Cognitive psychology and cognitive psychotherapy

Psychology is a multifaceted and versatile science. It has many directions and branches, each of which is focused on its own understanding of mental reality and the characteristics of its functioning. Each direction has its own approach to analyzing aspects of the psyche. Cognitive psychology is one of the relatively young, but quite progressive and very popular areas. This article is devoted to a brief overview of this area, as well as an overview of the related therapeutic approach - cognitive psychotherapy.

Concept and brief history of cognitive psychology

Cognitive psychology is a branch of psychological science that studies the cognitive processes of the human psyche. Research based on the cognitive approach in psychology is focused on the study of feelings, attention, memory, imagination, logical thinking, presentation of information, and the ability to make decisions. In fact, this is a whole concept focused on the activity of consciousness and the process of cognition.

Cognitive psychology studies the process of a person obtaining information about the world, how it is presented to them, how it is stored in memory and becomes knowledge, as well as how this knowledge affects a person’s behavior and attention. This direction concerns the entire range of mental processes, starting with sensations and ending with perception, attention, learning, pattern recognition, memory, and concept formation. It concerns thinking, language, memory, imagination, emotions and developmental processes, as well as all possible behavioral areas.

This trend appeared in the 50s of the 20th century in the USA. Although, of course, attempts to study the problems of consciousness have been made before. Even ancient philosophers asked questions about where thoughts and memory are located. For example, in Ancient Egypt they were believed to be located in the heart. Aristotle also supported this idea. However, Plato believed that the place where they are stored is the brain. Without going into details, we can say that people showed great interest in the problem of consciousness hundreds of years before cognitive psychology developed into a scientific field.

Considerable credit for the development of cognitive science belongs to such famous philosophers as Immanuel Kant, David Hume and Rene Descartes. Thus, Descartes' theory of mental structure eventually became a method for studying the psyche. Hume's work contributed to the establishment of laws of association of ideas and the classification of mental processes. And Kant pointed out that reason is a structure, and experience is the facts that fill this structure. But, naturally, it is wrong to believe that only these people should be thanked for the development of cognitive psychology. The activities of scientists from other fields also played a huge role.

One of the people who influenced the development of cognitive psychology more seriously is the German psychologist and physiologist Wilhelm Wundt, because he repeatedly said that consciousness has creative potential. Subsequently, this topic was partially developed in functionalism and structuralism, and only with the advent of behaviorism, which focused not on consciousness, but on behavior, at the beginning of the twentieth century, interest in it faded for almost half a century.

But already in the 1950s, a new stage in the development of cognitive science began. One of the pioneers of the movement was the American psychologist Edward Tolman. He pointed out the importance of considering cognitive variables and encouraged a shift away from the stimulus-response approach inherent in behaviorism. However, the most significant contribution to the formation of the approach was made by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, who studied child psychology, focusing on the stages of cognitive development. And even despite the fact that Piaget’s work was devoted mostly to child psychology, the range of applicability of the cognitive approach expanded significantly, and Piaget himself received the award “For Outstanding Contribution to the Development of Science.”

In the 1970s, cognitive psychology began to increasingly emerge as a distinct field of research and therapeutic practice. Many of its provisions became the basis of psycholinguistics, and its conclusions began to be used in other branches of psychological science, such as educational psychology, personality psychology and social psychology.

Currently, cognitive psychology is largely based on analogies between the mechanisms of human cognition and the transformation of information in computing devices. (And this despite the fact that its foundations were laid before cybernetics and complex computing and information technology appeared.)

The most common concept is that the psyche is a device that has a fixed ability to transform received signals. The main significance in it is the internal cognitive schemes and activities of the body involved in the process of cognition. The human cognitive system is considered as a system with input, storage and output devices, taking into account its throughput potential. And the basic metaphor of cognitive psychology is a computer metaphor, according to which the work of the human brain is likened to the work of a computer processor.

For those who are interested in representatives of cognitive psychology, we will name them. These are Boris Velichkovsky, George Sperling, Robert Solso, Karl Pribram, Jerome Bruner, George Miller, Ulrik Neisser, Allen Newell, Simon Herbert and some others. At the end of the article we will also provide a small list of books by some of these authors. Now the main ideas of cognitive science are of greatest interest to us.

But given the seriousness of the topic and the physical impossibility of talking about everything in one article, it won’t hurt if you take the time to watch the hour and a half video. This is a recording of the lecture “What is cognitive psychology, where does it come from and where is it going” by Maria Falikman, Doctor of Psychology, Senior Researcher at the Center for Cognitive Research, Faculty of Philology, Moscow State University. However, you can watch it after finishing the article or at any suitable time.

