Approaches to understanding freedom in psychology. Personal freedom: how to understand that you are a free person? Cognitive mechanisms of goal setting

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MAN BETWEEN FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM

In the human sciences, the freedom-determinism dilemma as applied to human actions has been one of the central ones for many centuries, although the content of both these concepts has changed significantly. Historically, the first version of determinism was the idea of fate, fate, divine destiny. Accordingly, the problem of freedom in philosophy and theology arose in connection with the problems of will ("freedom of will") and choice ("freedom of choice"). On the one hand, the concept of divine destiny left no room for individual freedom, on the other hand, the thesis of the god-likeness of man, his divine nature ("in the image and likeness") suggested the possibility of a person to influence his own destiny. The last thesis was defended, in particular, by many Renaissance thinkers who refuted the view of man as a toy in the clutches of fate. Erasmus of Rotterdam in his treatise "On Free Will" argued that a person is free to choose the path of sin or the path of salvation. God can grant salvation to a person, but the choice remains for a person whether he wants to be saved, to entrust himself to God.

In the European philosophy and science of modern times, in connection with the success of the natural science study of man, the problem of determining a person by his corporality, psychophysiological organization, mechanisms and automatisms of behavior arose. The problem of freedom received a new impetus in the context of the problem of the mind, the possibility of understanding what influences human behavior.

Our century is characterized by the awareness of a new kind of determinism - the determination of consciousness and behavior by the objective conditions of existence, social and cultural environment, "social being" (K. Marx) and "public unconscious" (E. Fromm). F. Nietzsche, who chronologically belonged to the 19th century, but ideologically to the 20th, opened up an extremely important perspective on the problem of freedom. He was the first to pose the problem of human self-transcendence - overcoming oneself as a factual reality, a breakthrough into the realm of the possible. Nietzsche was also the first to contrast the negative characterization of "freedom from" with the positive characterization of "freedom for". In the works of existentialist philosophers, primarily J.P. Sartre (J.P. Sartre) and A. Camus (A. Camus), the philosophical consideration of freedom was largely psychologized. Freedom appeared as a heavy burden, sometimes unbearable, giving rise to emptiness, existential anxiety and the desire to escape. The latter became the subject of the mentioned study by E. Fromm "Escape from Freedom".

In psychology, since the beginning of the century, there has been a delimitation of the problem of will, understood as an arbitrary control of behavior based on conscious decisions, and the problem of freedom proper, which was for a long time relegated to the periphery of psychology. From time to time, it was raised in a general theoretical context in the form of no longer the opposition "freedom-determinism" (since there were no psychologists in our century who deny this or that determinism of behavior), but as an opposition to the postulates of "hard determinism", suggesting that determination mental processes and behavior is universal and leaves no room for real freedom, and "soft determinism", meaning the presence of a certain space of freedom among deterministic processes (see review papers). One example of "hard determinism" is the point of view of P.V. Simonov, who declares freedom an illusion that arises due to the fact that we are not fully aware of all the determinants that affect us. From the point of view of an external observer, a person is completely determined in his choice. Interestingly, this opinion is in conflict with the pattern known in psychology as the "fundamental attribution error": people tend to overestimate the influence of external factors on behavior, being in the position of the "subject" of this behavior, and underestimate it, evaluating someone else's behavior from the position of an external observer. .

Freud's psychoanalysis, which considers a person as entirely conditioned by his past, and B. Skinner's neobehaviorism, which asserts the possibility and necessity of total control and management of all human behavior through a specially organized system of incentives, are considered extreme variants of "hard determinism". At the same time, there are other opinions even about Freudianism. So, M. Iturate (M. Iturate) argues that psychoanalysis is inherent in the focus on asserting freedom. A person acquires it due to the fact that he creates meanings that guide his behavior, thereby leaving the sphere of influence of natural laws. A close position is taken by the prominent psychoanalyst R. Holt, in whose opinion freedom and determinism do not contradict each other. He also considers Freud's main merit to be the disclosure of the semantic basis of behavior. The behaviorist position also does not necessarily imply "hard determinism" of the Skinnerian type. It was within the framework of neobehaviorism that some versions of "soft determinism" were formulated, linking a certain degree of freedom inherent in a person with independence from the current situation or with goals projected into the future. These arguments, like others, for example, explaining freedom through reliance on personal motives and values, are limited, however, separate elements freedom of choice in a particular situation and are not related to freedom as a basic anthropological characteristic of a person, especially since the studies of the processes of choice and decision-making that unfolded in the post-war period on different levels"dissolved" the problem of choice and freedom proper.

Choice is a concrete act that can be recorded by an external observer. It is localized in time; between two acts of choice there may lie a space in which no choice is made, although at any moment in time when there is a reflection of the situation, a choice is also possible. There are no non-alternative situations; at the same time, a necessary condition for constructing initially non-obvious alternatives is work on reflexive awareness of the situation. Where reflection is not enabled, there really may not be a choice. Choice is a complexly organized activity carried out at different levels of complexity and uncertainty of the situation.

Freedom, on the other hand, is phenomenologically a certain basic state that relates more to a possibility than to the act of its realization, a specific event. If I have experienced freedom, I have already gained it. "Freedom produces... freedom". If the essence of freedom is control over one's activity at all points of its trajectory, then it exists both at the points of choice and in the intervals between them, and the choice itself is either free (if it can be changed) or not (if it is rigidly defined). ). "A synonym for freedom is life ... After all, the living is different from dead topics that what is alive can always be different." Freedom and personal choice are thus not the same thing, although they are closely interrelated and reinforce each other. "Freedom is cumulative; a choice that includes elements of freedom expands the possibility of freedom for subsequent choice.

Let us now make a short review of the main approaches to the problem of freedom and self-determination in modern psychology.

PSYCHOLOGY OF FREEDOM AND SELF-DETERMINATION: MAIN APPROACHES

The concepts of "freedom" and "self-determination" are very close. The concept of freedom describes the phenomenologically experienced control over one's behavior, and is used for the global anthropological characterization of a person and his behavior. The concept of self-determination is used as an explanatory one at the psychological level of considering the "mechanisms" of freedom. At the same time, one should distinguish between self-determination, on the one hand, and self-regulation or self-control, on the other. In the latter case, regulators can be introjected norms, conventions, opinions and values of authoritative others, social or group myths, etc.; controlling his behavior, the subject does not act as its author, as in true self-determination.

Unlike G.A. Balla, we include in our review only explicit concepts of freedom and self-determination, leaving outside it numerous domestic and foreign approaches that can be interpreted as related to the mechanisms of self-determination.

Of the two aspects of freedom - external (absence of external restrictions, "freedom from") and internal (psychological position, "freedom for") - we chose the second as the subject of analysis. Sometimes clarifying definitions are used in this case ("psychological freedom", "internal freedom"), sometimes they are omitted, since we do not consider the first aspect, which is more related to socio-political issues, at all.

The problem of freedom received the most complete meaningful disclosure in the 60-80s. a number of existentialist-oriented authors, such as E. Fromm, V. Frankl (V. Frankl), R. May (R. May) and others, and in the 80-90s. under various names, she received a "registration permit" in academic psychology.

FREEDOM AS AWARENESS: E. FROMM

E. Fromm considers positive freedom, "freedom for", the main condition for human growth and development, linking it with spontaneity, integrity, creativity and biophilia - the desire to affirm life as opposed to death. However, freedom is ambivalent. She is both a gift and a burden; a person is free to accept it or refuse it. A person himself decides the question of the degree of his freedom, making his own choice: either to act freely, i.e. on the basis of rational considerations, or to give up freedom. Many choose to run away from freedom, thus choosing the path of least resistance. Of course, everything is decided not by any one act of choice, but is determined by the gradually developing integral structure of character, to which individual choices contribute. As a result, some people grow up free, while others do not.

Fromm's ideas contain a twofold interpretation of the concept of freedom. The first meaning of freedom is the original freedom of choice, the freedom to decide whether to accept freedom in the second meaning or to refuse it. Freedom in the second meaning is the structure of character, expressed in the ability to act on the basis of reason. In other words, in order to choose freedom, a person must already have the original freedom and the ability to make this choice in a reasonable way. There is some paradox here. Fromm, however, emphasizes that freedom is not a trait or a disposition, but an act of self-liberation in the process of making a decision. This is a dynamic, current state. The scope of human freedom is constantly changing.

1) what is good and what is bad;

2) the method of action in a given situation, leading to the goal;

3) own unconscious desires;

4) real possibilities contained in the situation;

5) the consequences of each possible solutions;

6) lack of awareness, it is also necessary to desire to act contrary to the expected negative consequences. Thus, freedom acts as an action arising from the awareness of alternatives and their consequences, the distinction between real and illusory alternatives.

FREEDOM AS A POSITION: V. FRANKL

The main thesis of the doctrine of free will by V. Frankl says: a person is free to find and realize the meaning of his life, even if his freedom is noticeably limited by objective reasons. Frankl recognizes the obvious determinism of human behavior, while denying its pan-determinism. A person is not free from external and internal circumstances, but they do not completely condition him. According to Frankl, freedom coexists with necessity, and they are localized in different dimensions of human existence.

Frankl speaks of man's freedom in relation to drives, heredity, and the external environment. Heredity, drives and external conditions have a significant influence on behavior, but a person is free to take a certain position in relation to them. Freedom to cravings is manifested in the ability to say "no" to them. Even when a person acts under the influence of an immediate need, he can allow it to determine his behavior, accept it or reject it. Freedom to heredity is expressed in relation to it as to material - that which is given to us in ourselves. Freedom to external circumstances also exists, although it is finite and not unlimited, it is expressed in the ability to take one position or another in relation to them. Thus, the influence of external circumstances on us is mediated by the position of a person in relation to them.

FREEDOM AS AWARENESS OF OPPORTUNITIES WITHIN DESTINY: R. MAY

Our consciousness, writes the leading theorist of existential psychology R. May, is in a state of constant fluctuations between two poles: an active subject and a passive object. This creates the potential for choice. Freedom does not consist in the ability to be a pure subject all the time, but in the ability to choose either one or another kind of existence, to experience oneself either in one or in another capacity, and to move dialectically from one to the other. The space of freedom is the distance between the states of the subject and the object, it is a kind of void that needs to be filled.

May, first of all, distinguishes freedom from rebellion, which, although it is a "normal internal movement towards freedom", is nevertheless structured by the external structure against which it is carried out, and thus completely dependent on it. "When there are no established standards against which a rebellion is directed, it has no power." Freedom is not connivance, the absence of a plan and purpose. This is not a rigid, definite doctrine, it cannot be formulated in the form of specific establishments, it is something living, changing.

In its most general form, freedom is a person's ability to manage his development, closely related to self-awareness, flexibility, openness, readiness for change. Through self-awareness, we can break the chain of stimuli and reactions, create a pause in it, in which we can make a conscious choice of our reaction. By creating this pause, the person somehow throws his decision on the scales, mediates the connection between the stimulus and the response by them, and thereby decides what the reaction will be. The less developed a person's self-consciousness, the more unfree he is, i.e. the more his life is governed by various repressed contents, by conditional connections formed in childhood, which he does not keep in his memory, but which are stored in the unconscious and govern his behavior. As self-consciousness develops, the range of choice of a person and his freedom increase accordingly.

