V.N. Druzhinin
LIFE OPTIONS
OUTLINES OF EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY
"EXISTENTIAL CONSTRUCTION",
OR LIFE AS A SUBJECT OF CREATIVITY
Like emerald seekers rummaging through tons of sand and gravel, we hope to find happiness here and now.
Consciousness, reason and imagination violated the "harmony" of animal existence. Their appearance has turned man into an anomaly, into a whim of the universe. Man is a part of nature, he is subject to physical laws and is not able to change them; and yet he goes beyond the limits of nature ... Thrown into this world at a certain place and time, he is also randomly expelled from it. Realizing himself, he understands his helplessness and the limitations of his own existence. He foresees the end - death. He will never free himself from the dichotomy of his existence; he cannot get rid of the body while he is alive, and the body makes him want to live.
We have been given a moment of time and a particle of freedom in order to dispose of our moment, a spark of consciousness that lit up the world. The feeling of time as a resource, "shagreen skin", decreasing regardless of the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of our desires (contrary to O. Balzac), is a feeling inherent only in adults who have the opportunity and desire to reflect on life.
A person immersed in everyday life is protected from the fear of death. This is the most reliable defense mechanism - the ability to immerse yourself in worries and responsibilities without thinking about the meaning of life.
Actually, not everyone is given the opportunity to reflect on the topic "to be or not to be." The vast majority of people on Earth are still immersed in the hardships of everyday existence: they need to treat their children and take care of aging parents, earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow, study or devote eight, and sometimes more hours, to service every day.
People break out of the embrace of "life-survival", arranging holidays for themselves: birthdays, "golden" and "silver" weddings, new year holidays and carnivals. But social conditions again immerse them in the struggle with circumstances. The meager salaries and pensions force people to take extra effort to maintain their existence at the minimum acceptable level. But again they turn off electricity, gas or hot water, and you need to get a Russian "potbelly stove" or a Japanese kerosene stove. A person cannot get used to cold, hunger and pain, and there is no money for medicines...
In relation to millions of people, psychological reasoning about the active choice of a life path and self-actualization sounds at least ridiculous.
People do not want to "have" and do not want to "be" because it is the result of their choice (conscious or unconscious), but because the need for biological, psychological and social survival requires effort to acquire sausages, clothes, shoes, furniture, cars.
The pressure on the personality exerted by the social environment, caste, class is so great that the personality cannot but acquire attributes that again and again symbolize belonging to a certain stratum, otherwise it will be thrown out of bounds. social group which is sometimes equivalent to psychological and even physical death. This is how people died, abandoned by their relatives, in the Paleolithic era.
If tens of millions of inhabitants of Russia in early XXI centuries lead "life-survival", then what existential problems we - psychologists - have to decide?
Problems of existence arise in a person who has the opportunity to choose and then reconsider his decision, who has the opportunity to think about the meaning of his own and universal existence. The reversibility of life choices is an unrealizable idea. Time is irreversible - you cannot enter the same river twice, but everyone can think about the meaning of their life.
A person who has realized the time of his life as an irreplaceable and limited resource can make an attempt to reconstruct his life. But this requires unique conditions. First, none external events, the impact of other people, natural and mental disasters, etc. should not be taken into account.
Secondly, a person should have a minimum external guarantee of his long-term physiological existence: a roof over his head, the amount on the account or long-term work, provision for old age, the possibility of treatment in case of illness, etc. - all that we call "social security".
It is no coincidence that in the West people actively design their lives and manage time as a resource after retirement. They choose their hobbies, actively travel, communicate, and participate in social life. As a rule, all this fits into the framework of "life as a pastime." For everyone else who wants to make full use of time, there are hedonistic and altruistic options. A variation on the theme of the latter is "reverence for life" by Albert Schweitzer, serving people, saving their lives. Let me remind you that A. Schweitzer devoted himself to medical practice, namely, to caring for lepers in Gabon, far from European civilization. But the main way is a creative approach to the most individual life, realized as a kind of reflexive version of "life as creativity" (see the corresponding chapter).
The object of construction is life itself, either one's own or someone else's. But "creative" consciousness is not inherent in everyone. It is difficult to invent a life option on your own. Therefore, at the end of the 20th century, a market for "lifestyles" arose. Many intellectual currents, schools, sects, religious communities, public organizations offer a variety of "lifestyles" to choose from, whether it be the "warrior's path" or participation in a psychotherapeutic "encounter group", which for many really turns into a way of life.
