Articles

Background. The article contains an analysis of L.S. Vygotsky`s autograph for his brother David dated 4th August, 1917. Meaning reconstruction of this autograph not only sheds light on L.S. Vygotsky`s understanding of the art phenomenon during his early (pre-psychological) stage of work, but also helps us to assume his worldview position at this period. 

Objective. Reconstruction of L.S. Vygotsky`s understanding of the phenomenon of art at the period between two revolutions and comparison of this understanding with the concept of art given in his “Psychology of Art”. 

Methods. Elements of source analysis, theoretical analysis of literature devoted to the specified stages of L.S. Vygotsky`s life, analysis of archival documents. 

Results. In his autograph L.S. Vygotsky contrasts two understandings of art: art as a social sign activity for transmitting feelings between individuals (L.N. Tolstoy) and art as a supra-individual spiritual phenomenon, a metaphysical human activity purposed to justify the world (F. Nietzsche). At the time of August 4, 1917, L.S. Vygotsky agrees with Nietzsche`s concept of art as the idea of an instrument for justifying the world is close to him because of his personality and professional crisis. Later, in his “Psychology of Art” L.S. Vygotsky gives the art definition that is closer to the socially oriented definition of L.N. Tolstoy, thus moving away from metaphysics. 

Conclusion. The presented analysis of L.S. Vygotsky’s autograph is important for understanding his moods and thought at the period between two revolutions of 1917. It also reflects the nonlinearity of L.S. Vygotsky`s professional search throughout his life.

Background. Sustainability, stability and progressive development of the country are largely determined by the status of its education system, its lead potential and ability to respond opportunely to the challenges of time, to take into account risks and to solve urgent, most acute problems. In the whole complex of problems of the Russian education one can single out the central one determining all the others — the lack of a strategy for innovative pedagogical education. 

Objective. The author had the purpose to conduct a multidimensional analysis of the factors determining the external and internal prerequisites for the personal and professional development of a teacher in the conditions of an updated pedagogical education. 

Results. The article provides a psychological analysis of possible positive dynamics, strategies of personal and professional development of a teacher based on the continuity of cultural traditions and innovative scientific technologies developed at the Psychological Institute of the Russian Academy of Education. It is shown that the accumulated theoretical and empirical material aimed at optimizing the educational process at school and university should be rethought and taken into account at the present stage of society development. The research team has carried out a series of studies that allowed to develop a new methodological — “systemic personality developing” approach, a concept and technology of personal and professional development of a teacher. The research presented in the article is aimed at solving the urgent problem of scientific and empirical substantiation of psychological concepts for development of a teacher ensuring the psychological well-being of students in a crisis period. A comparative analysis of two stages of empirical research (before the crisis and during the crisis) demonstrated that about a quarter of all surveyed teachers are specialists with a high level of personal and professional development, and they are able to create a psychologically favorable educational environment for their students. The number of teachers with a low level of personal and professional development increased significantly during the crisis, which negatively affected the level of anxiety, uncertainty, and fears among their students. 

Conclusion. The study established that it is the teacher who is the main subject providing a psychologically favorable educational environment for students, taking into account fundamental changes and crises in society: socio-cultural, philosophical, economic, political, etc. The obtained evidence base allowed for creation of a new practice of psychological training of future teachers which has been transformed at the target, content (personal, interpersonal, professional), technological, organizational, and strategic levels.

Background. The article raises a fundamental question that remains relevant throughout the entire period of the existence of psychology as a separate science, which claims to be objective and accurate knowledge. It is a question about the status of humanitarian psychology and about the limits of applicability of traditional research methods and criteria of scientific knowledge for understanding the inner world of a person. 

Objective. The author seeks to outline the limits of applicability of deterministic explanation of phenomena, causal logic, criteria of the result repeatability, etc. and to justify the need for developing the other methods and criteria for penetrating the inner world of a human being. 

