criterion for distinguishing an action from an activity; if the motive of a given process lies within itself, it is an activity, but if it lies outside this process itself, it is an action.) This is a conscious relationship of the subject of the action to its motive is the meaning of the action; the form of experiencing (awareness) of the meaning of an action is the consciousness of its purpose. (Therefore, an object that has meaning for me is an object that acts as an object of a possible purposeful action; an action that has meaning for me is, accordingly, an action that is possible in relation to one or another goal.) A change in the meaning of an action is always a change in its motivation” ( Ibid., p. 49).
It was from the initial distinction between motive and interest that A.N.’s later cultivation grew. Leontiev of incentive motives that only stimulate genuine interest, but are not associated with it, and meaning-forming motives that have personal meaning for the subject and in turn give meaning to the action. At the same time, the opposition between these two types of motives turned out to be overly sharpened. A special analysis of motivational functions (Leontiev D.A., 1993, 1999) led to the conclusion that the incentive and meaning-forming functions of a motive are inseparable and that motivation is provided exclusively through the mechanism of meaning-formation. “Motives-stimuli” are not without meaning and meaning-forming power, but their specificity is that they are connected with needs by artificial, alienated connections. The rupture of these connections also leads to the disappearance of motivation.
Nevertheless, clear parallels can be seen between the distinction between two classes of motives in activity theory and in self-determination theory. It is interesting that the authors of the theory of self-determination gradually came to realize the inadequacy of the binary opposition of internal and external motivation and to introduce a model of the motivational continuum that describes the spectrum of different qualitative forms of motivation for the same behavior - from internal motivation based on organic interest, “natural teleology” , to externally controlled motivation based on “carrots and sticks” and amotivation (Gordeeva, 2010; Deci, Ryan, 2008).
In the theory of activity, as in the theory of self-determination, there is a distinction between motives for activity (behavior) that are organically related to the nature of the activity itself, the process of which arouses interest and other positive emotions (meaning-forming, or internal, motives), and motives that encourage activity only in the strength of their acquired connections with something directly significant for the subject (stimulus motives, or external motives). Any activity can be performed not for its own sake, and any motive can come into subordination to other, extraneous needs. “A student may study in order to gain the favor of his parents, but he can also fight for their favor in order to gain permission to study. Thus, we have two different relationships between ends and means, rather than two fundamentally different types of motivation” (Nuttin, 1984, p. 71). The difference lies in the nature of the connection between the subject’s activities and his real needs. When this connection is artificial, external, motives are perceived as stimuli, and activity is perceived as devoid of independent meaning, having it only thanks to the motive-stimulus. In its pure form, however, this is relatively rare. The general meaning of a specific activity is a fusion of its partial meanings, each of which reflects its relationship to any one of the needs of the subject related to this activity directly or indirectly, in a necessary way, situationally, associatively or in some other way. Therefore, activity prompted entirely by “external” motives is just as rare as activity in which they are completely absent.
It is advisable to describe these differences in terms of the quality of motivation. The quality of motivation for activity is a characteristic of the extent to which this motivation is consistent with deep needs and the personality as a whole. Intrinsic motivation is motivation that comes directly from them. External motivation is motivation that is not initially associated with them; its connection with them is established through the construction of a certain structure of activity, in which motives and goals acquire an indirect, sometimes alienated meaning. This connection can, as the personality develops, be internalized and give rise to fairly deep formed personal values, coordinated with the needs and structure of the personality - in this case we will be dealing with autonomous motivation (in terms of the theory of self-determination), or with interest (in terms of the early works of A. N. Leontyev). Activity theory and self-determination theory differ in how they describe and explain these differences. The theory of self-determination offers a much clearer description of the qualitative continuum of forms of motivation, and the theory of activity provides a better theoretical explanation of motivational dynamics. In particular, the key concept in the theory of A.N. Leontiev, which explains the qualitative differences in motivation, is the concept of meaning, which is absent in the theory of self-determination. In the next section we will consider in more detail the place of the concepts of meaning and semantic connections in the activity model of motivation.
Motive, purpose and meaning: semantic connections as the basis of motivation mechanisms
The motive “launches” human activity, determining what exactly the subject needs at the moment, but he cannot give it a specific direction other than through the formation or acceptance of a goal, which determines the direction of actions leading to the realization of the motive. “A goal is a result presented in advance, towards which my action strives” (Leontyev A.N., 2000, p. 434). The motive “defines the zone of goals” (Ibid., p. 441), and within this zone a specific goal is set, obviously associated with the motive.
Motive and goal are two different qualities that the subject of purposeful activity can acquire. They are often confused because in simple cases they often coincide: in this case, the final result of an activity coincides with its subject, turning out to be both its motive and goal, but for different reasons. It is a motive because it materializes needs, and a goal because it is in it that we see the final desired result of our activity, which serves as a criterion for assessing whether we are moving correctly or not, approaching the goal or deviating from it.
A motive is what gives rise to a given activity, without which it would not exist, and it may not be recognized or may be perceived distortedly. A goal is the final result of actions anticipated in a subjective image. The goal is always present in the mind. It sets the direction of action accepted and sanctioned by the individual, regardless of how deeply it is motivated, whether it is connected with internal or external, deep or superficial motives. Moreover, a goal can be offered to the subject as a possibility, considered and rejected; This cannot happen with motive. Marx famously said: “The worst architect differs from the best bee from the very beginning in that before he builds a cell of wax, he has already built it in his head” (Marx, 1960, p. 189). Although the bee builds very perfect structures, it has no goal, no image.
And vice versa, behind any active goal there is a motive of activity, which explains why the subject accepted a given goal for fulfillment, be it a goal created by himself or given from the outside. Motive connects a given specific action with needs and personal values. The question of goal is the question of what exactly the subject wants to achieve, the question of motive is the question “why?”
