Everyday and scientific psychology. Relationship between psychology and other sciences

The connection between psychology and other sciences is shown in Fig. 1.10.

Philosophy. The founder of psychology is considered to be the greatest philosopher of antiquity - Aristotle. Philosophy is a system of views on the world and man, and psychology is the study of man. Therefore, until recently, psychology was studied in the philosophy departments of universities, and some of its sections (in particular, general psychology, where definitions of the basic concepts of science are given) are closely intertwined with philosophy. However, psychology cannot be the “handmaiden of philosophy,” as was the case in the Soviet Union, where Marxist-Leninist philosophy strictly defined the basic postulates of psychology. These are two independent sciences that can mutually enrich and complement each other. At the intersection of philosophy and psychology there is such a branch of the latter as general psychology.

Natural science is closely related to psychology. The development of theoretical and practical psychology in recent years would have been impossible without advances in biology, anatomy, physiology, biochemistry and medicine. Thanks to these sciences, psychologists better understand the structure and functioning of the human brain, which is the material basis of the psyche. Psychophysiology is located at the intersection of physiology and psychology.

Sociology as an independent science is closely related to social psychology, which is the bridge that connects the thoughts, feelings and attitudes of individuals with the phenomena of mass consciousness. In addition, sociology provides psychology with facts about the social activities of people, which are then used by psychology. The connection between psychology and sociology is provided by social psychology.

Technical sciences are also related to psychology, since they often have the problem of “docking” complex technical systems and humans. These issues are dealt with by engineering psychology and occupational psychology.

Story. Modern man is a product of historical development, during which the interaction of biological and mental factors took place - from the biological process of natural selection to the mental processes of speech, thinking and work. Historical psychology studies changes in the psyche of people in the process of historical development and the role of the psychological qualities of historical figures on the course of history.

Medicine helps psychology better understand the possible mechanisms of mental disorders in people and find ways to treat it (psychocorrection and psychotherapy). At the intersection of medicine and psychology there are such branches of psychology as medical psychology and psychotherapy.

Pedagogy provides psychology with information about the main directions and patterns of training and education of people, which makes it possible to develop recommendations for the psychological support of these processes. The connection between these related sciences is provided by educational psychology and developmental psychology.

Psychology itself came out of philosophy - the science of the soul. But this is far from the only connection that has survived at the present time. It is worth remembering the subject of psychology (human) and imagine how many other sciences have a similar subject: sociology, pedagogy, medicine, biology, history and other humanities, natural and even exact sciences. For example, mathematics - what is psychology without statistics and calculation of experimental results.

Modern psychology is still based on philosophical principles, methods and theories. Too often the problems of the essence of human existence and the causes of internal disharmony are touched upon. The theories of such famous psychologists as Freud, Jung, Fromm are called philosophical.

But despite the separation of psychology, philosophy cannot exist in isolation. This is how these sciences intertwine, exploring the problem of social and biological factors in man, the peculiarities of cognition of the surrounding world, phenomena such as faith and death, and the assimilation of values.

Psychology and history

History is interconnected with psychology no less than philosophy. Values, stereotypes, behavior patterns, requirements, and norms of society change from century to century, from year to year. But the influence of history as human living conditions is one side. The other side is taking into account historical experience and historical heredity, which influences from birth (which has long been confirmed in psychology).

In addition, something else is interesting:

on the one hand, historical events and vicissitudes influence the human psyche;
but on the other hand, the person himself influences history (one cannot say that absolutely all people make it - they do this (both positive and negative), but there are many of them).

What can I say, any psychological phenomenon cannot be comprehensively studied without delving into history. And our most important element (psyche) is proof of this. How did it become known that a person develops, that our psyche is so similar to the psyche of animals, but still different? From the history. How can you determine the beginning of a phenomenon? Analyzing history. And the conditions for the development of something, favorable and unfavorable factors, will be suggested by history.

A person cannot live without society, and history allows us to trace the development of social consciousness. There is even a special scientific direction - historical psychology, which studies the peculiarities of the development of the psyche and the assimilation of social experience in different eras. Psychology and history also exchanged some research methods. For example, the method of periodization, typology, comparison.

Psychology and Sociology

Another close connection. There is no need to elaborate here; it is enough to say the basic statement of psychology: man is a socio-biological being.

There is still no end to the debate about what is primary in a person: the influence of genes or the influence of society.
But all researchers have long agreed that both factors have a very strong influence. No matter what nature has instilled in us, without society we will not learn to live in this particular society.