Freedom is not opposed to determinism, but correlates with specific givens and inevitability (they must be consciously accepted), only in relation to which it is determined. These givens, inevitability and limitations that form the space of determinism human life, Mei calls fate. The paradox of freedom lies in the fact that it owes its significance to fate and vice versa; freedom and destiny are inconceivable without each other. "Every expansion of freedom gives rise to a new determinism, and any expansion of determinism gives rise to a new freedom. Freedom is a circle within a wider circle of determinism, which, in turn, is within an even wider circle of freedom, and so on ad infinitum." Freedom always manifests itself in relation to some realities and givens of life, such as, say, the need for rest and food, or the inevitability of death. Freedom begins where we accept some kind of reality, but not out of blind necessity, but on the basis of our own choice. This does not mean that we give in and give up, accepting some restrictions on our freedom. On the contrary, this is the constructive act of freedom. The paradox of freedom lies in the fact that freedom owes its vitality to fate, and fate owes its significance to freedom. They condition each other, they cannot exist without each other.

Freedom is the ability to change what is, the ability to transcend one's nature. When we make a free choice, we simultaneously scroll through and compare a number of different possibilities in our minds, while it is not yet clear which path we will choose and how we will act. Therefore, freedom always fundamentally deals with the possible. This is the essence of freedom: it transforms the possible into the real by the fact that, taking into any this moment limits of the real, works mainly with the realities of the possible. The opposite of freedom is automatic conformity. Because freedom is inseparable from the anxiety that comes with new opportunities, so many people only dream of being told that freedom is an illusion and they don't need to break their heads over it. The goal of psychotherapy is to achieve a state in which a person feels free to choose his way of life, to accept the situation to the extent that it is inevitable, and to change something to the extent that it is realistically possible. The main task of the psychotherapist is to help people acquire the freedom of awareness and experience of their capabilities.

The inevitability of evil is the price we pay for freedom. If a person is free to choose, no one can guarantee that his choice will be one way and not another. Susceptibility to goodness means sensitivity to the consequences of one's actions; expanding the potential for good, it simultaneously expands the possibilities for evil.

MULTILEVEL STRUCTURE OF SUBJECTNESS: R. HARRE

Unlike the existentially oriented theories of Fromm, Frankl, May and a number of other authors of clinical orientation, who write about the problems of human freedom in a language that is close and understandable to non-specialists, the concept of "freedom" is rarely found in academic works. As a rule, this problem bears the names of autonomy, self-determination, or some other designations. One of the terminological guises of the problem of freedom is the concept of "agency" (agency), the exact translation of which into Russian is impossible. We believe that its most correct translation corresponds to the concept of "subjectivity" (we are talking about the ability to act as an "agent" or subject, i.e. actor, driving force actions).

One of the most developed and recognized is the theory of subjectivity, developed by R. Harre in line with his widely known approach to an explanation social behavior. The model of the subject is at the center of his theory. "Most general requirement to any being, in order to be considered a subject, is that it has a certain degree of autonomy. By this I mean that his behavior (actions and acts) is not entirely determined by the conditions of his immediate environment. Autonomy, according to Harre, implies the possibility of distancing both from environmental influences and from those principles on which behavior has been based up to the present moment. the agent is able to switch from one behavioral determinant to another, to choose between equally attractive alternatives, to resist temptations and distractions, and to change behavioral guidelines. refrain from acting in his power."

The most profound manifestation of subjectness are two types of "self-intervention":

1) attention and control over influences (including our own motives and feelings, which usually control our actions, bypassing conscious control),

2) changing your lifestyle, your identity. Logically, two conditions stand out as prerequisites for subjectivity: first, the ability to represent a wider range of possible futures than those that can be realized, and, secondly, the ability to carry out any chosen subset of them, as well as to interrupt any initiated action. Real people differ in the degree to which they conform to this ideal model, as well as in the way they generate action.

Thus, the determination of human actions is very far from simple linear causality. Harre characterizes the system of regulation of human actions in cybernetic concepts of multi-level and multi-top. "This is a system that can examine each causal influence on it from the point of view of its correspondence to a set of principles built into the higher levels of the system. If the system is multi-vertex, its highest level will also be complex, capable of switching from one subsystem of this level to another. Such a system can have an infinite number of levels and each of them - an infinite number of subsystems.Such a system is capable of horizontal shifts, i.e. switch control of underlying levels from one subsystem to another of the same level.It is also capable of switching to upper levels, i.e. i.e. to placing horizontal shifts under the supervision and control of criteria systems of higher levels. This system is a pale shadow of those complex shifts and switching occurring in the internal activity of real subjects ".

The main problem of Harre's theory lies in the definition of these "criteria systems of higher levels". He speaks of a "mystery" which he tries to expose by referring to the "moral order" that characterizes man's relationship to himself, manifested in expressions like "You are responsible for this to yourself", "Do not allow yourself to sink", etc. . The vagueness of this definition contrasts sharply with the logical harmony and comprehensive thoughtfulness of all previous analysis.

SELF-EFFICIENCY THEORY: A. BANDURA

According to the author of the socio-cognitive theory of personality and regulation of behavior A. Bandura, there is no more significant mechanism of subjectivity than belief in one's own effectiveness. "Perceived self-efficacy is a belief in one's own ability to organize and carry out the actions required in order to produce given results." If people are not convinced that their actions can produce the desired effects, they have little determination to act.

The basis of human freedom, according to Bandura, is the impact on oneself, which is possible due to the dual nature of the Self - both as a subject and an object - and causally affects behavior in the same way as its external causes. "People have some influence on what they do through the alternatives they take into account, through predicting and evaluating the outcomes they present, including their own self-evaluative reactions, and through their assessment of their ability to accomplish what they envision." One of the main manifestations of subjective determination is the ability of people to act not as dictated by the forces of the external environment, but in situations of coercion - to resist it. It is thanks to the ability to influence themselves that people are to some extent the architects of their own destiny. General formula Bandura is reduced to the fact that "human behavior is determined, but determined in part by the individual himself, and not only by environmental factors."

THE THEORY OF SELF-DETERMINATION AND PERSONAL AUTONOMY: E. DECY AND R. RYAN

The theory of self-determination by E. Desi and R. Ryan also belongs to the most authoritative and developed theories of subjective causality. Self-determination in the context of this approach means a feeling of freedom in relation to both the forces of the external environment and the forces within the personality. According to the authors, the hypothesis of the existence of an internal need for self-determination "helps to predict and explain the development of behavior from simple reactivity to integrated values; from heteronomy to autonomy in relation to those types of behavior that are initially devoid of internal motivation." IN recent works of these authors, the concept of autonomy comes to the fore. A person is called autonomous when he acts as a subject, based on a deep sense of himself. Being autonomous thus means being self-initiated and self-regulating, in contrast to situations of coercion and seduction, when actions do not follow from the deep self. The quantitative measure of autonomy is the extent to which people live in harmony with their true self. The concept of autonomy refers to the process personal development, and to its result; the first is reflected in the effect of organismic integration, and the second - in the integration of the Self and the self-determination of behavior. In turn, autonomous behavior leads to a greater assimilation of experience and an increase in the coherence and structure of the Self, and so on.

1) autonomous orientation based on the belief that conscious behavior is related to its results; the source of behavior is the awareness of one's needs and feelings;

2) controlled orientation, also based on a sense of the connection between behavior and its result, but the source of behavior is external requirements;

3) impersonal orientation, based on the belief that the result cannot be achieved purposefully and predictably.

Although these orientations are enduring personality traits that manifest themselves in individual differences, Deci and Ryan substantiate the model of the gradual formation of personal autonomy through the internalization of motivation and the corresponding experience of control over behavior: from purely external motivation through the stages of introjection, identification and integration to internal motivation and autonomy. Autonomy appears in the latest works of the authors not just as one of the personality tendencies, but as a universal criterion and mechanism for normal development, the violation of which leads to various types of developmental pathology. Experimental evidence suggests, in particular, that higher autonomy correlates with greater congruence between behavior and feelings; accumulated a large number of empirical data on the conditions that promote and, on the contrary, violate the development of autonomy in the process of personal development.

OTHER APPROACHES IN FOREIGN PSYCHOLOGY

Let us briefly dwell on several more approaches to the problem of freedom and self-determination in foreign psychology. W. Tageson in his synthetic version humanistic psychology, relying not so much on general anthropological considerations as on specific psychological data, defines freedom as an experience of self-determination associated with self-awareness. "Psychological freedom or the power of self-determination is inextricably linked with the degree and extent of self-awareness (self-awareness) and thus is closely correlated with psychological health or authenticity" .

It is formed in the process individual development. The individual variable is the "zone of personal freedom", which also varies in different situations. Tyjson identifies three dimensions of freedom:

1) its cognitive basis - the level of cognitive development,

2) the scope of external restrictions,

3) subconscious internal determinants and limitations. The key process in gaining and expanding freedom is the reflexive awareness of the determinants and limitations of one's own activity. "As I more and more include in the field of awareness the subconscious depths of my personality (or peaks, if I gradually become aware of previously hidden or unrealized potentials), my psychological freedom grows."

Close views are developed by J. Easterbrook, who pays special attention to the control of basic needs and anxiety that is born in relations with the outside world. The effectiveness of control and the degree of freedom are directly related to intellectual abilities, learning and competence.

J. Rychlak also highlights the problem of self-determination. He sees the basis of freedom in the ability of the subject himself, based on his desires and meaningful goals formulated on their basis, to determine his own actions, to be included in the system of determination of his activity and to restructure it, supplementing the causal determination of the behavior of the target. The basis of what is usually called "free will" is, according to Richlak, the dialectical ability of self-reflection and transcendence, which allows the subject to question and change the premises on which his behavior is built.

ANALYSIS OF THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM AND SELF-DETERMINATION IN POST-SOVIET PSYCHOLOGY

In post-Soviet psychology over the past decade, original works have also appeared that pay tribute to the problems of freedom and self-determination of the individual.

In the reflexive-activity analysis of E.I. Kuzmina freedom is characterized through the self-determination of a person in relation to the boundaries of their virtual capabilities based on the reflection of these boundaries. Three aspects of freedom are distinguished: sensual (subjective experience of freedom), rational (reflection of the boundaries of possibilities) and effective (the ability to actually change the boundaries of virtual possibilities). Freedom, as shown by Kuzmina, is associated with the age stages of development, in particular, it depends on the formation of the intellect.

In the multilevel model of personal self-regulation E.R. Kaliteevskaya and D.A. Leontief's freedom is considered as a form of activity characterized by three features: awareness, mediation by the value "for what" and controllability at any point. Accordingly, the lack of freedom may be associated with a lack of understanding of the forces affecting the subject, with the lack of clear value orientations and with indecision, inability to intervene in the course of action. own life. Freedom is formed in ontogenesis in the process of acquiring by the individual the inner right to activity and value orientations. critical period for the transformation of children's spontaneity into freedom as a conscious activity is adolescence, when, under favorable circumstances, the integration of freedom (a form of activity) and responsibility (a form of regulation) into a single mechanism of autonomous self-determination of a mature personality is carried out. Psychologically unfavorable conditions for the development of a personality in ontogenesis, associated with an unstable self-attitude and lack of the right to one's own activity, on the contrary, lead to the experience of life as being entirely conditioned by external requirements, expectations and circumstances. The degree of development of individual freedom is manifested in the grounds for personal choices.

G.A. Score defines freedom as a first approximation through conditions conducive to the "harmonious deployment and manifestation of the versatile abilities of the individual." Ball's approach to the problem of inner or personal freedom is more descriptive-synthetic than analytical. Starting from the first definition, he formulates a number of integral psychological characteristics individuals acting as such conditions. At the same time, he practically does not touch upon the mechanisms of self-determination and autonomy at the level of a single action.

Finally, it is necessary to mention the concept of free causality by V.A. Petrovsky. He goes in an unconventional way, focusing on the analysis of various aspects of the Self as carriers or sources. various kinds causation. In this approach, I acts as the subject of freedom, and freedom itself is associated with going beyond the limits of what is pre-established in human activity - into the sphere of the infinite.

