Dmitry Alekseevich Leontyev Essay on Psychology From the book Legal Psychology [With the basics of general and social psychology] author Enikeev Marat Iskhakovich

Dmitry Alekseevich Leontyev Psychology of meaning: nature, structure and dynamics of semantic

2.7. Meaning regulation as a constitutive function of personality. Meaning in the structure of personality Being a person, a person acts as an autonomous bearer and subject of socially developed forms of activity-based attitude towards the world (for more details, see Leontyev D.A., 1989a). This is quality

A. N. Leontiev Leontiev believed that activity generates consciousness. “Primary consciousness exists only in the form of a mental image that reveals to the subject the world around him, but activity still remains practical, external. At a later stage

It would seem that in difficult times it is increasingly difficult to enjoy life, but surprisingly many people succeed. Doctor of Psychology, Professor, Head of the International Laboratory of Positive Psychology of Personality and Motivation at the National Research University Higher School of Economics talks about the factors that determine life satisfaction, feelings of happiness and well-being. Dmitry Alekseevich Leontiev.

You practice positive psychology. What is this direction?

It arose at the turn of the century. Until the end of the last century, psychology was mainly concerned with eliminating problems, but then people began to think that “to live is good, but to live well is even better.” Positive psychology analyzes the difference between simply “living” and “living well.” There are many interpretations of the “good life,” but they all agree on one thing: the quality of life cannot be improved only by eliminating all negative factors. In the same way, if you cure all of a person’s diseases, he will not become happy or even healthy. Health is more than the absence of disease. The founder of positive psychology, American Martin Seligman, recalled an incident from his practice: work with a client was going so well, problems were solved so quickly, that it seemed to everyone: just a couple more months and the client would be completely happy. “We finished working,” writes Seligman, “and an empty man sat in front of me.” Contrary to popular belief, positive psychology has a very indirect relationship with “positive thinking” - an ideology that says: smile, think about good things - and everything will work out. This is an experimental science that is only interested in facts. She studies under what conditions a person feels happier and less happy.

Surely humanity has thought about this before. Have scientific experiments confirmed previously common points of view?

Some of what was taken for granted in the pre-empirical period has been confirmed, some has not. For example, it was not confirmed that young people are happier than older people: it turned out that they have a higher intensity of all emotions, but this does not affect their attitude to life. The traditional idea of ​​woe from intelligence—that intelligence is negatively associated with well-being—has also not been confirmed. Intelligence does not help, but it does not prevent us from enjoying life.

What is meant by “happiness”, “well-being”? After all, it is one thing to feel happy and another to meet generally accepted criteria of well-being.

Ever since Ancient Greece When the problem of happiness and well-being first arose, it was considered in two aspects: objective and subjective. Accordingly, two lines of research emerged several decades ago. One focuses on what is called “psychological well-being,” that is, personality traits that help a person move closer to an ideal life. The other studies subjective well-being - assessing how close a person’s life is to the ideal that he sets for himself. It turned out that no matter what virtues a person has, they do not guarantee happiness and well-being: the poor, the homeless can be happy, but the rich also cry. Another interesting effect was discovered, which the German psychologist Ursula Staudinger called the paradox of subjective well-being. It turns out that many people rate the quality of their lives much higher than one would expect from the outside. Back in the 1990s, American psychologist Ed Diener and his co-authors conducted an experiment with the participation of representatives of various socially disadvantaged groups - the unemployed, the homeless, the seriously ill, etc. The researchers asked the observers what percentage of the experiment participants, in their opinion, considered their lives as a whole prosperous. Observers gave small numbers. Then the scientists interviewed the participants themselves - and almost all of them had a higher than average level of life satisfaction.

What explains this?

We often evaluate our own well-being in comparison to others and may use different criteria and frames of reference to do so. In addition, our well-being depends not only on external circumstances, but also on other groups of factors. Firstly, from the make-up of our personality, character, stable characteristics, which are often considered as inherited. (Indeed, research has found a strong connection between our well-being and the well-being of our biological parents.) Second, from factors we can control: the choices we make, the goals we set, the relationships we build. Greatest influence We are influenced by our personality - it accounts for 50% of individual differences in the field of psychological well-being. Everyone knows that there are people whom nothing can bring out of a state of complacency and contentment, and there are those whom nothing can make happy. External circumstances account for only a little over 10 percent. And almost 40% - on what is in our hands, what we ourselves do with our lives.

I would suggest that external circumstances have a greater influence on our well-being.

This is a typical misconception. People generally tend to shift responsibility for their own lives to any external circumstances. This is a trend that different cultures expressed to varying degrees.

What about ours?

I haven’t conducted any special research, but I can say that we are not doing very well in this regard. Over the past centuries, Russia has diligently done everything so that a person does not feel as if he controls his life and determines its results. We are accustomed to thinking that for everything that happens - even for what we do ourselves - we need to thank the Tsar-Father, the party, the government, the authorities. This is persistently reproduced under different regimes and does not contribute to the formation of responsibility for one’s own life. Of course, there are people who take responsibility for everything that happens to them, but they appear not so much thanks to, but in spite of, sociocultural pressure.

Denial of responsibility is a sign of infantilism. Do infantile people feel more prosperous?

Well-being is determined by how our needs are met and how close our life is to what we want. Children tend to be much happier than adults because their desires are easier to satisfy. But at the same time, their happiness almost does not depend on themselves: the needs of children are provided by those who care about them. Today, infantilism is the scourge of our and not only our culture. We sit with open beaks and wait for the good uncle to do everything for us. This is a child's position. We can be very happy if we are pampered, looked after, pampered and cherished. But if the wizard in the blue helicopter doesn't arrive, we won't know what to do. In psychologically older people, the degree of well-being is generally lower, since they have more needs, which are also not so easy to satisfy. But they have more control over their lives.

Do you think that the willingness to take responsibility for one's own well-being is partly determined by religion?

Don't think. In Russia now, religiosity is superficial. Although about 70% of the population calls themselves Orthodox, no more than 10% of them go to church, know dogma, rules and differ in their value orientations from non-believers. Sociologist Jean Toshchenko, who described this phenomenon in the 1990s, called it the paradox of religiosity. Later, a gap emerged between identifying oneself as Orthodox, on the one hand, and trusting the church, and even believing in God, on the other. It seems to me that the choice of religion in different cultures reflects, rather, the mentality and needs of people, and not vice versa. Look at the transformation of Christianity. The Protestant ethic prevailed in the countries northern Europe, where people had to fight nature, and emotionally charged Catholicism took hold in the pampered south. In our latitudes, people needed justification not for work and not for joy, but for the suffering to which they were accustomed - and a suffering, sacrificial version of Christianity took root in us. In general, the degree of influence of Orthodoxy on our culture seems exaggerated to me. There are things deeper. Take fairy tales, for example. For other nations, they end well because the heroes make an effort. In our fairy tales and epics, everything happens at the behest of a pike or arranges itself by itself: a man lay on the stove for 30 years and three years, and then suddenly got up and went to perform feats. Linguist Anna Verzhbitskaya, who analyzed the features of the Russian language, pointed out the abundance of subjectless constructions in it. This is a reflection of the fact that what is happening is often not a consequence of the speakers’ own actions: “they wanted the best, but it turned out as always.”

Do geography and climate influence subjective well-being?

Moving around the country, I notice: the further south you go (starting from Rostov, Stavropol), the more pleasure people get from life. They feel its taste and try to arrange their everyday space in such a way as to feel joy. It’s the same in Europe, especially in the south: people there savor life, for them every minute is a pleasure. A little further north, and your whole life is already a struggle with nature. In Siberia and the Far East, people sometimes become indifferent to their environment. It doesn’t matter what kind of house they have, the main thing is that it is warm there. This is a very functional relationship. They get almost no pleasure from everyday life. Of course, I am generalizing, but such trends are felt.

To what extent does material wealth determine a person's well-being?

In poor countries - to a very large extent. There, residents have many basic needs that are not satisfied, and if they are met, people feel more confident and happier. But at some point this rule ceases to apply. Research shows that at a certain point a turning point occurs and the growth of well-being loses its clear connection with well-being. This point is where the middle class begins. Its representatives have all their basic needs met, they eat well, they have a roof over their heads, medical care, and the opportunity to educate their children. The further growth of their happiness no longer depends on material well-being, but on how they manage their lives, on their goals and relationships.

When it comes to goals, what is more important: their quality or the fact of achieving them?

The goals themselves are more important. They can be our own, or they can come from other people - that is, they can be associated with internal or external motivation. The differences between these types of motivation were identified in the 1970s. Guided by internal motivation, we enjoy the process itself, external motivation - we strive for results. By realizing internal goals, we do what we like and become happier. By achieving external goals, we assert ourselves, gain fame, wealth, recognition and nothing more. When we do something not out of choice, but because it will increase our status in the community, we often do not become psychologically better off. Extrinsic motivation, however, is not always bad. It determines a huge part of what people do. Studying in institutes, schools, division of labor, any action not performed for oneself, in order to please a loved one, to please him, is external motivation. If we produce not what we consume ourselves, but what we take to the market, this is also external motivation. It is less pleasant than the internal one, but no less useful - it cannot and should not be excluded from life.