The relationship between cognition and social behavior

The general focus of the cognitivist approach is the desire to explain social behavior by describing predominantly cognitive processes characteristic of humans. They turn to mental activity, to the structures of mental life. The main emphasis in research is on the process of cognition. The connection between this process and social behavior: an individual’s impressions of the world are organized into some coherent interpretations, resulting in the formation of various ideas, beliefs, expectations, and attitudes, which act as regulators of social behavior. Thus, this behavior is entirely within the context of certain organized systems of images, concepts and other “mental” formations.

Basic ideas of cognitive psychology

Cognitive psychology relies on several fundamental ideas in its research. Let us present each of them in abstract form:

The main objects of study are cognitive processes. These include thinking, speech, perception, imagination, attention and memory. In addition to these, cognitive science studies human and artificial intelligence, the emotional sphere of personality, developmental psychology and the process of pattern recognition.
The most important premise of cognitive psychology is the study and analysis of cognitive processes in the form of computer functions. Representatives of the direction consider the cognitive processes of the human psyche in the same way as, for example, an electronics engineer studies a computer. A computer performs many operations related to receiving, processing, storing and issuing data. Human cognitive functions are responsible for similar operations.
The third idea follows from the second. It says that the psyche processes data in stages. Those. any stimulus received from the external world passes through a chain of ordinal transformations.
Mental information processing systems have their own maximum capacity. This assumption explains the direction of work and tasks of cognitive psychologists - they strive to find natural and most effective methods of working with information entering the psyche from the outside world (cognitive therapists use this knowledge to correct the behavior of patients).
All information that enters the psyche through cognitive processes is encoded and reflected in a special (individual) way.
For any research, it is necessary to use chronometric means to estimate the response time to proposed tasks and/or the speed with which the psyche reacts to signals. Cognitive psychology does not use introspective technologies (when a person himself observes the processes occurring in the psyche and does not use tools and standards), and considers them insufficiently accurate.

These ideas may seem quite simple at first glance, but in fact they form the basis on which a whole complex of complex scientific research rests. This, in turn, says that cognitive psychology, despite its relatively small age, is a very serious scientific field. By studying the processes of cognition occurring in the psyche, she can draw certain conclusions based on empirical evidence obtained.

The cognitive approach in psychology makes it possible to explain human behavior through a description of cognitive processes, to study and interpret the processes of perception, pattern recognition, problem solving, and memory functioning; to explore the mechanisms of constructing a cognitive picture of the world, unconscious perception and cognition, not only in humans, but also in animals.

All research in the field of cognitive psychology is carried out using special methods. First of all, these are methods of microdynamic and microstructural analysis of perceptual processes. The microstructure and microdynamics of mental activity are the subject of cognitive science, which studies the characteristics of mental life. The structure here is a relatively static representation of the system of organizing the elements of mental processes. And microdynamics is the study of processes occurring in mental life through the processing of information coming from the surrounding world. Thanks to both methods, human actions are considered as parts of a single intrapsychic system, and not as separate phenomena.

The next method is the microgenetic method, based on one of the types of Gestalt theory (Leipzig school), which focuses on the peculiarities of the formation of mental phenomena. According to this theory, images of objects do not appear in the human mind immediately, but after passing through several stages, which can be identified by creating certain conditions. But the main task of the method is to study not the final result of the thought process or its relationship with conditions, but the process itself leading to this result.

These three methods are designed to analyze thinking and cognitive processes. But there is one more that attracts the most attention. This is a personality construct replacement method developed by American psychologist George Kelly in 1955. Despite the fact that the cognitive approach in psychology was still in its infancy, Kelly’s works became defining for him, and today such an important area of practical cognitive psychology as cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy has been built around them. When considering it, we will touch a little deeper on the above-mentioned method.

Human cognitive development

Vallon, on the contrary, believes that the development of cognitive processes is closely intertwined with emotional and personal development. He believes that it is emotions that connect a child with his social environment. And the stages of mental evolution are considered as an intermittent sequence of reorganizations, which at certain moments includes the suppression or addition of certain functions. And therefore they consider it necessary to study conflicts and contradictions in the process of child development.

