Finally got to the book! For convenience, I will post some notes here.
The book is not easy to read.

Quoted from the book by F. E. Vasilyuk " Psychology of experience"

Fedor Efimovich Vasilyuk is our contemporary, a Russian psychotherapist. Dean of the Faculty of Psychological Counseling at the Moscow City Psychological and Pedagogical University. Head of the Department of Individual and Group Psychotherapy, Doctor of Psychology, Professor of the Department of Individual and Group Psychotherapy, Faculty of Psychological Counseling, MSUPE.

Typology of life worlds.

Vasilyuk's typology gives an idea of ​​how this or that person, with a certain arrangement of his inner world, experiences critical situations.
WITH typology structure is: "the life world" is the subject of typological analysis. It has external and internal aspects, designated respectively as the external and internal world. The outside world can be easy or difficult. Internal - simple or complex. The intersection of these categories defines four possible states, or types of "lifeworld".
Speaking of the difficulties of the outside world, meaning not only the corresponding experiences, but also the difficulty as a real characteristic of the world; not the world in itself, not the world before and outside the subject, but the world "Divided by the subject", the world seen through the prism of its life and activity, for difficulty can be discovered in the world only as a result of activity.... From the external position of "lightness" of the external aspect of the life-world corresponds to the security of all life processes, the direct given to the individual of the objects of needs, and "difficulties" - the presence of obstacles to their achievement.
Under the inner aspect of the psychological world it implies the internal structure of life, organization, conjugation and interconnection of its individual units.

Each life world is characterized primarily from the so-called. its spatio-temporal organization. At the same time, in accordance with the distinction between the external and internal aspects of the life world, external and internal time-space will be described separately. External aspect of the chronotype characterized by the absence or presence of "extension", which consists in the spatial remoteness and the temporal duration necessary to overcome the remoteness. The internal aspect of the chronotype describes the structure of the inner world, i.e. the presence or absence of "conjugation".

Type 1. externally easy and internally simple life world.
can be depicted by imagining a being that has a single need and lives in the conditions of immediate givenness of the object corresponding to it.
The space-time structure of this world. Ease with spatio-temporal t.z. must be interpreted as the absence of the "extension" of the external aspect of the world. (lack of spatial remoteness and temporal duration).Because of this, the subject does not know any “there” and “then”, he has no concepts of duration, sequence, extension, there is no past and future. Each implemented relation fills it completely. The simplicity of the inner world, or the absence of "conjugation" between individual moments of the inner space-time.the simplicity of the inner world means reckless immersion in a realizable life relationship, chaining to a given place in the chronotope. The described psychological world is characterized by such a chronotope in which there is no perspective and retrospective, the past and future are, as it were, pressed into the present, or rather, have not yet been isolated from it.
Central principle of attitude- the principle of pleasure.
Prototype such a life are the conditions of the womb and infant existence of man. They form the basis of the infantile worldview, which is latently present in every person.The infantile worldview corresponds to the “here and now” attitude to the satisfaction of the need, which does not require effort and expectation, with the complete possession of the object of need, identification with it.
The goal and highest value of such a life is pleasure. The activity of a person with such an attitude to the world is subject to momentary impulses. Infantile consciousness does not face questions about whether the desire for pleasure is adequate, whether it is provided by being, whether it is guaranteed for a certain period of time, at the price of what consequences it is achieved, etc.
The experience of an easy and simple life leads to the passivity of the subject, since under the conditions described, no activity is required to overcome the external world. Therefore, if a critical situation of impossibility of satisfaction suddenly arises, it is experienced by him as death, collapse, horror. He does not know that this can ever end, he does not take any action due to his passivity, and as a result he oscillates between states of horror and bliss. In this world, taken in all the purity of its characteristics, there is no place for experiencing at all, since the lightness and simplicity of the world, i.e., the security and consistency of all life processes, exclude the possibility of situations requiring experiencing. Moreover, even when being suddenly ceases to be easy and simple for one reason or another, the subject, not being able to "respond" to the critical situation that has arisen either with external practical activity or with ideal transformations of the psychological world, responds to it with the only means available to him - intra-corporeal changes. The latter corresponds to the concept of physiological stress reactions.
In a complex and/or difficult world, a subject can develop a consciousness corresponding to this world order, but it does not abolish the infantile consciousness, does not take its place, but builds on top of it, entering into complex and sometimes antagonistic relations with it.
The corresponding kind of experience is called hedonistic. It corresponds to the processes of psychological defense, which help a person to create the illusion of a solution to the problem or its absence.Every person has the experience of such an existence, and in certain situations it can be updated and control human behavior. In difficult and complex worlds, new, more complex forms of behavior are formed, building on top of this one, but they do not cancel it.