Work is often also associated with external motivation. This is reflected, for example, in the statement “business, nothing personal.” It is logical to assume that such an attitude has a bad effect, firstly, on our well-being and, secondly, on the results of the work itself.

Austrian psychologist Viktor Frankl said that the meaning of work for a person lies precisely in what he brings to his work as an individual, above and beyond the job instructions. If you are guided by the principle “business, nothing personal,” work becomes meaningless. By losing their personal attitude towards work, people lose internal motivation - only external motivation is retained. And it always leads to alienation from one’s own work and, as a consequence, to adverse psychological consequences. Not only mental and physical health suffers, but also the results of work. At first they may not be bad, but gradually they inevitably get worse. Of course, some activities provoke depersonalization - for example, working on an assembly line. But in a job that requires decision-making and creative input, you can’t do without personality.

What principles should work in a company be based on so that people not only produce good results, but also feel fulfilled, satisfied, and happy?

Back in the late 1950s, American social psychologist Douglas McGregor formulated theories X and Y, which describe two different attitudes towards employees. In Theory X, workers were viewed as disinterested, lazy people who needed to be tightly “built” and controlled in order for them to start doing something. In Theory Y, people are carriers of diverse needs who may be interested in many things, including work. They don't need carrots and sticks - they need to be interested in order to direct their activity in the right direction. In the West already in those years the transition from “Theory X” to “Theory Y” began, but in many ways we managed to get stuck on “Theory X”. This needs to be fixed. I'm not saying that a company should strive to satisfy all the needs of employees and make them happy. This is a paternalistic position. Moreover, this is impossible: it is difficult to completely satisfy a person - in new circumstances he has new demands. Abraham Maslow has an article "On Low Complaints, High Complaints and Meta-Complaints" in which he showed that as working conditions in an organization improve, the number of complaints does not decrease. Their quality is changing: in some companies people complain about drafts in the workshops, in others about insufficient consideration of individual contributions when calculating salaries, in others about the lack of professional growth. For some the soup is thin, for others the pearls are small. Managers should build relationships with employees in such a way that they feel responsible for what happens to them. People must understand that what they receive from the organization: salary, bonuses, etc. directly depends on their contribution to the work.

Let's get back to talking about goals. How important is it to have a big, global goal in life?

Don't confuse purpose with meaning. A goal is a specific image of what we want to achieve. A global goal can play a negative role in life. The goal is usually rigid, but life is flexible, constantly changing. Following one goal set in youth, you may not notice that everything has changed and other more interesting paths have appeared. You can freeze in one state, become slaves to yourself in the past. Remember the ancient eastern wisdom: “If you want something very badly, then you will achieve it and nothing else.” Achieving a goal can make a person unhappy. Psychology describes Martin Eden syndrome, named after the hero of the novel of the same name by Jack London. Eden set himself ambitious, difficult-to-realize goals, achieved them at a relatively young age and, feeling disappointed, committed suicide. Why live if your goals are achieved? The meaning of life is something else. This is a sense of direction, a vector of life, which can be realized for a variety of purposes. It allows a person to act flexibly, abandon some goals, and replace them with others within the same meaning.

Do you need to clearly formulate the meaning of life for yourself?

Not necessary. Leo Tolstoy in “Confession” says that he understood: firstly, it is necessary to raise the question not about the meaning of life in general, but about in its own sense life, and, secondly, there is no need to look for formulations and follow them - it is important that life itself, every minute of it, be meaningful and positive. And then such a life - real, and not what we think it should be - can already be intellectually comprehended.

Are feelings of well-being related to freedom?

Yes, and more economically than politically. One of the recent studies by American sociologist Ronald Inglehart and co-authors, which summarized monitoring data from fifty countries over 17 years, showed that the feeling of freedom of choice predicts approximately 30% of individual differences in people's satisfaction with their lives. This means, among other things, that the “exchange of freedom for well-being” deal is largely illusory. Although in Russia, most likely, it is committed unconsciously, moving along the path of least resistance.

Are you saying that in Russia people don’t feel free?

Several years ago, sociologists and I conducted a study that confirmed that most people in our country are rather indifferent to freedom. But there are also those who value it - they, as it turns out, have a more meaningful, thoughtful approach to life, they feel control over their own actions and tend to take responsibility, including for how their actions will affect others. Freedom and responsibility are interconnected things. Most people do not need freedom with such a burden: they do not want to be responsible for anything, either to themselves or to others.

How can you increase your life satisfaction and your level of well-being?

Since this has a lot to do with satisfying needs, you need to pay attention to their quality. You can fixate on the same needs and endlessly raise the bar: “I don’t want to be a pillar noblewoman, but I want to be a free queen.” Of course, it is important to satisfy such needs, but it is even more important to develop them qualitatively. It is necessary to look for something new in life, besides what we are used to and what is imposed on us, and also set goals for ourselves, the achievement of which depends on ourselves. The younger generation is now more involved in self-development than the older generation in various fields: from sports to the arts. This is very important because it provides a tool for both satisfying one’s own needs and for their qualitative development.

However, you need to understand: satisfaction itself is not an end in itself, but some kind of intermediate indicator. In some ways, dissatisfaction can be good, but satisfaction can be bad. The writer Felix Krivin had the following phrase: “To demand satisfaction from life means to challenge it to a duel. And then depending on your luck: either you are her, or she is you.” This should not be forgotten.

FUNDAMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

D.A. Leontiev

PSYCHOLOGY OF MEANING

NATURE, STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF MEANING REALITY

2nd, revised edition

in classical university education

as teaching aid for students

higher educational institutions studyingin the direction and specialties of psychology

UDC 159.9BBK88

Moscow State University named after. M.V. Lomonosov, Faculty of Psychology

Reviewers:

Doctor of Psychology Sciences, prof., corresponding member. RAO B.S. Bratus Doctor of Psychology Sciences, prof., corresponding member. RAO V.A.Ivannikov Doctor of Psychology Sciences, prof., corresponding member. RAS V.F.Petrenko Doctor of Psychology sciences, prof. IL. Vasiliev

Leontyev D.A.

L478 Psychology of meaning: nature, structure and dynamics of semantic reality. 2nd, rev. ed. - M.: Smysl, 2003. - 487 p.

The monograph is devoted to a comprehensive theoretical analysis of semantic reality: aspects of the problem of meaning, the forms of its existence in human relations with the world, in human consciousness and activity, in the structure of personality, in interpersonal interaction, in artifacts of culture and art.

Addressed to psychologists and representatives of related disciplines.

The manuscript was prepared with the support ofRussian Humanitarian Scientific Foundation,research project No. 95-06-17597

Published with the support ofRussian fund of fundamentalsresearch for project No. 98-06-87091

ISBN 5-89357-082-0

YES. Leontiev, 1999, 2003. Smysl Publishing House, design, 1999.

introduction

“The problem of meaning... is the last analytical concept that crowns general doctrine about the psyche, just as the concept of personality crowns the entire system of psychology"

A.N. Leontiev

In the last two decades, psychology has been experiencing a crisis of my methodological foundations, associated with the next opening of not only the boundaries of its subject, but also the boundaries of science and ideas about science in general, with the destruction of the fundamental and in the previous period very clear binary oppositions “life psychology - scientific psychology", "academic psycho-mlia - applied psychology", "humanistic psychology - mechanistic psychology", "depth psychology - vertex-IS1 psychology", as well as conceptual oppositions "affect - Intelligence", "consciousness - unconscious", "cognition - action”, etc. Work has intensified on the methodological understanding of the foundations of psychology and the construction of a new image of it, which in Russian psychology was expressed primarily in the revival of the idea of ​​“non-classical psychology” belonging to L. S. Vygotsky. (Elkonin, 1989; Asmolov, 1996 b; Dorfman, 1997, etc.) or ironic psychology" (Zinchenko, 1997), and in the West - in the discussion of the idea of ​​​​"postmodern psychology" (for example, Shatter, 1990). Non-classical psychology has not yet been clearly defined; it is more of an idea than a specific theory. It is possible, however, to outline the general vector of movement from classical to non-classical psychology: from a static idea of ​​a person to a dynamic one and from studying him in the form of an isolated “prepa-pita” to the awareness of his inextricable connection with the world in which his life takes place.