And again, there is a special direction in psychology - social psychology, which studies the functioning of society as a single organism and the characteristics of human behavior within certain groups. And just as with history, psychology and sociology exchanged research methods. For example, surveys and questionnaires come from sociology. Social learning theory itself comes from sociology. But groups came to sociology from psychology.

Psychology and pedagogy

Everything that concerns the development of children, training and education, re-education (not only children) is closely related to pedagogy. Raising children is unthinkable without knowledge of psychological characteristics and age characteristics. The training program itself must be selected taking into account the individual and personal characteristics of a person, taking into account his capabilities (development zone).

And, of course, there is a special direction - educational psychology.

How to help a child?
How to create conditions that correspond to its characteristics?
How to correlate sensitive periods of development and the training program?
How to instill the values and norms of society?

Educational psychology will answer everything.

Psychology and biology

Biology reveals our second side - innate characteristics. In addition, at the intersection of biology and psychology, zoopsychology and neuropsychology, psychogenetics arose. Biology allows you to find out organic disorders, and psychology will tell you how they affect the psyche and behavior of a person, his socialization.

Biology will also tell you what external natural factors influence the personality in each specific case, why children are sometimes born with pathologies and how this is related to the psyche. The very structure of the psyche and the structure of the brain, the functioning of the central nervous system will be deciphered by neuropsychology.

Psychology and medicine

At the junction of these sciences, medical psychology, or clinical psychology, was formed. It allows us to consider diseases and their causes, including psychological ones, in unity. On the other hand, it reveals a person’s perception of his own.

If psychology is the science of the soul, which, if necessary, corrects and rehabilitates, then clinical psychology is the science of the relationship between diseases and mental changes, and deals with treatment.

Psychology and jurisprudence, law

Is it worth talking about close cooperation between investigators and psychologists? In my opinion, it is obvious that it is impossible to “split” a person or predict the actions of a criminal if you do not know his psychological profile, do not master the methods of influence and do not know how to resist.

Psychologists are invited to complement or study. Many problems, for example, deviations, antisocial lifestyle, maladjustment, force law enforcement officers and psychologists to work together. Preventing, rehabilitating, correcting, informing is the task of legal psychology.

Psychology and Management

Can the service industry exist without knowledge of human psychology? No, it absolutely cannot. How to interest a client, how to please him, how to decide - management psychology will answer everything.

Afterword

Thus, we can say that psychology occupies a central place in the system of all scientific knowledge. It connects all spheres of human life. Psychology is increasingly being included in various educational programs as a special or applied discipline.

In addition to the sciences described in the article, psychology is also connected with political science, economics, and construction. In general, everything that concerns human life. Plato also called psychology the queen of all sciences. Although it began to be recognized as a separate science later (mid-19th century - early 20th century). A. Kedrov’s classification remains relevant to this day, in which he placed psychology at the center, and made philosophical, technical and social sciences adjacent to it.

Modern psychology has many branches and their names speak for themselves (regarding the connection between psychology and other sciences):

general psychology;
social Psychology;
age-related psychology;
clinical psychology;
pedagogical psychology;
engineering psychology;
differential psychology;
gender psychology;
comparative psychology;
zoopsychology;
aviation psychology;
space psychology;
psychophysiology;
psychology of advertising;
military psychology;
parapsychology;
psychology of management;
environmental psychology;
legal psychology.

The field of psychology is expanding as quickly as new professions are emerging, for example, ergonomist psychologist. His responsibilities include informing technology designers about how best to design machines, robots, and automatic machines for the human psyche (level of light, sound, location of levers, display); how and under what conditions and circumstances certain standards must be observed.

Psychology is characterized by close connections, primarily with other human sciences - philosophy, sociology, history.

The connections between psychology and philosophy are traditional, since until the 19th century, scientific psychological knowledge was accumulated within the framework of the philosophical sciences, psychology was a part of philosophy. In modern psychology there are many philosophical and psychological problems: the subject and methodology of psychological research, the origin of human consciousness, the study of higher forms of thinking, the place and role of man in social relations, the meaning of life, conscience and responsibility, spirituality, loneliness and happiness. Collaboration between psychologists and philosophers in studying these problems can be fruitful.

Psychology interacts with sociology, since the human psyche is socially conditioned. The objects of their research are very closely intertwined. The field of study of both sciences includes the individual, the group, and intergroup relations; there is a mutual exchange of facts and the borrowing of theoretical concepts and ideas. It is sometimes difficult to make a strict distinction between socio-psychological and sociological research. To successfully study group and intergroup relations, problems of national relations, politics and economics, and conflicts, the cooperation of sociologists and psychologists is necessary. Social psychology emerged at the intersection of these two sciences.