Type 2. externally difficult and internally simple life world.
Here, the blessings of life are not given directly, there are barriers, obstacles that prevent the satisfaction of needs. The difficulty of the external world in terms of the chronotope means the presence of "extension", i.e., spatial remoteness (life benefits) and temporal duration (necessary to eliminate remoteness). In a situation of a difficult world, the subject has to admit that the satisfaction of the need, which is a necessity for him, is impossible "here and now". It is possible only "there" and "later", and in consciousness there is an idea of ​​the spatial and temporal extension of the external world.As for the internal structure of this life-world, it remains simple as before. This absence of internal dissection and structured life in the spatio-temporal unfolding means the absence of "conjugation", i.e., the absence of spatial connection, "juxtaposition" of vital units (= relations = individual activities) and connections of temporal sequence between them. Activity is characterized in this world by a steady striving towards the object of need, this activity is not subject to any distractions, temptations and temptations, the subject does not know doubts, hesitations, feelings of guilt and pangs of conscience - in a word, the simplicity of the inner world frees activity from all sorts of internal obstacles. and restrictions. It knows only one obstacle - external. Due to the simplicity of the inner world, the semantic structure of the image of the outer world is also extremely simplified. It is made in two colors: each object is comprehended only from the point of view of its usefulness or harmfulness for satisfying the always intense single need of the subject.
As for the external aspect of the chronotope, it is significantly changed in comparison with the first type. The object of need can be both in direct contact with the subject, more precisely, with the organ of consumption, and at some distance. The same applies to the time aspect. But the main thing for characterizing a difficult life world, in contrast to an easy one, is not such an objective situation in itself, but that it is "grasped" by the subject with the help of special mental forms (phenomenologically signified "there" and "then"). Due to them, the psychological world of the subject is expanded and differentiated in comparison with the infantile one.
the law of experience of the second type is the reality principle. This experience proceeds from the fact that reality "does not hear convictions", that it is insurmountable, the fight against it is useless and, therefore, you need to accept it as it is, submit, reconcile and, within the boundaries and limits set by it, try to achieve the possibility of satisfying needs. . Therefore, the type of experience corresponding to this case is called realistic. Realistic experience is based on the mechanism of patience. It proceeds from the fact that reality is inexorable, it is necessary to accept it as it is, and try to achieve the satisfaction of one's needs within the limits set by reality.
Prototype of the described type are not only personalities of a certain type, but also certain states of the personality, more or less prolonged, normal or pathological. These include, say, "impulsive drives" well-known in psychopathology, which "represent acutely emerging urges and aspirations that subjugate the entire consciousness and behavior of the patient. With their occurrence, all other desires and ideas are suppressed."