The subject can act straightforwardly, doing only what he directly wants, directly realizing his desires. In this situation (and, in fact, all animals are in it), the question of purpose does not arise at all. Where I do what I directly need, from which I directly receive pleasure and for the sake of which, in fact, I am doing it, the goal simply coincides with the motive. The problem of purpose, which is different from motive, arises when the subject does something that is not directly aimed at satisfying his needs, but will ultimately lead to a useful result. The goal always directs us to the future, and goal orientation, as opposed to impulsive desires, is impossible without consciousness, without the ability to imagine the future, without time ABOUT th prospects. Realizing the goal, the future result, we also realize the connection of this result with what we need in the future: any goal has meaning.
Teleology, i.e. goal orientation qualitatively transforms human activity in comparison with the causally determined behavior of animals. Although causality persists and occupies a large place in human activity, it is not the only and universal causal explanation. “A person’s life can be of two kinds: unconscious and conscious. By the first I mean a life that is governed by reasons, by the second a life that is governed by a purpose. A life governed by causes can fairly be called unconscious; this is because, although consciousness here participates in human activity, it does so only as an aid: it does not determine where this activity can be directed, and also what it should be in terms of its qualities. Causes external to man and independent of him belong to the determination of all this. Within the boundaries already established by these reasons, consciousness fulfills its service role: it indicates the methods of this or that activity, its easiest paths, what is possible and impossible to accomplish from what the reasons force a person to do. Life governed by a goal can rightly be called conscious, because consciousness is the dominant, determining principle here. It is up to him to choose where the complex chain of human actions should be directed; and also - the arrangement of them all according to a plan that best suits what has been achieved ... "(Rozanov, 1994, p. 21).
Purpose and motive are not identical, but they can coincide. When what the subject consciously strives to achieve (goal) is what really motivates him (motive), they coincide and overlap each other. But the motive may not coincide with the goal, with the content of the activity. For example, study is often motivated not by cognitive motives, but by completely different ones - career, conformist, self-affirmation, etc. As a rule, different motives are combined in different proportions, and it is a certain combination of them that turns out to be optimal.
A discrepancy between the goal and the motive occurs in cases when the subject does not do what he wants immediately, but he cannot get it directly, but does something auxiliary in order to ultimately get what he wants. Human activity is structured this way, whether we like it or not. The purpose of the action, as a rule, is at odds with what satisfies the need. As a result of the formation of jointly distributed activities, as well as specialization and division of labor, a complex chain of semantic connections arises. K. Marx gave this a precise psychological description: “For himself, the worker does not produce the silk that he weaves, not the gold that he extracts from the mine, not the palace that he builds. For himself, he produces wages... The meaning of twelve-hour work for him is not that he weaves, spins, drills, etc., but that this is a way of earning money, which gives him the opportunity to eat, go to a tavern , sleep” (Marx, Engels, 1957, p. 432). Marx describes, of course, alienated meaning, but if there were no this semantic connection, i.e. connection between the goal and motivation, then the person would not work. Even an alienated semantic connection connects in a certain way what a person does with what he needs.
The above is well illustrated by a parable, often retold in philosophical and psychological literature. A wanderer walked along the road past a large construction site. He stopped a worker who was pulling a wheelbarrow full of bricks and asked him: “What are you doing?” “I’m carrying bricks,” the worker answered. He stopped the second one, who was driving the same car, and asked him: “What are you doing?” “I feed my family,” answered the second. He stopped the third and asked: “What are you doing?” “I’m building a cathedral,” answered the third. If at the level of behavior, as behaviorists would say, all three people did exactly the same thing, then they had different semantic contexts in which they inserted their actions, different meanings, motivations, and the activity itself. The meaning of work operations was determined for each of them by the breadth of the context in which they perceived their own actions. For the first there was no context, he only did what he was doing now, the meaning of his actions did not go beyond this specific situation. “I’m carrying bricks” - that’s what I do. The person does not think about the broader context of his actions. His actions are not correlated not only with the actions of other people, but also with other fragments of his own life. For the second, the context is connected with his family, for the third - with a certain cultural task, to which he was aware of his involvement.
The classic definition characterizes meaning as expressing “the relationship of the motive of activity to the immediate goal of action” (Leontyev A.N., 1977, p. 278). Two clarifications need to be made to this definition. Firstly, the meaning is not just expresses it's the attitude he and there is it's an attitude. Secondly, in this formulation we are not talking about any sense, but about a specific sense of action, or the sense of purpose. Speaking about the meaning of an action, we ask about its motive, i.e. about why it is being done. The relation of means to ends is the meaning of the means. And the meaning of a motive, or, what is the same, the meaning of activity as a whole, is the relationship of the motive to what is larger and more stable than the motive, to a need or personal value. The meaning always associates less with b ABOUT greater, the particular with the general. When talking about the meaning of life, we relate life to something that is greater than individual life, to something that will not end with its completion.
Conclusion: the quality of motivation in the approaches of activity theory and self-determination theory
This article traces the line of development in the theory of activity of ideas about the qualitative differentiation of forms of motivation for activity, depending on the extent to which this motivation is consistent with deep needs and with the personality as a whole. The origins of this differentiation are found in some of the works of K. Levin and in the works of A.N. Leontiev 1930s. Its full version is presented in the later ideas of A.N. Leontyev about the types and functions of motives.
Another theoretical understanding of the qualitative differences in motivation is presented in the theory of self-determination by E. Deci and R. Ryan, in terms of the internalization of motivational regulation and the motivational continuum, which traces the dynamics of “growing” into motives that are initially rooted in external requirements that are irrelevant to the needs of the subject. The theory of self-determination offers a much clearer description of the qualitative continuum of forms of motivation, and the theory of activity provides a better theoretical explanation of motivational dynamics. The key is the concept of personal meaning, connecting goals with motives and motives with needs and personal values. The quality of motivation seems to be a pressing scientific and applied problem, in relation to which productive interaction between activity theory and leading foreign approaches is possible.