The freedom to choose or design your own lifestyle is the achievement of a post-industrial, information society. Life turns into a creative process of re-creating life itself. And, of course, many "handicraft" attempts to create their own variants of being are not comparable with the easy possibility of choosing these options, just as the quality of a home-made car and a Mercedes SL class are not comparable in quality.
The industry of "life options" is opposed not only by individual, but also by group construction. The two environments for its implementation are the youth subculture and the subculture of the elderly. Both those and others are outside the "real life": some - still, others - already. In my opinion, so far attempts to create new "variants of life" have been of little success.
The movements of "beatniks", "hippies", "punks" are characterized not only by external paraphernalia, actions and some "ideology", but also psychological approach to life.
But do these approaches go beyond the options already outlined here in this book? The hippie subculture, associated with the cult of drugs and altered states of consciousness, sex, creativity and passive rejection of life as a struggle, is undoubtedly a variant of "life-withdrawal" ("life is a dream"). "Punks", aggressive and not hiding their destructiveness, embody "life-struggle" by their behavior (see the chapter "Life against life").
Artemy Troitsky recalls in his book "Rock in the USSR" (in English version"Back in USSR") that Secretary of the Central Committee Yegor Ligachev objected to the initiative to organize the concert "Rock Against Drugs": "Fighting rock against drugs is the same as prostitution against venereal diseases." I dare to say that E. Ligachev was competent, this is evidenced by the fate of rock musicians Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morisson and many, many others.
Failure does not stop inventors. Although the lifestyles of the ancient Athenian cynics, the Chinese followers of Lao Tzu or the Egyptian pilgrims are very close to some of those promoted today.
And yet, the end of the 20th century provided incredible opportunities for at least some people to get rid of the need for survival, from the dictates of society, without going beyond the boundaries of the community, without giving up the benefits of civilization and cultural achievements, as the same cynics had to do in order to gain freedom of choice.
Isn't this way out of the "realm of necessity" into the "realm of freedom" dreamed of by Karl Marx another illusion? Maybe the idea that each person develops an individual lifestyle - an idea that belongs to Alfred Adler - will soon cease to be a wish, a theoretical construction and become a reality?
But is a person able to take advantage of this opportunity? the main problem- in overcoming the pressure of mass production of "lifestyles" on the human consumer.
What is offered on the market? Naturally, the main subject of speculation is human immortality, or at least the extension of life. Here is the winner of the hit parade - "Dianetics", produced by R. Hubbard.
Countless "health systems" recommend jogging and dieting, bodybuilding and aerobics: a good appearance And inner health create the illusion of immortality and prolong youth. But with systems promoting healthy lifestyle life, competing systems that offer different ways to "leave" or "fly away". Information civilization has given rise to computer virtual reality. Computer games are an invention that has transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of people. They, like any game, are a simplified model of "real life". Computer graphics allows you to create a "presence effect" so that a person can get away from life's problems:
"Today, leaving the real world with the help of systematic and natural substances is considered a serious violation of laws in most developed countries. Perhaps computer games exist only because no one expected the threat of derealization of consciousness from computers. Computer illusion destroys the human body less. It is more manageable - the player can turn away from the monitor at any time or simply close his eyes ".
A revolution in the creation of the effect of presence was the invention of a system that includes a "glove", a "virtual reality helmet" and software that delivers a controlled synthesized television image to each human eye. Sensors track the position of the player's head, and the computer generates a picture of the world seen from a given point in virtual space from the required angle of view. According to psychologists, being in virtual reality, in the world of a computer game, is a variant of "awake sleep". A person is in an altered state of consciousness and enjoys it: “Consciousness is not needed for the game: the effect of presence ... is created from invariants, the world of the game is made of archetypes. The most striking sign of the unconscious orientation of Doom-shaped games is the attitude towards the category of time. In consciousness, it exists: by a strong-willed decision, a person can postpone his carnal needs “for later” or bring their fulfillment in line with past experience. There is no time in the unconscious and in Doom-shaped games. of the future: corpses disappear, there are no traces of a shootout. There is an illusion of the reversibility of actions, the absence of the "arrow of time" in the world and the feeling of eternity, the renewability of existence. The flow of life experience becomes absolutely controlled. So, computer virtual reality is another version of "life-dream", "life-sleep", a modern substitute for alcohol, drugs and psychotechnics that immerse a person in "nirvana". This is one of the many attempts to give a person the opportunity to forget, to get away from complexity. real life and feel out of time.