Psychology has close connections with history. The human psyche developed during the historical process. Therefore, knowledge of the historical roots of certain mental phenomena is absolutely necessary for a correct understanding of their psychological nature and characteristics. Historical traditions and culture of people largely shape the psychology of modern man. Cultural-historical psychology arose at the intersection of psychology and history.

The intersection of spheres of interests and connections in modern science and practice is quite obvious. Therefore, many interdisciplinary areas of research and practical work are currently emerging in psychology. Examples of this kind are: management, conflictology, ethnology, and the field of public relations. Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between the spheres of influence of different sciences in the study and practical solution of these problems. Therefore, the integration of sciences becomes relevant and the ability of psychologists to work in close contact with specialists from other sciences and areas of practical activity is important.

Psychology should be given a very special place in the system of sciences, and for these reasons.

Firstly, this is the science of the most complex thing known to mankind. After all, the psyche is “a property of highly organized matter.” If we mean the human psyche, then to the words “highly organized matter” we need to add the word “most”: after all, the human brain is the most highly organized matter known to us.

It is significant that the outstanding ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle begins his treatise “On the Soul” with the same thought. He believes that, among other knowledge, research about the soul should be given one of the first places, since “it is knowledge about the most sublime and amazing.”

Secondly, psychology is in a special position because in it the object and subject of knowledge seem to merge.

To explain this, I will use one comparison. Here a man is born. At first, being in infancy, he is not aware and does not remember himself. However, its development is proceeding at a rapid pace. His physical and mental abilities are formed; he learns to walk, see, understand, speak. With the help of these abilities he understands the world; begins to act in him; his circle of contacts is expanding. And then gradually, from the depths of childhood, a completely special feeling comes to him and gradually grows - the feeling of his own “I”. Somewhere in adolescence it begins to take on conscious forms. Questions arise: “Who am I? What am I?”, and later “Why me?” Those mental abilities and functions that have hitherto served the child as a means for mastering the external world - physical and social - are turned to self-knowledge; they themselves become the subject of comprehension and awareness.

Exactly the same process can be traced on the scale of all humanity. In primitive society, the main forces of people were spent on the struggle for existence, on mastering the outside world. People made fire, hunted wild animals, fought with neighboring tribes, and gained their first knowledge about nature.

Humanity of that period, like a baby, does not remember itself. The strength and capabilities of humanity gradually grew. Thanks to their psychic abilities, people created material and spiritual culture; writing, art, and science appeared. And then the moment came when a person asked himself questions: what are these forces that give him the opportunity to create, explore and subjugate the world, what is the nature of his mind, what laws does his inner, spiritual life obey?

This moment was the birth of the self-awareness of humanity, that is, the birth of psychological knowledge.

An event that once happened can be briefly expressed as follows: if previously a person’s thought was directed to the outside world, now it has turned to itself. Man dared to begin to explore thinking itself with the help of thinking.

So, the tasks of psychology are incomparably more complex than the tasks of any other science, for only in it does thought make a turn towards itself. Only in it does a person’s scientific consciousness become his scientific self-consciousness.

Finally, thirdly, the peculiarity of psychology lies in its unique practical consequences.

Practical results from the development of psychology should become not only incomparably more significant than the results of any other science, but also qualitatively different. After all, to know something means to master this “something”, to learn to control it.

Learning to control your mental processes, functions, and abilities is, of course, a more ambitious task than, for example, space exploration. At the same time, it must be especially emphasized that, by getting to know oneself, a person will change himself.

Psychology has already accumulated many facts showing how a person’s new knowledge about himself makes him different: it changes his relationships, goals, his states and experiences. If we move again to the scale of all humanity, then we can say that psychology is a science that not only cognizes, but also constructs and creates a person.

And although this opinion is not now generally accepted, recently voices have become louder and louder, calling to comprehend this feature of psychology, which makes it a science of a special type.

In conclusion, it must be said that psychology is a very young science. This is more or less understandable: we can say that, like the above-mentioned teenager, a period of formation of the spiritual powers of humanity had to go through in order for them to become the subject of scientific reflection.

Scientific psychology received official registration a little more than 100 years ago, namely, in 1879: this year the German psychologist W. Wundt opened the first laboratory of experimental psychology in Leipzig.

The emergence of psychology was preceded by the development of two large areas of knowledge: the natural sciences and philosophy; Psychology arose at the intersection of these areas, so it has not yet been determined whether psychology should be considered a natural science or a humanities one. From the above it follows that none of these answers appear to be correct. Let me emphasize once again: this is a special type of science. Let's move on to the next point of our lecture - the question of the relationship between scientific and everyday psychology.