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Leontyev D.A. Systemic-semantic nature and functions of the motive // Bulletin of Moscow University. Ser. 14. Psychology. 1993. No. 2. P. 73-82.
Leontyev D.A. Psychology of meaning. M.: Smysl, 1999.
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To quote the article:
Leontyev D.A. The concept of motive in A.N. Leontiev and the problem of quality of motivation. // Bulletin of Moscow University. Episode 14. Psychology. - 2016.- No. 2 - p.3-18
FUNDAMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
D.A. Leontiev
PSYCHOLOGY OF MEANING
NATURE, STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF MEANING REALITY
2nd, revised edition
in classical university education
as a teaching aid for students
higher educational institutions studyingin the direction and specialties of psychology
UDC 159.9BBK88
Moscow State University named after. M.V. Lomonosov, Faculty of Psychology
Reviewers:
Doctor of Psychology Sciences, prof., corresponding member. RAO B.S. Bratus Doctor of Psychology Sciences, prof., corresponding member. RAO V.A.Ivannikov Doctor of Psychology Sciences, prof., corresponding member. RAS V.F.Petrenko Doctor of Psychology sciences, prof. IL. Vasiliev
Leontyev D.A.
L478 Psychology of meaning: nature, structure and dynamics of semantic reality. 2nd, rev. ed. - M.: Smysl, 2003. - 487 p.
The monograph is devoted to a comprehensive theoretical analysis of semantic reality: aspects of the problem of meaning, the forms of its existence in human relations with the world, in human consciousness and activity, in the structure of personality, in interpersonal interaction, in artifacts of culture and art.
Addressed to psychologists and representatives of related disciplines.
The manuscript was prepared with the support ofRussian Humanitarian Scientific Foundation,research project No. 95-06-17597
Published with the support ofRussian fund of fundamentalsresearch for project No. 98-06-87091
ISBN 5-89357-082-0
YES. Leontiev, 1999, 2003. Publishing house "Smysl", design, 1999.
introduction
“The problem of meaning... is the last analytical concept that crowns the general doctrine of the psyche, just as the concept of personality crowns the entire system of psychology”
A.N. Leontiev
In the last two decades, psychology has been experiencing a crisis of my methodological foundations, associated with the next opening of not only the boundaries of its subject, but also the boundaries of science and ideas about science in general, with the destruction of the fundamental and in the previous period very clear binary oppositions “life psychology - scientific psychology", "academic psycho-mlia - applied psychology", "humanistic psychology - mechanistic psychology", "depth psychology - vertex-IS1 psychology", as well as conceptual oppositions "affect - Intelligence", "consciousness - unconscious", "cognition - action" etc. Work has intensified on the methodological understanding of the foundations of psychology and the construction of a new image of it, which in Russian psychology was expressed primarily in the revival of the idea of “non-classical psychology” belonging to L. S. Vygotsky. (Elkonin, 1989; Asmolov, 1996 b; Dorfman, 1997, etc.) or ironic psychology" (Zinchenko, 1997), and in the West - in discussing the idea of “postmodern psychology” (for example, Shatter, 1990). Non-classical psychology has not yet been clearly defined; it is more of an idea than a specific theory. It is possible, however, to outline the general vector of movement from classical to non-classical psychology: from a static idea of a person to a dynamic one and from studying him in the form of an isolated “prepa-pita” to the awareness of his inextricable connection with the world in which his life takes place.
In this context, it is no coincidence that many scientists, both in our country and abroad, are interested in the concept of meaning. This concept came to psychology from philosophy and the sciences of language and has not yet entered the main thesaurus of personality psychology, except for separate
introduction
scientific schools; At the same time, interest in it is growing, and the frequency of use of this concept in a variety of contexts and within the framework of various theoretical and methodological approaches is growing. In Russian psychology, the concept of personal meaning, introduced by A.N. Leontiev back in the 40s, has long been productive is used as one of the main explanatory concepts, not only in psychology, but also in related scientific disciplines. It is no coincidence that this concept has received such wide recognition in our country - after all, in Russian culture, Russian consciousness, the search for meaning has always been the main value orientation. It is less known that the concept of meaning has become popular in the West in recent decades - it occupies a very an important place in the logotherapy of W. Frankl, the psychology of personal constructs of J. Kelly, the ethogenic approach of R. Harré, the phenomenological psychotherapy of J. Gendlin, the theory of behavioral dynamics of J. Nutten and other approaches, despite the difficulty of adequately translating this concept into English and many other languages A rare exception is German, and it is natural that this concept first appeared in philosophy, psychology and the sciences of language among German speakers (G. Frege, E. Husserl, W. Dilthey, E. Spranger, Z. Freud, A. Adler , K. Jung, M. Weber, V. Frankl) and Russian-speaking (G.G. Shpet, M.M. Bakhtin, L.S. Vygotsky, A.N. Leontyev) authors.
Interest in the concept of meaning is caused, in our opinion, by the fact, although still unreflected, that this concept, as even a cursory glance at the practice of its use clearly shows, allows one to overcome the binary oppositions listed above. This becomes possible due to the fact that the concept of meaning turns out to be “own” for both everyday and scientific psychology; both for academic and applied; for both deep and apical; both for mechanistic and humanistic. Moreover, it is correlated with objective, subjective, and intersubjective (group, communicative) reality, and is also located at the intersection of activity, consciousness and personality, connecting all three fundamental psychological categories. Thus, the concept of meaning can claim a new, higher methodological status, the role of a central concept in a new, non-classical or postmodern psychology, the psychology of a “changing personality in a changing world” (Asmolov, 1990, p. 365).