But isn't immersing yourself in the worries of everyday life the same way to get away from the problem of life and death as a computer game or a vacation in the Canary Islands? Consider the words of Blaise Pascal:
“From childhood, a person only hears that he should take care of his own well-being and good name and of his friends, and in addition about the well-being and good name of these friends. business and duties, that from dawn to dusk he is in vanity and worries. “What a strange way to lead a person to happiness,” you say. - The most faithful, to make him unhappy! "- How, most faithful? There is much more true: take away these worries from him, and he will begin to think what he is, where he came from, where he is going - that is why it is necessary to plunge him headlong into affairs, turning him away from thoughts. And therefore, having invented for him a lot important activities, he is advised to devote every free hour to games, amusements, not to give himself a single minute of respite.
Extreme, "pure" versions of life are ideal types and are rarely realized in reality. The life of every average person is a mosaic: rituals and "preparation for life", drinking and love in the bosom of nature, work duties and hobbies. As from the details of the designer, our one and only life is assembled from multi-colored pieces of time.
And, thank God, if there is a place for creativity in it - the realization of our small inner wealth, which is expensive because it disappears with us.
Therefore, attempts to deprive us of that small fraction of freedom to manage ourselves and our lives, which is released to us by the grace of nature or the Lord God, are outraged. There is nothing more tragic than seeing a dash, a void between two dates - birth and death. Fortunately, we will not see our dash.
And yet a person who is powerless before death is not powerless before the fear of death. Psychological wizards give advice on how not to be afraid of death, and deserve nothing but irony. Man is afraid, but he must not surrender to the enemy, who will inevitably win. Spiritual stability, the will of resistance prolong the life of a person, and prolong the life of humanity. In the face of an obvious enemy - destructive aggression ("anti-life") and in front of an elusive enemy - death, he does not give up, beating off seconds, minutes, days, and sometimes even years in a hopeless, in fact, duel. Not relying on magicians from science - doctors, physiologists, geneticists, he solves the problem with available means, mobilizes himself and only occasionally resorts to the help of doctors and psychologists.
He invents, constructs for himself the meaning of life, despite the fact that life and the world as a whole are devoid of any meaning. But the illusion of a "meaning of life" that transcends individual human existence is the only illusion that deserves a good word. And then a person's life turns into a "life-service" to other people, to the cause, to the world as a whole, to God, etc. Christ, the Savior of mankind, came into the world by sacrificing himself. Rescuer is perhaps the most respected profession today, he does not perform self-sacrifice, but, clearing the rubble of being, gives us a chance to look at the beauty of the world again and feel the tragedy with our skin own life.
Three roles are worthy of a person: the role of rescuer, protector and creator. Creator, designer, worker, artist, scientist, student and teacher, mother and father, friend and girlfriend - they reproduce and renew life. Protector, policeman, soldier, firefighter and watchman protect life from external threats. The rescuer, the doctor, the psychologist, the priest prolong the physical and spiritual life. In a duel with destructive aggression and the meaninglessness of existence, the only meaning of individual existence is not illusory: the continuation of the life of mankind. Only the continuation of our spiritual life in others - in children, students, friends, loved ones - gives a chance that the memory of us will survive. For it is impossible after death to force people to remember themselves kind word. If the "geniuses" who destroyed millions live in the memory of new generations through the efforts of death worshipers, then we also have a small chance to preserve the memory of ourselves for a few more decades thanks to the love for people. This is the only chance, because our memory, no matter what Frankl wrote, will die with us.
Therefore, let us thank fate and chance that has thrown us into this tiny patch of "space-time", in an era when you can - I hope - think, speak and act in accordance with your desires and abilities, without risking much, when you can create your own unique life. Sometimes they are allowed to live only according to the canon, completely reproducing the script written by someone. There are times when variations on the path of life within a given theme are acceptable.
In the best eras, improvisation, freedom of thoughts and actions within the framework of the rules are allowed and welcomed. Creativity reigns when people need new rules of life. But when the thirst for change is combined with the lack of responsibility and the self-willed "I" comes to the fore, creativity grows into absurdity.
Canon - variation - improvisation - creativity - absurdity: there is a choice!
The book you are holding in your hands was written in the summer of 2000, without any obligation on my part to the future reader, today's superiors or my scientific past.
