Often people in their hearts complain that they were born just the way they are. Why does a person do this and not otherwise? What made him what he is? Why do some people take everything to heart, and some seem impenetrable? No exact answers to these questions have been found so far, but people are not the first century in the search, and this has generated a lot of theories, some of which are very logical and entertaining. We will talk about the basic theories of mental development below.
What is the psyche
This is the combination and interaction of many processes of the soul and body, such as memory, thinking, imagination, perception, emotionality and speech. This is a concept that plays a dominant role in psychology, medicine and philosophy. If you translate the word psychikos literally, then the translation will be "sincere." And if you put it in a scientific language, then this is the reflection by the subject of reality around him and the way he understands it. But you can put it simply: this is a person’s reaction to the outside world.
Today, scientists know for sure that human behavior is not least due to the orchestra of hormones that are produced in a certain amount, laid genetically. But this production can be affected by both medication and lifestyle.
Mental development
The psyche is far from constant, it has properties and conditions. This system is complex, it consists of many levels and sublevels that make up an indivisible whole. Failure on one of them can lead to a chain reaction and destruction of the whole psyche. It is impossible to remove one character trait from a person and thereby not change his psyche as a whole.
All his life from the moment of birth, a person has three types of mental processes: cognitive, regulatory and communicative. For scientists, much is still a mystery in this mechanism. There is no general theory of human mental development - there are several of them, and each specialist adheres to a certain one, taking into account his own opinion, based on several of them.
The influence of genes
Back in the 19th century, the concept of Hall-Haeckel recapitulation was developed. According to her, all living beings repeat partially or completely the behavior of their ancestors, and people are no exception. The concept, of course, has a scientific basis.
There are genotypes that are distributed according to the similarity of the form of genes. And this is proved by numerous experiments in which identical and heterogeneous twins participated, as well as families with adopted children. And these experiments have shown that the influence of genes on mental development is unconditional. With the same upbringing, education and other factors, the nature of people will always depend on heredity. But it does not play a leading role, since the set of genes of each person has only part of the similarity with the genes of the father and mother, and the other part is individual. So, the level of intelligence depends on how parents had it by about 50%, and the remaining percentages give a favorable intrauterine development, environment, upbringing and quality of education. There are cases that children of parents with rather low intellectual development, having been brought up in families with a higher level, ultimately exceeded their biological parents in it.
So, over time, it was discovered that not only genetics affects the formation of the psyche. Then there was a need for new theories, they began to crumble as if from a cornucopia. But the main relevant theories of mental development to this day are not so many. Many have been criticized and marked.
Thorndike Theory
Its essence is that a person takes the main and most important thing from society and his environment, and the incentive plays not the last role in achieving success. His main achievement as a scientist is that he formulated two laws of the development of the psyche. The law of repetition, which states that the more often a certain action is repeated, the stronger and faster its skill will be fixed. And the second law of the effect: that which is accompanied by an assessment is better fixed.
Skinner Theory
It consists in the fact that a person’s personality can be formed by anyone, if you do this closely, placing him from birth in certain conditions. He agrees with Thorndike that the external environment completely shapes a person from a mental point of view, moreover, he rejects any other influence. His concept is that reinforcement is not a reward, and negative reinforcement is not a punishment.
Bandura Theory
Socio-cognitive theory says that the role of reinforcement is overestimated by its predecessors, and most importantly in mental development is to arouse the desire to imitate. He first stated that it is not necessary to discount the role in the formation of personality of such factors as imposed faith, parents' expectations and instructions of society. If a person has authorities, then he will simply copy their personalities, and authorities are most often more experienced close people.
Piaget Theory
It is also known as the theory of intellectual development of the personality, which states that the development of personality must be dealt with from birth. To do this, you need to develop innate reflexes in the child , which can increase his intellectual development. Piaget developed for this special exercises for each period, and he identified three of them: sensorimotor intelligence, representative intelligence and specific operations, and the third - formal operations.
Kolberg theory
The scientist gave the dominant role to the presence of morality in man. Highlighting the three stages of moral development:
- Home-based, when all moral standards are imposed and implemented in order to obtain the desired.