In this context, it is no coincidence that many scientists, both in our country and abroad, are interested in the concept of meaning. This concept came to psychology from philosophy and the sciences of language and has not yet entered the main thesaurus of personality psychology, except for separate

introduction

scientific schools; At the same time, interest in it is growing, and the frequency of use of this concept in a variety of contexts and within the framework of various theoretical and methodological approaches is growing. In Russian psychology, the concept of personal meaning, introduced by A.N. Leontiev back in the 40s, has long been productive is used as one of the main explanatory concepts, not only in psychology, but also in related scientific disciplines. It is no coincidence that this concept has received such wide recognition in our country - after all, in Russian culture, Russian consciousness, the search for meaning has always been the main value orientation. It is less known that the concept of meaning has become popular in the West in recent decades - it occupies a very an important place in the logotherapy of W. Frankl, the psychology of personal constructs of J. Kelly, the ethogenic approach of R. Harré, the phenomenological psychotherapy of J. Gendlin, the theory of behavioral dynamics of J. Nutten and other approaches, despite the difficulty of adequately translating this concept into English and many other languages A rare exception is German, and it is natural that this concept first appeared in philosophy, psychology and the sciences of language among German speakers (G. Frege, E. Husserl, W. Dilthey, E. Spranger, Z. Freud, A. Adler). , K. Jung, M. Weber, V. Frankl) and Russian-speaking (G.G. Shpet, M.M. Bakhtin, L.S. Vygotsky, A.N. Leontyev) authors.

Interest in the concept of meaning is caused, in our opinion, by the fact, although still unreflected, that this concept, as even a cursory glance at the practice of its use clearly shows, allows one to overcome the binary oppositions listed above. This becomes possible due to the fact that the concept of meaning turns out to be “own” for both everyday and scientific psychology; both for academic and applied; for both deep and apical; both for mechanistic and humanistic. Moreover, it is correlated with objective, subjective, and intersubjective (group, communicative) reality, and is also located at the intersection of activity, consciousness and personality, connecting all three fundamental psychological categories. Thus, the concept of meaning can claim a new, higher methodological status, the role of a central concept in a new, non-classical or postmodern psychology, the psychology of a “changing personality in a changing world” (Asmolov, 1990, p. 365).

Such wide possibilities, however, also give rise to difficulties in working with this concept. Its multiple definitions are often inconsistent. The meaning itself makes sense if you use the pop-

IMPORTANCE

dirma in Lately metaphor, the nature of Proteus - he is changeable, fluid, many-sided, not fixed within his boundaries. Hence there are considerable difficulties in understanding this phenomenon, discrepancies in definitions, and vagueness in operationalization. . When the author of this book, while still a student at the Faculty of Psychology of Moscow State University, became interested in the problem of meaning (around 1979-1980), a large group of teachers and faculty members - direct students of A.N. Leontiev - were actively and with great enthusiasm involved in the development of this problem. Their number has now decreased. Of those who made the main contribution to the development of the concept during this period, some are no longer with us (B.V. Zeigarnik, E.Yu. Artemsna), others quite abruptly changed their problems and area of ​​research (V.V. .Stolin, A.U.Kharash), the third, having become disillusioned with the concept of meaning, actually abandoned it (V K. Vilyunas, E.V. Subbotsky), the fourth did not refuse, but subsequently directed their direct scientific research to others | not, although similar problems (A.G. Asmolov, E.E. Nasinovskaya, V. L. Petrovsky). At the same time, there is by no means a decrease in interest in this concept (rather, on the contrary) among psychologists of all schools and directions.

The development of general psychological ideas about the semantic understanding of human existence has been carried out by the author of this book since the early 1980s. The main task (one might say, the super task) was to assemble a complete picture of semantic reality from the fascinating pieces of the mosaic formed by existing ideas and publications on this topic. The first intermediate result was the PhD dissertation “Structural organization of the semantic sphere of personality,” defended by us in 1988. It proposed a classification of semantic structures and a model of the structure of personality-81 and, based on a general understanding of the semantic structures of the personality of the Kpk, a transformed form of life relationships. We have also developed the concept of semantic regulation of life activity, showing the scientific functions in this regulation of various semantic structures. This intermediate result corresponded to the first of the Three stages of development of any theoretical concepts identified by N.A. Bernstein (1966, pp. 323-324) - the stage of unification and logical ordering of disparate facts. We also realized the inevitable limitations of the scheme proposed in that work. This SI limitation was manifested not only in the fact that the semantic sphere of personality was considered in a static morphological section, but also in the fact that the very identification of discrete semantic structures in mho-rum is conditional. We did not have any other language of description, but we realized that behind the concepts we used there really were not

introduction

as much semantic structures as semantic processes. Understanding the remote prospects for the development of a procedural language, we formulated in the conclusion to the mentioned dissertation also tasks for the near future. These included: analysis of the conditions and mechanisms of actual genetic development and critical restructuring of existing semantic structures and dynamic semantic systems; analysis of inter-individual translation of meanings, including in the forms of material and spiritual culture; analysis of the development of the semantic sphere of the individual in ontogenesis, as well as psychological prerequisites and mechanisms for the abnormal development of the semantic sphere; development of research methods and influence on the semantic sphere. Solving these problems would make it possible to move from a static morphological scheme of the semantic sphere of personality to the concept of dynamic semantic reality, the natural form of existence of which is continuous movement, to a concept that has predictive power, which is inherent in the second stage of development of the theory according to N.A. Bernstein (1966 , pp. 323-324).

This minimum program, as we see it, has been completed in this work, which is the result of almost two decades of scientific research. It is devoted to solving the problem of constructing a unified general psychological concept of meaning, its nature, forms of existence and mechanisms of functioning in the structure of activity, consciousness, personality, interpersonal communication and in objectively embodied forms. In it we tried to fill the thought of A.N. Leontiev (1983) with specific psychological content a) o that the problem of personality forms a special psychological dimension, different from the dimension in which the study of mental processes takes place, as well as the thought of V. Frankl (Frankl, 1979) about the semantic dimension of a person, which builds on the biological and psychological dimensions.

it * * * ,\

Concluding this introduction with words of gratitude, one cannot help but move from the academic “we” to the conscious and “participatory” (M.M. Bakhtin) “I”.

I dedicate this book to my grandfather, Alexei Nikolaevich Leontyev. It would be inaccurate to say “to his memory”, because his presence - and above all in this work - is by no means limited to memory. Scientific work always transcends time in some sense - we can have a very meaningful dialogue with Descartes and Spinoza, Hippocrates and Aristotle. I clearly feel the presence of Alexey Nikolaevich in the same room with me.

viiiom time" and I hope that my book will contribute to it

"flight in this time dimension. He was and remains for me not a model of scientific integrity and devotion to science.

I have always been greedy for knowledge and a diligent student, I learn from many, and it is not easy to list everyone who influenced my professional development - not only those with whom I communicated personally, but also those with whom I have not met and will never meet . N among the latter are L.S. Vygotsky, M.M. Bakhtin, A. Adler, G. Allport, IM, M.K. Mamardashvili and other Teachers. Of those from whom I studied in the traditional sense of the word, I would like, without belittling anyone’s contribution, to specifically thank two of them; the influence of co-vupiiix on my work (and not only my work) since my student years cannot be assessed. Alexander Grigorievich Asmolov was largely responsible for the emergence and strengthening of my first interest in personality psychology and the problem of meaning, and constantly gave

And (pre-logical guidelines and helped me solve the problem of the meaning of tun ", what am I doing. Elena Yuryevna Artemyeva taught that in addition to con- mishishia, there should also be a position; she unobtrusively contributed to the differentiation of the boundaries between scientific research and understanding of life in general, the formation of I am a methodical thinker.

V any researcher has his own inner circle of reference - people working nearby in the problem field, professional interaction with whom is especially productive. A complete list of those who especially helped me advance my research with their research would be very long. I am grateful to many people, and especially to B.S. Bratus, F.E. Vasilyuk, V.P. Zinchenko, A.I. Vannikov, A.M. Lobk, E.V. Eidman. The general composition of this 1ZHI1I was helped to build by the theoretical ideas of my friend and colleague L. M. Dorfman. I am also grateful to all those friends and colleagues who morally supported and support me in my exploration of new routes in poorly explored territory.

Special thanks to my students, students and aspirants. Not only because in order to understand something, you need to explain it to someone. Without their participation, I would not have been able to single-handedly bring many theoretical ideas to the level of empirical testing and practical application. I am especially grateful to those of them whose PM1Sh is also in this book: Yu.A. Vasilyeva, M.V. Snetkova, I II Buzin, N.V. Pilipko, M.V. Kalashnikov, O.E. Kalashnikova, A II Poiogrebsky, M.A. Filatova.

Finally, one more thank you to my loved ones, from whom this has taken a fair share for a long time, and who treated it as stoically as possible.

chapter!. Approaches to understanding meaning

IN PSYCHOLOGY AND HUMANITIES

And he represented to the sovereign that the English masters have completely different rules of life, science and food, and each person has all the absolute circumstances before him, and through this he has a completely different meaning.

N. S. Leskov

1.1. concept of meaning in the humanities

In most general explanatory, philosophical and linguistic dictionaries, meaning is defined as a synonym for meaning. This applies not only to the Russian word "smysl", but also to its German counterpart "Sinn". In English the situation is more complicated: although the language has an etymologically close concept of “sense” (meaning), used, in particular, in common phrases “common sense” (common sense), “to make sense” (have meaning), nevertheless in the vast majority of cases in scientific discourse, as well as in everyday language, the Russian concepts of “meaning” and “sense” are translated by the same word “meaning”. The French "sens", on the contrary, is much more widespread than the purely academic term "signification" (meaning).