Such wide possibilities, however, also give rise to difficulties in working with this concept. Its multiple definitions are often inconsistent. The meaning itself makes sense if you use the popular
IMPORTANCE
Dirma has recently become a metaphor, the nature of Proteus - he is changeable, fluid, many-sided, not fixed within his boundaries. Hence there are considerable difficulties in understanding this phenomenon, discrepancies in definitions, and vagueness in operationalization. . When the author of this book, while still a student at the Faculty of Psychology of Moscow State University, became interested in the problem of meaning (around 1979-1980), a large group of teachers and faculty members - direct students of A.N. Leontiev - were actively and with great enthusiasm involved in the development of this problem. Their number has now decreased. Of those who made the main contribution to the development of the concept during this period, some are no longer with us (B.V. Zeigarnik, E.Yu. Artemsna), others quite abruptly changed their problems and area of research (V.V. .Stolin, A.U.Kharash), the third, having become disillusioned with the concept of meaning, actually abandoned it (V K. Vilyunas, E.V. Subbotsky), the fourth did not refuse, but subsequently directed their direct scientific research to others | not, although similar problems (A.G. Asmolov, E.E. Nasinovskaya, V. L. Petrovsky). At the same time, there is by no means a decrease in interest in this concept (rather, on the contrary) among psychologists of all schools and directions.
The development of general psychological ideas about the semantic understanding of human existence has been carried out by the author of this book since the early 1980s. The main task (one might say, the super task) was to assemble a complete picture of semantic reality from the fascinating pieces of the mosaic formed by existing ideas and publications on this topic. The first intermediate result was the PhD dissertation “Structural organization of the semantic sphere of personality,” defended by us in 1988. It proposed a classification of semantic structures and a model of the structure of personality-81 and, based on a general understanding of the semantic structures of the personality of the Kpk, a transformed form of life relationships. We have also developed the concept of semantic regulation of life activity, showing the scientific functions in this regulation of various semantic structures. This intermediate result corresponded to the first of the Three stages identified by N.A. Bernstein (1966, pp. 323-324) of the development of any theoretical ideas - the stage of unification and logical ordering of disparate facts. We also realized the inevitable limitations of the scheme proposed in that work. This SI limitation was manifested not only in the fact that the semantic sphere of personality was considered in a static morphological section, but also in the fact that the very identification of discrete semantic structures in mho-rum is conditional. We did not have any other language of description, but we realized that behind the concepts we used there really were not
introduction
as much semantic structures as semantic processes. Understanding the remoteness of the prospects for the development of a procedural language, we formulated in the conclusion to the mentioned dissertation also tasks for the near future. Among them were: analysis of the conditions and mechanisms of actual genetic development and critical restructuring of existing semantic structures and dynamic semantic systems; analysis of inter-individual translation of meanings, including in the forms of material and spiritual culture; analysis of the development of the semantic sphere of personality in ontogenesis, as well as the psychological prerequisites and mechanisms of abnormal development of the semantic sphere; development of research methods and influence on the semantic sphere. Solving these problems would make it possible to move from a static morphological scheme of the semantic sphere of personality to the concept of dynamic semantic reality, the natural form of existence of which is continuous movement, to a concept that has predictive power, which is inherent in the second stage of development of the theory according to N.A. Bernstein (1966 , pp. 323-324).
This minimum program, as we see it, has been completed in this work, which is the result of almost two decades of scientific research. It is devoted to solving the problem of constructing a unified general psychological concept of meaning, its nature, forms of existence and mechanisms of functioning in the structure of activity, consciousness, personality, interpersonal communication and in objectively embodied forms. In it we tried to fill the thought of A.N. Leontiev (1983) with specific psychological content a) o that the problem of personality forms a special psychological dimension, different from the dimension in which the study of mental processes takes place, as well as the thought of V. Frankl (Frankl, 1979) about the semantic dimension of a person, which builds on the biological and psychological dimensions.
it * * * ,\
Concluding this introduction with words of gratitude, one cannot help but move from the academic “we” to the conscious and “participatory” (M.M. Bakhtin) “I”.
I dedicate this book to my grandfather, Alexei Nikolaevich Leontyev. It would be inaccurate to say “to his memory”, because his presence - and above all in this work - is by no means limited to memory. Scientific work always transcends time in some sense - we can have a very meaningful dialogue with Descartes and Spinoza, Hippocrates and Aristotle. I clearly feel the presence of Alexey Nikolaevich in the same room with me.
viiiom time" and I hope that my book will contribute to it
"flight in this time dimension. He was and remains for me not a model of scientific integrity and devotion to science.
I have always been greedy for knowledge and a diligent student, I learn from many, and it is not easy to list everyone who influenced my professional development - not only those with whom I communicated personally, but also those with whom I have not met and will never meet . N among the latter are L.S. Vygotsky, M.M. Bakhtin, A. Adler, G. Allport, IM, M.K. Mamardashvili and other Teachers. Of those from whom I studied in the traditional sense of the word, I would like, without belittling anyone’s contribution, to specifically thank two of them; the influence of co-vupiiix on my work (and not only my work) since my student years cannot be assessed. Alexander Grigorievich Asmolov was largely responsible for the emergence and strengthening of my first interest in personality psychology and the problem of meaning, and constantly gave
And (pre-logical guidelines and helped me solve the problem of the meaning of tun ", what am I doing. Elena Yuryevna Artemyeva taught that in addition to con- mishishia, there should also be a position; she unobtrusively contributed to the differentiation of the boundaries between scientific research and understanding of life in general, the formation of I am a methodical thinker.
V any researcher has his own inner circle of reference - people working nearby in the problem field, professional interaction with whom is especially productive. A complete list of those who especially helped me advance my research with their research would be very long. I am grateful to many people, and especially to B.S. Bratus, F.E. Vasilyuk, V.P. Zinchenko, A.I. Vannikov, A.M. Lobk, E.V. Eidman. The general composition of this 1ZHI1I was helped to build by the theoretical ideas of my friend and colleague L. M. Dorfman. I am also grateful to all those friends and colleagues who morally supported and support me in my exploration of new routes in poorly explored territory.