Results. The statement is discussed that strict adherence to the mentioned criteria makes it possible to study a person only as a “thing”, while everything specifically human escapes research. This explains the difficulties or even the refusal to study such important problems as human freedom, creativity and, in particular, the phenomenon of insight; morality and responsibility, the meaning of life, etc. that cannot be explained by means of causal logic. The author suggests the following assumption: by cutting off everything that does not meet the traditional criteria of scientific character, psychology does not so much preserve as impoverish itself. In his arguments the author relies on the works of the greatest thinkers and scientists V.S. Solovyov, V.V. Zenkovsky, L.M. Lopatin, A.S. Arsenyev, S.L. Rubinstein, P. Teilhard de Chardin. 

Conclusion. In cases where the subject of study opposes the method of study, the science needs a change of point of view on the phenomenon under study and a fundamentally different formulation of the research question. At the same time, previously accumulated knowledge is not devalued, but acquires a different meaning. 

The author sees favorable opportunities for the development of psychology in its rapprochement with philosophy, with comprehending the experience of religious practices and the figurative-metaphorical way of describing phenomena.

Background of the article is set by the need to determine the main topics and formulate new tasks of the current stage of development of the cultural-historical psychology. 

Objective. Generalization of the author’s clinical observations, experimental materials and theoretical assumptions over the last 30 years of research in the field of developmental psychology; an attempt to highlight the key sought-for and reconstruct the field of possibilities in the cultural-historical psychology understood as the psychology of development. 

Results. The article gives a generalization of experimental studies and clinical observations of the situation of mediation and the act of mediation. It is substantiated that mediation is revealed. It is presented as an event of cumulative intermediary action. Intermediary action is appropriate in a situation of discovering and overcoming a hitherto implicit boundary of activity. 

Conclusion. It is demonstrated that intermediary action leads to three outcomes: its result is achieving what is needed; its product is discovering the meaning of the sign as a symbol of the space of action possibilities; its effect is procreating the actors’ subjectivity. Intermediary action is a unit of development.

Background. The anthropogenic pressure on the natural and social environment increases the ecopsychological research. On the eve of the 110th anniversary of the RAO Psychological Institute, it is important to conduct a historical and theoretical analysis of the development of an ecopsychological approach to the development of the psyche, indicating the importance of such prominent scientists of this institution as V.V. Davydov, G.A. Kovalev, A.I. Mirakyan, F.T. Mikhailov, etc. 

Objective. To describe the methodological prerequisites, theoretical constructs and stages ecopsychological approach to the development of the psyche being. 

Methods. Historical and theoretical analysis of the methodological prerequisites, theoretical constructs and stages ecopsychological approach to the development of the psyche being. 

Results. There are three stages in the formation of ecopsychological approach to the development of the psyche. First stage — academic topics “Ecology of childhood” and “Gifted student”. The second stage was devoted to the development of the main theoretical constructs, including the idea of the psyche as a form of being, relationship “individual — environment”, the ecopsychological typology of subject-environmental interactions, and the ecopsychological model of the formation of agency. The third stage — paradigmatic analysis of the definition of the psyche as an object of research within the framework of epistemological, ontological and transcendental paradigms. Four forms of existence are distinguished psyche as an object of study: become, alienated, generated and virtual. 

Conclusion. The obtained results suggest that in the future such an approach will make it possible to study the emergence of not only individual mental phenomena, but also ways of thinking that determine one or another scientific paradigm, not only in psychology, but also in the natural sciences.

Background. The article is devoted to the 110th anniversary of the founding of the Psychological Institute in Moscow. The main topics of discussions on the problems of giftedness at the beginning of the 20th century are considered in the context of modern psychology. 

Objective. The article has its purpose to show the persisting relevance of the conceptual ideas about giftedness formed in the initial period of its scientific study and their development in theoretical and experimental research in the Psychological Institute over the late 20th and early 21st centuries. 