- Conventional morality, when standards are implemented to meet the expectations of authoritarian personalities for a person.
- Autonomous when actions are determined by one’s own morality.
He developed the theory of Piaget, using the method of clinical conversations to correct personality.
Freud's Theory
This theory of mental development is famous for its scandalousness. Sigmund Freud deduced his theory that a person goes through several stages of the development of sexuality from birth. And what is scandalous in her is that what develops through this sexuality is also the personality of a person. According to Freud, everything that a person does and his personality is directly tied to sexual preferences. And there are five stages.
- Oral - proceeds from birth to about a year. During this period, a person receives all the pleasure orally, that is, through the mouth. The mouth during this period is the main and only erogenous zone. With his help, he receives the treasured food and comfort from the unimaginable stress that has piled on him. Women who breastfeed know that children “ask for breasts” not only from hunger, but also when they are worried about something or just miss their mother. According to Freud, how often a child asks for breasts and how he sucks mother’s milk already indicates his psyche in the future, and to deprive him of his “breast” is fraught with psychological trauma.
- Anal - begins after completion of the oral and lasts up to about three years. It is characterized by the fact that the erogenous zone of a person and all his basic instincts are concentrated around his anus. This means that the process of bowel movement causes the child pleasure and brings him comfort. It was during this period that children learn to be clean and accustomed to walking on a pot, and not in underpants. During this period, according to Freud, a person lays down how he will relate to his property, how neat and even his openness to people and his tendency to conflict will be.
- The phallic stage will last from three to five years. At this stage, the child gets acquainted with his genitals and becomes aware of them, begins to guess that they are needed not only to empty the bladder, they also have a different meaning. The main scandal of Freud’s theory of mental development of the child is that he believed that during this period the child experiences attachment to an adult precisely sexual, and the first object of desire in a person’s life is his parent of the opposite sex. Ideally, with age, you need to switch to other objects, but some slow down at this stage and in all partners look for a mother and father or do not even try to look for someone else, but live with a parent. He called this relationship between parent and child his famous terms "Oedipus complex" for boys and "Electra complex" for girls. At this stage, in his opinion, a person learns to think rationally, to be rational and to be able to look deep into oneself. The personality of a person at this stage is very much affected by the attitude of his parent of the opposite sex to him. The way a mother will treat her son will affect his attitude to herself and the future choice of women, if she was cold to him and rarely paid attention to him, then he will lust for cold and inaccessible women.
- The latent stage completes the phallic and lasts up to 12 years. After at the previous stage, sexual interest awoke, but the child has not yet realized this, it fades and he has completely different interests. But only until, during puberty, desire does not bloom with renewed vigor.
- The genital stage will last the entire period of puberty, that is, from about 11-12 to 18 years. All erogenous zones, namely oral, anal, genital, waking up earlier quietly and singly, wake up at once and with renewed vigor. A person is literally torn from sex drive, hormones go crazy. All his actions come down to one thing - to have sexual contact, to cause lust in most representatives of the opposite sex. If sexual interest is condemned, it becomes impossible to show it, or a person’s sexuality is ridiculed, then in the future it is fraught with phobias, complexes, regressions to previous stages and other mental deviations.
In addition to these stages, Freud's innovation consisted in the fact that he divided the human psyche into three layers:
- the unconscious;
- preconscious;
- conscious.
And all the sexual energy, which Freud called the first libido, is hidden on the unconscious layer. That is why in alcoholic intoxication people often come into sexual contact with those with whom they would not dare to be sober, this breaks out unconscious, which all dogmas and prohibitions have closed there. On the second layer, the preconscious, lurks fears and experiences in which a person is afraid to admit to himself, but deep in his soul he is aware of them.
8 phases of development according to Erickson
In narrow circles, Erickson’s theory is no less famous, according to which development takes place all life in 8 stages from birth to old age.
- Infancy, or the first year of life, at this stage either trustfulness or distrustfulness is formed.
- Early childhood, namely 2-3 years - formed a relationship to bashfulness and doubt.
- Preschool age, in the 4th and 5th year of life, a person lays initiative and conscience.
- School age lasts from six to the start of maturity, during this period a person learns to value, prioritize and form an attitude towards work.