The etymology of this concept also does not coincide in different languages. Russian “smysl” means “with thought”. The German “Sinn”, as M. Boss points out, originates from the ancient German literary verb “sinnan”, meaning “to be on the way to the goal” (Boss, 1988, b. 115). In this regard, E. Craig notes that the connection with intentional orientation present in the word “Sinn” is lost when translating it into English as “meaning”, and translating it with the word “sense” would be more adequate (Craig, 1988, b. 95-96). On the other hand, J. Richlak, with reference to dictionaries, argues that the word “meaning” comes from Anglo-Saxon roots with the semantics “to desire” and “intend” and is, accordingly, a concept of a target nature, denoting a correlative relationship

/./. concept of meaningVhumanities 9

between several constructs, which he calls poles of meaning (Rychlak, 1981, b. 7).

Historically, the original problematic context in which the concept of meaning arose as a scientific concept that does not coincide with the concept of meaning was the study of understanding texts, and the first theoretical paradigm was hermeneutics. The task of distinguishing linguistics from philosophy, on the one hand, and linguistics, on the other, is very complex and goes far beyond the scope of this work; KLK stated V.G. Kuznetsov, hermeneutics, humanities and philosophy “develop in a single historical and cultural context, depend on each other, influence each other” (1991a, p. 4). Hermeneutics arose as a doctrine on the interpretation of hidden meanings Holy Scripture, gradually becoming a doctrine of understanding hidden meanings in a broader context and merging at the beginning of our century with philosophical thought in the works of such representatives as W. Dilthey, H.-H. Gadamer and others. Therefore, relating certain views to the problem of meaning to the hermeneutic tradition, we will use only purely historical criteria.

Perhaps the first significant understanding of meaning in our context is found in Matthias Flatius of Illyria (16th century). Flacius offers a solution to one of the leading hermeneutical dilemmas - whether a word has one meaning or many - by introducing the distinction between meaning and sense: a word, expression, text have one meaning, but different contexts can give different meanings. Out of context, the word has no meaning; in each specific context the meaning is unambiguous. Thus, the problem of meaning comes down to the problem of context (Kuznetsov, 1991 A, With. 25). The hermeneutic, working with various contexts, must reveal their only divine meaning and interpret its semantic shades introduced into the biblical texts by their authors. This type of interpretation takes into account the subjective characteristics of the mountain position. The task of the hermeneut is to identify the author’s purpose and intent.” (ibid., With. 26). The concept of context, introduced by Flacius into the conceptual apparatus of hermeneutics, made it possible, perhaps for the first time, to separate the concepts of meaning and meaning as non-synonymous.

The problem of correlation, or more precisely, the distinction between the meaning and meaning of texts and speech expressions, received further development in the late 19th - first half of the 20th centuries in the sciences of language - linguistics, semiotics and logical semantics. As we, however, will discuss further, the identification of meaning and meaning has not yet become a part of history. Use of the concept of meaning

Chapter 1. Approaches to understanding meaning

in this context is far from final certainty. There are two fundamentally different traditions of using the concept of “meaning”. In one of them, meaning appears as a complete synonym for meaning; these two concepts are interchangeable.

We will not dwell specifically on such definitions. In the second tradition, the concepts of “sense” and “meaning” form a more or less pronounced conceptual opposition.In turn, the second tradition is also by no means homogeneous. 1977; 1997) he introduces it as follows: denotation, or the meaning of a text (sign) is the objective reality that the text (sign) denotes or a judgment about which is expressed; meaning is a way of specifying a denotation, the nature of the connection between the denotation and a sign, or, in modern language, “the information that a sign carries about its denotation”(Muskhelshivili, Schrader, 1997, p. 80). A text can have only one meaning, but several meanings, or it can have no meaning (if in reality nothing corresponds to it), but still have meaning.“In poetic use it is enough that everything has meaning; in scientific use, meanings must not be omitted.”

(Frege, 1997, p. 154-155). In Frege's texts there are indications of the connection between meaning and the context of their use. Yet, according to, in particular, E.D. Smirnova and P.V. Tavanets (1967), Frege did not create a theory of meaning. Nevertheless, his work still remains the most cited where the question of separating meaning and meaning is raised. Let us present several more approaches to the relationship between the meaning and meaning of speech expressions. K. I. Lewis (1983), analyzing types of meaning, distinguishes between linguistic and semantic meaning. The linguistic meaning of a word can be mastered with the help of an explanatory dictionary, first finding its definition, then defining all the words that are included in this definition, etc. What escapes is the semantic meaning associated with knowledge of all the variants of the correct use of a word in different contexts.M. Dummett (1987) considers the theory of meaning as one of the components theories of meaning , along with the theory of reference. The theory of meaning "...links the theory of truth (or reference) with the speaker's ability to master language, correlates his knowledge of the propositions of the theory with the practical linguistic skills that he displays"(there

/./. concept of meaningVhumanities 11

same,

With. 144). It must "...not only determine what the speaker knows, but also how his knowledge is manifested" (ibid., 1999, p. 124, 132). The specificity of this approach lies in the analysis of the relationship between discourse and ideology. The concept of discourse appears here as clarifying the idea of ​​context. Thus, M. Pesche and K. Fuchs (1999), stating the ambiguity of the connection between the text and its meaning, associate this with the idea that the text sequence is tied to one or another discourse formation, thanks to which it is endowed with meaning; It is also possible to link simultaneously to several discourse formations, which determines the presence of several meanings in the text. J. Guillaume and D. Maldidier (1999) argue that “texts, discourses, discourse complexes acquire a certain meaning only in a specific historical situation” (p. 124). Analyzing the texts of Tokha the Great French Revolution, the authors showed that although the meaning of an expression is far from being entirely determined by its internal structure, as linguistic semantics traditionally believed, the other extreme - considering the meaning to be completely externally determined - also did not justify itself. The authors formulate a balanced conclusion: “The meaning is not given a priori, it is created at each stage of the description; it is never structurally complete. Meaning comes from language and archive; it is both limited and open.” (ibid., With. 133). Another author sees the process of producing open meaning this way: “One meaning unfolds in another, in others; or he becomes entangled in himself and cannot free himself from himself. He's drifting. It is lost in itself or multiplied. As for time, we are talking about moments. The meaning cannot be pasted on. He is unstable and wanders all the time. Meaning has no duration. Only its “framework” exists for a long time, fixed and perpetuated during its institutionalization. The meaning itself wanders around different places... A specific situation of signification in which meaning and its doubling interact: non-distinction, non-significance, non-discipline, non-constancy. With this approach, meaning is largely uncontrollable." (Pulcinella Orlandi, 1999, p. 215-216). Constancy of meaning can be achieved based on the functioning of paraphrase and metaphor; in this way, “meaning acquires “flesh” as historical meaning, arising in conditions of a tense relationship between fixity and variability” (ibid., With. 216-217).

). A specialist in the fields of personality psychology, motivation and meaning, theory and history of psychology, psychodiagnostics, psychology of art and advertising, psychological and comprehensive humanitarian expertise, as well as in the field of modern foreign psychology. Author of more than 400 publications. Winner of the Viktor Frankl Foundation Prize in Vienna (2004) for achievements in the field of meaning-oriented humanistic psychotherapy. Editor of many translated books by leading psychologists of the world. IN last years develops issues of non-therapeutic practice of psychological assistance, prevention and facilitation of personal development based on existential psychology.

Research activities

Personality Research

Based on a biased and multilateral analysis of various psychological theories, as well as a broader view of the development of the social and human sciences, D.A. Leontyev substantiates and develops the idea of ​​personality as unity of the possible and necessary, within which a person can, using reflexive consciousness, go beyond the boundaries of the necessary into the possible. This idea of ​​personality is associated with highlighting the possibility of the existence of at least two psychological views of a person, as well as modes of his existence: the first considers a “natural person” as a passive, attracted, controlled, predictable being; within the framework of the second, attention is drawn to the “reflexive person”, who acts as the subject of his own activity. Moreover, a “second” look at a person is possible, but not required. This view is currently represented by existential psychology and cultural-historical activity psychology.

Rethinking personality psychology proposed by D.A. Leontiev is an attempt to understand the level of human activity at which, in the words of L.S. Vygotsky, not only develops, but also builds itself.

The main theses of the new, “possibility” theory of personality according to D.A. Leontiev

1. Personality psychology embraces a special group of phenomena that belong to the realm of the “possible,” and these phenomena are not generated by cause-and-effect patterns.

These phenomena are not necessary, but they are not accidental either, i.e. are not purely probabilistic in nature.

The so-called “natural-scientific psychology” studies man as a conditioned being, an extremely complex automaton, mechanism. With this understanding, psychological phenomena appear as “necessary”, i.e. generated by cause-and-effect patterns, as something that cannot but exist. Humanitarian (“non-classical”) psychology studies man in his “possible” and not necessary aspects, as an indeterministic being.

2. A person only acts and functions as a person for some periods in his life, realizing his human potential., i.e. he can live either in the intervals of the “necessary” or in the intervals of the “possible”.