This text is dedicated psychological problems human life(and death). It is based only on the author's personal reflections, flavored with quotations and unwitting borrowings from books read over the years since he learned to read. ...This book is not Scientific research, perhaps one big hypothesis, stretched over several printed sheets. I myself cannot accurately determine its genre, just as I will not risk recommending it to everyone with a light heart ...
EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY AS A SCIENCE
That is, your essence as a reader, my essence, the essence of Spinoza's man, Butler's man, Kant's man, and every man as such, is nothing but an aspiration, an effort aimed at continuing to be a man without dying.
Miguel de Unamuno.
Genuine scientific discussions are and will be conducted not at conferences and seminars, but in smoking rooms, at a table in a cafe or on the way to the institute. Between us - me, a 25-year-old junior researcher, and a 50-year-old doctor of sciences - there was a conversation on a banal Marxist topic for that time: about the adequacy of reflection. By the way, the doctor of sciences said: "Psychic reflection cannot be adequate, because only inadequacy ensures the life of a person. An astronaut in spaceship a wall separates from darkness, absolute zero and vacuum, which, if desired, any karateka can break through with his fist. If he reflected this - every minute with his consciousness, he would immediately go crazy ... "
Fantasies, illusions and visions help a person survive, or rather live a period of time until the time allotted to him by chance and genetics. Will the truth about his life help him? Nothing excites a person like his own destiny. Prophets, soothsayers, forecasters and fortune-tellers collect tribute from human anxiety and fear of premature death.
The human personality does not correlate with its behavior, activities, etc., but with its life and destiny, which is not always possible to choose, but it is given to everyone who is born to live. If a person keeps in mind every moment the thought that he is mortal, will he want to live? And what is the science of individual life for?
Existential psychology is the science of how human destiny depends on a person's attitude to life and death. It is designed to explain why a person's life develops in a certain way, and not otherwise. Any knowledge imposes a restriction on the degree of freedom of behavior of the object being studied, and a person from the moment of birth is deprived of this freedom, because it is not in his will to be born and not in his will to die. He can manage the time of his life, more precisely - death (and even then not always).
Existential psychology is the science of the diversity and typology of human lives, for just as all people are unique, their life paths are equally unique. Universal external events - wars, catastrophes, revolutions and, on the contrary, stabilization and conservation of social life make our lives similar. Belonging to a generation, nation, culture, religious denomination turns people's fates into socially typical ones. But through the typical and the universal, sprouts of the special and the unique break through. This is the science of the dissimilarity of human destinies.
Existential psychology is the science of human consciousness and subjective reality, which is a reflection of life in the form of an individual life path. There is a choice determined by the unconscious, after the works of 3. Freud and the results of modern depth psychology it's stupid to deny it. However, only consciousness allows a person to correlate himself with his own life, to pose and try to solve the problems of his individual existence, and not just answer the Hamlet question: "To be or not to be."
Erich Fromm writes clearly and expressively about this:
"Consciousness makes a person somehow anomalous phenomenon nature, the grotesque, the irony of the universe. He is a part of nature, subject to its physical laws and unable to change them. At the same time, it seems to be opposed to nature, separated from it, although it is part of it. He is connected by blood ties and at the same time feels rootless. Thrown into this world by accident, a person is forced to live by chance and against his own will must leave this world. And since he has self-consciousness, he sees his impotence and the finiteness of his being. He is never free from reflexes. He lives in eternal division. He cannot free himself from his body, nor from his faculty of thought."
“Man cannot live only as a successor of the family, as a kind of model of his species. It is HE who lives. Man is the only living being who feels uncomfortable in nature, not at ease: he feels expelled from paradise. And this is the only living being for whom his own existence is a problem; he must solve it himself, and no one can help him in this. existential contradictions in a person constantly lead to a violation of his internal balance. This state distinguishes him from an animal living in "harmony" with nature ".
Man, unlike animals, does not have an "ecological niche" for which the process of evolution has prepared him. It would be more accurate to say: a person must choose whether to create this existential niche or go beyond the limits given to him by circumstances. Human biology does not correspond to its existence in the aquatic environment, in the air or in space: but a person swims in the seas and rivers, dives under water, pilots airplanes and spaceships.