SOME THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The above review shows that, although the problem of freedom and self-determination of the personality is not yet included in the number of traditional psychological studies, nevertheless, the history of attempts to consider the phenomena of freedom, autonomy and self-determination as key to the study of motivation and personality is already quite solid. Obvious and "roll calls" between different authors, invariants in the understanding of freedom. Let's try to give the most general definition of freedom. It can be understood as the possibility of initiation, change or termination by the subject of his activity at any point in its course, as well as the possibility of abandoning it. Freedom implies the possibility of overcoming all forms and types of determination of personality activity, external to the existing existential Self, including one's own attitudes, stereotypes, scenarios, character traits and psychodynamic complexes.

Let us single out a number of key, in our opinion, aspects of the problem of freedom and consider them separately.

Multiplicity and multilevel regulation of behavior. Transcendence. In the theories of V. Frankl and R. Harre, this aspect is manifested most clearly. The processes of human interaction with the world and the regulation of these processes are carried out at several levels. Higher regulatory instances, located at the highest levels, allow the subject to free himself from the determining influence of the lower ones, to transcend them. A flying plane does not cancel the laws of gravity, but it turns out to be able to oppose them with other forces and laws that overcome their influence, due to the fact that these laws are carefully taken into account in the design of the aircraft. Shift to more high level regulation, the transcendence of regularities operating at the underlying levels, give a person relative freedom, freeing him from many types of determination (but not from all). General principle Such a transcendence is expressed by Hegel's brilliant formula: "Circumstances and motives dominate a person only to the extent that he himself allows them to." Freedom thus consists in the ascent to a higher level of regulation, at which the others are overcome. This principle is deployed, in particular, in our proposed multi-regulatory model of personality.

Breaks in determination. bifurcation processes. How, in principle, can one get away from the laws of nature acting at all levels of the development of matter? Is the idea of complete freedom compatible with the scientific picture of the world as a whole? Existential psychology owes a lot Nobel laureate in chemistry to I. Prigogine, who made possible a positive answer to this question. He discovered the so-called bifurcation processes in inanimate nature, at a certain point of which a break in determination occurs; an unstable process can go either in one or the other direction, and this "choice" is not deterministic, it depends on random factors. Let causal determinism be insurmountable "on the forehead", it is not continuous; if even in inorganic processes there are breaks in determination, then in human behavior they are for sure. The "pauses" between the stimulus and the response that R. May spoke about, apparently, are these bifurcation points, in which there is no other determinism, except for the determining force of my conscious decision.

Consciousness as the basis of freedom. In almost all the approaches discussed above, the authors in one form or another emphasized the role of consciousness. Of course, awareness of the factors that influence my behavior is crucial in freeing myself from their influence. But we are talking about awareness not only of what is, but also of what is not yet there - awareness of existing opportunities, as well as anticipation of future options. In general, the category of possibility, which is just beginning to enter the lexicon of psychologists, has, in our opinion, an extremely high explanatory potential, and its development can significantly advance the study of personality self-determination.

One of the most interesting psychological incarnations of the idea of awareness is the theory of needs by S. Maddi, who identifies, along with biological and social needs, a group of so-called psychological needs - in imagination, judgment and symbolization. It is the dominance of psychological needs that determines the path of personality development, which Maddy calls individualistic and which is based on self-determination, in contrast to the conformist path of development, determined by the dominance of biological and social needs.

Finally, another aspect of the problem of consciousness in the context of the problem of freedom is connected with the fundamental error of attribution already mentioned. From this tendency to underestimate the role of external causes of behavior, if one is in the position of an outside observer, and to overestimate them, if one takes the position of an acting subject, the conclusion follows about the natural blindness to one's own subjectness. However, it can be cured or compensated, at least in part, by learning to take the position of an observer in relation to oneself, to look at oneself "from the side" or "from above". This change of perspective sometimes comes as an insight, but is also amenable to training; it, as far as we can judge from unsystematized experience, leads to a significant increase in the freedom attributed to oneself, and helps to see the possibilities of actively changing the situation in the right direction.

Instrumental resources of freedom. This aspect of the problem of freedom lies on the surface. It is fairly obvious that while a certain degree of freedom is retained even in a concentration camp, the amount of freedom available differs in different situations. We prefer to talk about the resources of freedom, distinguishing between external resources, given by the objective situation, and internal resources, given by the instrumental equipment of the subject. The former define an abstract field of available possibilities in a situation; the latter determine which of these possibilities a particular subject, possessing certain physical and mental abilities and skills, is able to use, and which are not. The totality of internal and external resources determines the degree of freedom of a given subject in a given situation.

Let's explain this with examples. If a person needs to cross a river, there are different possibilities: firstly, to look for a bridge or a ford, secondly, to cross the river in a boat or raft, and thirdly, to swim across it. But if the first two possibilities are open to anyone, the third can only be taken into account by a person who can swim. In this situation, he has one opportunity more and, therefore, more free than a person deprived of this skill. Ability to drive a car, use a computer, speak foreign languages, shoot well, etc. and so on. in appropriate situations will give their owner additional degrees of freedom. Of course, different abilities and skills differ in the breadth of the range of situations in which they can benefit their possessor; for example, possession English language can benefit more often than fluency in French or Spanish, much less Finnish or Bulgarian. But this difference is purely probabilistic; Finnish may be more important than English in certain situations.

In addition to external (situational) and internal (personal) instrumental resources of freedom, there are two more groups of them that occupy an intermediate position between them. First, these are social resources: social position, status, privileges and personal relationships that allow a person in a social situation to act in a way that others cannot (an example is "telephone law"). These resources, however, are ambivalent because, by increasing the degree of freedom on the one hand, on the other hand, they also increase the degree of lack of freedom, imposing additional obligations and introducing additional "rules of the game". Secondly, these are material resources (money and other material goods). They, of course, expand the space of possibilities, but "work" only insofar as they are directly in the given situation at the disposal of the subject (but can be separated from him), while personal resources are inalienable.

The value base of freedom. It is about what gives meaning to freedom, distinguishing the positive "freedom to" from the negative "freedom from". Releasing restrictions is not enough; so that freedom does not degenerate into arbitrariness, its value-semantic justification is necessary. We can refer to two more ideas that are close in their essence. One of them is the idea of "telosponding" by J. Richlak, which suggests that human actions are always based on a system of prerequisites that make the subject's actions consistent, intelligible and predictable. Such a system of prerequisites, however, is not set, but is chosen by the subject himself and can be changed. This act of changing the determinants of one's behavior, which is a unique property of human consciousness, is what Richluck calls "goal-agility." Another idea emphasized by the prominent cultural anthropologist D. Lee is the need for certain socio-cultural structures for the exercise of human freedom. According to Lee, these structures act as limiting freedom only for an outside observer; from the point of view of a representative of the culture under consideration, freedom without them is impossible. We associate the value basis of freedom with the existential values according to A. Maslow, their special role and mechanisms of functioning. This issue deserves special detailed consideration.

At the end of this article, we leave it open. Our task was limited to posing the problem and indicating the main guidelines for its more detailed development. What we consider most important is the shift in the perspective of human actions, the need for which is undoubtedly overdue. This was noticed three decades ago. "It's a mistake to think that behavior should be the dependent variable in psychological research. For the person himself, this is an independent variable.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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In recent decades, issues related to the implementation of evaluation processes have been intensively developed in psychology, which inevitably affect broader problems of goal setting and freedom of choice. These studies allow a deeper understanding of the psychological aspects of the fundamental philosophical categories.

Concepts of freedom and will

Will is a mental function, which consists in the ability of an individual to consciously control his psyche and actions in the decision-making process to achieve the goals. F. N. Ilyasov (2013) defines will as “the ability of a subject to create a hierarchized system of values and make efforts to achieve values more high order, neglecting low-order values. The concept of will is closely related to the concept of "freedom". Free will is the ability of a person to make a choice regardless of certain circumstances. D. A. Leontiev (1993) defines freedom as the possibility of initiation, change or termination by the subject of his activity at any point in its course. Freedom implies the possibility of overcoming all forms and types of determination of personality activity.(Nietzsche F., 1990).

In philosophy, for a long time there has been a dispute about the existence of free will, its correct definition and nature. There are two opposing positions: hard determinism, the claim that determinism is true and free will does not exist, and metaphysical libertarianism, which claims that determinism is wrong and free will exists, or at least is possible. According to the concept of determinism, absolutely everything that happens was causally predetermined by what happened earlier.

The idealistic theory of free will asserts that man is the primary cause of his actions. To be responsible for your choice, you must be the cause of this choice, so if free will exists, then a person is responsible for his actions. If determinism is true, then any choice of a person is caused by events that are beyond his control. The concept of free will implies that an individual, under certain circumstances, can choose from several possible options. Non-physical theories of libertarianism hold that the events in the brain that lead to action are not reducible to physical processes, and that a non-physical mind, will, or soul influences physical causality.

Determinism is compatible with free will, it would be more accurate to say that free will is defined in such a way that it can coexist with determinism. Freedom may or may not exist for reasons unrelated to metaphysics. Compatibilists define free will as the freedom to act in accordance with one's own motives, without the interference of other people. They argue that the truth of determinism does not matter, what matters is that the will of a person is a consequence of his own desires and is not determined by external conditions. In contrast, the incompatibilist position is associated with a kind of metaphysical free will.

The principle of free will has implications in religion, ethics, and science. For example, in religion, free will implies the possibility of the coexistence of human desire and choice with divine omniscience, although this is difficult for an unbiased person to understand. In science, the study of free will can reveal ways to predict human behavior. There is also a point of view that free will is impossible under both determinism and indeterminism.

It seems quite obvious that your actions depend solely on you. You appear to be free to choose your course of action and thus are morally responsible for your choice. For example, if there is a person at the entrance of the store collecting donations, then you are faced with a dilemma: put your money in a donation box or go inside and buy a cake. You are completely free to make a choice in a given situation, but you are not free not to. Free choice is the destiny of every person; a person is "doomed to freedom", he chooses inevitably even when he does not want to choose (Jean-Paul Sartre).

Contemporary philosopher Galen Strawson (2010) argues that the concept of free will leads to an infinite regress and is therefore meaningless. The main argument is as follows. What you do is determined by who you are, so if you are responsible for what you do, you must be responsible for who you are. But you cannot be held responsible for either, because what you are is determined by your heredity and previous experience. Every action you take now is predetermined by prior events, and those prior events are predetermined by earlier events. Eventually we will reach initial phase, which is entirely determined by genetic components for which you are naturally not responsible.

However, this argument does not deprive you of the opportunity to feel responsible for what you do. Responsibility and choice are two different things. Responsibility is determined by consciousness and you will hold yourself responsible if your dog bites someone or your car rolls down the mountain and harms someone, despite the fact that you have no control over these events. Man cannot create himself and his condition out of nothing. It follows from this argument that free will itself is absurd, not that it is incompatible with determinism.

Modern science is a combination of deterministic and stochastic theories. Quantum mechanics only predicts events in probabilistic terms, casting doubt on whether the universe is deterministic. Modern theories cannot resolve the question of whether determinism, which has many interpretations, is true. From the point of view of physicalism, it is assumed that the laws quantum mechanics provide a complete probabilistic description of particle motion, whether or not free will exists.

According to S. Hawking and L. Mlodinov (“Higher Design”, 2010), the molecular foundations of biology indicate that people are a kind of complex biological machines, and although in practice our behavior cannot be accurately predicted, free will is just an illusion. It can exist only if determinism is denied, i.e. in a compatibilist interpretation.