In the 3rd edition of his book Psychology of meaning(2007), D.A. Leontyev presented in a generalized form the structure of regimes in which a person can live. These modes are placed on a scale from the completely determined person to the completely free, or “self-determined” (See. multiregulatory model of personality YES. Leontiev, within the framework of which 7 complementary mechanisms of regulation of human behavior are considered). In later works by D.A. Leontyev suggests turning to the metaphor of the “dotted man”, within which the understanding is expressed that a person realizes his human potential only in some periods of his life, while in others he finds himself/herself to a greater or lesser extent under pressure and control of various life circumstances, whatever they are.

As D.A. writes Leontyev, “Man has everything that lower organized animals have, thanks to which he can function at the “animal level”, not including his specific human manifestations. A person's trajectory in the world is dotted, discontinuous, because segments of functioning at the human level are interspersed with segments of subhuman functioning."

Human functioning at subhuman levels does not require effort; it is an “energy-saving mode of functioning.” “Everything that is truly human is energy-intensive, does not flow automatically, is not generated by cause-and-effect relationships and requires effort,” which of course pays off, but this is precisely why many refuse and move away from the “human” path, slipping into other modes of functioning.

3. Existence in human life in addition to the necessary, the sphere of the possible introduces into it the dimension of self-determination and autonomy.

Autonomy and self-determination (the ability to make independent, non-causally determined choice) do not arise in human life as a result of a causally determined process, and are needed by a person to orient himself and his behavior in the space of the possible. And the transformation of possibilities into reality occurs not as a result of any causal determination, but as a result of self-determination, through the choice and decision-making of the subject.

Even “meanings,” “values,” and “truths” in human life are not automatic, self-acting mechanisms; they influence a person’s life only through his self-determination in relation to them as a subject.

4. Throughout a person’s life, the degree of determination of the same psychological phenomena can change.

5. Self-determination of one’s life activity by a person, as the subject’s voluntary influence on the cause-and-effect patterns affecting this life activity, becomes possible through the use of reflexive consciousness.

6. The level of personal development determines the nature of the relationship between variables in the individual: at a lower level, the nature of the relationship between variables is more rigid and deterministic in nature; at a higher level of development, some act in relation to others only as prerequisites, without defining them unambiguously. “Personal development itself proceeds in the direction from genetically determined universal structures to less universal structures that initially exist in the modality of the possible.”

7. “An empirical indicator of action in the field of the possible, and not the necessary, is an unprovoked departure from the framework set by the situation.”

This exit occurs as the personality develops, increasingly towards the choice of meaningful and variable opportunities, as opposed to unambiguous needs.

8. As the forms and mechanisms of human life and psychological processes become more complex and improved, their causes begin to be increasingly replaced by prerequisites, which, unlike causes, give rise not to necessary consequences, but to possibilities, while their absence is an impossibility..

9. "Recognition of psychological reality and the significance of the category of the possible takes us from a clear and clearly structured world to a world where uncertainty reigns, and coping with its challenge is the key to adaptation and effective functioning".

Understanding the world in which a person finds himself as predetermined is an existential worldview.

10. The introduction of the category of the possible supplements the description of the interaction of a person as a subject with the world with an existential dimension, and in such an “extended” description a place is found for both an orientation towards certainty and an orientation towards uncertainty.

The prototype for such a description is Rubicon model(H. Heckhausen, J. Kuhl, P. Gollwitzer), within the framework of which the idea of ​​the so-called. “crossing the Rubicon” - a sharp transition carried out in the act of making an internal decision by the subject, from a “motivational state of consciousness”, maximally open in relation to receiving new information and weighing available possibilities, to a “volitional state of consciousness”, when the decision has already been made, the action takes on specific orientation and consciousness “closes itself” from everything that can shake this orientation.

11. "Opportunities are never actually embodied themselves, this happens only through the activity of the subject, who perceives them as opportunities for himself, chooses something from them and makes his “bet”, investing himself and his resources in the implementation of the chosen opportunity". At the same time, they accept responsibility for realizing this opportunity and give an internal commitment to themselves to invest efforts to realize it. In this transition, a transformation occurs: possible - valuable (meaningful) - due - goal - action.

In general, in those developed by D.A. Leontiev new guidelines for constructing a theory of personality, which can be called the psychology of “possible”, or more precisely, “possibility” personality, people are presented as being at different stages of their own path to humanization, at different stages of their individual ontogenetic evolution, which is a consequence of their personal choice and effort. In other words, it is proposed to consider people as being on the path to self-realization, the measure of which is people’s own steps taken in this direction, as well as the efforts made. However, self-realization here is not the realization of what is laid down by heredity or the environment, but the path of free decisions and choices of the person himself, not determined by the environment and heredity.

The key concepts for personality psychology developed by D.A. Leontiev are: space of the possible, reflective consciousness And act.

Deed can be understood as an action that does not fit into the traditional schemes of psychological causation, but requires the recognition of a different kind of causality, based on meaning, possibilities and responsibility, understood as personal causation. An act is “a conscious, responsible action based on personal causality and promoting the individual in the dimension of the personal path.”

One of the key problems of personality psychology for D.A. Leontiev is the transition of a person from the mode of determinism to the mode of self-determination when connecting reflexive consciousness.

Mechanisms of personality transition from the mode of determination to the mode of self-determination

The mechanisms for the transition of personality from the mode of determination to the mode of self-determination are certain psychotechnical actions or “existential psychotechniques” developed in different cultures, and meaningful, mainly by existential philosophy, existential psychology, as well as a dialogical approach to understanding a person and his life.

1. Stop, pause- between stimulus and reaction for the inclusion and work of reflexive consciousness, during which you can not react in a “natural” way, usual for yourself or the situation, but begin to build your own behavior.

2. Look at yourself from the outside. The inclusion of reflective consciousness, and thoughtful comprehension and awareness of all options and alternatives leads to the ability to make any choice.

3. Splitting the sense of self, awareness of the discrepancy that I am exactly like this. I as a person am what I choose to be, or what I make myself to be.

4. Identification of alternativeness of any choices and search for non-obvious alternatives. The same applies to choices that have already been made, especially those that a person made without noticing it. A choice is not only what a person has yet to make, but what a person is actually already doing.

5. Understanding the price you have to pay for each possible choice, i.e. - existential calculation.

6. Awareness of responsibility and investing oneself in the chosen alternative.

Identity problem

According to D.A. Leontiev, a person uses 2 strategies to determine his identity:

• social identity strategy involves defining oneself through belonging to a group; in this case, as a rule, a person renounces his own personality completely or partially, through its minimization in the world of large social groups. This strategy is implemented in the so-called. “flight from freedom” (E. Fromm) in general, and in particular in extreme situations, when a person “regresses” to an evolutionarily earlier stage of his development, abandoning those emancipations that he/she acquired in his/her life, and merges with the crowd, feeling good in it, a normal, self-confident part of the collective personality, without making decisions outside the group.

The modern world, according to D.A. Leontiev, filled with infantilism, denial of responsibility, care in dependence and others forms of escape from personality into social groups. It is the latter, according to D.A. Leontiev’s ideas are generally characterized by the social identity strategy currently chosen by many people.

The strategy of social identity is usually implemented through images of a person, images of his Self, understood as unique descriptions and perceptions of us by others, as well as our self-descriptions and self-perceptions, through which we participate in communication with others. These social formations in us (or even we) are dependent on the context and situation of communication and create a labyrinth of human identities.

• personal identity strategy assumes:

According to D.A. Leontiev, “Solving the problem of multiple, unstable and often conflicting identities modern man perhaps if this is done not by a representative of a certain number of social groups and communities, but by an autonomous person who has a point of support in himself, regardless of what social role categories or individual characteristics he can use to answer the question “who am I?” the answer of a person so understood is “I am I.” Identity for a person who feels his inner center outside of any verbally formulated identities is not a problem, according to D.A. Leontyev, since such a person resolves identity conflicts by constructing his own self, himself. values, and not processes that occur the other way around.

On a social scale, D.A. Leontyev says that the prosperity of a society depends on the presence in it of a critical mass of people who have support and a source of their own activity within themselves, are capable of action and take responsibility for it.

Psycholinguistic research

Studies of poetic creativity

YES. Leontyev notes the tendency of studies of a poetic work to go beyond the study of it only as a text into a broader existential context, where the subject of consideration should be the person who creates and perceives poetry, as well as what brought to life the creation of this work. YES. Leontiev systematized and reconstructed the modern understanding of poetry and its functioning as follows:

Modeling the poetry of D.A. Leontyev suggests saying that art models life, but not as an image, but as an activity, that is, as something that we can (have a chance) to do with our lives, and adds to its existing understanding such features as:

• A poetic work involves the life experiences of its author and reader.
• It is the person, and not the form of the poetic work itself, that overcomes and transforms its content; it happens through creative activity(existential acts of a self-determining personality) over the material of the work of which he is the author and during which his personality changes.
• The act of creating a poetic work combines the processes of understanding the meaning and the creative effort of creating a form; [poetic] text is not what we read, but “through which we read something else” (M.K. Mamardashvili). Understanding meaning is linked to personal development, which occur in the creative, mediated effort of man to actually “practice complexity” through the medium of “determinacy of form.” Poetic speech is to the highest degree arbitrary, mediated and reflexive, because when writing poetic works a person “must be completely himself.” “Poetry, like other forms of culture, cultivates arbitrariness, self-discipline, and a personal culture of overcoming.”