Type 3. externally easy and internally complex life world.
This life is devoid of situationality. In the psychological world there are no situations with their "turned up cases", favorable (or unfavorable) circumstances, with their time restrictions that give rise to "concerns", that is, actions that must be performed within a certain period, with their possibility of compromises between content irreconcilable tendencies , with their unexpected "suddenly" and "just in time", etc.
The internal necessity for the subject is to achieve internal consistency, conjugation of units of the inner world in space and time.
The main problematic and striving of an internally complex life is to get rid of the painful need for constant choices, to develop a psychological “organ” for mastering complexity, which would have a measure of the significance of motives and the ability to fasten life relationships into the integrity of individual life. This "organ" is nothing but value consciousness, for value is the only measure of the comparison of motives. The principle of value is, therefore, the highest principle of the complex and easy life-world. Each motive is assigned a certain "price", which determines its position in the hierarchy of values, which removes the tragedy of each choice, saves a person from doubts and hesitations, makes the choice automatic.
Values ​​do not possess motivating energy and power in themselves and therefore are not capable of directly compelling motives to submit to them.
However, on the other hand, value has the ability to generate emotions, for example, in the case when one or another choice clearly contradicts it. And this means that value (within the framework of the activity-theoretic approach) should be subsumed under the category of motive, because emotions are relevant to a separate activity, reflect the course of realization of some motive by it. It can be assumed that in the course of personality development, values ​​undergo a certain evolution, changing not only in content, but also in their motivational status, place and role in the structure of life. As value consciousness develops, values ​​can be transformed into meaning-forming motives.
Although value, as a content of consciousness, does not initially possess energy, as the personality develops internally, it can borrow it from actually acting motives, so that in the end it becomes the content of life from the content of consciousness and itself receives the power of a real motive. Value is not any known content that can become a motive, but only such that, having become a real motive, leads to the growth and improvement of the individual. With this transformation of value from a predetermined motive into a real, available motivational force, a hard-to-explain energy metamorphosis takes place. Having become a real motive, the value suddenly turns out to be the owner of such a powerful energy potential that cannot be attributed to all those borrowings that could take place in the course of its evolution. And if the motive, the need always belongs to a certain person, then the values ​​attach the subject to the universal. They are impersonal, transpersonal. The main values ​​of a person give him a sense of the meaningfulness of being, determine his main life goals.
value experience inherent in this type life world,- this is an internal work on the formation of a motivational-value system, its hierarchization, restructuring. In the process of such internal work, consciousness clarifies its own system of values, separates the main from the insignificant. This may be, for example, a decrease in a certain value (activity) in terms of hierarchical rank, that is, deprivation of its former significance. There are two main subtypes of value experience. The first of them is realized when the subject has not yet reached the highest stages of value improvement, and is accompanied by a greater or lesser change in his value-motivational system.
Several variants of this subtype of experience can be distinguished, depending on the scale of these changes and on whether, along with motivational transformations, a substantial restructuring of the subject's values ​​occurs or not.
In another case, if the world objectively impedes the realization of dominant, sense-forming values, the task of value experience may be the choice and approval of a new sense-forming value. A similar work takes place if the former value system that existed is discredited by experience. past life. Then the task of experiencing is to build a new value system that would give inner integrity and meaning to being.
In the case of grief caused by the loss, the value experience helps to transfer the lost relationship into the sphere of the ideal, aesthetic.
The development of the value system proceeds especially intensively during periods of significant choices and decisions for the individual, making them the content of the history of life. Prototype value experience is moral behavior: there is such a layer, section or dimension of human existence in which life is reduced to consciousness, the matter of life activity - the difficulty of the world - is put out of brackets and a person acts in conditions of a kind of light world. It was this plane that was identified and examined with psychological point vision in the third type of typology.

Type 4. externally difficult and internally complex life world.
In the fourth type of the life world, the activity of the subject is complicated by both internal fluctuations (the struggle of motives familiar from the past case) and external difficulties that can slow down the implementation of the chosen action, tempting the subject to give up this difficult task, reconsider the choice made, and switch to another, easier action. , motive.
The internal necessity for a person in this case is the realization of his life plan, what he feels as a matter of life, a vocation.
The main neoplasm that helps to cope with difficult and complex world, is the will. One of the main functions of the will is to prevent the struggle of motives from stopping or diverting the activity of the subject.
Will serves not one activity, but the construction of all life. Its purpose is to embody the idea of ​​a person about himself, about his life, the embodiment of life's creativity. The will constantly monitors the external and internal possibilities and requirements that arise in the situation, evaluates them.
Volitional behavior is characterized by a conscious correlation of the implemented activity (situational) with all the ideas, goals, plans, intentions, obligations, expectations of the individual, that is not included in this spatio-temporal situation (supra-situational).
A specific critical situation for this world is a crisis, when the realization of one's life plan becomes impossible for a person.
The type of experience characteristic of a given situation is called creative experience. Creative experience is a work of self-creation, self-construction. It restores the lost opportunity to live and act.
In a situation where only former forms realization of a life plan, in the process of creative experience, a person clarifies for himself the inner essence of his life plan and looks for new forms of practical realization of his ideal values, drawing up a new specific life plan.
Situations are possible when a person's experience of realizing his life plan completely discredits both the plan itself and the value system of the individual on which it was based. Here the work of creative experience includes the creation of a new system of values, and the creation of a new integrity of one’s life history and a new image of oneself, and in the eradication of everything connected with the former, rejected values, and, finally, in the sensual-practical embodiment of the new ideal.