- Youth - the moment of maturity comes and it is accompanied by the formation of individuality, awareness or diffusion of identity.
- Youth begins in 18-20 years and lasts up to about 30 years, these are years of formation of attitude to intimacy, isolation and intimacy with the opposite sex.
- Maturity begins immediately after youth and lasts up to 40 years. This is the heyday of a person’s creative beginning, an awareness of his place in life occurs, often the period is accompanied by personal conflict and stagnation.
- Older adulthood, and then old age, are characterized by a collected and holistic personality, but are accompanied by a feeling of despair and duality.
Even those who have not heard of Erickson himself must have heard of this theory.
Theory of Mental Development L. S. Vygotsky
In his works, he emphasized the study of the psyche at the stage of its formation, that is, in childhood, problems of socialization, lack of education and the role of artistic creativity. It was Vygotsky who, for the first time, clearly divides and differentiates the two dominant lines of development: social and inborn. In this social environment, it gives the same role in the formation of the psyche of a child as its genes.
Moreover, in his cultural-historical theory of the development of mental functions, he proposed to take for the fact that the social environment plays a major role in mental development. And not the last place in this development is occupied by the cultural heritage that the child takes possession of as he grows up. By cultural heritage, he also understands such iconic and verbal systems as language, writing, and the account system. Therefore, one of the names of his theory of mental development is cultural-historical. The child is forcibly locked up in a certain “zone of proximal development,” which will determine his cultural level for years to come. Everyone knows how hard it is for a person who has grown up in a village to adapt to the culture of urban residents. Such a person at first, and sometimes until the end of his life, can be seen from afar.
Vygotsky, in the theory of the development of higher mental functions, draws attention to the fact that the path of human development always begins with interaction with adults. From the first second of life and for a long time, a child is always under the supervision of adults; he “absorbs” their culture. As they say, what they are talking about, how they have fun and how they eat. And after the child grows up a little, and he joins this cultural life, he begins to learn to work with the same adults. And all this, according to the scientist, cannot but leave a huge mark in the soul and psyche of man.
The perception of reality and thinking is directly affected by the culture in which the child grew up. And this is the main thesis of the cultural-historical theory of the mental development of Vygotsky. After perfecting it to perfection, he discovers that in the process of mastering, and later simply applying, cultural skills, they reach automatism, that is, they are literally written to the subcortex of the brain and become part of the human psyche.
Another name for it is "Theory of the development of higher mental functions." Indeed, according to Vygotsky, a person, acquiring the skills of a high culture, hones at the same time such basic functions of the psyche as memory, thinking, perception and attention to the highest degree. Like his predecessors, he recognizes that the psyche is formed by stages and leaps, but does not differentiate them clearly. Vygotsky draws attention only to the fact that calm periods always give way to crisis periods and that precisely at these moments jumps in the development of the psyche take place.
On the theory of mental development of Vygotsky, the so-called psychological school of Vygotsky was founded, whose followers were the following outstanding scientists:
- A. N. Leontiev;
- D.A. Elkonin;
- A.V. Zaporozhets;
- P. I. Halperin;
- L. A. Bozhovich;
- A.R. Luria.
The latter became the founder of such a promising direction in psychology as neuropsychology.
Stern Theory
Psychologist William Stern suggested that the social environment plays a significant role, but that heredity also affects the mental development of a person. He formed his theory with his wife, watching his own children and their comrades. They noted that the environment in which children are located can slow down or accelerate development, but they cannot escape from genetics. The German psychologist called this theory the theory of convergence of mental development, which indicated the duality of factors that influenced the development of the psyche.
They also noticed that children who grow up in an environment of more developed peers or slightly older comrades are drawn in by their knowledge and skills, unlike those who develop in isolation. But at the same time there are innate qualities that the child is not able to “jump over". And therefore, according to his theory, the child’s mental development depends on two factors at once and not otherwise. In those days, it was nonsense to directly point to the "biologization" of the soul; such scientists were accused of down-landing.
In contrast to the cultural-historical theory of the development of higher mental functions, Stern's theory nevertheless gave the palm to genetics, pushing the social factor into the background.