Special thanks to my students, students and aspirants. Not only because in order to understand something, you need to explain it to someone. Without their participation, I would not have been able to single-handedly bring many theoretical ideas to the level of empirical testing and practical application. I am especially grateful to those of them whose PM1Sh is also in this book: Yu.A. Vasilyeva, M.V. Snetkova, I II Buzin, N.V. Pilipko, M.V. Kalashnikov, O.E. Kalashnikova, A II Poiogrebsky, M.A. Filatova.
Finally, another thank you goes to my loved ones, from whom this has taken a fair share for a long time, and who treated it as stoically as possible.
chapter!. Approaches to understanding meaning
IN PSYCHOLOGY AND HUMANITIES
And he represented to the sovereign that the English masters have completely different rules of life, science and food, and each person has all the absolute circumstances before him, and through this he has a completely different meaning.
N. S. Leskov
1.1. concept of meaning in the humanities
In most general explanatory, philosophical and linguistic dictionaries, meaning is defined as a synonym for meaning. This applies not only to the Russian word "smysl", but also to its German counterpart "Sinn". In English, the situation is more complicated: although the language has an etymologically close concept of “sense”, used, in particular, in the common phrases “common sense”, “to make sense”, nevertheless in the vast majority of cases in scientific discourse, as well as in everyday language, the Russian concepts of “meaning” and “sense” are translated by the same word “meaning”. The French "sens", on the contrary, is much more widespread than the purely academic term "signification" (meaning).
The etymology of this concept also does not coincide in different languages. Russian “smysl” means “with thought”. The German “Sinn”, as M. Boss points out, originates from the ancient German literary verb “sinnan”, meaning “to be on the way to the goal” (Boss, 1988, b. 115). In this regard, E. Craig notes that the connection with intentional orientation present in the word “Sinn” is lost when translating it into English as “meaning”, and translating it with the word “sense” would be more adequate (Craig, 1988, b. 95-96). On the other hand, J. Richlak, with reference to dictionaries, argues that the word “meaning” comes from Anglo-Saxon roots with the semantics “to desire” and “intend” and is, accordingly, a concept of a target nature, denoting a correlative relationship
/./. concept of meaningVhumanities 9
between several constructs, which he calls poles of meaning (Rychlak, 1981, b. 7).
Historically, the original problematic context in which the concept of meaning arose as a scientific concept that does not coincide with the concept of meaning was the study of understanding texts, and the first theoretical paradigm was hermeneutics. The task of distinguishing linguistics from philosophy, on the one hand, and linguistics, on the other, is very complex and goes far beyond the scope of this work; KLK stated V.G. Kuznetsov, hermeneutics, humanities and philosophy “develop in a single historical and cultural context, depend on each other, influence each other” (1991a, p. 4). Hermeneutics arose as a doctrine about the interpretation of the hidden meanings of the Holy Scriptures, gradually becoming a doctrine of understanding hidden meanings in a broader context and merging at the beginning of our century with philosophical thought in the works of such representatives as W. Dilthey, H.-G. Gadamer and others. Therefore, relating certain views on the problem of meaning to the hermeneutic tradition, we will use only purely historical criteria.
Perhaps the first significant understanding of meaning in our context is found in Matthias Flatius of Illyria (16th century). Flacius offers a solution to one of the leading hermeneutical dilemmas - whether a word has one meaning or many - by introducing the distinction between meaning and sense: a word, expression, text have one meaning, but different contexts can give different meanings. Out of context, the word has no meaning; in each specific context the meaning is unambiguous. Thus, the problem of meaning comes down to the problem of context (Kuznetsov, 1991 A, With. 25). The hermeneutic, working with various contexts, must reveal their only divine meaning and interpret its semantic shades introduced into the biblical texts by their authors. This type of interpretation takes into account the subjective characteristics of the mountain position. The task of the hermeneut is to identify the author’s purpose and intent.” (ibid., With. 26). The concept of context, introduced by Flacius into the conceptual apparatus of hermeneutics, made it possible, perhaps for the first time, to separate the concepts of meaning and meaning as non-synonymous.
The problem of correlation, or more precisely, the distinction between the meaning and meaning of texts and speech expressions, received further development in the late 19th - first half of the 20th century in the sciences of language - linguistics, semiotics and logical semantics. As we, however, will discuss further, the identification of meaning and meaning has not yet become a part of history. Use of the concept of meaning
Chapter 1. Approaches to understanding meaning
in this context is far from final certainty. There are two fundamentally different traditions of using the concept of “meaning”. In one of them, meaning appears as a complete synonym for meaning; these two concepts are interchangeable. We will not dwell specifically on such definitions. In the second tradition, the concepts of “meaning” and “meaning” form a more or less pronounced conceptual opposition. In turn, the second tradition is also by no means homogeneous.
Gottlieb Frege is considered to be the founder of the conceptual opposition “meaning - meaning” in the sciences of language. In his classic work from a century ago, Sense and Denotation (Frehey, 1977; 1997) he introduces it as follows: denotation, or the meaning of a text (sign) is the objective reality that the text (sign) denotes or a judgment about which is expressed; meaning is the way of specifying the denotation, the nature of the connection between the denotation and the sign, or, in modern language, “the information that the sign carries about its denotation” (Muskhelshivili, Schrader, 1997, p. 80). A text can have only one meaning, but several meanings, or it can have no meaning (if in reality nothing corresponds to it), but still have meaning. “In poetic use it is enough that everything has meaning; in scientific use, meanings must not be omitted.” (Frege, 1997, p. 154-155). In Frege's texts there are indications of the connection between meaning and the context of their use. Yet, according to, in particular, E.D. Smirnova and P.V. Tavanets (1967), Frege did not create a theory of meaning. Nevertheless, his work still remains the most cited where the question of separating meaning and meaning is raised.
