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Монография содержит естественнонаучный анализ ключевых понятий общей психологии: потребностей, эмоций, воли, поведения, индивидуальных (типологических) различий, сознания и неосознаваемых проявлений высшей нервной деятельности человека. Этот анализ осуществлен с позиций предложенного автором потребностно-информационного подхода и опирается на данные этологии, физиологии высшей нервной деятельности и психофизиологии человека. В заключительных главах рассматриваются вопросы художественного творчества, теории и практики воспитания. Книга представляет интерес для самого широкого круга читателей - биологов, физиологов, психологов, врачей-психоневрологов, педагогов и искусствоведов.

Павел Васильевич Симонов - Мотивированный мозг

Академия наук СССР

Секция химико-технологических и биологических наук

П. В. Симонов

Мотивированный мозг

Высшая нервная деятельность и естественнонаучные основы общей психологии

Ответственный редактор академик АМН СССР В. С. Русинов

Москва "Наука" 1987

Симонов П. В. Мотивированный мозг. М.: Наука, 1987.

Табл. 2. Ил. 28. Библиогр. 616 назв.

Рецензенты:

доктор медицинских наук Э. А. Костандов,

доктор психологических наук В. М. Русалов

© Издательство "Наука", 1987 г.

Высшая нервная деятельность и естественнонаучные основы общей психологии

Утверждено к печати Секцией химико-технологических и биологических наук АН СССР

Редактор издательства Е. А. Колпакова

Художник А. М. Драговой

Художественный редактор Н. А. Фильчагина

Технический редактор М. Ю. Соловьёва

Корректоры В. А. Алешкина, Н. Г. Васильева

ИБ № 35124

Сдано в набор 17.09.86

Подписано к печати 5.12.86 Т-19173. Формат 84X108¹/₃₂ Бумага кн.-журнальная Гарнитура литературная Печать высокая Усл. печ. л. 14,28. Усл. кр. отт. 14,91. Уч.-изд. л. 16,0. Тираж 6150 экз. Тип. зак. 5006 Цена 1 р. 20 к.

Ордена Трудового Красного Знамени издательство "Наука" 117864 ГСП-7, Москва, В-485 Профсоюзная ул., 90

2-я типография издательства "Наука" 121099, Москва, Г-99, Шубинский пер., 6

P. V. SIMONOV. MOTIVATED BRAIN. Natural scientific backgrounds for general psychology. Moscow: Publishing House "Nauka", 1987.

This monograph contains a natural scientific analysis of the key concepts of general psychology on the basis of the need-informational approach suggested by the author of this book, and rests upon the data, provided by the general physiology of brain, comparative physiology of the higher nervous activity and human psychophysiology. The results of this analysis may be described in the form of the following short definitions, given in the succession they are discussed in the book.

Need - a specific (essential) force of living organisms, procuring their connections with external environment for self-preservation and self-development, a source of living systems' activity in the surrounding world. Human needs may be divided into three basic groups independent as to their origin: vital, social and ideal needs of knowledge and creativity. In each group there are needs of preservation and those of development, the social group revealing needs "for me" (rights) and "for others" (responsibilities). Satisfaction of any of the above needs is promoted by initially independent additional needs in equipment (with means, knowledge, skills) and the need to overcome obstacles on the way to the goal, commonly defined as will. Personality - individual unique composition and internal hierarchy of basic (vital, social, ideal) needs of a given human being, including their varieties of preservation and development, "for me" and "for others". The most important personality characteristic is - which of these needs and for how long are dominant in the hierarchy of coexisting motives, which need is "supplied" by creative intuition (superconsciousness, according to K. S. Stanislavsky's terminology).

Emotion - reflection in human and higher animals' brain of an urgent need and of probability (possibility) of its satisfaction. The subject assesses its probability at conscious and unconscious levels using his inborn and previously acquired individual experience, involuntarily comparing the information on the means, time, resources, necessary for reaching the goal (satisfaction of a need) with the available information. Emotion in its neurophysiological sense is an active state of a system of specialized brain structures, prompting the subject to change his behaviour so that to maximize or to minimize this state, which determines reinforcing, switching over and compensatory (substituting) functions of emotions in organization of goal-directed behaviour. Behaviour-such form of human and animal vital activity, which changes the probability and the duration of contact with an* external object, able to satisfy the individual's need.

Consciousness - specificly human form of reflection of reality, operating with knowledge, which by means of the "second signal system" (words, mathematical symbols, artistic images) may be shared with other individuals, with other generations - in the form of cultural monuments. Subconsciousness - a variety of the unconscious psychic, comprising all that which was conscious or may become conscious under definite conditions, i. e. well automized and because of that no longer conscious skills; forced out consciousness motivational conflicts; well learned social norms, controlling behaviour and experienced as "the voice of conscience", "the call of duty" etc. Superconsciousness (creative intuition) is manifested as initial stages of a creative venture, uncontrolled by consciousness and will. Unconsci ousness thus protects the arising hypotheses ("psychic mutations and recombinations") from the conservatism of consciousness, from the extreme pressure of previously acquired experience. Consciousness however retains the function of selecting these hypotheses by means of logical analysis and with the help of criterion of practice in a broad context. The neurophysiological basis of superconsciousness is provided by the transformation and recombination of the traces (engrams) stored in the subject's memory, by initial closing of new temporary connections; whether they conform to the reality or not is defined only later on. Superconsciousness is always oriented at satisfaction of the dominant need, its specific contents channelling the direction of "the psychic mutagenesis". The actual controversy between determinism and freedom of choice may be removed only by the complementation principle. Man is not free (determined) from the point of view of an external observer, who considers the determination of by genetic factors and educational conditions. However - and at the same time - man is free in his choice from his reflecting consciousness' point of view. In choosing the action superconsciousness may suggest as material for the decision-making such trace recombinations of the previously acquired experience that never occurred neither in the subject's activity, nor in the experience of preceding generations. In this and only in this sense we may venture to speak of a specific "selfdetermination" of behaviour as a particular case of the process of self-propulsion and self-development of the living nature.

Unlike instruction and training, addressing almost exclusively the child's consciousness, education (as also art) is impeled to affect the subconsciousness and superconsciousness. Genuine good education presupposes not only the knowledge of moral norms, obeying the rules in order to be awarded or to escape punishment, but impossibility to violate the principles, which have become internal controls of human acts and actions. The subjective unconsciousness of the objective advantages of a socially favourable behaviour is the essence of moral dialectics.

Peter L. Kapitsa wrote in his "Experiment. Theory. Practice". (1981): "No doubt that the developing science of the higher nervous activity will establish even more close ties with social sciences... Only on this scientific basis institutions for correct education and training are feasible. Only on this scientific basis it is possible to look for the correct forms of human labour and human leisure. And above all, only on the scientific basis it is possible to create a healthy and efficient structure of the society".

This book is dedicated to broad sections of readers: biologists, physiologists, psychologists, psychoneurologists, teachers and students of art. This "Motivated Brain" is a second book after "The Emotional Brain" (1981) and the author hopes to write in future a third - "The Creative Brain: Evolution of Noosphere".