LECTURE No. 6. The formation of psychology as an independent science

1. Natural science prerequisites for the formation of psychology

The position put forward by materialist philosophers about the possibility and necessity of studying the psyche of man and animals, relying on the methods of the natural sciences, could not be realized before production, technology, and, in connection with them, natural science had reached a certain level of development.

B. F. Lomov writes in this regard: “It is known that psychology as an independent field of science began to form later than other (if not all, then many) fundamental sciences. And this fact is not accidental. It is quite natural. Its formation could not begin before than other sciences have not reached a certain level of development, that is, before the necessary scientific base has been created, which would make it possible to single out psychological problems proper and outline ways to solve them.

The most important natural scientific basis of psychology is physiology. The fate of psychology depended on her condition.

The development of physiology was determined by the successes of physics, chemistry, mechanics, biology, the rise and flourishing of which was determined by the growing needs of production in scientific knowledge, as well as the triumph of the ideas of philosophical materialism, the victory of materialistic trends in the sciences of nature.

By the middle of the XIX century. certain special areas of physiology have developed so much that they come close to the experimental development of problems that have long been the province of psychology. Such disciplines in which the spread of the experimental method to the field of mental phenomena began include neuromuscular physiology, physiology of the sense organs, anatomy and physiology of the brain. Along with them, astronomy, physical optics and acoustics, biology, and psychiatry contributed to the penetration of the experimental method into psychology. These branches of natural science and medicine constituted the main sources from which psychology grew as an experimental and independent field of knowledge.

On the threshold of the XIX century. general physiology in developing its problems relied on experimental methods. The new facts obtained with their help concerning the work of various body systems put on the agenda the question of the functions of the nervous system, since its participation in various physiological acts was increasingly revealed. Especially rapidly began to develop neuromuscular physiology - the area in which the reflex principle put forward by Descartes, for the first time, begins to be subjected to experimental verification and the test of time.

The development of the problem of neuromuscular connections began with a critique of ideas about the presence of "animal spirits" in the nervous system and muscles. Back in the XNUMXth century, the English scientist J. Swammerdam, who was engaged in comparative anatomy and physiology, experimentally established that the volume of a muscle does not change during its contraction.

This fact called into question the existence of "animal spirits". Since that time, the old concept of "animal spirits" has been replaced by the concept of nervous excitability.

Many of Swammerdam's experiments concerned the study of a number of vital functions of the body in connection with the removal of the brain. He found that many of the organic functions, including motor ones, remain intact for a certain time after removal of the brain. This gave reason to believe that organic functions and involuntary movements are not connected with the activity of the brain. Such a view of the nature of involuntary movements meant the birth of reflex atomism. He was opposed by another point of view, according to which all voluntary and involuntary acts have a single anatomical and physiological basis. The Dutch physician G. Burgav, on the basis of numerous experiments, found that voluntary and involuntary movements are carried out by the same muscles and the nature of their contraction is also the same. In this regard, Boerhave objected to the strict division of motor acts into voluntary and involuntary. He was the first to describe the process of transition of voluntary movements into involuntary ones.

Important for the development of the reflex theory was the confirmation by Boerhaave of the guesses of the Alexandrian doctors and Galen about the sensory and motor nerves as the anatomical basis of movements, the reflex mechanism.

Until the 1736th century the principle of machine-likeness put forward by Descartes remained without a name. Only in XNUMX Astruch Montpellier introduces the term "reflex", understanding it in the physical sense as a mirror image. Since that time, the concept of a reflex has become generally accepted.

In the XVIII century. A. Haller played an important role in the development of the physiology of the reflex. Continuing the line of Swammerdam, Galler again comes to the conclusion that the participation of the brain is not necessary for muscle contraction.

Through numerous experiments, he established the autonomous nature of muscle contraction, which testified to the complete indifference of the central brain structures in the simplest elementary neuromuscular reactions. Under the influence of Haller's experiments and views, the positions of reflex atomism were further strengthened.

The English scientist R. Witt spoke out against Haller's reflex atomism. Many specific facts that Witt had at his disposal convinced him that, on the one hand, it was impossible to "squeeze the mind" into every neuromuscular act, but there was no reason to reduce movements only to machine-like ones, on the other. To resolve this contradiction, Witt introduces a new "sensory principle", as if reconciling the principle of machine-likeness with the principle of participation of the soul in neuromuscular reactions. In his opinion, all motor acts, including involuntary ones, contain sensory components. Valuable in the views of Witt, as P. K. Anokhin believed, is an attempt to "combine the whole variety of machine, automatic and voluntary reactions in one neurological principle." Witt was one of the first to pay special attention to the possibility of evoking a series of organic reflexes from one type of external object. The name of Witt is associated with the completion of the first period in the history of the reflex, since he managed to give the reflex principle "such clarity and such a physiological meaning that it had not changed until the classics of the reflex of the XNUMXth century."

In the second half of the XVIII century. the tendency to limit the action of the reflex mechanism to the level of the spinal cord becomes more and more noticeable. It was especially pronounced in P. Cabanis and F. Elein. The latter openly called on physiologists to remove the problem of volitional, conscious acts from the circle of questions that physiology should deal with. After Blaine, the official distinction between spinal physiology and psychology begins, to which the brain was completely entrusted as an organ of a thinking substance, its conscious and arbitrary acts.

Blaine's view was not shared by everyone. She was opposed by another tendency, which expressed the desire to extend the reflex mechanism to all levels of neuro-cerebral activity, which meant the transfer of its action to the field of mental phenomena. Of the philosophers with such views, La Mettrie spoke, and of the naturalists, the Czech physiologist I. Prochazka. Both of them developed the idea of ​​the suitability of the reflex principle for the analysis of mental phenomena. Prochazka believed that sensory elements, whether they are conscious or not, are necessarily included in the structure of the reflex act. They are the "compass of life" for the body, allowing it to allocate beneficial and harmful effects for it. Thus, the reflex mechanism has a biological meaning for the organism, since it serves as an instrument of adaptation to the environment. Prochazka is the author of the classical formulation of the reflex, which was accepted by all physiologists of the XNUMXth century. The anatomical basis for the reflex scheme of Prochazka was independently established by the English physiologist C. Belli and the French scientist F. Magendie. Experimentally, they managed to determine which of the nerves has a sensitive function, and which - motor. The discovery of sensory and motor nerves gave a powerful impetus to the further development of reflex teaching. What was new for the reflex theory was Bell's discovery of the regulatory function of muscular sensation in the construction of various movements. This new discovery is expounded by Bell in his "neural circle" theory.