Some philosophies in the cognitive sciences and evolutionary psychology assume that free will as an entity does not exist. Due to the need to create complex behavior, the interaction of a finite set of rules and parameters creates the illusion of free will. This sense of free will arises from the unpredictability of the result obtained through deterministic processes. Examples are some games in which there is a set of strict rules, all information is open to any player and no random events occur in the game.

However, the strategy of games like chess, despite having a simple set of defined rules, can have a huge potential for unpredictable moves. By analogy, it is believed that the feeling of free will arises from the interaction of a finite set of rules and parameters that generate infinite and unpredictable behavior. But if there were a way to account for and calculate all events, then seemingly unpredictable behavior would become predictable.

In biology, issues of free will are often considered within the framework of sociogenetism or biogenetism, the essence of which lies in the relative importance of the influence of genetics and biology on culture, environment, development and human behavior. Many researchers believe that the main aspects of human behavior can be explained by genetics, the evolutionary development of the human brain. This view is troubling because in this situation people cannot be held responsible for their behavior. Steven Pinker believes that the fear of determinism in matters of genetics and evolution is a mistake and should not be confused with justification. Responsibility does not require behavior to be unreasonable as long as it responds to praise and punishment. Moreover, it is not entirely clear that environmental influences are less of a threat to free will than genetics.

In psychiatry, the problem of free will is associated with a certain group of mental disorders, primarily schizophrenia, in which actions are not completely under the control of the subject. While such disorders by themselves do not disprove the existence of free will, studying them can help us understand how the brain creates these sensations.

Psychology, based on an idealistic understanding of the nature of will, at one time gave three different answers to the question of what is the nature of the motives for the implementation of volitional actions - these are intellectual processes, emotions, and will itself.

In the intellectualistic theory of will (Meiman), the source of a person's volitional activity is his ideas, which are a necessary component of all mental processes, including such complex manifestations of consciousness as feeling and will. A person never wants what he has no idea about. Human consciousness is filled with a mass of representations of varying degrees of clarity, each of which is fighting for its pre-eminent position. The most clear and distinct ideas win in this struggle, which give rise to volitional processes: volitional aspirations arise in the process of the struggle of ideas.

Psychologists of the empirical school adhered to the emotional theory of will (Ribot). The only reason act of will they counted feelings. Volitional activity, according to this theory, is based on the desire to experience or prolong pleasure and avoid suffering. Human actions are caused by the emotions experienced by him at the moment. Representations, not accompanied by feelings, remain only "cold ideas" that are not capable of causing even the simplest action.

Intellectualistic and emotional theories of will did not recognize independence volitional processes. They considered the will to be a phenomenon of a secondary order, built on the basis of ideas or feelings. Adherents of the voluntaristic theory of will (Wundt, James) asserted the originality and initial independence of the will from feelings and ideas - the motives of the will are contained in itself.

The last century is characterized by the awareness of the determination of consciousness and behavior by the objective conditions of existence, the social and cultural environment, the social unconscious (E. Fromm). For psychology, this period is characterized by the delimitation of "hard determinism", which assumes that the determination of mental processes and behavior is universal and leaves no room for real freedom, and "soft determinism", which allows for the presence of a certain space of freedom among the deterministic processes.

Examples of hard determinism are the points of view of P. V. Simonov (1984), who considers freedom as an illusion arising from the fact that we are fully aware of all the determinants that affect us, Z. Freud, who believes that a person is entirely conditioned by his past, B Skinner (B. Skinner), who argued the possibility and necessity of total control and management of human behavior.

Speaking about freedom, D. A. Leontiev draws attention to the multiplicity and multilevel nature of the regulation of behavior. In this situation, the higher regulatory instances allow a person to free himself from the determining influence of the lower ones, to transcend them. The basis of freedom is the awareness of the factors influencing the activity, and the consequences to which it can lead. The degree of freedom is determined by the totality of resource opportunities (external and internal). Finally, the value base of freedom gives it meaning, distinguishing the positive "freedom for" from the negative "freedom from".

E. Fromm (1990, 1992) identifies positive freedom, "freedom for", as the main condition for human growth and development, linking it with spontaneity, integrity, creativity and biophilia - the desire to affirm life as opposed to death. However, freedom is ambivalent. She is both a gift and a burden; a person is free to accept it or refuse it. A person himself decides the question of the degree of his freedom, making his own choice: either to act freely, i.e. on the basis of rational considerations, or to give up freedom. Many choose to run away from freedom, thus choosing the path of least resistance.

V. Frankl (1987) believes that a person is not free from external and internal circumstances, but they do not completely determine him. Heredity, drives and external conditions have a significant influence on behavior, but a person is free to take a certain position in relation to them. He can find and realize the meaning of his life, even if his freedom is noticeably limited by objective reasons. Freedom coexists with necessity, and they are localized in different dimensions of human existence. Freedom in relation to drives is manifested in the ability to say "no" to them. Freedom to external circumstances also exists, although it is not unlimited and is expressed in the ability to take one position or another in relation to them.

According to R. May (1981), freedom does not consist in choosing the state of an active subject and a passive object - to experience oneself either in one or in another capacity. The space of freedom is the distance between the states of the subject and the object, it is a kind of void that needs to be filled. Freedom is the ability to change what is, the ability to transcend one's nature. As self-consciousness develops, the range of a person's choice and his freedom increase accordingly.

In the theory of subjectivity R. Harre (1979, 1983), freedom is the ability to act as an "agent" or subject, i.e. the actor, the driving force of action and to have a certain autonomy, which implies the possibility of distancing both from the influences of the environment and from internal principles. The determination of human actions is far from simple linear causality and is multi-vertex. Its highest level determines the probability of switching from one subsystem to another. Such a system can have an infinite number of levels, and each of them has an infinite number of subsystems. It is capable of performing horizontal shifts, i.e. switch control of underlying levels from one subsystem to another, as well as provide vertical switching.

According to the author of the theory of self-efficacy and regulation of behavior A. Bandura (1997), the basis of human freedom is the ability to influence oneself, which becomes possible due to the dual nature I as both subject and object at the same time. The self influences the behavior of the subject in the same way as external factors. One of the main manifestations of subjective determination is the ability of people to act not as dictated by the external environment, but in situations of coercion - to resist it. It is precisely because of the ability to influence themselves that people are to some extent the architects of their own destiny: "human behavior is determined, but determined in part by the individual himself, and not just by environmental factors."

E. Desi and R. Ryan (1985, 1986, 1991) suggested that there is an internal need for self-determination, which helps to predict and explain the development of behavior from simple reactivity to integrated values; from heteronomy to autonomy in relation to those types of behavior that are initially devoid of intrinsic motivation. "Autonomy consists in the fact that the subject acts on the basis of a deep sense of himself. To be autonomous means to be self-initiated and self-regulating, in contrast to situations of coercion, when actions are not stem from the deep self. A quantitative measure of autonomy is the extent to which people live in harmony with their true self.

It seems to us that such a wide range of variation in the interpretation of the concept of freedom is determined by the complexity and multifactorial nature of the problem. The situation can be simplified if we try to isolate these factors and determine the role of each of them in the problem under consideration. The criterion of "freedom-non-freedom" refers to the choice of the goal and the decision to implement the activity. In this situation, our task is to identify those mental mechanisms that determine the formation of the goal, and to establish the influence on the category of freedom of each of them. Fortunately, the development of the concept of evaluation processes provides such an opportunity.

Goal-setting and decision-making on the implementation of activities are based on the amount of knowledge that the subject has. This volume is provided by three sources of information: inheritance mechanisms formed in the process of evolution; experience of previous generations, i.e. knowledge transmitted through learning (socialization), and personal experience of the subject obtained in the process of any form of interaction, including observation. These sources ensure the formation of three goal-setting factors - life support, species support and cognitive processes. Let's consider each of them.

Life support.

Target pyramid. In psychology, there is a tendency to consider the needs and motives of the individual not as isolated entities, but as a hierarchically organized structure. The presence of hierarchical relations, perhaps, is not quite clearly present in the division of needs into basic and additional, into basic and superstructural, into biological and social. This idea is most clearly seen in A. Maslow (1999) in his concept of the hierarchy of motives, where he emphasizes the advantage (obstruction) of physiological needs over social ones.

A hungry person lives with thoughts of bread, but as soon as he receives this bread, there is a need for spectacles. The author does not specifically talk about the systematizing basis of such a hierarchy, but implicitly this concept suggests that needs have their own value and can be ranked according to this criterion. This is also evidenced by the functional purpose of this phenomenon - the establishment of the order of activation of needs.

There are quite a few variants of such hierarchizations, but we want to pay attention to something else. There is one purely logical discrepancy in ascertaining the presence of hierarchization. A need is a remitting function and every given moment the subject realizes only one. Necessary activity is provided by transient mental constructs, which, upon completion of the activity, either disintegrate (expectation) or interact with the context (the result of activity) and therefore cannot be used to implement hierarchization. In such a situation, the question of hierarchization cannot even be raised, since there is simply nothing to hierarchize.

Nevertheless, everyday experience suggests that the hierarchy still exists, and when there is nothing somehow not up to self-actualization, and the presence of a threat to life does not contribute to aesthetic development (“when the guns speak, the muses are silent”). Without going into details, we can assume that the concept of hierarchization does not refer to the need in its traditional understanding, but to some of its constant component. The most likely candidates for this role are the need underlying the need and the purpose of the activity formed by it.

The purpose of the activity in the process of its implementation almost always breaks down into subgoals, forming a target range, the function of which is to exercise procedural control. For example, obtaining a degree in higher education how the purpose of the activity is divided into the passage of separate courses, semesters, which are subgoals in relation to the first. The passage of the semester, in turn, breaks down into the execution laboratory work, listening to lectures, studying sources, passing tests and exams, which are subgoals in relation to the previous one. In turn, each of these subgoals consists of the implementation of specific actions that can be considered as its constituent parts.

But getting a diploma itself is not the ultimate goal of the subject, it is carried out for something else. Establishing this "other" is quite simple. To do this, you just need to ask the question - why? Why does a person need a degree? It is needed in order to improve one's financial situation, increase one's social status, and assert oneself. But these goals are also not final and, in turn, are aimed at a more complete satisfaction of the needs of the organism, which determine the survival of the individual, and these goals are an expression of the basic biological goal behind them - life support.

The structure that arises in this case can be designated as a target pyramid, which is a system of life support methods used by this subject. In this regard, all human life activity can be represented as a single expectation series, ranked depending on the degree of global goal, in which the main goal is set by biological factors of life support, and its detail is determined by the real conditions of this interaction.

Despite all the variety of activities carried out by the subject, they are connected with each other, giving purposefulness to human existence. These connections may not always be obvious and conscious, but they always exist. If we take the goal of any activity and try to establish supergoals standing above it, then we will certainly come to a similar construction.

Thus, the main goal human activity is the implementation of life support; everything else is a sub-goal that determines how to implement the first. Conceptually, life support is a psychobiological drive, the significance of which extends to all underlying subgoals, carrying out their meaning depending on their place in this system and the role they play in life support.

Thus, the resulting hunger can be satisfied by taking bread, but the subject does not need bread as such. He needs to normalize those psychobiological parameters that have shifted in the process of hunger. Bread in this case is only an external way to normalize them, i.e. functions as a condition. That is why the items of need can vary: hunger can be satisfied in many other ways, but their effect must be unambiguous - the normalization of deviated parameters. Accordingly, the value of these methods will be determined by their ability to restore disturbed homeostasis.