Although Wallon does not recognize a single developmental rhythm for all children, he identifies periods with their own characteristics and peculiarities of the child’s interaction with other people. So, let's look at Wallon's successive stages of childhood:

impulsive stage (up to 6 months) is the stage of reflexes that develop automatically in response to stimuli, and then the appearance of conditioned reflexes;
Emotional stage (from 6 to 10 months) - here there is already an accumulation of emotions such as: Fear, anger, disgust, joy and others. And emotions are closely related to movement, which in a small child is an indicator of spiritual life. The child is not yet able to perceive himself as different from other people.
the beginning of practical thinking (from 10-14 months) - the baby begins to recognize sounds, gestures, words, express his desires with words and gestures.
projective phase (from 14 months to 3 years) - The child develops independence through mastering speech and walking. He is already able to explore and act with objects whose names he recognizes simultaneously with their properties. The transition from action to thinking already occurs here and is made possible through imitation. The connection between society and the child's psyche is manifested in the fact that the child imitates the actions of others and also acts in accordance with the social model. The child's reactions must be complemented and understood by adults.
personalism phase (from 3 to 6 years). This stage includes 3 periods:

oppositional period, which begins at the age of 3 years. The child feels the need to assert and gain his independence, which leads to great conflicts, as the child confronts others and asserts himself, while unconsciously offending others and showing disobedience. This crisis is necessary in the development of the child, since from this moment he begins to become aware of his inner life. At the same time, the child acquires the ability to distinguish objects by shape, color, size;
The narcissistic period (from 4 years old) is a manifestation of increased interest in oneself. The child tries to present himself in a favorable light, believes in his superpowers, insists on achieving his desires and goals. And his perception becomes more abstract, he is able to distinguish lines, graphic symbols;
period of imitation (at the age of 5 years) - during this period, raising a child should be intensely “pleasant”, since the child shows attention to people, to the world, and also experiences affection for people. An important fact is that if a child does not have attachment to people during this period, he may become a victim of fears and anxieties. During this period, the child also imitates, takes on roles and thinks about the hero.

stage of education (from 6 to 12 years) - the child turns to the outside world, develops knowledge about objects, their properties, and various forms of activity. Thinking becomes more objective, mental abilities and operations are formed.
stage of puberty. At this stage, the teenager concentrates on himself, on his needs and asserts his independence. He tries to find meaning and justification in various social relationships. Therefore, we can say that at this stage the preparation for life that constitutes childhood is completed. And cognitively develops the ability to think and connect abstract concepts.

To conclude the chapter on cognitive development, a person's mental abilities reach their peak between the ages of 18 and 20 and do not decline significantly until age 60. And the differences between mental potential in old age and youth become obvious when we consider the reaction speed of thinking. With age, the speed of thinking decreases, short-term memory and the ability to remember information deteriorate. A sharp weakening of mental activity is observed in people shortly before death.

Cognitive behavioral psychotherapy

cognitive approach in psychology

Today, with the help of cognitive behavioral psychotherapy, therapists work with people’s mental disorders: eliminate them, smooth them out, or reduce the likelihood of future relapses. It helps eliminate psychosocial consequences, correct behavior, and increase the effectiveness of medication treatment. This direction was based on the ideas of George Kelly.

Kelly's personality construct theory states that each mental process proceeds through different ways of predicting events in the surrounding reality. Human consciousness and behavior are not controlled by instincts, incentives, or even the need for self-actualization. He acts as a scientist, studying and understanding the world around him and himself.

According to Kelly, a person, by studying the behavior of others, trying to understand its essence and make predictions, builds his own system of personal constructs. The concept of “construct” is fundamental in the scientist’s theory. The construct consists of the characteristics of perception, memory, thinking and speech and is a classifier of how a person perceives himself and the world around him.

This is the main means for classifying the phenomena of reality, which is a bipolar scale, for example, “stupid-smart”, “beautiful-ugly”, “brave-cowardly”, etc. The process of a person’s choice of constructs characterizes him as an object of cognition, which is the subject of interest of all therapy. The constructs form a system, and if it turns out to be ineffective, a healthy person either changes it or replaces it with a new one. In case of mental disorders, they resort to therapy.

In general terms, therapy can be defined as a comparative analysis of the characteristics of people’s perception and interpretation of external information. This analysis consists of three stages:

At the first stage, the patient works with various tools that help identify erroneous judgments and then find their causes.
At the second stage, the patient, with the help of a therapist, masters techniques for correct correlations between phenomena in the surrounding world. The specialist’s task is to show a person the benefits and harms, advantages and disadvantages of an existing construct.
At the third stage, the patient must become aware of the new construct and begin to build his behavior on its basis.