the relation of the subject to reality in the case of different types of experience:
creative experience different sensual-practical attitude to reality.
In a real life situation, a person can use different types of experience or any combination of them. The use of different types of experience in the same situation will lead, respectively, to different results.
hedonistic experience ignores reality, distorts and denies it, forming the illusion of satisfaction and preservation of the violated content of life.
Realistic experience accepts reality as it is, adjusting to it the dynamics and content of the subject's needs.
value experience tries to disarm reality with ideal procedures, turning it into an object of interpretation and evaluation. The accomplished event is only ideally transformed by the value consciousness.

Brief annotation

The monograph is devoted to the study of critical life situations and the processes of their overcoming. Situations of stress, frustration, internal conflict and life crisis are analyzed. To cope with these situations, to survive them, a person needs to do sometimes painful inner work to restore peace of mind, meaningfulness of life. Establishment and systematization of the basic patterns of the process of experiencing is something new that the book introduces into the psychology of overcoming critical situations.

The book is intended for psychologists, psychotherapists, philosophers, educators, social workers psychological help population.

From the author.

Domestic psychology has long ceased to be a purely academic discipline, but it still owes a great deal to practice. IN various areas public life this debt is actively paid - the figure of a psychologist is becoming more and more familiar in a modern factory and in medical institution, in pedagogy and jurisprudence. But the need for psychological help exists not only in social practice, but also in personal and family life, and this need is so far completely insufficiently satisfied. On the other hand, psychology itself, especially the so-called " interesting psychology", exploring the motives, emotions, personality of a person, cannot continue to develop productively only within the walls of the laboratory, without taking an active part in real human life.

Under the influence of this mutual interest, a new (and long-awaited) period is now opening in the development of domestic practical psychology: literally before our eyes, the sphere of psychological services for the population is emerging - a family service, a suicidological service with a network of "social and psychological assistance" offices and crisis hospitals, a psychological service of a university, etc. .

The specific organizational forms of separating the "personal" psychological service into independent practice are not yet completely clear, but whatever they may be, the very fact of its appearance poses the task of developing fundamental principles for general psychology. theoretical foundations that could guide this practice.

Moscow University Press, 1984.

From the author

Domestic psychology has long ceased to be a purely academic discipline, but it still owes a great deal to practice. In various areas of public life, this debt is being actively paid - the figure of a psychologist is becoming more and more familiar in a modern factory and in a medical institution, in pedagogy and jurisprudence. But the need for psychological help exists not only in social practice, but also in personal and family life, and this need is so far completely insufficiently satisfied. On the other hand, psychology itself, especially the so-called "interesting psychology" that studies motives, emotions, and a person's personality, cannot continue to develop productively only within the walls of a laboratory without taking an active part in real human life.

Under the influence of this mutual interest, a new (and long-awaited) period is now opening in the development of domestic practical psychology: literally before our eyes, the sphere of psychological services for the population is emerging - a family service, a suicidological service with a network of "social and psychological assistance" offices and crisis hospitals, a psychological service of a university etc. .

The specific organizational forms of separating the "personal" psychological service into independent practice are not yet completely clear, but whatever they may be, the very fact of its appearance poses the task of developing the fundamental theoretical foundations by which this practice could be guided by general psychology.

These foundations themselves must be based on the awareness of the not yet quite familiar professional position occupied by a psychologist who practically works with a person. If, within the framework of pedagogical, legal, medical and other fields of activity, the psychologist acted as a consultant and assistant to a teacher, doctor or lawyer serving these specialists, then, taking this position, he becomes a responsible producer of work, directly serving the person who turned to him for help. And if earlier the psychologist saw him through the prism of the questions facing other specialists (clarification of the diagnosis, determination of sanity, etc.), or his own theoretical questions, now, as a responsible subject of independent psychological practice, for the first time he professionally encounters not sick, students, suspects, operators, subjects, etc., but with a person in the fullness, concreteness and intensity of his life problems. This does not mean, of course, that a professional psychologist should act, so to speak, purely "humanly"; the main question lies precisely in isolating the psychological aspect proper from this life problem and thereby delineating the psychologist's area of ​​competence.