In this sense, free will is just an illusion of consciousness. What we understand by free will is actually the use of consciousness to optimize the achievement of a genetically predetermined goal. Such an understanding of freedom is close to the definition of freedom as a conscious necessity, with the only clarification that this necessity is genetically determined and even awareness is not needed for its implementation. It is used only in order to more optimally implement this genetic predetermination.

There seems to be freedom, and a person can really make arbitrary decisions as to whether to eat a cheese sandwich or oatmeal for breakfast, but the ultimate goal of these actions is common - the satisfaction of food needs, and through it - the implementation of life support; he can arbitrarily decide whether to visit his friends today or stay at home and read a book, but both are forms of recreation necessary for sustenance.

A person can arbitrarily change the schedule of his day, but in any case he will include all the components necessary for life support, he can change the time and place of work, but he will still work, he can build his relationships with others in any way, but in in any case, he will maintain a reasonable balance of his interests and the interests of others. This defines the following output − freedom usually consists in the choice of means, preserving more stable goals.

The presence of freedom (especially absolute freedom) implies the absence of an initially defined goal outside the will of the subject himself and the possibility of its arbitrary establishment (freedom to choose a goal). It would seem that the presence of a genetically determined goal of life and its prevailing significance, the subordination of all other subgoals to it, makes the very possibility of using the term “freedom” as applied to human existence doubtful. Freedom comes down not to the choice of goals, but to the choice of means aimed at optimizing the achievement of a genetically determined goal. Man is a creature with a programmed development stereotype, its direction and goals.

This purposefulness is determined by the basic psychobiological drive - the need for life support. Similar concepts already exist in psychology (the vital energy of McDougall, the "life instinct" in the psychoanalytic concept of Z. Freud). In biology, it is referred to as the "self-preservation instinct." It should only be noted that in all these cases these concepts are used without regard to the problems of goal setting.

Subjectivity and procedurality. The concept of purpose, which at first glance seems clear and self-evident, is in fact one of the complex categories of philosophy, economics, management theory, and sociology. Without being able to go into details, we will single out only one provision that is necessary for us: goals can be general or procedural and particular or substantive. The fundamental difference between procedural goals, such as the desire for power, self-affirmation, career growth, wealth, creative development, is the impossibility of achieving them. They are like a horizon line all the time moving away as you approach them. Due to their procedural nature, they cannot form objective goals, and, consequently, needs.

For their formation, the procedural goal must be divided into sub-goals that have objectivity, i.e., be concretized. For example, the desire for wealth can be realized in business, where each specific transaction of a businessman will form a necessary activity that has its own objective goal. Its presence enables the subject to make a preliminary assessment of the degree of success of the proposed activity, make a decision on its implementation, and then evaluate the result.

Objectivity and processuality as qualitative characteristics of the goal are spaced on different sides of the target pyramid: the higher the goal, the more global and procedural it is, the greater the role hereditary psychobiological processes play in it, the less it is realized. But such a goal cannot be realized directly, but only by dividing it into many specific goals. The lower the goal, the more objective it is, the higher the possibility of its realization, the more variable it is.

Possibility of choice (range of freedom). Why are we bringing this up? The subjective perception of the freedom to choose a goal is determined precisely by the possibility of varying objective goals while maintaining procedural ones. Procedural and objective goals have different degrees of freedom: the more procedural the goal, the lower the degree of its freedom, and vice versa, the more objective it is, the greater the degree of freedom it has. The most procedural goal is life support, which cannot be changed or ignored. Life support determines only the general direction of activity, while specific goals are variable and situationally determined.

A person cannot fail to provide life support. As soon as the subject goes down a step and begins to determine how he will carry out this life support, the possibility of variation appears, i.e. element of freedom. This possibility of variation will increase all the time as we move down the target pyramid, reaching complete arbitrariness at its very base: the more significant the target, the less its degree of freedom, and vice versa. The least significant goals have the greatest freedom.

Life support has the highest significance, all other goals are more particular, they are only a specification of this main goal in the given conditions and receive their significance from it in accordance with their role in this process. Such a mechanism for signifying goals determines the nature of their significance - it is induced.

View provision.

But life support is not able to explain all the diversity of human behavior, for example, the presence of people of reckless courage, demonstrating contempt for danger, people sacrificing their lives for others, choosing extreme professions, the presence of conflicts associated with the risk to life, and finally, the emergence of wars. The explanation for these phenomena is that life support is not the only basic psychobiological drive, there is also species support.

It performs the same functions as life support - the signification of objects, phenomena, events of the external environment and the formation of the goals of activity, only it does this based on the need to preserve the population as a whole. The task of species provision is the preservation and development of the species. These two basic psychobiological drives partially overlap each other and in some cases may come into conflict.

Species provision forms a certain number of psychobiological drives of a particular order, of which we will single out three - competitive relations, community hierarchization, provision and protection of offspring. The implementation of competitive relations often leads to the emergence of conflicts, aggressive behavior (the struggle for the right to leave offspring, for the right to distribute the group product, for power, for the possession of resources) and can pose a threat to life, entering into conflict with the life support instinct.

A similar phenomenon is observed in the animal world. In order to attract the attention of the female, the peacock in the process of evolution acquires a bright color, which is a masterpiece of scenery, but this also unmasks the bird. The black grouse is a very cautious bird with excellent hearing, it is almost impossible to get close to it imperceptibly. But during the mating period, he talks so loudly that he loses his hearing and becomes easy prey for the hunter. The instinct is blind, and by providing the implementation of some functions, it can become an obstacle to the implementation of others.

In other words, a person can arbitrarily violate the genetically laid down principles of mental organization, not to mention those developed in the process of life. But not everything that a person can do according to his psychophysiological capabilities, he should do. People act in accordance with their ideas about the world around them and their role in it, but these ideas are subjective and, as such, may differ from those of other people.

Cognitive mechanisms of goal setting.

The backlash of freedom is determined by the above. But in some cases, a person can act contrary to these principles, violate them. It turns out that he can also correct the highest goals - life and species support. Any mental act, any need-based activity is provided not only by hereditary, but also by cognitive mechanisms. The former provide constant mechanisms for these processes, the latter - their adjustment in relation to the conditions of this interaction. Only their equity participation can vary here.

The genetic component cannot form activity (neither subjective nor procedural), it determines only the motivation for activity and its strategy, for example, the tendency to carry out aggression or retrusion when danger arises. But how should it be expressed, i.e. to whom this aggression should be directed and from interaction with whom it is necessary to evade, is determined by learning and personal experience.

The very possibility of such an adjustment determines the dominance of cognitive mechanisms over genetic ones. The instinct of self-preservation may dictate the need to save life at all costs, but the fear of looking like a coward or losing respect can be stronger and make the subject play Russian roulette. In some cases, this cognitive adjustment can be so great that it allows the subject, against the instinct of self-preservation, to commit suicide when unable to pay the card debt.

Cognitive activity is also provided by evaluation processes and is based on three principles -need, opportunity and expediency. The need is determined by the need, which, for the implementation of the activity, forms the corresponding expectation, which includes the goal of the activity (external and internal) and the way to achieve this goal (activity algorithm) with their significant characteristics. The significance of this need should be higher than the significance of labor costs for the implementation of activities (the game should be worth the candle). Opportunity is determined by comparing this activity algorithm with self-assessment formed by past experience.

Of greatest interest in this triad is the definition of expediency. It is based on the hedonistic principle - the activity should either reduce the negative component of the need, or provide the positive component of the goal, or both at the same time. Only after the implementation of all these evaluation processes, the subject has the opportunity to make a decision on the implementation of activities.

The fundamental point of this process is the control system, which ensures the expediency mental activity limiting, of course, her freedom. On the one hand, a person is free in his choice, on the other hand, he is “doomed” to choose the best option, and therefore not free. He, of course, can act contrary to the principle of expediency, i.e. has the capacity to do so, but prefers not to. The tool for implementing this principle is another psychobiological drive - hedonism, the desire to receive positive emotions and avoid negative ones.

The psychological content of the concept of freedom.

So what happens to free will in this case? It certainly exists, but within the limits of the same biological predetermination. To understand the mechanism of this limitation, we need to differentiate the analyzed concept into a goal and a way to achieve it. The fact is that the same goal can be achieved in different ways. So, the subject cannot change the basic goals: the need for life support and the satisfaction of biological needs that ensure this process - nutrition, respiration, excretion, etc. He also cannot change the goals associated with functioning in the community, determining the possibility of coexistence in it. But he can choose how to achieve these goals. And here he is also not very free, since all these methods must comply with the principle of expediency.

Speaking about the significance of life support as a psychobiological goal of life, we mean its subjective significance and, accordingly, the subjective hierarchization of goals. In some cases and under certain conditions, this design can be deformed. For example, the fear of being seen as a coward in the eyes of others may be higher than the fear of death, the need to take risks may be determined by the desire to overcome oneself, as is the case in extreme sports, when choosing life-threatening professions.

Thus, goal-setting processes are provided by both hereditary and cognitive mechanisms. At the same time, the former are based on the principles of life and species support and determine the framework of the function, the latter, based on the principles of necessity, possibility and expediency, its fine adaptation to existing conditions. The amount of this adjustment can vary widely, reaching the possibility of completely blocking hereditary goals. However, as a rule, such a possibility will be in conflict with the principle of expediency.

Genetic processes are carried out at the unconscious level, while cognitive processes are largely conscious, which determines the possibility of their control and, consequently, freedom of choice. The phenomenon of "freedom-non-freedom" is determined by this ratio of hereditary and acquired factors in the structure of need-based activity. The ability to correct the first by the second determines the fundamental possibility of choosing a goal and a way to achieve it, which makes the subject responsible for his actions.

And, finally, the last is the attitude of the individual regarding his freedom, his readiness to dispose of it at his own discretion. Freedom is not a sweet potato. Undoubtedly expanding a person's ability to provide life support, freedom at the same time makes him responsible for their consequences. The fact is that any activity of the subject is evaluated by him, the totality of these evaluations forms self-esteem. The subject also constantly evaluates all others with whom it interacts and hierarchizes the community based on these assessments.

Self-assessment is extremely important here, since it, in comparison with the assessments of others, allows the subject to make a social orientation and determine his place in the structure of the community. In this regard, a decrease in the assessment of the result of activity is very painful, since it is accompanied by a corresponding change in social orientation and a subjective feeling of a decrease in one's place in the community hierarchy.

In this situation, the subject has one defense mechanism - this is attribution, which makes it possible to choose: to accept a negative assessment, placing responsibility on himself with all the ensuing consequences, or not to accept it, shifting it to circumstances beyond his control (attributing to external factors , accident or inefficiency of the activities of others). In this case, the low efficiency of the subject's activity may not be attributed by the subject to himself, but attributed to "incompetent leadership."

The psychology of the "cog in the system" is like a cocoon protecting the subject's already rather low self-esteem from the destructive influence of reality. The same function is performed by religion, which allows shifting responsibility to the omniscient and omniscient Creator. This phenomenon of "escape from freedom", described by E. Fromm (1990), is dominant. It is believed that less than 10% of the population are able to independently make decisions and take responsibility for their consequences.

Summary.

First of all, it is necessary to state that freedom is a concept that has a quantitative characteristic. This means that one cannot speak of the presence or absence of freedom, one can speak about the degree of freedom. And the degree of freedom is determined by the scale of the goal - the more procedural it is, the less the subject is free with respect to it, and vice versa, the more objective it is, the higher the degree of freedom. Since the concept of procedurality correlates with the significance of the goal, this pattern can be formulated differently: the more significant the goal, the lower the degree of its freedom and vice versa.