It is important to note that the specialist only starts the treatment process, and then simply corrects it. And a lot here (which is also typical in other areas of psychiatry and psychology) depends on the person undergoing treatment.

Kelly's theory describes a conceptual framework that allows a person to make sense of reality and create specific behavioral patterns. By the way, it was supported by the famous Canadian and American psychologist Albert Bandura. He developed a system of "observational learning" used to change behavior.

The personal construct itself is used by world experts who study the causes of low self-esteem, fears and phobias, and depressive states. Cognitive psychotherapists believe that the cause of any mental disorder lies in dysfunctional (wrong) constructs. This is why Kelly's theory is so important for therapy.

Images as elements of consciousness and principles of their analysis from Gestalt psychology

The principles of analyzing images as elements of consciousness and self-awareness came from Gestalt psychology. In Gestalt psychology the following principles:

an image is the result of human activity, the idea of an image as a whole;
the idea of isomorphism - there is a similarity between material and mental processes. Today: relative similarity - if there is some external structure in an external phenomenon, then there will be a similar structure in the internal image;
the idea of the immanent dynamics of Gestalt - the image has an inherent internal tendency to change. Representations always change: they are completed, expanded, etc.;
the idea of the dominance of good figuresthe idea of consistency and internal consistency of cognitive structures;
the principle of assimilation and contrastthe idea of convexity of certain social objects (comparison in categorization).

Features of the cognitivist approach to the problem of personality

Cognitive concepts occupy an increasingly significant place in personality theory. These concepts do not accept the psychoanalytic image of a flawed person who is subject to the action of unconscious and conflicting motivational forces. If Freud emphasized the role of instincts, which brings man closer to animals, then the basis of the cognitive approach is what distinguishes man in the animal world - the ability to think and reflect. Cognitive psychology is also skeptical about the behaviorist image of a person controlled by the situation.

Cognitive psychology proceeds from the assumption that the individual is an independent subject who implements a research attitude in relation to reality. He lives and acts as a professional explorer: observes, predicts, hypothesizes, plans, experiments, draws conclusions, and uses his knowledge to adapt to and transform the world.

Information is of great importance in the structure and life of the individual. But information does not control a person, but is only material that is transformed in the process of thinking, forecasting and planning actions. Like a researcher, an individual goes beyond the available information and independently organizes knowledge about the outside world. Consequently, the personality is neither a puppet controlled by the environment, nor a mediocre actor completely dependent on dark instinctive forces. A person is a more or less mature researcher who largely independently determines his own destiny and knows how to actively act in social conditions.

One of the first theorists of cognitive personology was George Kelly, who created the doctrine of personal constructs. Kelly viewed man as a scientist, acting on the basis of personal constructs and thoughts. According to the concept of personal constructs, a person independently creates his own image of the world and his own personality. Kelly sought to understand the uniqueness of the construction of the world by a specific person.

According to O. Bannister, “construct theory perceives man not as an infantile savage, not as a creature slightly more capable than the average rat, and not as a victim of his own biography. A person is a mature researcher who, in the course of his search, creates and shapes himself - sometimes magnificently, sometimes tragically.”

Among the ideological predecessors of the cognitive trend, the ancient Stoic philosopher Epictetus is called, who said: “It is not what is influenced that forces you, but your opinion.” Consciousness is the key to psychological problems. The cognitive approach to personality is the highlighting of the internal picture of the world that each person possesses. Personality is what a person knows and believes. Personality is a system of opinions that a person has formed about himself, life and other people. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of knowing an individual’s own belief system and understanding the mechanism of its influence on his life.

The interests of the cognitive approach to personality include knowledge of how an individual develops his ideas and perceptions of reality, how he makes choices from available options and makes decisions, and how he actually acts.

The cognitive concept is characterized by the fact that a person is represented as a system that transforms information. Behavior depends not only on external information, but also on internal cognitive structures and knowledge acquired through learning and reflection. Man is an independent and creative system. The main method of changing the behavior and experience of an individual is education and upbringing.

Personality is related to how a person interprets events and situations: how a person perceives his own behavior and its consequences depends on the characteristics of his personality. For example, some attribute internal reasons to their course of action, others - external ones, that is, they explain behavior by circumstances. Some believe that they themselves control events, others feel that they are subject to them.

No person is a completely autonomous system, independent of external influences and his own biography. Intellectual processes, emotions and human actions are regulated by various factors. According to cognitive theory, the structure of information determines what people strive for and what they avoid.