Let us present several more approaches to the relationship between the meaning and meaning of speech expressions. K.I. Lewis (1983), analyzing the types of meaning, distinguishes between linguistic and semantic meaning. The linguistic meaning of a word can be mastered with the help of an explanatory dictionary, first finding its definition, then defining all the words that are included in this definition, etc. What escapes is the semantic meaning associated with knowledge of all the variants of the correct use of a word in different contexts. M. Dummett (1987) considers the theory of meaning as one of the components of the theory of meaning, along with the theory of reference. The theory of meaning "...links the theory of truth (or reference) with the speaker's ability to master language, correlates his knowledge of the propositions of the theory with the practical linguistic skills that he displays" (theresame, With. 144). It must "...not only determine what the speaker knows, but also how his knowledge is manifested" (ibid., With. 201).
/./. concept of meaningVhumanities 11
Meaning is thus determined by a broader context than meaning.
The emphasis is placed differently in the works of representatives of the modern French school of discourse analysis, in which the problem of meaning is always in the center of attention, but at the same time is considered outside the traditional contrast between meaning and meaning in linguistics (Guillaume, Maldidier, 1999, p. 124, 132). The specificity of this approach lies in the analysis of the relationship between discourse and ideology. The concept of discourse appears here as clarifying the idea of context. Thus, M. Pesche and K. Fuchs (1999), stating the ambiguity of the connection between the text and its meaning, associate this with the idea that the text sequence is tied to one or another discourse formation, thanks to which it is endowed with meaning; It is also possible to link simultaneously to several discourse formations, which determines the presence of several meanings in the text. J. Guillaume and D. Maldidier (1999) argue that “texts, discourses, discourse complexes acquire a certain meaning only in a specific historical situation” (p. 124). Analyzing the texts of the tokha of the Great French Revolution, the authors showed that although the meaning of an expression is far from being entirely determined by its internal structure, as linguistic semantics traditionally believed, the other extreme - considering the meaning to be completely determined from the outside - also did not justify itself. The authors formulate a balanced conclusion: “The meaning is not given a priori, it is created at each stage of the description; it is never structurally complete. Meaning comes from language and archive; it is both limited and open.” (ibid., With. 133). Another author sees the process of producing open meaning this way: “One meaning unfolds in another, in others; or he becomes entangled in himself and cannot free himself from himself. He's drifting. It is lost in itself or multiplied. As for time, we are talking about moments. The meaning cannot be pasted on. He is unstable and wanders all the time. Meaning has no duration. Only its “framework” exists for a long time, fixed and perpetuated during its institutionalization. The meaning itself wanders to different places... A specific situation of signification in which meaning and its doubling interact: non-distinction, non-significance, non-discipline, non-constancy. With this approach, meaning is largely uncontrollable." (Pulcinella Orlandi, 1999, p. 215-216). Constancy of meaning can be achieved based on the functioning of paraphrase and metaphor; in this way, “meaning acquires “flesh” as historical meaning, arising in conditions of a tense relationship between fixity and variability” (ibid., With. 216-217).
Personality psychology in the works of domestic psychologists Kulikov Lev
The inner world of personality. D. A. Leontyev
The inner world of the individual. D. A. Leontyev
Meaning of life
So, we have examined the second level of personality structure - the value-semantic dimension of its existence, its inner world. The sources and carriers of meanings that are significant for a person are his needs and personal values, relationships and constructs. In their form, a person’s personality represents all the meanings that form the basis of his inner world, determine the dynamics of his emotions and experiences, structure and transform his picture of the world to its core - the worldview. All of the above applies to any meanings that are firmly rooted in the individual. But one of these meanings is worth dwelling on separately, since in terms of its globality and role in a person’s life, it occupies a very special place in the structure of the individual. This is the meaning of life.
The question of what the meaning of life is is not within the purview of psychology. The field of interest of personality psychology, however, includes the question of what impact the meaning of life or the experience of its absence has on a person’s life, as well as the problem of the psychological causes of loss and ways of finding the meaning of life. The meaning of life is a psychological reality, regardless of what exactly a person sees this meaning in.
One fundamental psychological fact is the widespread feeling of loss of meaning, the meaninglessness of life, the direct consequence of which is the increase in suicide, drug addiction, violence and mental illness, including specific, so-called noogenic neuroses - neuroses of loss of meaning (Frankl V.). The second fundamental psychological fact is that at an unconscious level, a certain meaning and direction of life, cementing it into a single whole, develops in every person by the age of 3–5 years and can be identified in general terms by experimental psychological and clinical psychological methods (Adier A.). Finally, the third fact is the determining role of precisely this objectively established direction of life. It carries true meaning, and any attempts to construct the meaning of life for oneself through speculative reasoning or an intellectual act will be quickly refuted by life itself. This is best illustrated by the story of Leo Tolstoy’s spiritual quest. After several unsuccessful attempts to find the meaning of life and then build his life in accordance with it, Tolstoy realized the fallacy of the approach itself. “I realized that in order to understand the meaning of life, it is necessary, first of all, for life itself not to be meaningless and evil, and then - reason, in order to understand it...... I realized that if I want to understand life
Thus, it can be argued that the life of any person, since it is directed toward something, objectively has meaning, which, however, may not be realized by the person until death. At the same time, life situations (or psychological research) can pose a task for a person to understand the meaning of his life. To realize and formulate the meaning of your life means to evaluate your life as a whole. Not everyone successfully copes with this task, and this depends not only on the ability to reflect, but also on deeper factors. If my life objectively has an undignified, petty, or, indeed, immoral meaning, then this awareness threatens my self-respect. To maintain self-respect, I internally unconsciously renounce the true meaning of my real life and declare that my life is meaningless. In fact, what lies behind this is that my life is devoid of worthy meaning, and not that it has no meaning at all. From a psychological point of view, the main thing is not a conscious idea of the meaning of life, but the saturation of real everyday life with real meaning. Research shows that there are many opportunities to find meaning. What gives life meaning can lie in the future (goals), in the present (a feeling of fullness and richness of life), and in the past (satisfaction with the results of the life lived). Most often, both men and women see the meaning of life in family and children, as well as in professional affairs.