Any science has as its basis some everyday, empirical experience of people. For example, physics relies on the knowledge we acquire in everyday life about the movement and fall of bodies, about friction and inertia, about light, sound, heat and much more.

Mathematics also comes from ideas about numbers, shapes, quantitative relationships, which begin to form already in preschool age.

But the situation is different with psychology. Each of us has a stock of everyday psychological knowledge. There are even outstanding everyday psychologists. These are, of course, great writers, as well as some (though not all) representatives of professions that involve constant communication with people: teachers, doctors, clergy, etc. But, I repeat, an ordinary person also has certain psychological knowledge. This can be judged by the fact that each person, to some extent, can understand another, influence his behavior, predict his actions, take into account his individual characteristics, help him, etc.

Let's think about the question; How does everyday psychological knowledge differ from scientific knowledge?

Let us tell you five such differences.

First: everyday psychological knowledge is concrete; they are confined to specific situations, specific people, specific tasks. They say that waiters and taxi drivers are also good psychologists. But in what sense, to solve what problems? As we know, they are often quite pragmatic. The child also solves specific pragmatic problems by behaving in one way with his mother, in another with his father, and again in a completely different way with his grandmother. In each specific case, he knows exactly how to behave in order to achieve the desired goal. But we can hardly expect from him the same insight in relation to other people's grandmothers or mothers. So, everyday psychological knowledge is characterized by specificity, limitation of tasks, situations and persons to which it applies.

Scientific psychology, like any science, strives for generalizations. To do this, she uses scientific concepts. Concept development is one of the most important functions of science. Scientific concepts reflect the most essential properties of objects and phenomena, general connections and relationships. Scientific concepts are clearly defined, correlated with each other, and linked into laws.

For example, in physics, thanks to the introduction of the concept of force, I. Newton was able to describe thousands of different specific cases of motion and mechanical interaction of bodies using the three laws of mechanics.

The same thing happens in psychology. You can describe a person for a very long time, listing in everyday terms his qualities, character traits, actions, relationships with other people. Scientific psychology seeks and finds such generalizing concepts that not only economize descriptions, but also allow us to see behind the conglomerate of particulars the general trends and patterns of personality development and its individual characteristics. One feature of scientific psychological concepts should be noted: they often coincide with everyday ones in their external form, that is, simply put, they are expressed in the same words. However, the internal content and meanings of these words are usually different. Everyday terms are usually more vague and ambiguous.

Once high school students were asked to answer in writing the question: what is personality? The answers varied widely, with one student responding: “That’s something that should be verified on paper.” I will not talk now about how the concept of “personality” is defined in scientific psychology - this is a complex issue, and we will specifically deal with it later, in one of the last lectures. I will only say that this definition is very different from the one proposed by the mentioned schoolboy.

The second difference between everyday psychological knowledge is that it is intuitive in nature. This is due to the special way they are obtained: they are acquired through practical trials and adjustments. This method is especially clearly visible in children. I have already mentioned their good psychological intuition. How is it achieved? Through daily and even hourly tests to which they subject adults and which the latter are not always aware of. And during these tests, children discover who can be “twisted into ropes” and who cannot.

Often teachers and trainers find effective ways of education, training, and training by following the same path: experimenting and vigilantly noticing the slightest positive results, that is, in a certain sense, “going by touch.” They often turn to psychologists with a request to explain the psychological meaning of the techniques they have found.

In contrast, scientific psychological knowledge is rational and fully conscious. The usual way is to put forward verbally formulated hypotheses and test the logically following consequences from them.

The third difference lies in the methods of knowledge transfer and even in the very possibility of its transfer. In the field of practical psychology, this possibility is very limited. This directly follows from the two previous features of everyday psychological experience - its concrete and intuitive nature. Deep psychologist F.M. Dostoevsky expressed his intuition in the works he wrote, we read them all - did we become just as insightful psychologists after that? Is life experience passed on from the older generation to the younger? As a rule, with great difficulty and to a very small extent. The eternal problem of “fathers and sons” is precisely that children cannot and do not even want to adopt the experience of their fathers. Each new generation, each young person has to “pull his weight” himself to gain this experience.

At the same time, in science, knowledge is accumulated and transmitted with greater, so to speak, efficiency. Someone long ago compared representatives of science to pygmies who stand on the shoulders of giants - outstanding scientists of the past. They may be much smaller in stature, but they see further than giants because they stand on their shoulders. The accumulation and transmission of scientific knowledge is possible due to the fact that this knowledge is crystallized in concepts and laws. They are recorded in scientific literature and transmitted using verbal means, that is, speech and language, which is what we, in fact, began to do today.