Information used in behavior comes from two sources. The first of these is the social and physical environment currently influencing, that is, family, school, organization or media, which generates corresponding images of perception. The second source of information is experience, a system of knowledge that an individual received in the past through learning, thinking and action. Depending on the source of information, there are two types of behavior regulation: external and internal. Of particular interest is internal regulation.

The basis of internal regulation is cognitive structures (“dynamic schemes”). The concept of cognitive structures is fundamental to understanding personality. Cognitive structures are a system of information about the external world and one’s own personality. They are a certain organization of an individual's past experience, the result of learning and thinking. The system of cognitive structures that forms the relatively stable traits of a person is the basis of personality. In the cognitive concept, personality is, first of all, a certain organization of information encoded in a person’s memory, a set of personal experiences.

Personality is largely determined by cognitive structures, or schemas. Cognitive personality theory uses an expanded concept of schema. Schema is an active organization (structure) of past experience, which is aimed at searching and selecting information; perception is based on the use of schemes: only that for which there are schemes is perceived, everything else is ignored. The schemas that define personality are the core beliefs (concepts, positions). People form concepts of themselves, others, and the world as a whole. These concepts influence the formation of other beliefs, values and attitudes. Schemas begin to form in childhood based on personal experiences and identification with significant others.

Cognitive structures are a source of information about the environment, about one’s own “I”, as well as about programs of behavior and achieving intended goals. Cognitive structures perform the following functions.

First, they give a person a sense of identity. Thanks to appropriate cognitive structures, the individual receives a sense of his own identity and also navigates the outside world. To act effectively, you need to know not only the parameters of the external environment, but also understand yourself, your competence, motivation, emotional maturity and abilities. A distinctive feature of a person is the possession of information not only about the external world, but also about himself, about his Self. A person without personality, deprived of past experience, would not know who he is, would not understand his place in the world, would not be able to behave in society. The totality of data about one’s own personality, knowledge and skills, as well as motivation is called self-awareness (I-concept, self-image or self-portrait). In our time, which is oriented towards the outside world, the importance of self-knowledge is underestimated.

In the process of developing the structure of “I”, in addition to the sense of identity, a sense of one’s own value is also formed, i.e. a belief in the autonomous value of one's own personality and the expectation of confirmation of this belief from other people and oneself. The creation of a sense of self-worth occurs under the influence of information received from the social environment, which recognizes the individual’s value (for example, in the form of approval), his belonging and a certain status in a social group, as well as by assessing the position of the “I” in the value network and the degree of effectiveness of the structure regulation functions "I". A temporary or permanent change in one's own value occurs either as a result of actual changes in the individual's position, or due to changes in the value of other persons and objects with which the individual compares himself.

Secondly, cognitive structures facilitate orientation in the external world, which is a condition for adaptation. Thanks to current experience and scientific knowledge, a person understands natural, biological, technical and social phenomena, and can describe and explain the causes of benevolent or hostile interpersonal relationships.

Thirdly, the information contained in cognitive structures makes it easier to assess the significance of things and events. In the course of his life, a person learns what is good for him and what is bad, what brings satisfaction and what poses a threat. For example, most people see positive value in security, education, love, etc. In the same way, people know that violence, uncertainty about the future, and illness belong to the category of negative values. A person whose knowledge of values is vague, who does not understand what is good and what is bad, faces great difficulties in determining his goals and lifestyle.

Fourthly, behavioral programs are encoded in cognitive structures, that is, a system of rules that allows one to achieve intended goals. These programs can be algorithms (for example, technological instructions), heuristics (for example, a style of playing chess, principles for solving creative problems, etc.). Among these programs are guidelines on how to acquire new knowledge. Of particular importance is the belief system, that is, certain rules of life that a person tries to follow. These personal rules or philosophy of life may be shaped by parenting, religion, common sense, or fanciful ideas about how one should live. People either become unhappy due to illogical, unscientific thinking or achieve a great degree of satisfaction in life by practicing common sense.

Thus, cognitive structures are an important factor in the regulation of behavior. But not all schemes are adaptive. There are also maladaptive, dysfunctional patterns that lead to disturbances in behavior, emotional processes, perception and thinking. There are three main groups of cognitive mechanisms in which disturbances are possible: cognitive elements, cognitive processes and cognitive content.

Cognitive elements include basic premises, negative core beliefs, deep-seated ideas of the individual about the world around him, other people and himself: “Nobody needs me, no one loves me”, “You can’t trust people” and automatic thoughts, so named because its involuntariness, transience and unconsciousness, when a person does not select information for reflection, but focuses on it involuntarily.