Results. Analysis of the debates on the problems of giftedness at the first Russian psychological congresses and publications by G.I. Chelpanov, P.P. Blonsky, L.S. Vygotsky, V.M. Ekzemplyarsky demonstrates that their statements about the complexity and originality of the manifestations and development of giftedness continue to be the attention focus of psychologists and educators. The development of these ideas can be traced in the differential psychology of B.M. Teplov, in the giftedness concepts of N.S. Leites and A.M. Matyushkin. The research results of the department of psychology of giftedness at PI RAO over the last five years keep expanding the ideas about giftedness proposed by its first researchers: on the integrity and complexity of the mental giftedness phenomenon, on identification and development of gifted children, on developmental education technologies for children with different types of giftedness and methods of their psychological and pedagogical support, on the telic theoretical and practical training of teachers for gifted children. 

Conclusion. The approach to the problem of giftedness, proposed in the works of G.I. Chelpanov and the first researchers of the Psychological Institute, preserved and received its further development, despite persecution of the scientists, obstacles, and prohibitions on their works. The perspectiveness of most of these ideas has been proven in more recent research on ability, giftedness, thinking, and creativity, including work carried out in the 21st century.

Background of research into the conscious self-regulation of a person is determined by the increasing uncertainty of existence — the main problem of humanity in a changing world. Actual Federal State Educational Standards guide teachers to create learning conditions conducive to not only personal and cognitive development but regulatory meta-results as well. 

Objective. The article has its purpose to consider the ideas of conscious self-regulation at the main stages of development of the scientific school of the self-regulation psychology in connection with creating and implementing various approaches to its study. 

Results. The study revealed the historical roots and identified the main stages of developing scientific ideas on the conscious self-regulation of a person. The author analyzed the main provisions, the subject and methods of the structural-functional, subjective, differential and resource approaches to the study of self-regulation corresponding to these stages. The article presents the general results providing verification of the described approaches. 

Conclusion. Conscious self-regulation is a controlling meta-resource including universal and special regulatory competencies that provide the conscious setting of goals and managing their achievement. Development of the regulatory competencies ensures successful achieving educational and professional results, as well as solution of a wide range of the life tasks, such as personality self-development, professional self-determination, maintaining psychological well-being and security in situations of uncertainty. It seems promising to develop ideas about the age-related formation of the general ability of self-regulation and its regulatory role in the social interaction of people in the modern conditions of increasing uncertainty in a changing world.

Background. The article describes the author’s way from researching the phenomenon of insight to revealing the psychological mechanism of creativity. Its first stage (1965) was a postgraduate continuation of the studies initiated in the term papers and dissertations under the guidance of S.L. Rubinshtein. At the second stage (1969) the author introduced a new experimental-diagnostic method “Creative field” into psychology. 

Objective. To reveal the author’s approach to the consideration of the thought process and the nature of creativity; to describe the study of the mechanism of creativity as an ability to develop activities on one’s own initiative. 

Results. At the first stage of research work it was justified that the mechanism of insight opened by Y.A. Ponomarev is not the only one. The studies demonstrated the role of the nature of the thinking languages and the dynamics of changing their types: from the visual image to the sign, and then — from the sign to the structure. The visibility of the structure explains instant emergence of the hypothesis. The author’s conclusions were confirmed in the theories of N.I. Zhinkin, L.M. Wecker, M. Hunt. The second stage of research allowed the author to realize the Rubinstein’s principle of creative activity and develop a typology of cognitive activity, which correlates with the cognition levels identified by G. Hegel: stimulus-productive level supposes implementation of the proposed task within the framework of initial requirements (according to Hegel — the level of the singular); heuristic level, carried out beyond the requirements of the original task, allows to discover new patterns (according to Hegel — the level of the special); creative level (according to Hegel — the level of the universal) is characteristic of the few. An open regularity does not act as a solution method, but as a starting point for constructing a theory. 