The problem of the relationship between consciousness and matter, mental and physical, soul and body has been of interest to philosophers, psychologists and natural scientists since ancient times. When solving it, the question of the organ of the soul or its substrate and carrier acquired particular importance, since the discovery of such a substrate would inevitably lead to the recognition of the dependence of mental phenomena on a bodily foundation.

On the border of the XVIII-XIX centuries. F. Gall's phrenological system is gaining particular popularity, according to which each psychological ability corresponds to a certain part of the brain, which is an independent organ of this ability. Gall singled out 37 abilities of the soul, each of which has its own place in the "brain map". Affective abilities, and there are 21 of them, were placed in different parts of the hindbrain, and intellectual abilities (there are 16 of them) - in different areas of the forebrain. The level of development of each ability is determined by the volume of the medulla of the area that is responsible for this or that ability. This is reflected in the cranial topology, in the ratio of protrusions and depressions on the skull of the brain, according to which it was proposed to determine the individual structure of mental abilities and the measure of their development.

In a number of respects, Gall's phrenology did not stand up to scrutiny. Gall's mistake was that he tried to mechanically impose a system of mental abilities on the morphological structure of the brain. For all its inconsistency, phrenology also played a positive role in the sense that it established the belonging of mental functions to a material organ, namely, the brain, and also formed and affirmed the idea of ​​a specific cerebral localization. This is all the more important to note that at that time this idea was opposed by the point of view, preserved from ancient times, according to which individual mental abilities are localized in different parts of the body. So, the question of the connection between mental abilities and the brain remained open and required its scientific, or rather, experimental, resolution.

The first step towards experimental substantiation of the problem of localization of mental functions was carried out by the French anatomist and physiologist J. Flourens, known in the history of physiology as the father of the extirpation method. Having carried out numerous experiments on the removal and disruption of individual brain sections in birds and chickens, he came to the conclusion that with respect to various mental abilities, the brain is equipotential, that is, all its sections are equally involved in any of the mental functions. Flourance experimentally confirmed what was put forward in the second half of the XNUMXth century. Haller the position that the brain is not a collection of autonomous organs responsible for any one of the many mental abilities, but a single homogeneous whole that does not have a clearly defined specialization.

At that time, scientists did not yet know that in the lower vertebrates with which J. Flurance dealt, the cerebral cortex is almost not differentiated, and mental abilities are not all represented in the cortex. That is why, with the destruction of various parts of the brain in lower vertebrates, approximately the same restoration of disturbed mental functions occurs.

Flourance's general conclusions were based on the fact that when various parts of the brain were removed, any impaired mental functions were restored over time.

Flourance's experimental work forced us to look at the brain as a single dynamic system, drew the attention of scientists to the compensatory and vicarious functions of the brain. For psychology, the significance of Flurence's research lies in the fact that for the first time they experimentally revealed the dependent connection of mental phenomena with the brain. Modern neuropsychology should be very grateful to Flurence as the founder of the experimental direction in this area.

Subsequent clinical and experimental studies again bring to the fore the idea of ​​brain differentiation and specialization.

In 1861, P. Brokaya, on the basis of clinical observations, discovered the speech center in the brain. He found that damage to the posterior third of the inferior frontal gyrus of the brain is associated with impaired articulated speech. This fact served as the basis for Brock's generalizing conclusion, the meaning of which was that each of the intellectual functions has a strictly limited place in the brain. In support of this point of view, in a short time after Broca's discovery, "visual memory centers" (A. Bastian, 1869), "writing centers" (3. Exner, 1861), "concept centers" (J. Charcot 1887) were found in the brain and etc.

Soon the positions of the localization theory of the brain were strengthened thanks to the experimental studies of Fritsch and Gitzig in 1870. Using the method of electrical stimulation of certain parts of the brain in rabbits and dogs, they managed to establish the presence of motor centers in the cerebral cortex. Their subsequent research and the experiments of other physiologists made it possible to draw up a whole map of the motor centers.

With the invention of the microscope, histological studies of brain structures were widely developed, thanks to which it became known about the cellular structure of the brain substrate. T. Meinert (1867, 1868) showed that the cortical layer of the brain consists of a huge variety of cells, each of which, in his opinion, has its own mental function.

In the same period, K. Golgi put forward a hypothesis about the network-like structure of the nervous system. The brain began to be presented as a complex aggregate, consisting of a large mass of cells connected by nerve fibers.

The new idea of ​​the structure of the brain coincided with the traditional scheme of the structure and work of consciousness from the point of view of associative psychology.

The discovered similarity in the structure of the brain and consciousness contributed to the assertion of the idea of ​​a direct relation of the mental elements of consciousness with the morphological structures of the brain.

But along with studies confirming the high differentiation of the brain in relation to various mental functions, there were other studies, the resulting conclusions from which were directly opposite and spoke in favor of brain equipotentiality.

We are talking about Goltz's experiments, which confirmed the originally put forward ideas of Flurence. At the beginning of the XNUMXth century, K. Lashley came to similar results and conclusions when he studied the characteristics of changes in skills in rats depending on the destruction of certain parts of the brain.

These conclusions were that the degree of skill impairment depends mainly on the mass of the removed brain and that different parts of it are equally relevant to the formation and restoration of various skills as complex forms of behavior.

Representatives of a holistic approach to the brain also found an analogy, but in other psychological ideas about the soul as a single and indecomposable entity.

There are again attempts to directly correlate the psychological and anatomical picture of the work of consciousness, on the one hand, and the brain, on the other.

In solving the problem of localization of mental functions, two opposite directions are distinguished - analytical and synthetic.

Representatives of the first advocated attributing individual mental functions to certain brain structures, supporters of the other, on the contrary, considered various mental phenomena as a function of the entire brain.

The common mistake of both directions was that mental functions were projected directly onto the brain, bypassing the functional level of analysis of its work, while the connection between the mental and the structure of the brain is always mediated by physiological activity.

Psychomorphologism in solving the problem of the brain mechanisms of mental activity was overcome only after the work of our Russian scientists Sechenov, Bekhterev and Pavlov.