Cognitive processes are the link between basic assumptions and automatic thoughts; they ensure correspondence between newly received information and previous ideas. These are, for example, the so-called “conditional” assumptions: “If I don’t succeed in everything I do, no one will respect me”; “If he doesn’t love me, then I’m not worthy of love.”

Cognitive content combines elements and operations around a specific topic (“I am sexually inferior,” “I will never get married,” etc.).

In general, the cognitive structure of a person may have its own weak point - “cognitive vulnerability”.

Cognitive structures, as the main component of personality, are characterized by certain traits.

1. They have a certain level of complexity, that is, they can be more complex or simpler. Complexity has several dimensions. One of these dimensions is the number of aspects that a person takes into account when perceiving and evaluating phenomena. For example, a teacher with insignificant complexity of cognitive structures evaluates students using a scale: capable - incapable. With a higher complexity of cognitive structures, the assessment is carried out using many scales: capable - incapable; highly motivated – low motivated; emotionally mature – emotionally not mature; introvert - extrovert, etc. An important indicator of the complexity of cognitive structures is the amount of information they contain: the richer the knowledge, the more complex the cognitive structures are.

The degree of complexity of cognitive structures plays an important role in behavior. The higher the complexity, the less often a person perceives the world as black and white, the more he notices subtle differences between people, more accurately evaluates events, the more flexible he is in behavior and the less he considers emotions.

People with low cognitive complexity act stereotypically, are unable to adapt flexibly to new requirements of the situation, are prone to vague generalizations, often find themselves dependent on external circumstances, etc.

As the situation becomes more complex, people with high cognitive complexity will increase the rate of information processing faster than cognitively simple people. The former will be able to cope with more complex situations before their ability to process information is reduced or exhausted.

2. Cognitive structures are characterized by the degree of abstraction - concreteness. A person whose cognitive structures are concrete perceives the world as a series of objects; he has difficulty forming concepts of a high degree of generality. For example, a person with specific cognitive structures resists the inclusion of “newspapers” and “radio” in the “mass media” category because “they write in newspapers” and “they speak on the radio.” Such individuals have linear cognitive structures. Abstract cognitive structures assume that knowledge has a hierarchical structure. In the course of thinking and action, they are able to break away from images of perception and operate with general concepts.

3. Cognitive structures are assessed by the degree of their openness. Structures are closed if a person does not adjust his beliefs and views under the influence of new information, if the information channel between the environment and the individual is blocked.

4. Cognitive structures are characterized by activity - passivity. The higher the level of activity, the greater the controlling role played by cognitive structures in behavior.

The cognitive approach to personality changes the way we look at a person’s problems. Man is not a helpless product of biochemical reactions, blind impulses or reflexes. He is a being capable of correcting erroneous ideas and unlearning false ways of thinking. By identifying and correcting mental errors, he can rise to a higher level of self-actualization. Cognitive psychotherapy is based on the idea of the primacy of the conscious, rational side of the psyche in resolving personal problems.

Clear reason and common sense have been considered the basis of psychological stability and mental health for many centuries, but the magnificent flowering of psychoanalysis in the 20th century made us partly forget about this simple truth. Personality disorders (anxiety, depression, panic fear (phobia), boredom, feelings of inferiority, etc.) arise as a result of disturbances and failures in information processes that negatively affect the closely related emotional and motivational aspects of behavior and activity. A psychotherapist is in some ways similar to a good (“systems”) programmer who is able to find and eliminate a glitch in a program and even (ideally) teach similar procedures to the user (client).

The quality of thinking determines the comfort of existence - people are unhappy because they think or imagine something incorrectly - even to themselves. A person's feelings and behavior are highly dependent on his thoughts, opinions, beliefs and ideas. Jean Piaget showed that very young children do not understand that an object exists outside of their perception. Consequently, one cannot understand the horror of a child whose parent has just left the room; in figuring out the true situation, one should rather turn directly to the cognitive processes of this child and his internal reality, in which the parent really does not exist.

Something similar happens to adults. Paul Watzlawick writes: “Patients come into your office believing that the world works a certain way. This particular belief system is not very constructive, which is why they seek help. Your job is to help them believe that the world works differently. It is necessary to help patients change their belief system. The new strategy, if it is effective, should help the patient to be more satisfied and enjoy life, while the old one caused him pain and suffering.”