The fundamental limitation of this zone is given by the fact that the professional activity of a psychologist does not coincide in its direction with the pragmatic or ethical aspiration of the person who applied for help, with the orientation of his emotional-volitional attitude into the world: a psychologist cannot directly borrow his professional goals from a set of actual goals and desires patient, and consequently his professional actions and reactions to the events of the patient's life cannot be automatically determined by what the patient wants.

This does not mean, of course, that a psychologist should kill sympathy and empathy in himself and once and for all oblige himself to have the right to respond to a "cry for help" not as a specialist, but simply as a person, that is, ethically: to give friendly advice, to console to provide practical assistance. These actions lie in a dimension of life where there can be no talk of any professional duty, just as there can be no talk of prescribing or forbidding a doctor to give his own blood to a patient.

What a psychologist really must, if he wants to be useful to a person as a specialist, is, having retained the ability for compassion, which forms the emotional-motivational soil that nourishes his practical activity, learn to subordinate his immediate ethical reactions, directly arising from compassion, to a positively determined pathological program. help, as a surgeon can do in his circle during an operation or a teacher, who uses one or another educational influence is by no means always pleasant for the pupil.

But why, in fact, is this ability to subordinate direct ethical reactions to a professional psychological attitude necessary? Because, firstly, that consolation and pity are not exactly (and often not at all) what the patient needs to overcome the crisis. Secondly, because the advice of life, to which many patients are greedy, is for the most part simply useless or even harmful to them, indulging their unconscious desire to relieve themselves of responsibility for their own lives. A pedologist is not a specialist in everyday advice at all, the education he received does not at all coincide with the acquisition of wisdom, and, therefore, the fact of having a diploma does not give him the moral right to make specific recommendations on how to act in a given life situation. And one more thing: before turning to a psychologist, the patient usually considered all possible ways out of a difficult situation and found them unsatisfactory. There is no reason to believe that by discussing his life situation with the patient on the same plane, the psychologist will be able to find a way out that he did not notice. The very fact of such a discussion maintains unrealistic hopes in the patient that the psychologist can solve life's problems for him, and the almost inevitable failure strikes at the authority of the psychologist, reducing the chances of the ultimate success of his case, not to mention the fact that the patient often experiences unhealthy satisfaction. from the "game" won by the psychologist, described by E. Berne (1) under the title "And you try. - Yes, but ..." And finally, the third of the possible direct ethical reactions to the misfortune of another person - practical help to him - cannot be included in arsenal professional psychological actions simply because the psychologist, with all the desire, cannot improve his financial or social situation, correct his appearance or return the lost loved one, that is, he cannot influence the external, existential aspect of his problems.

All these points are very important for the formation of a sober attitude of patients (and the psychologist himself) to the possibilities and tasks of psychological assistance. However main reason, which forces the psychologist to go beyond the immediate ethical response in search of proper psychological means of assistance, lies in the fact that a person can always and only himself survive the events, circumstances and changes in his life that gave rise to the crisis. No one can do this for him, just as the most sophisticated teacher cannot understand the material being explained for his student.

But the process of experiencing can be controlled to some extent - stimulate it, organize it, direct it, provide favorable conditions for it, striving to ensure that this process ideally leads to the growth and improvement of the personality - or at least does not go pathological or socially unacceptable way (alcoholism, neuroticism, psychopathization, suicide, crime, etc.). Experience, thus, is the main subject of the application of the efforts of a practical psychologist who helps a person in a situation of a life crisis. And if so, then in order to build the theoretical foundation of this practice, it is quite natural to make the process of experiencing the central subject of general psychological research into the problem of overcoming critical situations.

The reader has probably already noticed that the term "experience" is used by us not in the usual sense for scientific psychology, as a direct, most often emotional, form of giving the subject the contents of his consciousness, but to designate a special internal activities, internal work, with the help of which a person manages to endure certain (usually difficult) life events and situations, restore lost mental balance, in a word, cope with a critical situation.