After Sechenov, Bekhterev advanced knowledge in the field of anatomy and physiology of the brain to such an extent that his contemporaries in Russia and abroad spoke of him as a scientist, more and better than whom no one knew the structure and functions of the brain.

A similar assessment can be equally attributed to Pavlov, whose teaching on the dynamic localization of brain centers played a decisive role in understanding the anatomical and physiological mechanisms of mental phenomena.

Thanks to Sechenov, Bekhterev, Pavlov and their predecessors in Europe, it was firmly established that the brain is an organ of the psyche, and therefore all reasoning about mental phenomena without connection with the brain, of which they are a function, became fruitless mysticism.

Anatomical and physiological studies of the brain, as well as experiments in neuromuscular and sensory physiology, were an important condition for the transfer of speculative psychology to the natural sciences, a prerequisite for an objective study of the psyche of animals and humans.

The teachings of the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1800-1882) revolutionized the entire system of biological and psychological thinking. His work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) is called one of the most important in the history of Western civilization. The book outlined a new theory of the development of the animal world. The principle of development itself has guided reflections on nature, society and man (including the soul) since ancient times. With Darwin, this principle was embodied in a majestic teaching, rooted in the Mont Blanc of Facts.

This teaching refuted the biblical dogma that all kinds of living beings were once and for all created by God. Church attacks on Darwin reached their peak after the publication of his work The Descent of Man (1870), from which it followed that man was not created in the image and likeness of God, but comes from a herd of monkeys.

Darwin's teaching marked a sharp turn from one form of determinism to another. The new determinism was biological (mechano-determinism and biodeterminism).

Darwin pointed to natural selection as a factor in the survival of organisms in a constantly threatening environment. In the course of evolution, only those who were able to adapt most effectively survive.

The basic factor in this explanatory scheme is the factor of heredity. Darwin gave an accurate scientific explanation of expediency without resorting to the concept of innate purpose. All these innovations revolutionized not only biology, but also psychology.

Since natural selection cuts off everything that is not necessary for life, it would also destroy mental functions if they did not contribute to adaptation. This prompted us to consider the psyche as an element of the organism's adaptation to the environment. The psyche could no longer be seen as an isolated "island of the spirit." Instead of a separate organism, the relationship "organism - environment" becomes decisive for psychology. This gave rise to a new systemic style of thinking, which later led to the conclusion that the subject of psychology should not be the consciousness of the individual, but his behavior in the external environment that changes the organism and the mental makeup of the individual.

The concept of individual variation is an indispensable part of Darwin's evolutionary theory. These include variations in the field of the psyche. This gave a powerful impetus to the development of a new direction in psychology, the subject of which was the study of individual differences between people, due to the laws of heredity.

This direction, initiated by Darwin's cousin Francis Galton, has become a branch of differential psychology.

Darwinism stimulated the study of the psyche in the animal world, becoming the basis of another new direction in science - zoopsychology.

Along with Darwin and simultaneously with him, the ideas of a new evolutionary biology were developed by the English philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903).

Following the tradition that dominated England, he was an adherent of associationism. But he underwent a significant transformation in Spencer's Fundamentals of Psychology (1855). In it, life was defined as "the continuous adaptation of internal relations to external ones." What happens inside the organism can be understood only in the system of its relations to the external environment. Relationships are nothing but adjustments. From this point of view, associations must also be understood as links between the elements of mental life.

Various assumptions were made about the processes inside the body, the projection of which is the connection between mental phenomena. The principle of adaptation demanded to “leave” the isolated organism and look for the “root” of associations in what is happening in the external world, to which the organism adapts every day.

Adaptation means not only adapting to new situations of the sense organs as sources of information about what is happening outside. A new type of associations was asserted - between internal mental images and muscular actions realizing the adaptation of the whole organism.

Here a sharp turn took place in the movement of psychological thought. From the "field of consciousness" she rushed into the "field of behavior."

From now on, not physics and chemistry, as before, but biology becomes the guiding star in the development of the associative doctrine, which takes on a new look in behaviorism and reflexology.

The main achievements in the development of these methods in relation to psychology are associated with the work of F. Galton (1822-1911).

Deeply impressed by the ideas of his cousin Darwin, he gave decisive importance not to the factor of adaptation of an individual organism to the environment, but to the factor of heredity, according to which the adaptation of a species is achieved through genetically determined variations in the individual forms that form this species. Based on this postulate, Galton became a pioneer in the development of behavioral genetics.

The study of individual differences has been widely developed. These differences constantly made themselves felt in experiments to determine the thresholds of sensitivity, reaction time, the dynamics of associations and other mental phenomena. In the book "Hereditary Genius" (1869), he argued that outstanding abilities are inherited. Using available experimental psychological methods, adding to them those invented by himself, he put them at the service of the study of individual variations. This applied to both bodily and mental signs. The latter were considered no less dependent on genetic determinants than, say, eye color.

In his laboratory, anyone could, for a small fee, determine their physical and mental abilities, between which, according to Galton, there are correlations. About 9000 people passed through this anthropological laboratory. But Galton had a bigger plan in mind. He expected to cover the entire population of England in order to determine the level of the country's mental resources.

He designated his tests with the word "test", which is widely included in the psychological lexicon. Galton pioneered the transformation of experimental psychology into a differential psychology that studies the differences between individuals and groups of people. The merit of Galton was the in-depth development of variational statistics, which changed the face of psychology as a science that makes extensive use of quantitative methods.

Galton was the first to make individual differences between people a special subject of study; created measurement procedures and an initial statistical apparatus for evaluating differences; collected a large amount of experimental material concerning different levels in the structure of individuality - somatic, physiological, psychological; he even raised the question of the origin of individual characteristics and tried to solve it.

In 1900, in the book "On the Psychology of Individual Differences (Ideas for Differential Psychology)," V. Stern first introduced the term "differential psychology" to designate a new field that had spun off from the mother science - general psychology. The methodological and experimental methodological approaches formulated by Stern, the basic concepts, and many statistical techniques, despite the past 100 years, are still true today.

In 1869 Galton's book Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into its Laws and Consequences was published. In this book, he tried to solve the problem of the heritability of giftedness by analyzing the pedigrees of prominent figures in science, jurisprudence, sports, military affairs, art, "statesmen" using the genealogical method of psychogenetics.