The culture of overcoming material, important for poetic creativity, has passed, according to D.A. Leontiev has at least 2 stages of his development:

• the power of the canon and artistic tradition, where cacon and tradition serve as a tool for overcoming the material.
• overcoming the canon itself in individual creativity (the problem of the last century), i.e. the conflict between the personal and the social, and the former’s overcoming the latter.

Speaking about the perception and empirical study of poetry, D.A. Leontyev suggests saying that:

• Currently, there are no holistic, developed approaches to considering and understanding the mechanisms of perception and impact of poetic works, as well as empirical studies of the perception of poetry by real audiences, although fundamental theoretical and phenomenological studies of the construction of poetic works themselves have been developed. This gap can be explained by the “elitism” of poetry as an art form.
• V modern understanding perception of poetry can be divided into 2 extremes:
  • the attention of researchers on the formal, linguistic, structural elements of the image of a poetic work, built in the minds of readers, without taking into account their interaction with the integral system of the poem and without correlation with their life contexts.
  • a traditional approach to understanding the impact of poetry on a person, leading only to affective experiences, through the understanding of poetry as a phenomenon of an emotional nature.

Publishing activities

Public activities and scientific contacts

Scientific school, students and followers

Author's latest developments

Within personality psychology, YES. Leontiev develops a “possibility” approach to understanding personality (2011). He proposed a multi-regulatory model of personality (2007), which fits as an integral part of this approach.

Links

1. Leontyev D.A. Philosophy of life M. Mamardashvili and its significance for psychology// Cultural-historical psychology, 2011, No. 1. - P. 2.
2. Leontyev Dmitry Alekseevich
3. Dmitry A. LEONTIEV, Ph.D. » CV
4. " Leontyev D.A. // Questions of psychology, 2011, No. 1. - P. 3-27.
5. Vygotsky L.S. Concrete human psychology// Bulletin of Moscow State University. Series. 14. Psychology, 1986, No. 1. - P. 58.
6. Leontyev D.A. About the subject of existential psychology// 1 All-Russian scientific-practical conference on existential psychology / Ed. YES. Leontyeva, E.S. Mazur, A.I. Soslanda. - M.: Smysl, 2001. - P. 3-6.
7. " Leontyev D.A. New guidelines for understanding personality in psychology: from the necessary to the possible// Questions of psychology, 2011, No. 1. - pp. 11-12.
8. Leontyev D.A." New guidelines for understanding personality in psychology: from the necessary to the possible// Questions of psychology, 2011, No. 1. - P. 12.
9. Leontyev D.A." New guidelines for understanding personality in psychology: from the necessary to the possible// Questions of psychology, 2011, No. 1. - P. 16.
10. Leontyev D.A. Personal potential as self-regulation potential// Scientific notes of the Department of General Psychology of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov / Under. ed. B.S. Bratusya, E.E. Sokolova. - M.: Smysl, 2006 (a). pp. 85–105.
11. " Leontyev D.A. New guidelines for understanding personality in psychology: from the necessary to the possible// Questions of psychology, 2011, No. 1. - P. 19.
12. " Leontyev D.A. New guidelines for understanding personality in psychology: from the necessary to the possible// Questions of psychology, 2011, No. 1. - pp. 13-14.
13. " Leontyev D.A. New guidelines for understanding personality in psychology: from the necessary to the possible// Questions of psychology, 2011, No. 1. - P. 24; Leontyev D.A. On the psychology of action// Existential. tradition: philosophy, psychology, psychotherapy. - Rostov n/d., 2006. - Issue. 2. - pp. 153-158.

The article examines the formation of the concept of motive in the theory of A.N. Leontiev in correlation with the ideas of K. Lewin, as well as with the distinction between external and internal motivation and the concept of the continuum of regulation in the modern theory of self-determination by E. Deci and R. Ryan. The distinction between external motivation, based on reward and punishment, and “natural teleology” in the works of K. Levin and (external) motive and interest in the early texts of A.N. is revealed. Leontyev. The relationship between motive, goal and meaning in the structure of motivation and regulation of activity is examined in detail. The concept of the quality of motivation is introduced as a measure of the consistency of motivation with deep-seated needs and the personality as a whole, and the complementarity of the approaches of activity theory and the theory of self-determination to the problem of the quality of motivation is shown.

Relevance and vitality of any scientific theory, and including psychological theory activity are determined by the extent to which its content allows us to obtain answers to the questions that face us today. Any theory was relevant at the time when it was created, providing an answer to the questions that existed at that time, but not every theory retained this relevance for a long time. Theories that relate to the living are able to provide answers to today's questions. Therefore, it is important to correlate any theory with the issues of today.

The subject of this article is the concept of motive. On the one hand, this is a very specific concept, on the other hand, it takes central place in the works not only of A.N. Leontiev, but also many of his followers who developed the activity theory. Previously, we have repeatedly turned to the analysis of the views of A.N. Leontiev on motivation (Leontiev D.A., 1992, 1993, 1999), focusing on such individual aspects as the nature of needs, multimotivation of activity and the functions of motive. Here we, briefly dwelling on the content of previous publications, will continue this analysis, paying attention primarily to the origins of the distinction between internal and external motivation found in activity theory. We will also consider the relationship between motive, purpose and meaning and correlate the views of A.N. Leontiev with modern approaches, primarily with the theory of self-determination by E. Deci and R. Ryan.

Basic provisions of the activity theory of motivation

Our previous analysis was aimed at eliminating contradictions in the traditionally cited texts of A.N. Leontyev, due to the fact that the concept of “motive” in them carried an excessively large load, including many different aspects. In the 1940s, when it was first introduced as explanatory, this stretchability could hardly be avoided; the further development of this construct led to its inevitable differentiation, the emergence of new concepts and, at the expense of them, a narrowing of the semantic field of the actual concept of “motive”.

The starting point for our understanding of the general structure of motivation is A.G.’s scheme. Asmolov (1985), who identified three groups of variables and structures that are responsible for this area. The first is the general sources and driving forces of activity; E.Yu. Patyaeva (1983) aptly called them “motivational constants.” The second group is the factors for choosing the direction of activity in a specific situation here and now. The third group is secondary processes of “situational development of motivation” (Vilyunas, 1983; Patyaeva, 1983), which make it possible to understand why people complete what they started doing, and do not switch each time to more and more new temptations (for more details, see .: Leontyev D.A., 2004). Thus, the main question in the psychology of motivation is “Why do people do what they do?” (Deci, Flaste, 1995) breaks down into three more specific questions corresponding to these three areas: “Why do people do anything at all?”, “Why do people this moment do what they do and not something else?” and “Why do people, once they start doing something, usually finish it?” The concept of motive is most often used to answer the second question.

Let's start with the main provisions of the theory of motivation by A.N. Leontiev, discussed in more detail in other publications.

1. The source of human motivation is needs. A need is an objective need of the organism for something external - an object of need. Before meeting the object, the need generates only undirected search activity (see: Leontyev D.A., 1992).
2. A meeting with an object - the objectification of a need - turns this object into a motive for purposeful activity. Needs develop through the development of their objects. It is precisely due to the fact that the objects of human needs are objects created and transformed by man that all human needs are qualitatively different from the sometimes similar needs of animals.
3. A motive is “the result, that is, the object for which the activity is carried out” (Leontyev A.N., 2000, p. 432). It acts as “...that objective, what this need is (more precisely, a system of needs. - D.L.) is specified in given conditions and what the activity is directed towards as what motivates it” (Leontyev A.N., 1972, p. 292). A motive is a systemic quality acquired by an object, manifested in its ability to motivate and direct activity (Asmolov, 1982).

4. Human activity multimotivated. This does not mean that one activity has several motives, but that one motive, as a rule, embodies several needs to varying degrees. Thanks to this, the meaning of the motive is complex and is determined by its connections with different needs (for more details, see: Leontyev D.A., 1993, 1999).

5. Motives perform the function of motivating and directing activity, as well as meaning formation - giving personal meaning to the activity itself and its components. In one place A.N. Leontiev (2000, p. 448) directly identifies the guiding and meaning-forming functions. On this basis, he distinguishes two categories of motives - meaning-forming motives, which carry out both motivation and meaning-formation, and “motive-stimuli”, which only motivate, but lack a meaning-forming function (Leontyev A.N., 1977, pp. 202-203).