According to G. Vitkin, personality is a system, the development of which consists in increasing differentiation of structures and in a gradual transition from a homogeneous to a heterogeneous state. This shows up:

1) functional specialization of individual elements of the system and their relative independence from each other;

2) isolating the system from the surrounding world, i.e. the transition from externally controlled behavior to internally controlled behavior;

3) complication of integration of system elements.

In this regard, G. Vitkin distinguishes between a global personality (“field dependent”), which is distinguished by relative homogeneity, low specialization of individual functions, an unexpressed sense of one’s own difference from the environment (insufficient sense of identity) and uncomplicated integration, and a heterogeneous personality (differentiated, “ independent of the field"). The difference between global and differentiated personality manifests itself, for example, in the sphere of perception as “dependence” or “independence” on the field. With “field dependence,” perception is determined by the general organization of the field, and its constituent elements are difficult to distinguish from the general background. With a “field-independent” type of perception, individual elements of a complex set of stimuli are easily differentiated. Therefore, the lack of a sense of identity of one’s body or personality is a manifestation of “field dependence.”

Critical Approach

The critical approach is based on an analysis of the moral and political views that underlie modern trends in psychiatry and medical psychology. The main role in the development of this approach was played by the works of R. Lang and M. Foucault. Representatives of the critical movement are also G. Shash, Johnstone, J. Usher and others. In his works “The History of Madness in the Classical Age” and “Psychiatric Power” M. Foucault demonstrated that psychiatry began its formation as a practice of controlling cessation behavior and only then acquired features of an independent scientific direction. Therefore, socio-economic factors have always played a huge role in shaping the concept of mental illness, and problems of power, control and violence have been key in the organization of psychiatric treatment. Using the example of the development of medicine in France, Foucault shows how economic conditions during the birth of capitalism led to the formation of a new concept of madness. To a certain extent, the emergence of a critical approach was facilitated by the discovery of facts of numerous abuses of the rights of the mentally ill (forced hospitalization, sterilization, lobotomy, sexual violence, etc.).

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Technology for developing critical thinking

...initiating student reflection. Conduct reflection Techniques for the development of critical thinking Techniques of the challenge stage True and false statements ... The technology for the development of critical thinking includes three stages: challenge - comprehension ... Prediction tree "This technique helps to make assumptions about the development of the plot line in a story, story. Reception "Tree of Predictions" ...

Within the critical approach, such areas as anti-psychiatry (R. Lang, T. Cooper), critical psychiatry (D. Ingleby), post-psychiatry (P. Bracken) are distinguished.

Within the framework of antipsychiatry, illness is considered as the only possible way for an individual to survive in an abnormal situation. In particular. R. Lang conducts a phenomenological-existential analysis of psychoses, emphasizing the division of the self into true and false, characteristic of these cases, as well as the ontological uncertainty of schizophrenic patients. The schizophrenic patient is seen by Lang as a desperate person who is forced to develop a false self as a defense against reality. Lang criticizes traditional psychiatry for using the detached attitude of doctor to patient as a measure of normality of a standard image of a person, leading to a lack of mutual understanding. He notes that the behavior of a standard patient is a function of a standard psychiatrist and a standard hospital. To better understand the patient, the psychiatrist must consider his existential situation.

A number of authors hold more radical views on schizophrenia, denying its existence in general. This is typical, in particular, for Italian psychiatry (F. Basaglia. M. Riso).

Italian anti-psychiatry, unlike the American and English ones, is a more political movement than a scientific one. It is aimed at reorganizing assistance to people with severe mental disorders and protecting their rights. The schizophrenic reaction is seen as a reaction to an abnormal (schizophrenic and capitalist) society.

Representatives of critical psychiatry argue that the doctrine of mental illness needs not so much new facts as a re-evaluation of old concepts. First of all, the positivist approach in psychiatry is questioned. As D. Ingleby notes. The psychiatrist observes his patients in the same manner as an astronomer observes the stars, and this renders any psychiatric theory useless. The laws that govern people are not the same as those that govern inanimate objects. To refer to this process he uses the term “renfication”, i.e. reification. According to Ingleby, psychiatric diagnoses are not reliable and valid in all cases. Moreover, in everyday practice, a psychiatric diagnosis is more of an administrative decision. Some provisions of the social constructivism approach are used here. according to which many scientific concepts that are supposedly based on “hard facts” are in fact socially determined. When society labels a certain behavior and condition of an individual as "pathological" then that behavior begins to be discussed in terms of illness.