Having singled out three degrees of talent and at the same time using the examination marks received by those entering the Royal Military College, he applied to this material the then-existing law of Quetelet (1796-1874) - "the law of deviation from averages." By analogy with the distribution of people's height, he suggested "the existence of some constant average level of mental abilities, the deviation from which, both towards genius and towards idiocy, must follow the law that governs the deviation from all kinds of averages." A Gaussian distribution of people according to "intellectual talents" is outlined.

In the same decades, psychological diagnostics appeared and began to develop. It was started, again, by Galton, who, studying the heredity of talent, naturally came to the need to measure the mental qualities of people - from sensory functions to types of mental activity and character.

The development of knowledge about mental illness and their causes also played an important role in the formation of psychology as a science. The first scientific attempts to explain mental illness are noted in the VI century. BC e. The most common during this period was the brain theory of mental illness. Such curative indications as hunger, beating, brutal violence, chains, etc. were proposed as measures of cure. The listed forms of therapy would become generally accepted norms for treating the mentally ill in Western Europe until the XNUMXth century.

In the medieval period, the natural scientific explanation of mental illness is completely replaced by a mystical idea of ​​their causes. Mental illnesses are beginning to be seen as the result of a settlement in the soul of the devil, as a result of malicious witchcraft. To isolate the mentally ill, special institutions began to be established, similar to prisons, where the sick were flogged with rods, stabbed with needles, swords in order to expel the settled devil from the soul and free the person from witchcraft. From the XV-XVI centuries. The Church is at the head of mass reprisals against those who gave their souls to the devil. Special bulls were published indicating the methods for recognizing and exterminating the possessed.

But even when the fires of the Inquisition were burning all over Europe, there were sound voices of protest. Suffice it to mention the name of the German physician of the XNUMXth century I. Weier, who called for replacing the tribunal of the Inquisition with the treatment of the sick, firmly believing in the ancient precepts: in a healthy body there is a healthy spirit, and, therefore, by strengthening the body, one can also heal the soul. Even then, Plater argued that the brain is an instrument of thought and any damage to it leads to mental perversions. By healing the brain, mental disorders can also be eliminated.

In the XNUMXth century psychiatry is strongly influenced by the materialistic tendencies of Descartes and Bacon. Lapua associated mental illness with a disorder of the nervous system, believing that hysterical seizures are based on the processes of mechanical compression and expansion of the meninges.

In the XVIII century. France becomes the center of advanced and scientific psychiatry. Philippe Pinel is a reformer of French psychiatry. Pinel's worldview took shape under the direct influence of the French materialists of the XNUMXth century. The basic principles of clinical psychiatry put forward by him boiled down to the following: the destruction of prison regimes, the humanization of measures to calm and pacify patients, the removal of iron chains and handcuffs from them, the creation of comfortable hospitals, the transformation of psychiatry into an experimental science modeled on other areas of natural science, the introduction of objective methods for studying the causes of mental diseases.

He undertook the first mass examination of 200 patients, which gave him the opportunity to build a new classification of mental illness. This classification included five main types of mental disorders: mania, mania without delirium, melancholy, dementia and idiocy. The classification was based on the psychological principle. Among the main causes of mental disorders, he indicated two types of them - these are predisposing causes, to which Pinel attributed hereditary factors and individual predispositions to psychoses, and producing causes, including physical injuries and organic disorders of the brain, on the one hand, and moral upheavals - with another. The business started by Pinel found its successors, both in France itself and abroad. In England, Conolly becomes a true reformer of psychiatry. In the field of practical psychiatry, he went even further than Pinel. The name of D. Konolzh is associated with the beginning of a widespread movement against any constraint of the mentally ill. If Pinel, having removed the chains and handcuffs from the mentally ill, left straitjackets on them, then Conolly destroyed them too. In Belgium, during the same period, J. Ghislain occupied the leading positions in the organization of psychiatric affairs.

Unlike France, England and Belgium, the development of psychiatry in Germany at the end of the XNUMXth and the first half of the XNUMXth centuries. characterized by opposite tendencies. Psychiatry in this country acted as an appendage of philosophy. Theoretical psychiatry was developed by philosophers who were far from practical psychiatry, and therefore it was of a speculative nature. The dominant position was occupied by views according to which mental illnesses were understood as the own creations of the spirit, as a result of an evil inclination in the soul. To tame evil will, supporters of the idealistic wing in the science of mental illness (Heinroth, Ideler, Beneke, and others) proposed the use of mechanical, pain, nausea, and water therapy, which was the most sophisticated methods of torturing mentally ill people.

In Germany, representatives of the somatic direction in German psychiatry opposed such a tremendous therapy. Among them, the famous German physician G. Griesinger stood out. He is credited with translating national psychiatry from the realm of speculative schemes into the natural sciences. He believed that pathological processes in the brain lie at the basis of any mental illness. His work On Psychic Reflex Acts (1843) anticipated Sechenov's reflex teaching and laid the first foundations for the reflex trend in psychiatry.

In the second half of the XNUMXth century, under the influence of Darwin's evolutionary ideas within the somatic direction in European psychiatry, the role of the hereditary factor in psychopathogenesis began to be unjustifiably overestimated.

The most powerful influence on European psychiatry was the theory of degeneration by the French psychiatrist B. Morel. In his "Treatise on Degeneracy" (1857) he developed the position of a constant increase in morbid properties when they are passed from one generation to another.

The concept of degeneration received support in other countries, especially in Germany (Schüle, Ebing, and others).

In French psychiatry of the second half of the XNUMXth century. more advanced positions were occupied by the Nancy school and the school of J. Charcot, known as the "School of the Salpêtrière". In both of them, a somatic approach to mental illness was developed, the practice of humane treatment of patients was actively introduced, and the problems of hypnosis and suggestion were intensively developed. It is with these two scientific schools that the emergence of experimental psychology in France is connected.

The first experiments on suggestion were carried out at the end of the XNUMXth century. Mesmer, who later came up with the theory of animal magnetism. Somewhat later it was discovered that artificial sleep can be induced by magnetic passes. The English physician D. Brad, on the basis of numerous experiments, came to the conclusion that the leading role in the emergence of artificial or hypnotic sleep is played not by magnetic passes per se, but by fatigue of the sense organs during prolonged exposure to them.