Why, to designate the subject of our study, we found it possible to use an already "occupied" term, we will answer this question later, in the Introduction. But why is it necessary to go for terminological innovation at all? The point, of course, is not that the area of ​​psychic reality we are studying is terra incognita for psychology and should be named for the first time, but that its existing names - psychological defense, compensation, coping behavior, etc. - us they are not satisfied, since the categories they express fix only particular aspects of the integral problem that we see here, and none of them, therefore, can claim the role of a general category. On the other hand, a new term is required because we want to immediately, from the threshold, dissociate ourselves from the theoretically limited methodology that dominates the study of this sphere of mental reality, and conduct an analysis from the standpoint of a certain psychological concept- the theory of activity of A. N. Leontiev, and in its arsenal there is simply no corresponding concept.

The last circumstance is not accidental. Although many studies within the framework of this theory, to one degree or another, affect the subject of interest to us, no attempts have yet been made to clearly formulate this problem in the most general theoretical terms. The probable reason why the theory of activity has hitherto touched only in passing on this sphere of psychic reality is that this theory has devoted its main attention to the study of objective-practical activity and psychic reflection, and the need for experience arises precisely in such situations that cannot be be directly resolved by practical activity, no matter how perfect reflection it may be provided. This cannot be understood in such a way that the category of activity is generally inapplicable to experiencing, and that, therefore, it “by nature” falls out of the general activity-theoretic picture; on the contrary, experience completes this picture, representing in comparison with external practical and cognitive activities a special type of activity processes, (2) which are specified primarily by their product. The product of the work of experiencing is always something internal and subjective - peace of mind, meaningfulness, peace, a new value consciousness, etc., in contrast to the external product of practical activity and internal, but objective (not in the sense of indispensable truth in content, but in the sense of relatedness external in form) of the product of cognitive activity (knowledge, image).

Thus, in the problem of experience, the theory of activity reveals a new dimension for itself. This determined the main goal of the study - from the standpoint of the activity approach, to develop a system of theoretical ideas about the patterns of overcoming critical life situations by a person and thereby expand the boundaries of the general psychological theory of activity, highlighting the psychology of experience in it as a special subject of theoretical research and methodological developments.

It is clear that such a goal cannot be achieved empirically, by accumulating already numerous facts. Its achievement involves the application of a theoretical method. As such, we used Marx's method of "ascent from the abstract to the concrete". At the specific methodological level, our theoretical movement was organized by the method of categorical-typological analysis, the principles and techniques of which we borrowed from the works and oral presentations of O. I. Genisaretsky. (3)

The goal formulated in this way, the chosen method for achieving it, and the available historical and scientific conditions determined the following sequence of tasks that were solved in our study.

First, it was necessary to put the problem of experiencing in the context of the psychological theory of activity, to systematically introduce the category of experiencing into this context. The word “introduce”, perhaps, does not quite accurately express the inner essence of this task, because we did not take the category of experience in a ready-made form outside the theory of activity from any other theory, but rather tried to “limit” the extrascientific, intuitive idea of ​​experience with concepts and categories of the psychological theory of activity. Such "limiting" is akin to the process of remembering, when we cannot name a certain content exactly, but gradually narrow the search area, determining what it refers to and what it is not.

Only by crystallizing the idea of ​​the object of interest to us in the body of the “parental” general psychological theory and thus obtaining a certain point of support, it was possible to begin reviewing the ideas about it available in the psychological literature without the risk of drowning in an abundance of material, getting bogged down in details and missing the main thing. The review is almost completely devoid of historicity, it is built strictly systematically. The reader hoping to get acquainted with the original ideas about stress, conflict, frustration and crisis, about psychological protection and compensation, will apparently be disappointed with this review. He will discover in the first chapter not a gallery of independent theoretical positions, but rather a construction site where individual elements and entire blocks of a future, in some places already guessed construction, are being prepared.

The purpose of the second, constructive chapter was to, taking the initial abstractions of the psychological theory of activity and being guided, on the one hand, by the general idea of ​​experiencing, and, on the other, by the data of an analytical review, to deploy these abstractions in the direction of the empiricism of interest to us with the aim of its theoretical reproduction in this kind of knowledge that captures the patterns of processes, and not their general features.