The fourth difference lies in the methods of obtaining knowledge in the fields of everyday and scientific psychology. In everyday psychology, we are forced to limit ourselves to observations and reflections. In scientific psychology, experiment is added to these methods.

The essence of the experimental method is that the researcher does not wait for a combination of circumstances as a result of which the phenomenon of interest to him arises, but causes this phenomenon himself, creating the appropriate conditions. Then he purposefully varies these conditions in order to identify the patterns to which this phenomenon obeys. With the introduction of the experimental method into psychology (the opening of the first experimental laboratory at the end of the last century), psychology, as I have already said, took shape into an independent science.

Finally, the fifth difference, and at the same time advantage, of scientific psychology is that it has extensive, varied and sometimes unique factual material, which is not available in its entirety to any bearer of everyday psychology. This material is accumulated and comprehended, including in special branches of psychological science, such as developmental psychology, educational psychology, patho- and neuropsychology, labor psychology and engineering psychology, social psychology, zoopsychology, etc. In these areas, dealing with various stages and levels of mental development of animals and humans, with mental defects and diseases, with unusual working conditions - conditions of stress, information overload or, conversely, monotony and information hunger, etc. - the psychologist not only expands the range of his research tasks, but and encounters new and unexpected phenomena. After all, examining the operation of a mechanism under conditions of development, breakdown or functional overload from different angles highlights its structure and organization.

Thus, assistance to children in the conditions of a cruel experiment that nature has placed on them, assistance organized by psychologists together with defectologists, simultaneously turns into the most important means of understanding general psychological patterns - the development of perception, thinking, and personality.

So, to summarize, we can say that the development of special branches of psychology is a Method (method with a capital M) of general psychology. Of course, everyday psychology lacks such a method.

The history of science, including psychology, knows many examples of how a scientist saw the big and vital in the small and abstract. When I.P. Pavlov was the first to register the conditioned reflex secretion of saliva in a dog; he declared that through these drops we would eventually penetrate into the torment of human consciousness. The outstanding Soviet psychologist L. S. Vygotsky saw in “curious” actions such as tying a knot for memory as ways for a person to master his behavior.

You won’t read anywhere about how to see small facts as reflections of general principles and how to move from general principles to real life problems. Only constant attention to such transitions and constant practice in them can form in you a feeling of the “beat of life” in scientific pursuits.

The development of science resembles moving through a complex labyrinth with many dead-end passages. To choose the right path, you need to have, as they often say, good intuition, and it arises only with close contact with life.

Let us consider the position of psychology in the system of other sciences. The variety of problems in psychology makes it difficult to accurately characterize its place among them. For a long time there have been discussions about whether psychology is a natural science or a humanities science. There cannot be a definite answer to this question, since some branches of psychology are more related to the humanities (for example, personality psychology, social psychology), while others are more related to the natural sciences (for example, neuropsychology, pathopsychology).

However, such a linear division of all sciences into humanities and natural sciences now seems somewhat outdated. In developed by B.M. Kedrov’s nonlinear classification of sciences places psychology inside a triangle, the vertices of which are the natural, social and philosophical sciences. The rest of the sciences are at the junction of these basic ones.

Modern psychology develops in interaction with other sciences. In 1966, at the International Psychological Congress in Moscow, the outstanding Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget gave a lecture on the place of psychology in the system of sciences. His main idea was that the future of psychology depends on its connections with mathematics, physics, biology, sociology, linguistics, political economy, logic - a huge constellation of sciences that forms the world of modern knowledge. Psychology, according to Piaget, is at the center of this world.

Psychology is characterized by close connections, first of all, with other human sciences - philosophy, sociology, history, physiology, pedagogy.

The connections between psychology and the biological sciences are due to the fact that the human psyche has a natural basis. Therefore, many psychological problems must be solved through the interaction of psychologists and biologists. Interaction with physiology is especially fruitful. Psychophysiology appeared at the intersection of these two sciences. A deep physiological understanding of how the brain works helps solve many psychological problems.

Psychology has long-standing connections with pedagogy. Many outstanding teachers noted the need for psychological knowledge for pedagogical science and practice. On the other hand, an in-depth study of the processes of a child’s mental development is possible only on the basis of an understanding of the pedagogical laws of teaching and upbringing. In resolving any issues concerning the child, interaction between psychologists and teachers is necessary. At the intersection of psychology and pedagogy, educational psychology appeared.