French psychiatrists adhered to a different understanding of hypnosis. The representative of the Nancy school, P. Liebeault, who wrote the book The Treatment by Suggestion and Its Mechanism (1891), associated the phenomenon of hypnosis with the property of suggestibility, which characterizes all people without exception, only to varying degrees. Susceptibility to hypnosis began to be regarded in the Charcot school as a sign of a predisposition to hysterical illness. Charcot has priority in identifying the main forms of neurosis - hysteria, neurasthenia and psychasthenia, the occurrence of which was associated with organic and functional disorders of the nervous system and brain. In general, the scientific face of Charcot's psychiatric school was determined by comparative studies of the mental norm and pathology, natural science orientation in the theory and methods of research and treatment of patients, systematic development of the problems of hypnosis and suggestion, which acted both as a method of treatment and as a subject of scientific analysis. The traditions of the Salpêtrière school determined the nature and direction of the first experimental research in psychology. The closest students and followers of Charcot - Ribot, Dumas, Binet, Janet, and others - were the initiators and organizers of experimental psychology in France.

The fate of experimental psychology in France turned out to be similar to the history of the emergence of experimental psychology in Russia. As in France, the pioneers of Russian experimental psychology were mainly neuropathologists and psychiatrists.

The beginning of the formation of scientific psychiatry in Russia dates back to the second half of the 1827th century. I. M. Balinsky (1902-1857) was the founder of Russian psychiatry. His merit lies in the fact that by his tireless activity he created the organizational prerequisites for the construction of scientific psychiatry in Russia. Balinsky opened the first department in Russia (1867) and a psychiatric clinic (XNUMX) in St. Petersburg. In their foundation, Balinsky saw a real foundation for the development of a new science. He retired early, leaving a wide field of activity for young scientists. Therefore, scientific work in the psychiatric centers he created is developed in its entirety by his students, headed by IP Merzheevsky.

The main cycle of research conducted by Merzheevsky was devoted to the study of mental illness in connection with pathological changes in the brain and in the body as a whole. Under the leadership of Merzheevsky, studies were carried out in a psychiatric clinic to study the effect of various harmful effects on the nervous system. The specific scope of the research included studying the effect of starvation, phosphorus poisoning, removal of the thyroid gland and other factors that cause disturbances in the activity of the nervous system. Experimental anatomical and physiological studies of the brain were carried out. As a result of research work in the Merzheevsky clinic, about 30 dissertations were prepared, more than 150 scientific papers were published. More than 50 qualified psychiatrists have graduated from the walls of the first psychiatric center in Russia. All this was a great initial contribution to the development of domestic psychiatry.

The experience of Balinsky and Merzheevsky served as a model and example for the development of psychiatric science in other cities of Russia.

New psychiatric centers are opening in Kazan, Moscow, Kharkov, Kyiv. The first psychological laboratories were also organized at these centers. The Department of Psychiatry was opened at Kazan University, which was headed by V. M. Bekhterev from the end of 1885. In 1886, he organized the first psychophysiological laboratory here. Having moved to St. Petersburg and replacing Merzheevsky, who had retired there, Bekhterev opened a second psychological laboratory at the Department of Psychiatry of the Military Medical Academy (1894). The scientific activity of V. M. Bekhterev was distinguished by its versatility. His contribution to various fields - anatomy and physiology of the brain, neuropathology, psychiatry, psychology - can hardly be overestimated. In all these areas, Bekhterev was an exponent of advanced ideas, a follower of the teachings of Sechenov, and a supporter of an objective approach to the study of neuropsychic activity. Bekhterev’s emergence as a world-famous scientist took place after he opened his own laboratory, and especially Wundt’s laboratory in Leipzig (1879), therefore, a more complete description of his scientific views and their assessment should be attributed chronologically to the period associated with the development of psychology as an independent science. Bekhterev, as a representative of medicine and natural science, acted after Sechenov not only as the ideological inspirer of natural science and experimental psychology, but also as its direct organizer in Russia.

The foundation of the Moscow Psychiatric School was laid by A. Kozhevnikov, who in 1837 organized a psychiatric clinic with private donations. S. S. Korsakov, whose name is associated with many important milestones in both psychiatry and psychology, became its leader. Korsakov is the leader of the national movement against any constraint on the mentally ill. His scientific work on polyneurotic psychosis, which he reported on in 1889 at the International Medical Congress, brought Korsakov worldwide recognition. The significance of this work was to substantiate the dependence of pathopsychological phenomena on damage to the brain and nervous system in general. Korsakov, like Bekhterev, is credited with establishing materialistic positions in psychiatry and psychology, an objective approach to the study of the psyche and deviations in it, and in the practical implementation of measures to transform psychology into an experimental science. On his initiative, in 1895, another psychological laboratory in Russia was created in Moscow.

A significant contribution to the development of Russian psychiatry, as well as to the preparation and foundation of Russian experimental psychology, was made by the formed psychiatric centers in Kyiv, Kharkov, Yuriev, headed by P. I. Kovalevsky, I. A. Sikorsky, V. F. Chizh - prominent Russian scientists , neurologists and psychiatrists.

From a brief review of the history of psychiatry, it can be seen that its development took place in a long confrontation between somatic and spiritualistic directions, a development that, according to Yu. V. Kannabikh, was a form of struggle between two worldviews - materialism and idealism, a struggle between two approaches to understanding the causes of mental illness , two orientations in the methods of their study and treatment. All the best achievements in the field of psychiatry were associated with the natural science direction, which asserted deterministic knowledge about the nature of mental disorders. It was the psychosomatic, psychoneurological line in psychiatry that contributed to the transfer of the idea of ​​natural determinism to the field of psychology, the establishment in it of an objective approach to the study of the psyche in its normal and diseased state. The merit of leading natural scientists, neuropathologists and psychiatrists is determined not only by their formation of the theoretical prerequisites for the natural-scientific transformation of psychology, but also by their direct participation in its renewal, especially in Russia and France.

2. The emergence of the first experimental sections of psychology

Before objective methods for studying holistic behavior were invented, scientific psychological thought achieved great success in the experimental analysis of the activity of the sense organs.

These successes were associated with the discovery of a regular, mathematically calculable relationship between objective physical stimuli and the mental effects they produce - sensations. It was this direction that played a decisive role in the transformation of psychology into an independent experimental science.