Of course, the “ascent to the concrete” does not end with the identification of these regularities. In the third and final chapter, the problem of the cultural-historical determination of experience is posed, the development of which, according to our plan, should throw a bridge from the general laws of this process, i.e. from experience in general, the experience of some abstract individual, to experience specific person living among people in a certain historical era. This chapter contains a hypothesis about the mediation of the process of experiencing by certain structures of social consciousness, as well as a detailed analysis of a specific case of experiencing, performed on the material more fiction. This analysis is intended not so much to prove the hypothesis (it is clearly not enough to prove it), but rather to illustrate it, and at the same time a number of provisions of the previous parts of the work.

The author considers it his duty to honor with words of gratitude the blessed memory of A. N. Leontiev, under whose leadership the research began, and also to sincerely thank Professor V. P. Zinchenko, without whose participation and support this book could not have been published, N. A. Alekseev , L. M. Khairullaev, and I. A. Pitlyar for help in the work.

Introduction

Two concepts of experience

The subject of our analysis are the processes that in ordinary language are successfully expressed by the word "experience" (in the sense in which "to survive" means to endure some, usually painful, events, to overcome some difficult feeling or condition, to endure, withstand and etc.) and at the same time did not find their reflection in the scientific psychological concept of experiencing.

When we are concerned about how a person who cares about us will survive the loss that has befallen him, this anxiety is not about his ability to feel suffering "to experience it (i.e., not about the ability to experience it in the traditional psychological sense of the term), but about something else - about how he will be able to overcome suffering, endure the test, get out of the crisis and restore peace of mind, in a word, psychologically cope with the situation.We are talking about some active, productive internal process that really transforms the psychological situation, about experiencing-activity.

It suffices to look at the traditional psychological concept of experiencing to see that it has little to do with the idea of ​​experiencing-activity. This traditional concept is given through the category of mental phenomena. Any mental phenomenon is characterized by its relation to one or another "modality" (feeling, will, idea, memory, thinking, etc.), and from the side of the internal structure, firstly, by the presence of "immanent objectivity", or objective content, and, secondly, by the fact that it is directly experienced by the subject, given to him. The last aspect of the mental phenomenon is fixed in the concept of experience. Thus, experience in psychology is understood as a direct internal subjective given of a mental phenomenon, in contrast to its content and "modality". From this point of view, such rarely used expressions as "mental experience", "visual experience", etc., are theoretically meaningful, although they cut the ear. (4).

In order to understand the meaning of this concept more precisely, it is necessary to consider experience in its relation to consciousness. Both structural components psychic phenomenon - objective content and experience - are somehow given to consciousness, but given in different ways, in completely different modes of observation. With active forms of perception, thinking, memory, the perceived subject content acts as a passive object, to which mental activity is directed. That is, the objective content is given to us in consciousness, which is a special act of observation, where the Observed appears as an object, and the Observer as the subject of this act. In the case of experience, these relationships turn around. Each of the internal experience is well aware of the fact that our experiences proceed spontaneously, without requiring special efforts from us, they are given to us directly, by themselves (cf. Cartesian "we perceive by ourselves"). To say about experience that it is "given by itself" means to emphasize that it is precisely given by itself, by its own power, and is not taken by the effort of an act of consciousness or reflection, in other words, that the Observed here is active and, therefore, is a logical subject, and the Observer , on the contrary, only experiences, undergoes the impact of the given, is passive and therefore acts as a logical object.

In order to more clearly shade the specificity of experience as a special mode of functioning of consciousness, it is necessary to name the two remaining combinatorial possibilities. When consciousness functions as an active Observer grasping its own activity, i.e. both the Observer and the Observed have an active, subjective nature, we are dealing with reflection. And finally, the last case - when both the Observer and the Observed are objects and, therefore, the observation itself as such disappears - fixes the logical structure of the concept of the unconscious. From this point of view, the widespread physicalist ideas about the unconscious as a place of silent interaction of psychological forces and things become understandable.

As a result of this reasoning, we get a categorical typology that indicates the place of experience among other modes of functioning of consciousness.

We are not in a position to dwell on a detailed interpretation of this typology; it would lead us too far away from the main theme, especially since the main thing has already been achieved - a system of correlations and oppositions has been formulated that defines the main meaning of the traditional psychological concept of experiencing.