Freedom, responsibility and spirituality
A lot has been written about freedom and responsibility in the psychological literature, but mainly either in a journalistic vein or with scientistic skepticism, debunking them “from a scientific point of view.” Both testify to the powerlessness of science in the face of these phenomena. In our opinion, we can get closer to understanding them by revealing their connection with things traditionally studied in psychology, but avoiding simplification.
Freedom implies the possibility of overcoming all forms and types of determination external to the human deep existential Self. Human freedom is freedom from causal dependencies, freedom from the present and past, the opportunity to draw motivating forces for one’s behavior in the imaginary, foreseeable and planned future, which Animals don’t have it, but not every person has it either. At the same time, human freedom is not so much freedom from the above-mentioned connections and dependencies as overcoming them; it does not cancel their action, but uses them to achieve the desired result. As an analogy, we can cite an airplane that does not cancel the law of universal gravitation, but nevertheless takes off from the ground and flies. Overcoming gravity is possible precisely because the forces of gravity are carefully taken into account in the design of the aircraft.
A positive characterization of freedom must begin with the fact that freedom is a specific form of activity. If activity is generally inherent in all living things, then freedom, firstly, is a conscious activity, secondly, mediated by the value “for what,” and, thirdly, an activity completely controlled by the subject himself. In other words, this activity is controlled and at any point it can be arbitrarily stopped, changed or turned in a different direction. Freedom, therefore, is inherent only to man, but not to everyone. The internal lack of freedom of people is manifested first of all in a lack of understanding of the external and internal forces acting on them, secondly, in the lack of orientation in life, in throwing from side to side and, thirdly, in indecision, inability to reverse the unfavorable course of events, to get out of the situation , to intervene as an active force in what happens to them.
Responsibility, as a first approximation, can be defined as a person’s awareness of his ability to act as a cause of change (or resistance to change) in the world around him and in his own life, as well as conscious management of this ability. Responsibility is a type of regulation that is inherent in all living things, but the responsibility of a mature personality is an internal regulation mediated by value guidelines. A human organ such as conscience directly reflects the degree of discrepancy between a person’s actions and these guidelines.
With internal lack of freedom there cannot be full personal responsibility, and vice versa. Responsibility acts as a prerequisite for internal freedom, since only by realizing the possibility of actively changing the situation can a person attempt such a change. However, the opposite is also true: only through outwardly directed activity can a person come to realize his ability to influence events. In their developed form, freedom and responsibility are inseparable; they act as a single mechanism of self-regulating, voluntary, meaningful activity inherent in a mature personality, in contrast to an immature one.
At the same time, the ways and mechanisms for the formation of freedom and responsibility are different. The path to freedom is the acquisition of the right to activity and the value guidelines of personal choice. The path to responsibility is the transition of activity regulation from the outside to the inside. At the early stages of development, there may be a contradiction between spontaneous activity and its regulation as a type of contradiction between external and internal. The contradiction between freedom and responsibility in their developed mature forms is impossible. On the contrary, their integration, associated with the individual’s acquisition of value guidelines, marks a person’s transition to a new level of relations with the world - the level of self-determination - and acts as a prerequisite and sign of personal health.
Adolescence is a critical age in terms of personality formation. Throughout it, a number of complex mechanisms are consistently formed, marking the transition from external determination of life and activity to personal self-regulation and self-determination, a radical change in the driving forces of personal development. The source and driving forces of development in the course of these changes shift inside the personality itself, which gains the ability to overcome the conditioning of its life activities by its life world. Along with the formation of appropriate personal mechanisms - freedom and responsibility - they are filled with meaningful values, which is expressed in the formation of an individual worldview, a system of personal values and, ultimately, in a person’s acquisition of spirituality as a special dimension of personal existence (Frankl V.).
A few special words should be said about spirituality. Spirituality, like freedom and responsibility, is not a special structure, but a certain way of human existence. Its essence is that the hierarchy of narrow personal needs, life relationships and personal values that determine decision-making for most people is being replaced by an orientation toward a wide range of universal and cultural values that are not in hierarchical relationships with each other, but allow for alternativeness. Therefore, decision-making by a mature person is always a free personal choice among several alternatives, which, regardless of its outcome, enriches the personality, allows one to build alternative models of the future and thereby choose and create the future, and not just predict it. Without spirituality, therefore, freedom is impossible, because there is no choice. Lack of spirituality is equivalent to certainty and predetermination. Spirituality is what fuses together all the mechanisms of the highest level. Without it there can be no autonomous personality. Only on its basis can the basic formula of personality development take shape: first a person acts to support his existence, and then supports his existence in order to act, to do the work of his life (Leontyev A. N.).
From the book The False Woman. Neurosis as an internal theater of personality author Shchegolev Alfred AlexandrovichPart II. Neurosis as an internal theater of personality
From the book Personality Psychology in the works of domestic psychologists author Kulikov LevIndividual and personality. A. N. Leontyev In psychology, the concept of an individual is used in an overly broad sense, leading to a failure to distinguish between the characteristics of a person as an individual and his characteristics as a person. But it is precisely their clear distinction, and, accordingly, that lies in its
From the book Essay on Personality Psychology author Leontyev Dmitry BorisovichPersonality formation. A. N. Leontiev The situation of the development of a human individual reveals its characteristics already at the very first stages. The main one is the indirect nature of the child’s connections with the outside world. Initially direct biological connections child
From the book Psychodiagnostics and correction of children with disabilities and developmental disorders: a reader author Astapov ValerySection VI. THE INNER WORLD OF THE PERSONALITY Main themes and concepts of the section Self-attitude of the individual. Self-respect and self-acceptance. The phenomenon of “meaning of life”. Freedom and responsibility of the individual. Subjectivity. Subjective reality. Subjective spirit. Liberty
From the book Psychology: Cheat Sheet author author unknownI am the last authority in personality. D. A. Leontyev “I” is the form in which a person experiences his personality, the form in which the personality reveals itself. The self has several facets, each of which was at one time the subject of interest of certain psychological schools and
From the book Psychology of Meaning: Nature, Structure and Dynamics of Meaningful Reality author Leontyev Dmitry BorisovichDmitry Alekseevich Leontyev Essay on Psychology From the book Legal Psychology [With the basics of general and social psychology] author Enikeev Marat Iskhakovich
From the book Transpersonal Psychology. New approaches author Tulin AlexeyDmitry Alekseevich Leontyev Psychology of meaning: nature, structure and dynamics of semantic
From the author's book2.7. Meaning regulation as a constitutive function of personality. Meaning in the structure of personality Being a person, a person acts as an autonomous bearer and subject of socially developed forms of activity-based attitude towards the world (for more details, see Leontyev D.A., 1989a). This is quality
From the author's bookA. N. Leontiev Leontiev believed that activity generates consciousness. “Primary consciousness exists only in the form of a mental image that reveals to the subject the world around him, but activity still remains practical, external. At a later stage
Leontyev Dmitry Alekseevich,Moscow
Doctor of Psychological Sciences, Professor.