A researcher of the sense organs, the physiologist Ernst Weber (1795-1878), came to new discoveries. He wondered how much to change the strength of stimulation, so that the subject catches a subtle difference in sensation. So the emphasis has been shifted. Experiments and mathematical calculations became the source of a current that has flowed into modern science under the name of psychophysics. Psychophysics began with ideas about local mental phenomena. But it received a huge methodological and methodological resonance in the entire corpus of psychological knowledge. An experiment, a number, a measure were introduced into it. The table of logarithms turned out to be applicable to the phenomena of mental life, the behavior of the subject.

The breakthrough from psychophysiology to psychophysics was also significant in that it separated the principle of causality from the principle of regularity. Psychophysics has proved that in psychology, even in the absence of knowledge about the bodily substratum, the laws that govern its phenomena can be strictly empirically discovered.

In the second half of the XIX century. individual questions and problems lying on the border of physiology and psychology become the subject of special and systematic research, which are then isolated and formalized into relatively independent scientific areas. One of the first such areas was psychophysics, created by the German physicist, physiologist and philosopher G. Fechner (1801-1887).

Psychophysics was conceived by Fechner as the science of the universal connection between the physical and spiritual worlds. Based on the philosophy of Schilling, Fechner came up with the doctrine of the identity of the mental and physical, put forward the principle of the universal animation of nature. According to Fechner, a special science should be created, which, with the help of experiment and mathematics, could prove the philosophical concept put forward by him. Such a science was psychophysics, which he defined as an exact doctrine of the functional relationship between the body and the soul.

According to Fechner, psychophysics should be engaged in an experimental mathematical study of various mental processes (sensations, perceptions, feelings, attention, etc.) in their relation, on the one hand, to physical factors, which should be the subject of external psychophysics, on the other hand, in relation to the anatomical and physiological foundations, which should have been the subject of internal psychophysics.

But Fechner had to limit his own research only to the field of external psychophysics, since at that time the most accessible for experimental and mathematical substantiation were questions related to the relationship of mental phenomena with external physical conditions. A special role here was played by E. Weber's research on the study of touch and sensitivity thresholds. It was Weber's experiments that showed that there is a certain relationship between the physical and the mental, in particular between irritation and sensation, and that the discovered relationships between them are amenable to experimental measurement. Of considerable importance for determining the specifics of the new science were the ideas of Herbart, in particular his doctrine of the thresholds of consciousness and the rationale for the possibility of using mathematics in psychology.

In contrast to Herbart, in whom the concept of intensity was attributed to a spiritual entity torn off from the external world, Fechner applied this concept to sensations, placing the latter in connection with external stimuli.

Psychophysics became the science of the connection between stimuli and sensations. The provisions established by Fechner on the measurability of psychophysical relations and on the possibility of applying a mathematical law to them brought to the fore the problem of developing special methods of psychophysical measurement and methods of mathematical analysis and description of psychophysical relations. The general program for the construction of psychophysics included three main tasks:

1) to establish what law the relations of the mental and physical world obey, using the example of the connection of irritations and sensations;

2) give a mathematical formulation of this law;

3) to develop psychophysical measurement methods.

For the first time, Fechner came up with the idea of ​​creating a new experimental mathematical science - psychophysics - in 1851. In the following years, he was busy with the practical implementation of his psychophysical program. In 1860, G. Fechner's main work "Elements of Psychophysics" was published. The results of numerous experiments and measurements related to the study of elementary aesthetic feelings were summarized and summarized by him in the book "Introduction to Aesthetics" (1876). The appearance of this work by Fechner marked the discovery of another precise field of knowledge - experimental aesthetics. The methods he developed for studying aesthetic feelings turned out to be suitable for psychology and were soon used by W. Wundt to study elementary emotions.

One of his essential merits is the establishment by him of the basic psychophysical law. The starting material for its derivation was Weber's experiments on the determination of thresholds.

Fechner was convinced that he had found an unshakable law expressing the relationship between the physical and spiritual worlds.

Another line of criticism has been related to the question of the boundaries and limits of the Weber-Fechner law. G. Aubert (1865) and G. Helmholtz (1867) found that deviations from the basic psychophysical law occur in the field of vision, and the ratio of the difference is preserved only at medium degrees of light intensity, while at low and strong brightnesses this ratio increases. Similar deviations from the basic psychophysical law were found in other types of sensitivity. Most of all, Fechner's formula was opposed by Delbeuf, who wrote in 1873 the book "Etudes of Psychophysics", where he proposed either a complete replacement of the formula, or its other interpretation.

But, as subsequent events showed, this criticism did not so much undermine psychophysics as stimulated its subsequent development. Despite the most diverse approaches that take place in modern psychophysics, it remains one of the most fundamental and developed areas in general and experimental psychology.

In close connection with the basic psychophysical law is Fechner's doctrine of thresholds. Unlike Herbart, Fechner applied the concept of the threshold not to consciousness as a whole, but only to sensations. The concept of "threshold of consciousness" was replaced by the concept of "threshold of sensations".

Along with the thresholds of sensations, Fechner introduces the concept of extensive thresholds, to which he attributed the thresholds of time and space. In his experiments, Fechner used three main methods: the method of minimal changes, the method of average errors, and the method of true and false cases. Using this principle, Weber designed his famous compass (1830), with the help of which experiments were carried out to measure skin spatial thresholds. The method of astronomers, tested by Weber, was brought to a greater perfection in procedural and mathematical terms by Fechner. He also called it "the method of minimal changes."

The method of minimal changes is the simplest and most accurate in determining the absolute and difference thresholds. It is sometimes called direct, because in its use one passes directly from one intensity to another and determines the amount at which there is a subtle sensation or a subtle difference between two of them. The method of minimal changes is also convenient in the sense that it does not require too many experiments to determine the threshold value with a certain accuracy. Along with the advantages of the method of minimal changes, certain disadvantages are also inherent, which were discovered during the very first measurements. These initial experiments showed that the threshold values ​​obtained using this method are subject to large fluctuations both in different subjects and in the same subject, depending on various uncontrolled external and internal factors. The threshold value has, as it were, a certain "extensibility", or a certain range within which the threshold fluctuates. G. Fechner believed that the thresholds themselves are constant values, and all deviations from their absolute value were evaluated as observation errors. To eliminate these errors and remove the influence of various factors on the threshold value, G. Fechner develops two other methods - the method of average errors, as well as the method of true and false cases.

The method of mean errors was transferred to psychophysics from astronomy and physics to study the eye and skin thresholds. Fechner gave this method a mathematically and methodologically complete form. The same was done by him with respect to the method of true and false cases.