Since significance is the systematization basis for the formation of the target pyramid, this dependence determines the place of this goal in this pyramid: the most significant goals, such as the need for life support (the instinct of life), the need for hedonism, the tendency to objectification and initiation of activity, are at the top and determine the meaning of all underlying goals. They cannot change. All underlying goals acquire a certain degree of freedom, which increases as you move towards the base of the pyramid. Therefore, the answer to the question of whether there is free will or not varies depending on what level of goal it belongs to.

Human activity is determined by both genetic mechanisms and personal experience. Genetically determining the goals of life, evolution is not able to determine the ways to achieve them just as rigidly, since they are too variable and dependent on the state of the organism, the environment and society, determined by the principle of expediency - the achievement optimal result minimal funds. The freedom to choose means, with the constancy of basic goals, determines the range of freedom that evolution has given to man.

A person is indeed doomed to freedom of choice, but the principle of its implementation is predetermined by the need for self-preservation, the preservation of offspring and the achievement of optimality of decisions made. Despite the high degree of genetic and psychological predetermination of behavior, a person can and should control his actions, which makes him responsible for them.

There is freedom as the ability of a subject to make decisions independently, but the vast majority of the population does not know what to do with it. It perceives freedom as a burden of responsibility for the consequences of its actions and builds a strategy of behavior in such a way as to avoid it.

Eduard Bechtel, MD

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PSYCHOLOGICAL JOURNAL, 2000, no. 1, p. 15-25.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FREEDOM: TO THE STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM OF SELF-DETERMINATION OF THE PERSON

Cand. psychol. Sci., Associate Professor, Faculty of Psychology, Moscow State University, Moscow
Ways to solve the problem are outlined psychological mechanisms self-determination underlying human freedom. The dilemma of freedom-determinism is analyzed in relation to human behavior. given short review main approaches to the problem in foreign and domestic psychology. A number of key aspects of the problem of freedom and self-determination are considered, such as transcendence, breaks in determination, awareness, instrumental resources of freedom, and the value basis of freedom.
Keywords: freedom, self-determination, autonomy, subjectivity, choice.

Self-determination of personality is not among the traditional topics of academic psychology. The complexity, the philosophical "burdenedness" of this problem, the danger of slipping scientific analysis in journalism during its consideration were the reason that it began to enter the field of view of psychology only from the beginning of the 40s. our century since classic book E. Fromm (E. Fromm) "Escape from freedom" (see also). Several decades this problem was considered mainly by existentially oriented authors, whose books were widely known, but had little influence on the mainstream of academic personality psychology. Only since the 80s. the problem of self-determination (under various names) began to be seriously dealt with by academic psychology in the West; the most developed and well-known are the theories of R. Harre (R. Nagge), E. Desi (E. Deci) and R. Ryan (R. Ryan) and A. Bandura (A. Bandura). In Soviet psychology, this problem was not studied in any serious way; now, after the period of perestroika, it quite naturally begins to attract the attention of an increasing number of researchers. Nevertheless, today we are at the initial stage of studying the psychological foundations of self-determination.

This article is primarily staging. First, we will try to formulate the problem itself as concretely as possible and set the basic concepts in their correlation with each other. Then we will give an overview of the main approaches to the problem of freedom and self-determination of personality in world psychology. In conclusion, let us outline a number of theoretical hypotheses and particular problems that form the components of the general problem of self-determination.
MAN BETWEEN FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM
In the human sciences, the freedom-determinism dilemma as applied to human actions has been one of the central ones for many centuries, although the content of both these concepts has changed significantly. Historically, the first version of determinism was the idea of fate, fate, divine destiny. Accordingly, the problem of freedom in philosophy and theology arose in connection with the problems of will ("freedom of will") and choice ("freedom of choice"). On the one hand, the concept of divine destiny left no room for individual freedom, on the other hand, the thesis about the god-likeness of man, his divine nature ("in the image and likeness") suggested the possibility of a person to influence his own destiny. The last thesis was defended, in particular, by many Renaissance thinkers who refuted the view of man as a toy in the clutches of fate. Erasmus of Rotterdam in his treatise "On Free Will" argued that a person is free to choose the path of sin or the path of salvation. God can grant salvation to a person, but the choice remains for a person whether he wants to be saved, to entrust himself to God.

Our century is characterized by the awareness of a new kind of determinism - the determination of consciousness and behavior by the objective conditions of existence, social and cultural environment, "social being" (K. Marx) and "public unconscious" (E. Fromm). F. Nietzsche, who belonged chronologically to the 19th century, but ideologically to the 20th, opened up an extremely important perspective on the problem of freedom. He was the first to pose the problem of human self-transcendence - overcoming oneself as a factual reality, a breakthrough into the realm of the possible. Nietzsche was also the first to contrast the negative characterization of "freedom from" with the positive characterization of "freedom for". In the works of existentialist philosophers, primarily J.-P. Sartre (J.-P. Sartre) and A. Camus (A. Camus), the philosophical consideration of freedom was largely psychologized. Freedom appeared as a heavy burden, sometimes unbearable, giving rise to emptiness, existential anxiety and the desire to escape. The latter became the subject of the mentioned study by E. Fromm "Escape from Freedom".

In psychology, since the beginning of the century, there has been a delimitation of the problem of will, understood as an arbitrary control of behavior based on conscious decisions, and the problem of freedom proper, which was for a long time relegated to the periphery of psychology. From time to time it was raised in the general theoretical context in the form of no longer the opposition "freedom-determinism" (since there were no psychologists in our century who deny this or that determinism of behavior), but as an opposition to the postulates of "hard determinism", suggesting that the determination of mental processes and behavior is of a general nature and leaves no room for real freedom, and "soft determinism", which means the presence of a certain freedom space among deterministic processes (see review papers). One example of "hard determinism" is the point of view of P.V. Simonov, who declares freedom an illusion that arises due to the fact that we are not fully aware of all the determinants that affect us. From the point of view of an external observer, a person is completely determined in his choice. Interestingly, this opinion is in conflict with the pattern known in psychology as the "fundamental attribution error": people tend to overestimate the influence of external factors on behavior, being in the position of the "subject" of this behavior, and underestimate it, evaluating someone else's behavior from the position of an external observer .

3. Freud's psychoanalysis, which considers a person as entirely conditioned by his past, and B. Skinner's neobehaviorism, which asserts the possibility and necessity of total control and management of all human behavior through a specially organized system of incentives, are considered extreme variants of "hard determinism". At the same time, there are other opinions even about Freudianism. So, M. Iturate (M. Iturate) argues that psychoanalysis is inherent in the focus on asserting freedom. A person acquires it due to the fact that he creates meanings that guide him in their behavior, thereby leaving the sphere of influence of natural laws. If the essence of freedom is control over one's activity at all points of its trajectory, then it exists both at the points of choice and in the intervals between them, and the choice itself is either free (if it can be changed) or not (if it is rigidly defined). ). "A synonym for freedom is life ... After all, the living differs from the dead in that the living can always be different." Freedom and personal choice are thus not the same thing, although they are closely related and reinforce each other. "Freedom is cumulative; a choice that includes elements of freedom expands the possibility of freedom for subsequent choice."

Let us now make a short review of the main approaches to the problem of freedom and self-determination in modern psychology.

PSYCHOLOGY OF FREEDOM AND SELF-DETERMINATION:

MAIN APPROACHES
The concepts of "freedom" and "self-determination" are very close. The concept of freedom describes the phenomenologically experienced control over one's behavior, and is used for the global anthropological characterization of a person and his behavior. The concept of self-determination is used as an explanatory one at the psychological level of considering the "mechanisms" of freedom. At the same time, one should distinguish between self-determination, on the one hand, and self-regulation or self-control, on the other. In the latter case, regulators can be introjected norms, conventions, opinions and values of authoritative others, social or group myths, etc.; controlling his behavior, the subject does not act as its author, as in true self-determination.

Unlike G.A. Balla, we include in our review only explicit concepts of freedom and self-determination, leaving behind numerous domestic and foreign approaches that can be interpreted as related to self-determination mechanisms.

Of the two aspects of freedom - external (absence of external restrictions, "freedom from") and internal (psychological position, "freedom for") - we have chosen the second as the subject of analysis. Sometimes clarifying definitions are used in this case ("psychological freedom", "internal freedom"), sometimes they are omitted, since we do not consider the first aspect, which is more related to socio-political issues, at all.

Freedom as awareness: E. Fromm
E. Fromm considers positive freedom, "freedom for", the main condition for human growth and development, linking it with spontaneity, integrity, creativity and biophilia - the desire to affirm life as opposed to death. However, freedom is ambivalent. She is both a gift and a burden; a person is free to accept it or refuse it. A person himself decides the question of the degree of his freedom, making his own choice: either to act freely, i.e. on the basis of rational considerations, or to give up freedom. Many choose to run away from freedom, thus choosing the path of least resistance. Of course, everything is decided not by any one act of choice, but is determined by the gradually developing integral structure of character, to which individual choices contribute. As a result, some people grow up free, while others do not.

Fromm's ideas contain a twofold interpretation of the concept of freedom. The first meaning of freedom is the original freedom of choice, the freedom to decide whether to accept freedom in the second meaning or to refuse it. Freedom in the second meaning is the structure of character, expressed in the ability to act on the basis of reason. In other words, in order to choose freedom, a person must already have the original freedom and the ability to make this choice in a reasonable way. There is some paradox here. Fromm, however, emphasizes that freedom is not a trait or a disposition, but an act of self-liberation in the decision-making process. This is a dynamic, current state. The scope of human freedom is constantly changing.

The outcome of the choice depends most of all, of course, on the strength of the conflicting tendencies. But they differ not only in strength, but also in the degree of awareness. As a rule, positive, creative tendencies are well realized, while dark, destructive tendencies are poorly understood. According to Fromm, a clear awareness of all aspects of the situation of choice helps to make the choice optimal. He identifies six main aspects that require awareness: 1) what is good and what is bad; 2) the method of action in a given situation, leading to the goal; 3) own unconscious desires; 4) real possibilities contained in the situation; 5) the consequences of each of the possible decisions; 6) lack of awareness, it is also necessary to have a desire to act contrary to the expected negative consequences. Thus, freedom acts as an action arising from the awareness of alternatives and their consequences, the distinction between real and illusory alternatives.
Freedom as a position: V. Frankl
The main thesis of the doctrine of free will by V. Frankl says: a person is free to find and realize the meaning of his life, even if his freedom is noticeably limited by objective reasons. Frankl recognizes the obvious determinism of human behavior, while denying its pan-determinism. A person is not free from external and internal circumstances, but they do not completely condition him. According to Frankl, freedom coexists with necessity, and they are localized in different dimensions of human existence.

All these determinants are localized in the biological and psychological dimensions of a person, and freedom - in a higher, poetic or spiritual dimension. A person is free due to the fact that his behavior is determined primarily by the values and meanings localized in this dimension. Freedom stems from the fundamental anthropological abilities of a person to self-distancing (taking a position in relation to oneself) and self-transcendence (going beyond oneself as a given, overcoming oneself). Therefore, a person is free even in relation to himself, free to rise above himself, to go beyond his own limits. "Personality is what I am, as opposed to the type or character that I have. My personal being is freedom - freedom to become a person. It is freedom from being just that, freedom to become different."
Freedom as awareness of possibilities within the framework of destiny: R. May
Our consciousness, writes the leading theorist of existential psychology R. May, is in a state of constant oscillation between two poles: an active subject and a passive object. This creates the potential for choice. Freedom does not consist in the ability to be a pure subject all the time, but in the ability to choose either one or another kind of existence, to experience oneself either in one or in another capacity, and to move dialectically from one to the other. The space of freedom is the distance between the states of the subject and the object, it is a kind of void that needs to be filled.