Head of the International Laboratory of Positive Psychology, Personality and Motivation, Professor of the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, National Research University Higher School of Economics. Member of the Academic Council of the National Research University Higher School of Economics.
Director of the publishing house and scientific and production company “Smysl” and the Institute of Existential Psychology and Life Creativity.
Member of professional organizations: Moscow Psychological Society (Deputy Chairman of the Council), Moscow Association of Humanistic Psychology, International Association of Empirical Aesthetics (IAEA), International Society of Theoretical Psychology (ISTP), International Society of Cultural Researchers in Activity Theory (ISCRAT), International Society of History Psychology and Behavioral Sciences (CHEIRON), International Society for Research in Behavioral Development (ISSBD), International Society for Empirical Research in Literature (IGEL).
Member of the editorial boards of professional publications: “Psychological Journal”, Journal des Viktor-Frankl-Instituts (Austria, Vienna), “Moscow Psychotherapeutic Journal”, “Cultural-Historical Psychology”, “Psychology. Journal of the Higher School of Economics.
Graduated from the Faculty of Psychology of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov in 1982.
In 1988 he defended his PhD thesis on the topic “Structural organization of the semantic sphere of personality”, in 1999 - his doctoral dissertation on the topic “Psychology of meaning”.
Scientific interests: YES. Leontyev is the author of the original concept of the psychology of meaning and the general psychological concept of personality; a leading representative of the existential approach in Russia, one of the consistent developers of the existential approach to understanding man and research within the framework of positive psychology. In recent years, he has been developing issues of non-therapeutic practice of psychological assistance, prevention and facilitation of personal development based on existential psychology.
Based on a biased and multilateral analysis of various psychological theories, as well as a broader view of the development of the social and human sciences, D.A. Leontyev substantiates and develops the idea of personality as a unity of the possible and necessary, within the framework of which a person can, using reflexive consciousness, go beyond the boundaries of the necessary into the possible.
Founder of the Smysl publishing house and the Institute of Existential Psychology and Life Creativity.
YES. Leontyev is one of the most recognizable and published modern domestic psychologists in Russia and abroad, the author of numerous scientific and popular works on the problems of personality psychology, motivation, self-regulation, psychological examination, methodology of psychology and the provision of psychological assistance (more than 400), including books “Essay on the psychology of personality”, “Introduction to the psychology of art”, “Psychology of meaning”, “Thematic apperception test”, etc.
Since 1982 he has been teaching at the Faculty of Psychology of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov: at the Department of General Psychology, since 2013 - at the Department of Personality Psychology; associate professor, professor.
In 2009-2012 Headed the Laboratory of Problems of Personality Development of Persons with Disabilities at Moscow State University of Psychology and Education.
Since 2011 he has been working at the National Research University Higher School of Economics.
Since 1994, member of the editorial board of the journal “Psychological Journal”, since 2004 - of the journal “Psychology. Journal of the Higher School of Economics”, since 2005 - the journal “Cultural-Historical Psychology”. In 2006-2013 - Managing editor of The Journal of Positive Psychology.
Awards:
- Laureate of the Viktor Frankl Foundation Prize in Vienna (Austria) for achievements in the field of meaning-oriented humanistic psychotherapy;
- Honorary Professor of the Perm State Institute of Arts and Culture.
Participation in the “Golden Psyche” competition
- “International scientific and practical conference “Personality in an era of change: mobilis in mobili””, December 17-18, 2018, Moscow (in the category “Event of the year in the life of the community”, 2018), laureate
- “Life-Creative Lessons of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry”, master class (in the category “Master Class of the Year for Psychologists”, 2017), winner
- “A.F. Lazursky (1874-1917). Personality theory: 100 years of oblivion and development”, a set of events dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the death of A.F. Lazursky: monograph, international conference, memorial plaque (in the category “Project of the Year in Psychological Science”, 2017), laureate
- “The scientific heritage of A.A. Leontiev”, research project carried out under the grant of the Russian Humanitarian Scientific Foundation No. 15-06-10942a (in the nomination “Project of the Year in Psychological Science”, 2017), laureate
- , educational and educational program of additional education (in the nomination “Psychological Tool of the Year”, 2016), nominee
- “All-Russian conference with international participation “From the origins to the present” 130 years of the organization of the psychological society at Moscow University”, September 29 - October 1, 2015 (in the category “Event of the year in the life of the community”, 2015), winner
- “Causemetry in the study of psychological time and the life path of an individual: past, present, future”, international conference and printed publications dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the causometric approach (in the category “Project of the Year in Psychological Science”, 2008), winner
- "Living Classics", book series (in the category "Project of the Year in Psychological Science", 2003), nominee
- "TO. Levin "Dynamic psychology: selected works" (in the category "Best project in scientific psychology", 2001), nominee
- , (in the nomination “Best Project in Psychological Education”, 2001), laureate