Existential psychology is the daughter of existential philosophy and half-sister of existential psychotherapy. For several centuries of its existence, existential philosophy, under various names, has posed the most important problems of individual human existence and, like any philosophy, has not solved them, because the task of philosophy is not to solve problems, but to provide their solution to science. The philosophy of life by F. Nietzsche and M. Unamuno, the Russian religious philosophy of S. Frank and G. Shpet, etc., etc. - support existential psychology.
Developmental psychology and developmental psychology closely border on existential psychology, more precisely, we are talking about the discipline called life span developmental psychology. It operates with the concepts of "time of life", "space of life" and explores mental development individual from birth to death. The main reason for personality change, according to experts in the field of life development psychology, is age and associated changes in the social, socio-psychological, psychological and psycho-physiological status of the individual.
The connection with existential psychotherapy is more difficult. The psychologist and the psychotherapist strive to help their neighbor, and even more so the distant (since - for a fee), to solve life problems. But sometimes a psychologist resembles a rescuer who rushes to the aid of a person drowning in a raging sea, not only not having scuba gear with him, but also not knowing how to swim at all.
The book you are holding in your hands was written in the summer of 2000, without any obligations on my part to the future reader, today's superiors or my scientific past. This text is devoted to the psychological problems of human life (and death). It is based only on the author's personal thoughts, flavored with quotations and involuntary borrowings from books read over many years. Four basic skills: speaking, reading, writing and counting - must be acquired by the child. Only two of them really help people live. A person for whom speech is the main tool, namely a scientist, writer, philosopher, therapist, teacher, is forced to neglect the “golden rule” of social life: “silence is golden”. Especially in a hopeless situation is a person who is doomed by the profession to seek the truth, or rather, who seriously believes that the duty of a scientist is to discover it.
However, this book is not a scientific study, perhaps one big hypothesis, stretching over several printed sheets. I myself cannot accurately determine its genre, just as I will not risk recommending it to everyone with a light heart. But as one shabby publisher told me: "Any book can be published, just as any book can be sold."
Existential psychology as a science
“That is, your essence, reader, my essence, the essence of Spinoza's man, Butler's man, Kant's man, and every man as such, is nothing but an aspiration, an effort aimed at continuing to be a man without dying.”
Miguel de Unamuno
Genuine scientific discussions are and will be conducted not at conferences and seminars, but in smoking rooms, at a table in a cafe or on the way to the institute. Between us - me, a 25-year-old junior researcher, and a 50-year-old doctor of sciences - there was a conversation on a banal Marxist topic for that time: about the adequacy of reflection. By the way, the doctor of sciences said: “Psychic reflection cannot be adequate, because only inadequacy ensures the life of a person. An astronaut in a spaceship is separated from darkness, absolute zero and vacuum by a wall, which, if desired, can be punched by any karateka. If he reflected this - every minute with his consciousness, he would immediately go crazy ... "
Fantasies, illusions and visions help a person survive, or rather live a period of time until the time allotted to him by chance and genetics. Will the truth about his life help him? Nothing excites a person like his own destiny. Prophets, soothsayers, forecasters and fortune-tellers collect tribute from human anxiety and fear of premature death.
The human personality does not correlate with its behavior, activities, etc., but with its life and destiny, which is not always possible to choose, but it is given to everyone who is born to live.
If a person keeps in mind every moment the thought that he is mortal, will he want to live? And what is the science of individual life for?
Existential psychology is the science of how human destiny depends on a person's attitude to life and death. It is designed to explain why a person's life develops in a certain way, and not otherwise. Any knowledge imposes a restriction on the degree of freedom of behavior of the object being studied, and a person from the moment of birth is deprived of this freedom, because it is not in his will to be born and not in his will to die. He can manage the time of his life, more precisely - death (and even then - not always).
Existential psychology is the science of the diversity and typology of human lives, for just as all people are unique, their life paths are equally unique. Universal external events - wars, catastrophes, revolutions and, on the contrary, stabilization and conservation of social life make our lives similar. Belonging to a generation, nation, culture, religious denomination turns people's fates into socially typical ones. But through the typical and the universal, sprouts of the special and the unique break through. This is the science of the dissimilarity of human destinies.
Existential psychology is the science of human consciousness and subjective reality, which is a reflection of life in the form of an individual life path. There is a choice determined by the unconscious, after the works of Z. Freud and the results of modern depth psychology, it is foolish to deny this. However, only consciousness allows a person to correlate himself with his own life, to pose and try to solve the problems of his individual existence, and not just answer the Hamlet question: "To be or not to be."