Conclusion. The article substantiates that the mechanism of creativity as the ability to develop one’s activity on his own initiative, can take place only with the dominance of cognitive motivation in the structure of personality. This has been confirmed in the sample of more than 10,000 subjects in a series of long-term studies in which one experiment is in process since 1970, when the subjects were 10th graders. The research data of these studies constitute a theoretical and empirical proof of the post-nonclassical methodological principle of the unity of truth and morality.

Background. Creating new research areas at the Psychological Institute of the Russian Academy of Education is an important and urgent task. In the context of increasing changes in all spheres of life, there is a demand of modern society for professional support of psychologists in maintaining the psychological health of population and creating opportunities for harmonious development of youth and realization of its creative potential in these conditions. 

Objective. The article presents a number of modern areas of research at the Psychological Institute of the Russian Academy of Education. In accordance with modern research paradigms, they are clearly interdisciplinary in nature and involve innovative digital technologies. The presented studies are carried out in the context of health psychology and neurorehabilitation, implementation of psychological assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic, fundamental research in the psychology of childhood, and the practical organization of psychological support for the children in “hot spots”. Particular attention is paid to the study of the phenomenon of modern child, highlighting the possibilities for preserving the value of childhood and harmonious development of children. 

Methods. Empirical and experimental studies implement the well-known psychological methods for diagnostics of mental development and functional states, as well as technologies of virtual reality (VR), exoskeletons, biofeedback (BFB), olfactorometry, etc. 

Results. Implementation of innovative technologies in neurorehabilitation has made it possible to identify promising areas of research, which results will determine the development of the VR industry as a whole. As part of the research conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, recommendations were developed for various groups of our population on organizing activities in self-isolation, on the psychological support and psychological training for medical staff, on the neuropsychological diagnostics and rehabilitation associated with COVID-19. Special efforts have been required for the research and practical work to create an effective system of psychological support in the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics. The research team of the Psychological Institute of RAE also participated in organizing a large-scale international forum “Child in the Digital World”, which involved more than 10,000 students from 46 countries of the world. Its results demonstrated the growing interest in the childhood problems and the scientists’ desire to develop a common understanding of how educational work with children should be organized. 

Conclusions. New research areas were organized and implemented in the fruitful cooperation of the Psychological Institute of RAE and the Faculty of Psychology of the Lomonosov Moscow State University. In several cycles of interdisciplinary research that has already been carried out and is just being in mid-course, it was possible to obtain new fundamental knowledge in the fields of health psychology, childhood psychology, educational psychology, etc. This allowed for working out practical recommendations and scientific developments in the new promising areas of scientific research.

Background. The relevance of the article is connected with the necessity to reflect on the content of the main scientific and organizational stages in the evolution of the research activity of the Psychological Institute on the eve of its 110th anniversary. 

Objective. On the basis of documentary sources to carry out a historical and psychological reconstruction of the Psychological Institute activity in 1912–2021. 

Methods. Compiling a database of documentary sources, synchronous and comparative data analysis, content slices, problemological and bibliographic methods. 

Results. The article provides a historical and psychological analysis and a brief review of the scientific activity of the Psychological Institute during 1912–2021. The authors reconstruct a historical context of the key events in the formation of the Psychological Institute as a unified intellectual and moral entity. They commemorate the names of the first Russian psychologists and present the personalistic aspect of the institute activity from the standpoint of synchronic analysis. The article includes the time cross-section of the content of scientific and practical problems and considers the main results of the innovative scientific activity of the Institute in different historical periods. The study demonstrates the inseparability of intergenerational intellectual connection of the institute scientists, which conditioned the theoretical and methodological continuity of scientific trends, profound development of traditional scientific schools and creation of the modern ones, as well as consistent advancement to new frontiers of psychological science. 

Conclusion. At all stages of its historical existence, the Psychological Institute demonstrated its best qualities of a subject of historical development, managing to preserve the priority of science as the basic value and scientificity as the basis of unity of theoretical search, experimental development, creation of conditions and programs for preparing future psychological personnel.