May first of all distinguishes freedom from rebellion, which, although it is a "normal internal movement towards freedom," is nevertheless structured by the external structure against which it is carried out, and thus depends entirely on it. "When there are no established standards against which a rebellion is directed, it is deprived of power" [ibid., p. 135]. Freedom is not connivance, the absence of a plan and purpose. This is not a rigid, definite doctrine, it cannot be formulated in the form of specific regulations, it is something living, changing.

In its most general form, freedom is the ability of a person to manage his development, closely related to self-awareness, flexibility, openness, readiness for change. Thanks to self-awareness, we can interrupt the chain of stimuli and reactions, create a pause in it, in which we can make a conscious choice of our reaction [ibid., p. 84]. By creating this pause, the person somehow throws his decision on the scales, mediates the connection between the stimulus and the response by them, and thereby decides what the reaction will be. The less developed a person's self-consciousness, the more unfree he is, i.e. the more his life is governed by various repressed contents, by conditional connections formed in childhood, which he does not keep in his memory, but which are stored in the unconscious and govern his behavior. As self-consciousness develops, the range of choice of a person and his freedom increase accordingly.

Freedom is not opposed to determinism, but correlates with specific givens and inevitability (they must be consciously accepted), only in relation to which it is determined. These givens, inevitability and limitations, which form the space of the determinism of human life, May calls fate. The paradox of freedom lies in the fact that it owes its significance to fate and vice versa; freedom and destiny are inconceivable without each other. "Any expansion of freedom gives birth to a new determinism, and any expansion of determinism gives rise to a new freedom. Freedom is a circle within a wider circle of determinism, which, in turn, is inside an even wider circle of freedom, and so on ad infinitum." Freedom always manifests itself in relation to some realities and givens of life, such as, say, the need for rest and food, or the inevitability of death. Freedom begins where we accept some kind of reality, but not out of blind necessity, but on the basis of our own choice. This does not mean that we give in and give up, accepting some restrictions on our freedom. On the contrary, this is the constructive act of freedom. The paradox of freedom lies in the fact that freedom owes its vitality to fate, and fate owes its significance to freedom. They condition each other, they cannot exist without each other.

Freedom is the ability to change what is, the ability to transcend one's nature. When we make a free choice, we simultaneously scroll through and compare a number of different possibilities in our minds, while it is not yet clear which path we will choose and how we will act. Therefore, freedom always fundamentally deals with the possible. This is the essence of freedom: it turns the possible into the real by accepting at any given moment the limits of the real, working mainly with the realities of the possible. The opposite of freedom is automatic conformity. Because freedom is inseparable from the anxiety that comes with new opportunities, so many people only dream of being told that freedom is an illusion and they don't need to break their heads over it. The goal of psychotherapy is to achieve a state in which a person feels free to choose his way of life, to accept the situation to the extent that it is inevitable, and to change something to the extent that it is realistically possible. The main task of the psychotherapist is to help people acquire the freedom of awareness and experience of their capabilities.

Multi-level structure of subjectness: R. Harre
Unlike the existentially oriented theories of Fromm, Frankl, May and a number of other authors of clinical orientation, who write about the problems of human freedom in a language that is close and understandable to non-specialists, the concept of "freedom" is rarely found in academic works. As a rule, this problem bears the names of autonomy, self-determination, or some other designations. One of the terminological guises of the problem of freedom is the concept of "agency" (agency), the exact translation of which into Russian is impossible. We believe that its most correct translation corresponds to the concept of "subjectivity" (we are talking about the ability to act as an "agent" or subject, i.e. an actor, a driving force of action).

One of the most developed and recognized is the theory of subjectivity, developed by R. Harre in line with his well-known approach to explaining social behavior (see). The model of the subject is at the center of his theory. "The most general requirement for any being to be considered a subject is that it has a certain degree of autonomy. By this I mean that its behavior (actions and acts) are not completely determined by the conditions of its immediate environment" . Autonomy, according to Harre, implies the possibility of distancing both from the influences of the environment and from those principles on which behavior has been based up to the present moment. A full-fledged agent (agent) is able to switch from one determinant of behavior to another, to choose between equally attractive alternatives, to resist temptations and distractions, and to change the guiding principles of behavior. "A person is a perfect subject in relation to a certain category of actions, if both the tendency to act and the tendency to refrain from action are in his power." The most profound manifestation of subjectness are two types of "self-intervention": 1) attention and control over influences (including our own motives and feelings, which usually control our actions, bypassing conscious control, and 2) changing one's lifestyle, one's identity. Logically, two conditions stand out as prerequisites for subjectivity: first, the ability to represent a wider range of possible futures than those that can be realized, and, secondly, the ability to carry out any chosen subset of them, as well as to interrupt any initiated action. Real people differ in the degree to which they conform to this ideal model, as well as in the way they generate action.

Thus, the determination of human actions is very far from simple linear causality. Harre characterizes the system of regulation of human actions in cybernetic concepts of multi-level and multi-top. "This is a system that can examine each causal influence on it from the point of view of its correspondence to a set of principles built into the higher levels of the system. If the system is multi-vertex, its highest level will also be complex, capable of switching from one subsystem of this level to another. Such a system can have an infinite number of levels and each of them - an infinite number of subsystems.Such a system is capable of horizontal shifts, i.e. switch control of underlying levels from one subsystem to another of the same level.It is also capable of switching to upper levels, i.e. i.e. to placing horizontal shifts under the supervision and control of criteria systems of higher levels. This system is a pale shadow of those complex shifts and switchings occurring in the internal activity of real subjects ".

Self-efficacy theory: A. Bandura
According to the author of the socio-cognitive theory of personality and regulation of behavior A. Bandura, there is no more significant mechanism of subjectivity than belief in one's own effectiveness. "Perceived self-efficacy is a belief in one's own ability to organize and carry out the actions required in order to produce given results." If people are not convinced that their actions can produce the desired effects, they have little determination to act.

The basis of human freedom, according to Bandura, is the impact on oneself, which is possible due to the dual nature I - simultaneously as subject and object, and causally influences behavior in the same way as its external causes. "People have some influence on what they do through the alternatives they take into account, through predicting and evaluating the outcomes they present, including their own self-evaluative reactions, and through their assessment of their ability to accomplish what they envision" [there same, s. 7]. One of the main manifestations of subjective determination is the ability of people to act not as dictated by the forces of the external environment, but in situations of coercion - to resist it. It is thanks to the ability to influence themselves that people are to some extent the architects of their own destiny. Bandura's general formula boils down to the fact that "human behavior is determined, but determined in part by the individual himself, and not only by environmental factors" [ibid, p. 9].

On the one hand, self-efficacy is a universal motivational mechanism that operates in almost all spheres of life, on the other hand, the content of self-efficacy beliefs is specific to different areas. Therefore, Bandura considers the use of specific scales for diagnosing self-efficacy in different types of activity more appropriate than the development of a common standardized questionnaire.
Theory of self-determination and personal autonomy: E. Desi and R. Ryan
The theory of self-determination by E. Desi and R. Ryan also belongs to the most authoritative and developed theories of subjective causality. Self-determination in the context of this approach means a feeling of freedom in relation to both the forces of the external environment and the forces within the personality. According to the authors, the hypothesis of the existence of an internal need for self-determination "helps to predict and explain the development of behavior from simple reactivity to integrated values; from heteronomy to autonomy in relation to those types of behavior that are initially devoid of internal motivation" . In the latest works of these authors, the concept of autonomy comes to the fore. A person is called autonomous when he acts as a subject, based on a deep sense of himself. To be autonomous thus means to be self-initiated and self-regulating, in contrast to situations of coercion and seduction, when actions do not follow from a deep I. The quantitative measure of autonomy is the extent to which people live in harmony with their true self. I. The concept of autonomy refers both to the process of personal development and to its outcome; the first is reflected in the effect of organismic integration, and the second - in the integration I and self-determination of behavior. In turn, autonomous behavior leads to greater assimilation of experience and increased coherence and structure. I etc.

The authors distinguish three main personal orientations, following the mechanisms of regulation of their actions that are dominant in people: 1) autonomous orientation, based on the belief about the connection of conscious behavior With its results; the source of behavior is the awareness of one's needs and feelings; 2) controlled orientation, also based on a sense of the connection between behavior and its result, but the source of behavior is external requirements; 3) impersonal orientation, based on the belief that the result cannot be achieved purposefully and predictably.

Although these orientations are enduring characteristics of personality that manifest themselves in individual differences, Deci and Ryan substantiate a model of the gradual formation of personal autonomy through the internalization of motivation and the corresponding experience of control over behavior: from purely external motivation through the stages of introjection, identification and integration to internal motivation and autonomy. Autonomy appears in the latest works of the authors not just as one of the personality tendencies, but as a universal criterion and mechanism for normal development, the violation of which leads to various types of developmental pathology. Experimental evidence suggests, in particular, that greater autonomy correlates with a greater degree of congruence between behavior and feelings; a large amount of empirical data has been accumulated on the conditions that promote and, on the contrary, violate the development of autonomy in the process of personal development.
Other approaches in foreign psychology
Let us briefly dwell on several more approaches to the problem of freedom and self-determination in foreign psychology. W. Tageson in his synthetic version of humanistic psychology, relying not so much on general anthropological considerations as on specific psychological data, defines freedom as an experience of self-determination associated with self-awareness. "Psychological freedom or the power of self-determination is inextricably linked with the degree and extent of self-awareness (self-awareness) and thus is closely correlated with psychological health or authenticity" . It is formed in the process of individual development. The individual variable is the "zone of personal freedom", which also varies in different situations. Tyjson distinguishes three parameters of freedom: 1) its cognitive basis - the level of cognitive development, 2) the scope of external restrictions, 3) subconscious internal determinants and restrictions. The key process in gaining and expanding freedom is the reflexive awareness of the determinants and limitations of one's own activity. “As I more and more include in the field of awareness the subconscious depths of my personality (or peaks, if I gradually become aware of previously hidden or unrealized potentials), my psychological freedom grows” [ibid, p. 441].

Analysis of the problem of freedom and self-determination in post-Soviet psychology

In post-Soviet psychology over the past decade, original works have also appeared that pay tribute to the problems of freedom and self-determination of the individual.

In the multilevel model of personal self-regulation E.R. Kaliteevskaya and D.A. Leontiev (see ) freedom is considered as a form of activity, characterized by three features: awareness, mediation by the value "for what" and manageability at any point. Accordingly, the lack of freedom can be associated with a lack of understanding of the forces affecting the subject, with the lack of clear value orientations and with indecision, inability to interfere in the course of one's own life. Freedom is formed in ontogenesis in the process of acquiring by the individual the inner right to activity and value orientations. The critical period for the transformation of children's spontaneity into freedom as conscious activity is adolescence, when, under favorable circumstances, freedom (a form of activity) and responsibility (a form of regulation) are integrated into a single mechanism of autonomous self-determination of a mature personality. Psychologically unfavorable conditions for the development of a personality in ontogenesis, associated with an unstable self-attitude and lack of the right to one's own activity, on the contrary, lead to the experience of life as being entirely conditioned by external requirements, expectations and circumstances. The degree of development of individual freedom is manifested in the grounds for personal choices.

G.A. Ball defines freedom in the first approximation through the conditions conducive to the "harmonious deployment and manifestation of the versatile abilities of the individual" (p. 11). Ball's approach to the problem of internal or personal freedom is more descriptive-synthetic than analytical. Starting from the first definition, he formulates a number of integral psychological characteristics of the personality, acting as such conditions. At the same time, he practically does not touch upon the mechanisms of self-determination and autonomy at the level of a single action.