Statement of the problem of qualitative differences in motivation: K. Levin and A.N. Leontyev

The distinction between “sense-forming motives” and “stimulus motives” is in many ways similar to the distinction, rooted in modern psychology, between two qualitatively different and based on different mechanisms types of motivation - internal motivation, conditioned by the process of activity itself, as it is, and external motivation, conditioned by benefit, which a subject can receive from the use of alienated products of this activity (money, marks, offsets and many other options). This breeding was introduced in the early 1970s. Edward Deci; The relationship between internal and external motivation began to be actively studied in the 1970-1980s. and remains relevant today (Gordeeva, 2006). Deci was able to most clearly formulate this distinction and illustrate the consequences of this distinction in many beautiful experiments (Deci and Flaste, 1995; Deci et al., 1999).

Kurt Lewin was the first to raise the question of qualitative motivational differences between natural interest and external pressures in 1931 in his monograph “The Psychological Situation of Reward and Punishment” (Lewin, 2001, pp. 165-205). He examined in detail the question of the mechanisms of the motivational effect of external pressures, forcing the child “to carry out an action or demonstrate behavior different from the one to which he is directly drawn at the moment” (Ibid., p. 165), and about the motivational effect of the opposite “situation” , in which the child’s behavior is controlled by primary or derivative interest in the matter itself” (Ibid., p. 166). The subject of Levin's direct interest is the structure of the field and the direction of the vectors of conflicting forces in these situations. In a situation of immediate interest, the resulting vector is always directed towards the goal, which Lewin calls “natural teleology” (Ibid., p. 169). The promise of reward or the threat of punishment creates conflicts in the field of varying degrees of intensity and inevitability.

A comparative analysis of reward and punishment leads Levin to the conclusion that both methods of influence are not very effective. “Along with punishment and reward, there is also a third opportunity to evoke the desired behavior - namely, to arouse interest and arouse a tendency towards this behavior” (Ibid., p. 202). When we try to force a child or an adult to do something based on carrots and sticks, the main vector of his movement turns out to be directed to the side. The more a person strives to get closer to an undesired, but reinforced object and begin to do what is required of him, the more the forces pushing in the opposite direction grow. Levin sees a fundamental solution to the problem of education in only one thing - in changing the motivation of objects through changing the contexts in which the action is included. “The inclusion of a task in another psychological area (for example, transferring an action from the area of ​​“school assignments” to the area of ​​“actions aimed at achieving a practical goal”) can radically change the meaning and, therefore, the motivation of this action itself” (Ibid., p. 204).

One can see direct continuity with this work of Lewin that took shape in the 1940s. ideas of A.N. Leontiev about the meaning of actions given by the holistic activity in which this action is included (Leontiev A.N., 2009). Even earlier, in 1936-1937, based on research materials in Kharkov, an article was written, “Psychological study of children’s interests in the Palace of Pioneers and Octobrists,” published for the first time in 2009 (Ibid., pp. 46-100), where in detail not only the relationship between what we call today internal and external motivation is studied, but also their interrelation and mutual transitions. This work turned out to be the missing evolutionary link in the development of A.N.’s ideas. Leontyev about motivation; it allows us to see the origins of the concept of motive in activity theory.

The subject of the study itself is formulated as the child’s relationship to the environment and activity, in which an attitude towards the task and other people arises. There is no term “personal meaning” here yet, but in fact it is the main subject of study. The theoretical task of the study concerns the factors of formation and dynamics of children's interests, and the criteria of interest are behavioral signs of involvement or disinvolvement in a particular activity. We are talking about October students, junior schoolchildren, specifically second-graders. It is characteristic that the work sets the task not of the formation of specific, given interests, but of finding general means and patterns that allow stimulating the natural process of generating an active, involved attitude towards different types activities. Phenomenological analysis shows that interest in certain activities is due to their inclusion in the structure of relationships that are significant for the child, both objective-instrumental and social. It is shown that the attitude towards things changes in the process of activity and is associated with the place of this thing in the structure of activity, i.e. with the nature of its connection with the goal.

It was there that A.N. Leontiev uses the concept of “motive” for the first time, and in a very unexpected way, contrasting motive with interest. At the same time, he states the discrepancy between the motive and the goal, showing that the child’s actions with the object are given stability and involvement by something other than interest in the very content of the actions. By motive he understands only what is now called “external motive,” as opposed to internal. This is “the driving cause of activity external to the activity itself (i.e., the goals and means included in the activity)” (Leontyev A.N., 2009, p. 83). Younger schoolchildren (second graders) engage in activities that are interesting in themselves (its purpose lies in the process itself). But sometimes they engage in activities without interest in the process itself, when they have another motive. External motives do not necessarily come down to alienated stimuli such as grades and adult demands. This also includes, for example, making a gift for mom, which in itself is not a very exciting activity (Ibid., p. 84).

Further A.N. Leontyev analyzes motives as a transitional stage to the emergence of genuine interest in the activity itself as one becomes involved in it thanks to external motives. The reason for the gradual emergence of interest in activities that previously did not arouse it is A.N. Leontyev considers the establishment of a means-end connection between this activity and what is obviously interesting to the child (Ibid., pp. 87-88). In essence, we are talking about the fact that in the later works of A.N. Leontyev received the name personal meaning. At the end of the article A.N. Leontyev speaks of meaning and involvement in meaningful activity as a condition for changing the point of view on a thing and attitude towards it (Ibid., p. 96).

In this article, for the first time, the idea of ​​meaning appears, directly associated with motive, which distinguishes this approach from other interpretations of meaning and brings it closer to Kurt Lewin’s field theory (Leontiev D.A., 1999). In the completed version, we find these ideas formulated several years later in the posthumously published works “Basic Processes of Mental Life” and “Methodological Notebooks” (Leontiev A.N., 1994), as well as in articles of the early 1940s, such as “ Theory of development of the child’s psyche”, etc. (Leontyev A.N., 2009). Here a detailed structure of activity already appears, as well as an idea of ​​motive, covering both external and internal motivation: “The object of the activity is at the same time what motivates this activity, i.e. her motive. ... Responding to one or another need, the motive of activity is experienced by the subject in the form of desire, desire, etc. (or, conversely, in the form of the experience of disgust, etc.). These forms of experience are forms of reflection of the subject’s attitude to the motive, forms of experiencing the meaning of activity” (Leontyev A.N., 1994, pp. 48-49). And further: “(It is the discrepancy between the object and the motive that is the criterion for distinguishing an action from an activity; if the motive of a given process lies within itself, it is an activity, but if it lies outside this process itself, it is an action.) This is a conscious relationship of the subject of the action. to its motive is the meaning of the action; the form of experiencing (awareness) of the meaning of an action is the consciousness of its purpose. (Therefore, an object that has meaning for me is an object that acts as an object of a possible purposeful action; an action that has meaning for me is, accordingly, an action that is possible in relation to one or another goal.) A change in the meaning of an action is always a change in its motivation” ( Ibid., p. 49).

It was from the initial distinction between motive and interest that A.N.’s later cultivation grew. Leontiev of incentive motives that only stimulate genuine interest, but are not associated with it, and meaning-forming motives that have personal meaning for the subject and in turn give meaning to the action. At the same time, the opposition between these two types of motives turned out to be overly sharpened. A special analysis of motivational functions (Leontyev D.A., 1993, 1999) led to the conclusion that the incentive and meaning-forming functions of a motive are inseparable and that motivation is provided exclusively through the mechanism of meaning-formation. “Motives-stimuli” are not without meaning and meaning-forming power, but their specificity is that they are connected with needs by artificial, alienated connections. The rupture of these connections also leads to the disappearance of motivation.

Nevertheless, clear parallels can be seen between the distinction between two classes of motives in activity theory and in self-determination theory. It is interesting that the authors of the theory of self-determination gradually came to realize the inadequacy of the binary opposition of internal and external motivation and to introduce a model of the motivational continuum that describes the spectrum of different qualitative forms of motivation for the same behavior - from internal motivation based on organic interest, “natural teleology” , to externally controlled motivation based on “carrots and sticks” and amotivation (Gordeeva, 2010; Deci, Ryan, 2008).

In the theory of activity, as in the theory of self-determination, there is a distinction between motives for activity (behavior) that are organically related to the nature of the activity itself, the process of which arouses interest and other positive emotions (meaning-forming, or internal, motives), and motives that encourage activity only in the strength of their acquired connections with something directly significant for the subject (stimulus motives, or external motives). Any activity can be performed not for its own sake, and any motive can come into subordination to other, extraneous needs. “A student may study in order to gain the favor of his parents, but he can also fight for their favor in order to gain permission to study. Thus, we have two different relationships between ends and means, rather than two fundamentally different types of motivation” (Nuttin, 1984, p. 71). The difference lies in the nature of the connection between the subject’s activities and his real needs. When this connection is artificial, external, motives are perceived as stimuli, and activity is perceived as devoid of independent meaning, having it only thanks to the motive-stimulus. In its pure form, however, this is relatively rare. The general meaning of a specific activity is a fusion of its partial meanings, each of which reflects its relationship to any one of the needs of the subject related to this activity directly or indirectly, in a necessary way, situationally, associatively or in some other way. Therefore, activity prompted entirely by “external” motives is just as rare as activity in which they are completely absent.