Erich Fromm writes clearly and expressively about this: “Consciousness makes a person some kind of an anomalous phenomenon of nature, a grotesque, an irony of the Universe. He is a part of nature, subject to its physical laws and unable to change them. At the same time, it seems to be opposed to nature, separated from it, although it is part of it. He is connected by blood ties and at the same time feels rootless. Thrown into this world by accident, a person is forced to live by chance and against his own will must leave this world. And since he has self-consciousness, he sees his impotence and the finiteness of his being. He is never free from reflexes. He lives in eternal division. He cannot free himself from his body, nor from his ability to think." And further: “A person cannot live only as a successor of the family, as a kind of model of his species. It is HE who lives. Man is the only living being who feels uncomfortable in nature, not at ease: after all, he feels expelled from paradise. And it is the only living being for which its own existence is a problem; he must solve it himself, and no one can help him in this. He cannot return to a subhuman state of "harmony" with nature, and he does not know where he will end up if he moves on. Existential contradictions in a person constantly lead to a violation of his internal balance. This state distinguishes him from an animal living in “harmony” with nature. 1
Fromm Erich. Anatomy of human destructiveness. M.: Respublika, 1994. S. 195–196.
Man, unlike the animal, does not have an “ecological niche” for which the process of evolution has prepared him. It would be more accurate to say: a person must choose whether to create this existential niche or go beyond the limits given to him by circumstances. Human biology does not correspond to its existence in the aquatic environment, in the air or in space, but a person swims in the seas and rivers, dives under water, pilots airplanes and spaceships.
Existential psychology is the daughter of existential philosophy and half-sister of existential psychotherapy. For several centuries of its existence, existential philosophy, under various names, has posed the most important problems of individual human existence and, like any philosophy, has not solved them, because the task of philosophy is not to solve problems, but to provide their solution to science. The philosophy of life by F. Nietzsche and M. Unamuno, the Russian religious philosophy of S. Frank and G. Shpet, etc., etc., are the basis of existential psychology.
Existential psychology is closely related to developmental psychology and developmental psychology, more precisely, we are talking about the discipline called life span developmental psychology. It operates with the concepts of "time of life", "space of life" and explores the mental development of the individual from birth to death. The main reason for personality change, according to experts in the field of life development psychology, is age and associated changes in the social, socio-psychological, psychological and psycho-physiological status of the individual.
The connection with existential psychotherapy is more difficult. The psychologist and psychotherapist strive to help their neighbor, and even more so - the distant one (because - for a fee), to solve life's problems. But sometimes a psychologist resembles a rescuer who rushes to the aid of a person drowning in a raging sea, not only not having scuba gear with him, but also not knowing how to swim at all.
Unlike existential psychotherapy, existential psychology does not help to live, but describes and explains life. Does “passive” knowledge help a person? To the extent that his individual consciousness is a sufficient tool for managing his own behavior and, accordingly, building his own life.
In any case, to paraphrase Karl Marx, I would say that psychologists have so far tried to change human life, while the task is to explain it. Knowing the causes and acting on them, you can change the consequences, but not cancel them. It is impossible to overcome the gravity of the earth by force of will.
So, personality as integrity is correlated with individual life as integrity, the process of existence of personality, its changes in interaction with the world is life.
“World” is not a very good term, it would be more correct to say “environment”, “environment” (“ environment”), that is, a certain part of the world with which a person can actually or potentially interact. In the future, I will use the term “world” in the sense of “individual living environment of a person”, without being original, since in Russian psychology such a relationship between the concepts of “person” and “world” was fixed by S. L. Rubinshtein.
Man, the world and life (since the existential psychologist deals with these realities) must be described by means of psychological categories, and not biological, physical, social, cultural, etc.
Religion, like philosophy, tries to solve the problems of individual human existence. Symbiosis gives rise to religious philosophy: Thomism, neo-Thomism, Christian existentialism, etc. When we researchers talk about religion, for some reason, we always mean various options Christianity, and meanwhile the problems of "how to live" (ethics) and "how a person lives" (psychology) are not specific to him. Moreover, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, as well as Confucianism and, especially, Taoism provide their own answers to these questions. In addition to ethical prescriptions, explicitly or implicitly, they are based on the concepts of individual human life "as it really is."
The symbiosis of religion and psychology gave rise to various versions of Eastern psychotechniques, and in Western European and North American cultures a “Christian psychology” arose, based on the Christian model of man and his being. Accordingly, there are at least as many versions of Christian psychology as there are Christian denominations.