With the development of psychophysical methods, Fechner made a huge contribution to the history of psychology, which lies in the fact that he laid the foundation for mathematical and experimental psychology.

G. Helmholtz (1821-1894) was the central figure in creating the foundations on which psychology was built as a science with its own subject. His versatile genius transformed many natural sciences, including the nature of the psyche. They discovered the law of conservation of energy.

Having taken up such a bodily device as a sense organ, Helmholtz took as an explanatory principle not an energy (molecular), but anatomical principle. Experimental work confronted Helmholtz with the need to introduce new causal factors.

The source of the mental (visual) image was an external object, in the most distinct vision of which, the problem solved by the eye consisted.

It turned out that the cause of the psychic effect was hidden not in the structure of the organism, but outside it.

In the zone of scientific analysis, phenomena appeared that spoke of a special form of causality: not physical and not physiological-anatomical, but mental. There was a separation of the psyche and consciousness. At a time when Fechner was completely absorbed in psychophysical measurements, a large group of physiologists came close to the experimental development of problems in the psychophysiology of the sense organs. His influence in the development of psychophysiology was decisive.

Helmholtz directs his main efforts to the experimental study of mental phenomena in their connection with the anatomy and physiology of the sense organs.

The central place in Helmholtz's experimental studies is occupied by questions of the psychophysiology of vision and hearing. Helmholtz began studying the physiology of vision almost immediately after his well-known experiments on measuring the speed of nerve excitation conduction (1851). As early as 1856, the first volume of his "Physiological Optics" was published. The subsequent second and third volumes appear in 1860 and 1866, respectively. From the point of view of psychology, the last two volumes are of greatest interest, since the second volume sets out in great detail his three-component theory of color vision, and the third contains the well-known general empirical theory of vision, the doctrine of "unconscious output" and the theory of "sensations of innervation." Since 1856, Helmholtz also began to study physiological acoustics. In 1863, he published a generalizing work, in which he gives extensive material on the experimental study of the tonal composition of vowels, timbre, combination tones, puts forward the doctrine of dissonance and consonance, and sets out the resonant theory of hearing.

Based on numerous experiments on the study of simple and complex tones, Helmholtz comes to the conclusion about the resonant nature of the sound and auditory apparatus in humans.

The results of his research not only fixed a new level of knowledge, but also gave a strong impetus to the development of many new theoretical and experimental studies in the field of hearing psychophysiology.

Helmholtz's experiments in the field of psychophysiology of vision have an even greater scientific contribution and effect of stimulating further research work. He put forward a number of general theories - a three-component theory of color vision, a genetic theory of visual perception of space and the associated doctrine of "unconscious inference", the doctrine of "sensations of innervation". In these theories, the philosophical and methodological positions of Helmholtz were most clearly manifested.

A significant part of Helmholtz's research was related to the study of color vision.

An experimental study of the phenomena of contrast, the eye, illusions, the mechanisms of binocular vision, the perception of direction and depth led Helmholtz to the conclusion that all of the above visual functions are not innate properties of the eye, but products of experience and exercises, the effects of repeated repetition of sensorimotor connections and associations formed under various subjective and objective conditions of spatial vision.

Helmholtz's doctrine of "unconscious inference" also followed from the general empirical theory of vision.

His scientific contribution to the field of experimental psychophysiology is great and multifaceted.

He stands at the origins of modern experimental psychology. He considered psychology as a science that should be built entirely on the basis of experimental and mathematical methods.

He was inclined to reduce psychology entirely to physiology. His attempts to dissolve psychology in physiology should be considered erroneous and mechanistic.

But for the era in which his scientific activity proceeded, they also had a positive side, since they were aimed at giving psychology a natural scientific orientation.

Helmholtz, with his scientific views and achievements, significantly brought closer and accelerated the time for the practical restructuring of psychology on natural scientific foundations and took a direct part in this progressive movement.

The introduction of the mental factor as a regulator of the behavior of the organism also occurred in the works of the physiologist E. Pfluger.

He subjected to experimental criticism the scheme of the reflex as an arc, in which the centripetal nerves produce the same standard muscular response.

Pfluger's experiments revealed a special causality - mental.

At the same time, these experiments undermined the accepted view that the psyche and consciousness are one and the same.

The studies begun by astronomers on the measurement of the personal equation were continued by many physiologists, including F. Donders and Z. Exner, who began to measure the time of the actual mental components of the reaction.

3. Exner measured the simplest mental reactions as separate auditory, visual and skin reactions. He studied the features of changes in a simple reaction depending on various conditions, which included the age of the subjects, the modality and intensity of stimuli, the effect of training, fatigue, the effect of alcohol, etc. its propagation from the senses to the center and back. As a result of measuring the individual components that make up the total reaction time, 3. Exner found that the longest time in the duration of psychophysiological processes is observed at the level of the higher parts of the central nervous system, while in the peripheral parts the speed of the course of nervous processes is subject to lesser changes under the influence of one or more another influencing factor. These data allowed 3. Exner to conclude that the time for the transformation of centro-rapid excitation into centrifugal is one of the decisive reasons for which individual fluctuations in the total reaction time are associated. In the works of Z. Exner, the problem of personal equation more and more appeared as a physiological and even as a psychophysiological one. Its old name no longer corresponded to new ideas, and therefore the term "personal equation" is replaced by Z. Exner.

At this time, Donders was engaged in measuring the mental link of the general reaction. His first studies were connected with the determination of the duration of reactions to stimuli of different modalities. Donders began to complicate a simple reaction by introducing new additional components into it: the act of discrimination and the act of choice. The experiment allowed Donders to measure the total time for both mental acts - choice and discrimination. Thanks to this modification in the experimental procedure, Donders was able to measure both the discrimination time and the selection time separately. Donders called this simple reaction the A-reaction. The reaction, which includes both the process of discrimination and the act of choice, he called the B-reaction. The reaction associated only with the choice function was called the C-reaction.

Donders viewed his research as purely physiological. In fact, they had a direct psychological orientation and contributed to the formation of another new section of the future experimental psychology. The work of Exner and Donders in many respects determined the nature of future research in the field of measuring mental reactions. Their research practically completes the experimental analysis of human reactions within the framework of physiology.

The formation of psychophysics, psychophysiology, psychometry created the prerequisites for their subsequent separation from physiology and their unification into a separate independent discipline, which Wundt would call initially physiological, and later simply experimental psychology.