It is advisable to describe these differences in terms of the quality of motivation. The quality of motivation for activity is a characteristic of the extent to which this motivation is consistent with deep needs and the personality as a whole. Intrinsic motivation is motivation that comes directly from them. External motivation is motivation that is not initially associated with them; its connection with them is established through the construction of a certain structure of activity, in which motives and goals acquire an indirect, sometimes alienated meaning. This connection can, as the personality develops, be internalized and give rise to fairly deep formed personal values, coordinated with the needs and structure of the personality - in this case we will be dealing with autonomous motivation (in terms of the theory of self-determination), or with interest (in terms of the early works of A. N. Leontyev). Activity theory and self-determination theory differ in how they describe and explain these differences. The theory of self-determination offers a much clearer description of the qualitative continuum of forms of motivation, and the theory of activity has a better developed theoretical explanation of motivational dynamics. In particular, the key concept in the theory of A.N. Leontiev, which explains the qualitative differences in motivation, is the concept of meaning, which is absent in the theory of self-determination. In the next section we will consider in more detail the place of the concepts of meaning and semantic connections in the activity model of motivation.

Motive, purpose and meaning: semantic connections as the basis of motivation mechanisms

The motive “launches” human activity, determining what exactly the subject needs at the moment, but he cannot give it a specific direction other than through the formation or acceptance of a goal, which determines the direction of actions leading to the realization of the motive. “A goal is a result presented in advance, towards which my action strives” (Leontyev A.N., 2000, p. 434). The motive “defines the zone of goals” (Ibid., p. 441), and within this zone a specific goal is set, obviously associated with the motive.

Motive and goal are two different qualities that the subject of purposeful activity can acquire. They are often confused because in simple cases they often coincide: in this case, the final result of an activity coincides with its subject, turning out to be both its motive and goal, but for different reasons. It is a motive because it materializes needs, and a goal because it is in it that we see the final desired result of our activity, which serves as a criterion for assessing whether we are moving correctly or not, approaching the goal or deviating from it.

A motive is what gives rise to a given activity, without which it would not exist, and it may not be recognized or may be perceived distortedly. A goal is the final result of actions anticipated in a subjective image. The goal is always present in the mind. It sets the direction of action accepted and sanctioned by the individual, regardless of how deeply it is motivated, whether it is connected with internal or external, deep or superficial motives. Moreover, a goal can be offered to the subject as a possibility, considered and rejected; This cannot happen with motive. Marx famously said: “The worst architect differs from the best bee from the very beginning in that before he builds a cell of wax, he has already built it in his head” (Marx, 1960, p. 189). Although the bee builds very perfect structures, it has no goal, no image.

And vice versa, behind any active goal there is a motive of activity, which explains why the subject accepted this goal for fulfillment, be it a goal created by himself or given from the outside. Motive connects a given specific action with needs and personal values. The question of goal is the question of what exactly the subject wants to achieve, the question of motive is the question “why?”

The subject can act straightforwardly, doing only what he directly wants, directly realizing his desires. In this situation (and, in fact, all animals are in it), the question of purpose does not arise at all. Where I do what I directly need, from which I directly receive pleasure and for the sake of which, in fact, I am doing it, the goal simply coincides with the motive. The problem of purpose, which is different from motive, arises when the subject does something that is not directly aimed at satisfying his needs, but will ultimately lead to a useful result. The goal always directs us to the future, and goal orientation, as opposed to impulsive desires, is impossible without consciousness, without the ability to imagine the future, without time ABOUT th prospects. Realizing the goal, the future result, we also realize the connection of this result with what we need in the future: any goal has meaning.

Teleology, i.e. goal orientation qualitatively transforms human activity in comparison with the causally determined behavior of animals. Although causality persists and occupies a large place in human activity, it is not the only and universal causal explanation. “A person’s life can be of two kinds: unconscious and conscious. By the first I mean a life that is governed by reasons, by the second a life that is governed by a purpose. A life governed by causes can fairly be called unconscious; this is because, although consciousness here participates in human activity, it does so only as an aid: it does not determine where this activity can be directed, and also what it should be in terms of its qualities. Causes external to man and independent of him belong to the determination of all this. Within the boundaries already established by these reasons, consciousness fulfills its service role: it indicates the methods of this or that activity, its easiest paths, what is possible and impossible to accomplish from what the reasons force a person to do. Life governed by a goal can rightly be called conscious, because consciousness is the dominant, determining principle here. It is up to him to choose where the complex chain of human actions should be directed; and also - the arrangement of them all according to the plan that best suits what has been achieved ... "(Rozanov, 1994, p. 21).

Purpose and motive are not identical, but they can coincide. When what the subject consciously strives to achieve (goal) is what really motivates him (motive), they coincide and overlap each other. But the motive may not coincide with the goal, with the content of the activity. For example, study is often motivated not by cognitive motives, but by completely different ones - career, conformist, self-affirmation, etc. As a rule, different motives are combined in different proportions, and it is a certain combination of them that turns out to be optimal.

A discrepancy between the goal and the motive occurs in cases when the subject does not do what he wants immediately, but he cannot get it directly, but does something auxiliary in order to ultimately get what he wants. Human activity is structured this way, whether we like it or not. The purpose of the action, as a rule, is at odds with what satisfies the need. As a result of the formation of jointly distributed activities, as well as specialization and division of labor, a complex chain of semantic connections arises. K. Marx gave this a precise psychological description: “For himself, the worker does not produce the silk that he weaves, not the gold that he extracts from the mine, not the palace that he builds. For himself he produces wages... The meaning of twelve-hour work for him is not that he weaves, spins, drills, etc., but that this is a way of earning money that gives him the opportunity to eat, go to a tavern, sleep" (Marx, Engels , 1957, p. 432). Marx describes, of course, alienated meaning, but if there were no this semantic connection, i.e. connection between the goal and motivation, then the person would not work. Even an alienated semantic connection connects in a certain way what a person does with what he needs.

The above is well illustrated by a parable, often retold in philosophical and psychological literature. A wanderer walked along the road past a large construction site. He stopped a worker who was pulling a wheelbarrow full of bricks and asked him: “What are you doing?” “I’m carrying bricks,” the worker answered. He stopped the second one, who was driving the same car, and asked him: “What are you doing?” “I feed my family,” answered the second. He stopped the third and asked: “What are you doing?” "I'm building Cathedral", answered the third. If at the level of behavior, as behaviorists would say, all three people did exactly the same thing, then they had different semantic contexts in which they inserted their actions, different meanings, motivations, and the activity itself. The meaning of work operations was determined for each of them by the breadth of the context in which they perceived their own actions. For the first there was no context, he only did what he was doing now, the meaning of his actions did not go beyond this specific situation. “I’m carrying bricks” - that’s what I do. The person does not think about the broader context of his actions. His actions are not correlated not only with the actions of other people, but also with other fragments of his own life. For the second, the context is connected with his family, for the third - with a certain cultural task, to which he was aware of his involvement.

The classic definition characterizes meaning as expressing “the relationship of the motive of activity to the immediate goal of the action” (Leontyev A.N., 1977, p. 278). Two clarifications need to be made to this definition. Firstly, the meaning is not just expresses it's the attitude he and there is it's an attitude. Secondly, in this formulation we are not talking about any sense, but about a specific sense of action, or the sense of purpose. Speaking about the meaning of an action, we ask about its motive, i.e. about why it is being done. The relation of means to ends is the meaning of the means. And the meaning of a motive, or, what is the same, the meaning of activity as a whole, is the relationship of the motive to what is larger and more stable than the motive, to a need or personal value. The meaning always associates less with b ABOUT greater, the particular with the general. When talking about the meaning of life, we relate life to something that is greater than individual life, to something that will not end with its completion.

Conclusion: the quality of motivation in the approaches of activity theory and self-determination theory

This article traces the line of development in the theory of activity of ideas about the qualitative differentiation of forms of motivation for activity, depending on the extent to which this motivation is consistent with deep needs and with the personality as a whole. The origins of this differentiation are found in some of the works of K. Levin and in the works of A.N. Leontiev 1930s. Its full version is presented in the later ideas of A.N. Leontyev about the types and functions of motives.

Another theoretical understanding of the qualitative differences in motivation is presented in the theory of self-determination by E. Deci and R. Ryan, in terms of the internalization of motivational regulation and the motivational continuum, which traces the dynamics of “growing” into motives that are initially rooted in external requirements that are irrelevant to the needs of the subject. The theory of self-determination offers a much clearer description of the qualitative continuum of forms of motivation, and the theory of activity has a better developed theoretical explanation of motivational dynamics. The key is the concept of personal meaning, connecting goals with motives and motives with needs and personal values. The quality of motivation seems to be a pressing scientific and applied problem, in relation to which productive interaction between activity theory and leading foreign approaches is possible.

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To quote the article:

Leontyev D.A. The concept of motive in A.N. Leontiev and the problem of quality of motivation. // Bulletin of Moscow University. Episode 14. Psychology. - 2016.- No. 2 - p.3-18