Finally, it is necessary to mention the concept of free causality by V.A. Petrovsky. He goes in an unconventional way, focusing on the analysis of various aspects I as carriers or sources of various kinds of causality. I acts in this approach as the subject of freedom, and freedom itself is associated with going beyond the limits pre-established in human activity - into the sphere of the infinite.

SOME THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The above review shows that, although the problem of freedom and self-determination of the personality is not yet included in the number of traditional psychological studies, nevertheless, the history of attempts to consider the phenomena of freedom, autonomy and self-determination as key to the study of motivation and personality is already quite solid. Obvious and "roll calls" between different authors, invariants in the understanding of freedom. Let's try to give the most general definition of freedom. It can be understood as the possibility of initiation, change or termination by the subject of his activity at any point in its course, as well as refusal from it. Freedom implies the possibility of overcoming all forms and types of determination of personality activity, external to the existing existential Self.(see), including their own attitudes, stereotypes, scenarios, character traits and psychodynamic complexes.

Let us single out a number of key, in our opinion, aspects of the problem of freedom and consider them separately.

1. Plurality and multi-level regulation of behavior. Transcendence. In the theories of V. Frankl and R. Harre, this aspect is manifested most clearly. The processes of human interaction with the world and the regulation of these processes are carried out at several levels. Higher regulatory instances, located at the highest levels, allow the subject to free himself from the determining influence of the lower ones, to transcend them. A flying plane does not cancel the laws of gravity, but it turns out to be able to oppose them with other forces and laws that overcome their influence, due to the fact that these laws are carefully taken into account in the design of the aircraft. The shift to a higher level of regulation, the transcendence of patterns operating at lower levels, give a person relative freedom, freeing him from many types of determination (but not from all). The general principle of such transcendence is expressed by Hegel's brilliant formula: "Circumstances and motives dominate a person only to the extent that he himself allows them to." Freedom thus consists in the ascent to a higher level of regulation, at which the others are overcome. This principle is deployed, in particular, in our proposed multi-regulatory model of personality (see).

2. Breaks in determination. bifurcation processes. How, in principle, can one get away from the laws of nature acting at all levels of the development of matter? Is the idea of complete freedom compatible with the scientific picture of the world as a whole? Existential psychology owes a lot to the Nobel Laureate in Chemistry I. Prigogine, who made possible a positive answer to this question. He discovered the so-called bifurcation processes in inanimate nature, at a certain point of which a break in determination occurs; an unstable process can go either in one or the other direction, and this "choice" is not deterministic, it depends on random factors. Let causal determinism be insurmountable "on the forehead", it is not continuous; even if there are breaks in determination in inorganic processes, they certainly exist in human behavior. The "pauses" between the stimulus and the response that R. May spoke about, apparently, are these bifurcation points, in which there is no other determinism, except for the determining force of my conscious decision.

3. Consciousness as the basis of freedom. In almost all the approaches discussed above, the authors in one form or another emphasized the role of consciousness. Of course, awareness of the factors that influence my behavior is crucial in freeing myself from their influence. But we are talking about awareness not only of what is, but also of what is not yet there - awareness of existing opportunities, as well as anticipation of future options. In general, the category of possibility, which is just beginning to enter the lexicon of psychologists (see "explanation from the fourth glance"), in our opinion, has an extremely high explanatory potential, and its development can significantly advance the study of personality self-determination.

I cannot be free unless I am aware of the forces influencing my actions. I cannot be free unless I am aware of the here-and-now possibilities for my actions. I cannot be free if I am not aware of the consequences that certain actions will entail. Finally, I cannot be free if I am not aware of what I want, I am not aware of my goals and desires. One of the first and clearest philosophical definitions of freedom, based on the central idea of awareness, is the definition of it as the ability to make a decision with knowledge of the matter. One of the most interesting psychological incarnations of the idea of awareness is the theory of needs by S. Maddi, who identifies, along with biological and social needs, a group of so-called psychological needs - in imagination, judgment and symbolization. It is the dominance of psychological needs that determines the path of personality development, which Maddy calls individualistic and which is based on self-determination, in contrast to the conformist path of development, determined by the dominance of biological and social needs.

Finally, another aspect of the problem of consciousness in the context of the problem of freedom is connected with the fundamental attribution error already mentioned. From this tendency to underestimate the role of external causes of behavior, if one is in the position of an outside observer, and to overestimate them, if one takes the position of an acting subject, the conclusion follows about the natural blindness to one's own subjectness. However, it can be cured or compensated, at least in part, by learning to take the position of an observer in relation to oneself, to look at oneself "from the side" or "from above". This change of perspective sometimes comes as an insight, but is also amenable to training; it, as far as we can judge from unsystematized experience, leads to a significant increase in the freedom attributed to oneself, and helps to see the possibilities of actively changing the situation in the right direction.

4. Instrumental resources of freedom. This aspect of the problem of freedom lies on the surface. It is fairly obvious that while a certain degree of freedom is retained even in a concentration camp, the amount of freedom available varies from situation to situation. We prefer to talk about the resources of freedom, distinguishing between external resources, given by the objective situation, and internal resources, given by the instrumental equipment of the subject. The former define an abstract field of available possibilities in a situation; the latter determine which of these possibilities a particular subject, possessing certain physical and mental abilities and skills, is able to use, and which are not. The combination of internal and external resources determines degree of freedom the subject in this situation.

Let's explain this with examples. If a person needs to cross a river, there are different possibilities: firstly, to look for a bridge or a ford, secondly, to cross the river in a boat or raft, and thirdly, to swim across it. But if the first two possibilities are open to anyone, the third can only be taken into account by a person who can swim. In this situation, he has one opportunity more and, therefore, more free than a person deprived of this skill. The ability to drive a car, work with a computer, speak foreign languages, shoot well, etc. and so on. in appropriate situations will give their owner additional degrees of freedom. Of course, different abilities and skills differ in the breadth of the range of situations in which they can benefit their possessor; for example, proficiency in English may benefit more often than proficiency in French or Spanish, much less Finnish or Bulgarian. But this difference is purely probabilistic; Finnish may be more important than English in certain situations.

In addition to external (situational) and internal (personal) instrumental resources of freedom, there are two more groups of them that occupy an intermediate position between them. Firstly, these are social resources: social position, status, privileges and personal relationships that allow a person in a social situation to act in a way that others cannot (an example is "telephone law"). These resources, however, are ambivalent because, by increasing the degree of freedom on the one hand, on the other hand, they increase the degree of lack of freedom, imposing additional obligations and introducing additional "rules of the game". Secondly, these are material resources (money and other material goods). They, of course, expand the space of possibilities, but "work" only insofar as they are directly in the given situation at the disposal of the subject (but can be separated from him), while personal resources are inalienable.

5. The value base of freedom. It is about what gives meaning to freedom, distinguishing the positive "freedom to" from the negative "freedom from". Releasing restrictions is not enough; so that freedom does not degenerate into arbitrariness, its value-semantic justification is necessary. We can refer to two more ideas that are close in their essence. One of them is the idea of "telosponding" by J. Richlak, suggesting that human actions are always based on a system of prerequisites that make the subject's actions consistent, intelligible and predictable. Such a system of prerequisites, however, is not set, but is chosen by the subject himself and can be changed. This act of changing the determinants of one's behavior, which is a unique property of human consciousness, is what Richluck calls "goal-setting." Another idea emphasized by the prominent cultural anthropologist D. Lee. - the need for certain socio-cultural structures for the implementation of human freedom. According to Lee, these structures act as limiting freedom only for an outside observer; from the point of view of a representative of the culture under consideration, freedom without them is impossible. We associate the value basis of freedom with the existential values according to A. Maslow, their special role and mechanisms of functioning. This issue deserves special detailed consideration (see).

At the end of this article, we leave it open. Our task was limited to posing the problem and indicating the main guidelines for its more detailed development. What we consider most important is the shift in the perspective of human actions, the need for which is undoubtedly overdue. This was noticed three decades ago. "It is a mistake to think that behavior should be the dependent variable in psychological research. For the individual himself, it is the independent variable."

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common Slavic.) - 1. in the Homeric epic - free man - this is one who acts without compulsion, in accordance with his own nature; 2. for Pythagoras - freedom is the essence of the "yoke of necessity"; 3. according to A. Schopenhauer - freedom is the highest and independent of the world principle of being; 4. according to K. Marx - freedom is a conscious necessity; 5. in the words of one of the American presidents, "the freedom of one person ends where the freedom of another begins"; 6. in some areas of psychology - the hypothetical ability of a person to completely control his choices, decisions. Existential psychology insists on the existence of unlimited human free will. Another, this time already a deterministic extreme, is the denial of any free will in a human being in general, as is characteristic, in particular, of psychoanalysis and behaviorism; 7. a state in which an individual is not burdened with illnesses, deprivations, depressing social and other problems; 8. in voluntarism - freedom is when a person does what he wants, and not what is needed or what is required of him in society, as if it were his immediate desires that corresponded to the true human essence. Everyday understanding of freedom most often coincides with the voluntaristic one. Understanding the relativity of any freedom, under favorable conditions for the development of moral and legal consciousness of personality formation, is usually realized by adolescence, but this awareness does not come to all people and not fully even at the age of maturity. In general, this term is used too loosely, like a spot in a Rorschach test, often demagogically “freely” or with manipulative goals, to give it some meaning without clarifying definitions just because talking about freedom characterizes an individual in a certain way. Thus, the President of the Russian Federation, starting from 2008, repeats from time to time, like a magic spell, that “freedom is better than lack of freedom”, without explaining what exactly he means by these terms, what kind of freedom, from what or whom, for Who and for what exactly does freedom exist? This is the same as saying that the unknown "X" is better than the less known "Y". The President should probably re-read more carefully not Trotsky, but F. M. Dostoevsky, who in the story “Winter Notes on a Summer Journey” says the following about freedom: “What is liberte? Freedom. What freedom? Equal freedom for everyone to do whatever they want within the limits of the law. Does freedom give everyone a million? No. What is a man without a million? A man without a million is not the one who does anything, but the one with whom they do whatever they want. Freedom, as G.K. Lichtenberg (1742-1799), best characterizes not anything in particular, but how it is abused; 9. in modern philosophy - the universal of the culture of the subjective series, fixing the possibility of activity and behavior in the absence of external goal-setting (Mozheiko, 2001).

Liberty

freedom). The state of a person who is ready for change is in her ability to know about her predestination. Freedom is born from the awareness of the inevitability of one's fate and, according to May, involves the ability to "always keep several different possibilities in mind, even if at the moment we are not entirely clear how exactly we should act." May distinguished between two types of freedom - freedom of action (freedom of action) and freedom of being (freedom of being). The first he called existential freedom, the second - essential freedom.

FREEDOM

The term is used in psychology in two senses: 1. It is understood that someone controls his own choices, decisions, actions, etc. The feeling that external factors play little or no role in a person's behavior. This meaning is conveyed by phrases such as "freedom of speech" and so on. 2. A state in which a person is (relatively) free from the burden of painful situations, harmful stimuli, hunger, pain, illness, etc. This meaning is usually conveyed by sentences beginning with "Freedom from...". In the pragmatics of everyday life, these two freedoms are closely intertwined, but if their conceptual distinction is not respected, this will lead to philosophical and political confusion. The former is closer in meaning to the doctrine of good will; the latter concerns control issues (2). See social power and behaviorist position on the role of reinforcement and punishment.

Approaches to understanding freedom in psychology. Personal freedom: how to understand that you are a free person? Cognitive mechanisms of goal setting

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