In parallel with the development of experimental psychology, responding to the versatile demands of practical life, a new branch of psychology began to develop actively - psychodiagnostics. Psychodiagnostics as a special scientific discipline has come a long way of development and formation.

Psychological diagnostics emerged from psychology and began to take shape at the turn of the XNUMXth century. influenced by practical requirements. Its emergence was prepared by several directions in the development of psychology.

Its first source was experimental psychology, since the experimental method underlies psychodiagnostic techniques, the development of which is the essence of psychodiagnostics. Psychodiagnostics grew out of experimental psychology. And its emergence in the 1850-1870s. associated with the increased influence of natural science on the field of mental phenomena, with the process of “physiologization” of psychology, which consisted in transferring the study of the characteristics of the human psyche into the mainstream of experiment and the exact methods of the natural sciences. The first experimental methods were provided to psychology by other sciences, mainly physiology.

1878 is conditionally considered the beginning of the emergence of experimental psychology, since it was in this year that Wundt founded the first laboratory of experimental psychology in Germany. Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), outlining the prospects for building psychology as an integral science, assumed the development of two non-overlapping areas in it: natural science, based on experiment, and cultural-historical, in which psychological methods of studying culture are called upon to play the main role ("psychology of peoples" ). According to his theory, natural scientific experimental methods could only be applied to the elementary, lowest level of the psyche. It is not the soul itself that is subject to experimental research, but only its external manifestations. Therefore, sensations and the motor acts caused by them - reactions - were studied in his laboratory. Following the model of Wundt's laboratory, similar experimental laboratories and offices are being created not only in Germany, but also in other countries (France, Holland, England, Sweden, America).

Developing experimental psychology came close to the study of more complex mental processes, such as speech associations. Immediately after the publication of Galton in 1897, Wundt used the associative technique in his laboratory. The individual differences in reaction time obtained in the experiments were explained by the nature of the associations, and not by the individual characteristics of the subjects.

However, the author who created the first psychological experimental method was Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909), who studied the laws of memory using sets of meaningless syllables. He believed that the results he obtained did not depend on the consciousness of the subject, and, therefore, to a greater extent met the requirement of objectivity. With this method, Ebbinghaus opened the way for the experimental study of habits.

American psychologist James Cattell (1860-1944) explored attention span and reading skills. With the help of a tachistoscope, he determined the time needed to perceive and name various objects - shapes, letters, words, and so on.

Cattell recorded the phenomenon of anticipation. So at the turn of the XNUMXth century. in psychology, an objective experimental method was established, which began to determine the nature of psychological science as a whole. With the introduction of experiments into psychology and the emergence of new criteria for the scientific nature of its ideas, prerequisites were created for the emergence of knowledge about individual differences between people.

But practice required information about higher functions in order to diagnose individual differences between people regarding the acquisition of knowledge and the performance of complex forms of activity.

Differential psychology has become another source of psychodiagnostics. Without ideas about individual psychological characteristics, which are the subject of differential psychology, it would be impossible for the emergence of psychodiagnostics as a science of methods for measuring them.

The differential psychological study of man took shape under the influence of the demands of practice, first medical and pedagogical, and then industrial. One of the main reasons for the emergence of psychodiagnostics should be considered the need for diagnosis and treatment of mentally retarded and mentally ill people.

One of the earliest publications on the issues of mental retardation belongs to the French doctor J. E. D. Esquirol, who sought to differentiate different degrees of mental retardation. Another French doctor - E. Seguin - was the first to pay attention to teaching mentally retarded children using special techniques. Their work made a certain contribution to the development of methods that helped determine mental retardation. An essential step in solving this problem belonged to the French psychologist Henri Wiene (1857-1911). He began with experimental studies of thinking. Soon, on instructions from the government, he began to look for psychological means by which he could separate children who were capable of learning, but lazy, from those who suffered from birth defects. Experiments on the study of attention, memory, thinking were carried out on many subjects of various ages. Binet turned experimental tasks into tests by establishing a scale, each division of which contained tasks that could be performed by normal children of a certain age. This scale has gained popularity in many countries.

In Germany, Stern introduced the concept of "intelligence quotient" (IQ). This direction has become the most important channel for bringing psychology closer to practice. The technique of measuring intelligence made it possible, on the basis of psychological data, to solve issues of training, selection of personnel, professional suitability, etc.

There is a close internal relationship between the theoretical provisions developed within the framework of general psychology and the foundations of psychodiagnostics. Ideas about the patterns of development and functioning of the psyche are the starting point for choosing a psychodiagnostic methodology, designing psychodiagnostic methods, and using them in practice.

The history of psychodiagnostics is both the history of the emergence of the main psychodiagnostic methods and the development of approaches to their creation based on the evolution of views on the nature and functioning of the mental.

In this regard, it is interesting to trace how some important psychodiagnostic methods were formed within the framework of the main schools of psychology.

Test methods are usually associated with behaviorism. The methodological concept of behaviorism was based on the fact that there are deterministic relationships between the organism and the environment. Behaviorism introduced the category of behavior into psychology, understanding it as a set of responses to stimuli accessible to objective observation. Behavior, according to the behaviorist concept, is the only object of study of psychology, and all internal mental processes must be interpreted in terms of objectively observed behavioral reactions. In accordance with this, the purpose of diagnostics was initially reduced to the fixation of behavior.

A special direction in psychological diagnostics is associated with the development of various methods for diagnosing personality. For this purpose, most often not tests are used, but special methods, among which questionnaires and projective techniques stand out. The theoretical basis of this method can be considered introspectionism. The method of questionnaires can be considered as a kind of self-observation.

Another well-known method for diagnosing personality is projective techniques. Their ancestor is traditionally considered the method of verbal associations, which arose on the basis of associationist theories.

Most researchers today tend to consider the associative experiment as a technique for studying the interests and attitudes of the individual. The associative experiment stimulated the emergence of such a group of projective techniques as Sentence Completion.

In addition to associationism, the theoretical origins of projective methods can be found in psychoanalysis, which puts the concept of the unconscious at the forefront.

Author: Luchinin A.S.

<< Back: Development of psychology in the era of enlightenment (England. Development of associative psychology. French materialism. Germany. Development of German psychology in the 18th-19th centuries. Philosophical stage in the development of psychology)

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