The advantage of Christian psychology over other versions of the psychology of life is that it explicitly declares its irrational foundations. Meanwhile, as psychoanalysis and other versions of depth psychology, not to mention "Marxist psychology", they are either masked (according to the principle "we write two, zero in the mind"), or they are not reflected. The exception is humanistic psychology. But the idea of a person as a self-developing, active, self-actualizing creator, striving for altruistic relationships with the world (if, of course, a humanistically oriented psychotherapist helps him), is extremely far from the reality that we encounter every day! However, every psychologist has the right to have his own opinion on this matter.
Christian psychology, like other versions of existential psychology, is aimed at helping a particular person, since the recipes for help have been developed by the practice of Christianity and are known to psychologists. It is less aimed at research, at an impartial fixation of real life. And yet, the model of a person offered by Christian psychology is closer and more understandable to me than other options.
The psychologist who deals with the problems of individual human life finds himself in the same predicament as the cosmologist who studies the development of the stars and galaxies. He cannot conduct a rigorous natural experiment, he has no right to change human destiny if a person does not ask him to. Hence such a close connection between practical and existential psychology: almost all theories of human life are created by practicing psychologists, psychotherapists, teachers, and doctors. Practice, live observations, conversations are the richest source of information about the daily existence of a person. A considerable share in the knowledge of the problems of life is also personal experience psychologists, acquired often under the most tragic circumstances.
A prisoner of a concentration camp who miraculously survived next to the furnace of a crematorium, Viktor Frankl founded logotherapy. Having survived at least five marriages and divorces, Russian psychologists (I will not name names) create family and marriage consultations and teach others how to build interpersonal relationships. Critical external circumstances and problems in self-construction of one's own life are two sources of enthusiasm for existential psychology (the author applies this maxim to himself too).
An existential psychologist treats life as a whole, but is forced to divide it into life stages, which are determined by the choice of lifestyle, and within these stages isolate life events.
The psychologist cannot empirically embrace individual life. First, she's not shorter than him. personal life, therefore, the observation of the full life cycle of one person by one psychologist is impossible, and several psychologists for one observed is an exorbitant luxury. Secondly, observation cannot be continuous, because an essential part of a person's life is hidden from others, and the psychologist himself has the right to privacy. Thirdly, no one will ever agree to an invasion of their own lives, the lives of their children. Man is not Drosophila and not E. coli.
So, if observation in existential psychology is possible, then it is situational, fragmentary in time and incomplete. The impossibility of using observation to study the process of individual human life in the "natural environment" and in real physical time is the main criterion separating existential psychology from natural science.
Measurement, experiment, observation, natural modeling are important as additional methods of other branches of psychology (personality psychology, developmental psychology, social psychology etc.), delivering information for existential-psychological analysis.
Who can guarantee that he was a witness to the life choices of another person at the time of the study?
Developmental psychology and developmental psychology face the same problems, but they are helped by the ability to treat subjects as the same objects within age groups. This makes it possible to apply longitudinal (long-term observation over a group of homogeneous objects in time) or the “slice method” (testing subjects different ages simultaneously). Both developmental psychology and age psychology interested general patterns mental activity and individual psychological differences between people, depending on age, as well as on the external influences and events associated with it. Such events include the beginning of school, marriage, professional career events, etc. Personality change is seen as a function of biological age and social influences, which in a given culture are traditionally associated with age-related changes.
The object of existential psychology has always been and will be a unique person as a typical representative of all mankind. This is another paradox of the science of individual life. In the unique fate of the individual, we must discern the general psychological patterns of human life.
In personality psychology, supporters of the idiographic and nomothetic approaches have long opposed each other.
Let me remind you that the supporters of the nomothetic approach, in particular G. Eysenck, believed that, like any other science, personality psychology should reveal general laws that describe behavior using natural scientific methods. Proponents of the idiographic approach believed that research in personality psychology is aimed at understanding a unique object, so the main method should be the description of "special cases" followed by theoretical generalization and interpretation.
Existential psychology, by its very essence as a science, "fate" is devoid of an arsenal of natural scientific methods. But if it claims to be a science, it should not resort to the method of describing particular cases: it is necessary to observe the basic principles of scientific induction so as not to make the mistake of premature and unjustified generalization. Therefore, the main empirical method Existential psychology has become the "archival method": the study of texts, materials of biographies and autobiographies, memoirs and eyewitness accounts, documents. Based on the analysis of texts, it is reconstructed life path personality.