Proponents of post-psychiatry point to the need to democratize the field of psychiatry, openly discussing the context, values and practices of medicine. They note a dangerous trend towards medicalization, i.e. to the extension of medical concepts to areas of human life unrelated to health and illness.

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Psychiatry and Narcology

... “General psychopathology” (M.V. Korkina et al. Psychiatry: Textbook. M., 1995). When carrying out differential diagnosis as ... on adj. 2. Lesson 1. Subject and tasks of psychiatry. Relevance of psychiatry for general practitioners and... Disorders of memory and intelligence. Modern trends in psychiatry. Classification of mental illnesses (ICD-10). Psychopharmacotherapy (nootropics, psychotherapy...

Representatives of the critical approach do not offer special methods of helping individual patients, since they advocate updating the system as a whole, changing society's attitude towards people with mental disorders, and, finally, modifying the basic postulates regarding the goals of medical practice.

Conceptual apparatus

The main concept is cognitive structures (a synonym for image among Gestaltists or image systems). Meaning is the result of the categorization process. The sum of values relative to a piece of reality is a correlation frame.

The central idea is that a person’s cognitive structure cannot be unbalanced, disharmonious, and if this is the case, then there is an immediate tendency to change this state. Individuals behave in ways that maximize the internal consistency of their cognitive system, and, furthermore, groups behave in ways that maximize the internal consistency of their interpersonal relationships. The feeling of inconsistency causes psychological discomfort, which gives rise to a reorganization of the cognitive structure in order to restore conformity.

Existential and humanistic approaches

Existential and humanistic approaches have points of contact that allow us to talk about them in parallel. The main similarity is the primary focus not on the problems of health and illness, but on the problems of a healthy or sick PERSON. In this sense, mental illness is just one of many aspects of human existence. and the patient's personality is more than his illness. JI. Binswangsr. R. May, I. Yalom. L. Kempinski, K. Rogers and other psychotherapists made a great contribution to the development of these approaches.

The existential model in medical psychology is based on several important provisions:

• the features of human existence are its meaningfulness, the fundamental possibility of choice and necessity; accept responsibility for these choices;

• it is impossible to separate the subject from the worlds in which he is present: the biological world, the world of relationships and the world of self-identity;

• a person is constantly in a state of becoming;

• death (the finiteness of human existence) is the only absolute fact of life;

• every person is unique and irreplaceable;

• people have the ability to go beyond the current situation, to rise above it. see yourself as both subject and object;

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Theoretical approaches to studying the problem of children's fears in psychology

... and integration. Chapter 1 Theoretical approaches to studying the problem of children's fears in psychology More... Tillich consider anxiety and fear to be integral attributes of human existence. Kierkegaard introduced the distinction between ordinary fear-phobia, ... life-threatening “reckless and impulsive actions of a person” Fear, thus, can perform a certain socializing or ...

• modern neuroses are neuroses of human alienation from the world; they are accompanied by a feeling of inner emptiness and loneliness.

Thus, existential and humanistic approaches in medicine point to the connection of psychopathological syndromes with basic existential issues - the finitude of human existence, human freedom and responsibility, loneliness and guilt, as well as frustration of the natural needs for every person for self-actualization and self-esteem.

At the same time, existentialists emphasize existence, and representatives of the humanistic approach emphasize the uniqueness and unconditional value of any individual. The usefulness of using the existential approach in the clinic is limited by the ability of the seriously mentally ill to adequately respond to problems of responsibility, existential loneliness and the finitude of human existence.

Representative of the humanistic approach K. Rogers points out. that there are basic, specifically human needs, for example, the need for a positive attitude from significant others, for self-esteem, for self-actualization, i.e. in realizing personal potential. Positive self-attitude. according to Rogers, it should be unconditional - every person is unique and deserves love and respect. This experience of unconditional positive self-regard is acquired in childhood. However, the child may come to the conclusion that he deserves positive treatment only under certain conditions, for example, if he behaves “by the rules.” Such a person denies an essential part of himself that does not meet externally imposed standards. Client-centered therapy, developed by K. Rogers, is aimed at developing in patients the skills of self-acceptance, self-confidence (in Rogers’ terminology, trust in the body), and sincere communication.

The contradictions within these approaches can be evidenced by the controversy between different authors regarding clinical cases.

Existential therapy, in principle, does not use any special techniques that distinguish it from other approaches. Its unique characteristic is the goals put forward by the psychotherapist. Existential psychotherapists encourage patients to take responsibility for their lives, make free choices, and be honest with themselves and others.