Additional is the method of conversation. About the introspection of the researcher, aimed at experiences associated with the events of his personal life, it was said earlier. And yet, the method of understanding comes to the fore: human actions, life events should be correctly described and understood. Interpretation occurs with the help of concepts and relations between them, which belong to the researcher. Without a developed system - an interpreter - no understanding is possible. The well-known Russian psychologist A. A. Kronik introduced the concept of dual - causal and target - determination of the events of an individual life. All events happen either “in order to” or “because”. The answer to these two questions concerning the fate of the individual must be given by the psychologist.
In some ways, the work of an existential psychologist is akin to the work of a philosopher: he, too, must create his own model of reality, his own interpreter, based on intuition, logic, and non-formalizable life experience. To do this, he must forget for a while the content of all the psychological and philosophical books that he has read in his life, abandon conscious preliminary hypotheses and stereotypes, not resort to the works and methods offered by his colleagues, but try with "naive" eyes, to look impartially at that part of reality that is called individual life. Any human life is personal. It is known in advance that such an attempt is doomed to failure. But even an attempt makes it possible, if not to discover something new in reality, according to the principle “And the king is naked!”, then to manifest that inner interpreter through which the psychologist describes, understands and analyzes the course of human life, inseparable and inaccessible to scientific understanding.
The success of such an analysis depends on a number of prerequisites that are difficult to formalize. From the individual talent of the researcher, therefore, any existential psychologist is to some extent obsessed with megalomania (in the everyday, and not in the strictly clinical sense). From previous life experience researcher - therefore, people who themselves have lived a significant period of time and experienced a lot turn to such a complex subject. Or university graduates get down to business, believing that they know about life, if not everything, then certainly the most important thing (“don’t teach me how to live”). From accumulated in psychological science knowledge is the most difficult point for a psychologist. Finally, on the reliability of the information that empirical researchers receive.
Nobody trusts autobiographies and biographies, especially famous people. They are incomplete and contradictory: as an example, it suffices to compare different versions of the biographies of Einstein or Landau, written both by people close to them and by “objective” researchers. The advantage of the fates of prominent people is in one thing - they are documented in great detail. But there is always a danger of becoming a victim of deception or self-deception. In addition to the "Napoleonic" legend, "Einstein", "Pushkin" and other legends have been created. But who said it would be easy?
Existential psychology should not teach how a person should live. For this there is jurisprudence and ethics, and specialists who know and develop the norms of human coexistence. Existential psychologists are looking for the "meaning of life", because it is pointless to look in the outside world for something that exists only inside the subject. To search for the meaning of life, there is philosophy and religion. And finally, existential psychology, unlike different versions of existential psychotherapy, should not help a person to live.
The researcher is interested in how a person actually lives. Of course, the knowledge he gains has the potential to be useful. Reading books on psychology will not make people live better, just as they will not learn to fly by reading articles on aerodynamics and the design of flying machines.
In order not to write guides on how to live correctly, how to achieve immortality or at least get rid of the fear of death, one has to follow the “rules for guiding the mind”, which J. Piaget suggests using.
2. During the preparation of the study, one should read as much as possible more books and articles from related fields of knowledge. This reading suggests original analogies.
3. Ideas should be treated ruthlessly: "like the head of a Turk." This allows you to find flaws in designs, keep searching and generate new ideas.
Assumptions. I believe that there are variants of life that are independent of the individual, invented by mankind and reproduced in time. A person, depending on specific circumstances, can choose one or another option, but the option of life can be imposed on him. The degree of freedom of the individual and the measure of pressure on him from the outside world - the social environment - depend on specific historical conditions. The concept of "life option" is an integral psychological characteristic of individual existence and is determined by the type of a person's attitude to life. There are psychological parameters that can be used to describe life options, but they are difficult to formalize, although they lend themselves to verbalization. The variant of life forms the human personality, "typifies" it. The individual turns into a representative of a “life personality type”. The “typical representative” is not an invention of Soviet literary critics, but a reality. So, the individual "enters" life, is included in one or another version of life with his abilities, temperament, character, and "leaves" - a typified personality. It is possible to change the variant of life depending on the circumstances or the similarity of the options among themselves. And the last thing: life is one, man is mortal.