Within the framework of this general meaning, the variant of this concept, which limits experience to the sphere of subjectively significant, has become most widespread in modern psychology. At the same time, experience is understood in its opposition to objective knowledge: experience is a special, subjective, biased reflection, and a reflection not of the surrounding objective world in itself, but of the world taken in relation to the subject, from the point of view of the opportunities provided by it (the world) to satisfy actual motives and needs of the subject. In this understanding, it is important for us to emphasize not what distinguishes experience from objective knowledge, but what unites them, namely, that experience is conceived here as a reflection, that we are talking about experience-contemplation, and not about experience-activity, to which our research.

A special place in the psychological literature on experience is occupied by the works of F. V. Bassin, with whose name in Soviet psychology of the 70s the problems of "meaningful experiences" (Bassin's term) and an attempt to present them as "the predominant subject of psychology" are associated. In these works, the concept of experience received, so to speak, a serious shake-up, as a result of which its boundaries were blurred (but also expanded!) By bringing this concept closer to a large and heterogeneous mass of phenomena and mechanisms (among them is the "inferiority complex" of A. Adler, the effect of "incomplete action" B. Zeigarnik, Mechanisms of psychological defense, the mechanism of "shift of the motive to the goal" by A. N. Leontiev, etc.), which allowed F. V. Bassin to put forward a number of promising hypotheses that go beyond the traditional concept of experiencing , to which we will return in due course. The main thing in the works of F. V. Bassin lies, in our opinion, in the outlined, although not explicitly formulated, translation to the “economic” point of view on experience, i. and vital, meaningful changes in human consciousness. If such a transition could be done strictly and systematically, we would have a unified theory of experience, uniting experience-contemplation and experience-activity in a single representation.

Neither Bassin nor anyone else has yet succeeded in doing this at the level of a holistic theory; research on experiencing-contemplation, which is conducted mainly in line with the study of emotions, and research on experiencing-activity, carried out in the theories of psychological defense, psychological compensation, coinciding behavior and substitution, go mostly in parallel. However, in the history of psychology, there are examples of a successful combination of these two categories in clinical analyzes of specific experiences (for example, in Z. Freud's analysis of the "work of sorrow", E. Lindemann of the "work of grief", in Sartre's understanding of emotion as a "magic action"), and this gives reason to hope that sooner or later a unifying theory of experience will be constructed.

Introduction of the concept of experience into the categorical apparatus of activity theory

The construction of such a unifying theory is a matter for the future. We are faced with a much more modest task - the development of ideas about experiencing-activity from the standpoint of the activity approach in psychology. The introduced concept, therefore, does not pretend to replace or include the traditional concept of experience. (5) It is introduced not instead of it, but next to it, as an independent and independent concept.

In foreign psychology, the problem of experiencing is actively studied as part of the study of the processes of psychological defense, compensation, and coinciding behavior. Here a lot of facts are described, a developed technique of theoretical work with them has been created, a large methodological experience of practical work with a person who is in a critical life situation has been accumulated. In recent years, this area has become the subject of close attention of many Soviet psychologists and psychiatrists. The theory of activity, however, remained somewhat aloof from this problematic.

Meanwhile, since this theory claims to be a general psychology, it cannot look indifferently at the existence of entire layers of psychological facts (known to others psychological systems) and entire areas of practical psychological work without attempting to theoretically assimilate these facts and the corresponding intellectual and methodological experience.

It cannot, of course, be asserted that the psychological theory of activity has so far completely failed to notice this sphere of psychological reality. The course of research has repeatedly led many authors developing the activity-theoretical approach to the problem of experiencing. We find in their writings an analysis of concrete cases of experience (let us recall, for example, A. N. Leontiev's description of the "psychological exit" that the prisoners of the Shlisselburg fortress found in order to survive the need to perform senseless forced labor); development of ideas about psychological situations and states that are the causes of the processes of experience (these include: "disintegration of consciousness", personality development crisis, state of mental tension, conflict of personal meanings). The idea of ​​experiencing comes also in the study of individual mental functions (let's call V. K. Vilyunas' idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe "emotional way of resolving situations", an attempt to explain such perception phenomena as perceptual defense, etc. using the concept of personal meaning), and in the study of general mechanisms the functioning of the psyche (for example, when studying from the activity positions of the phenomenon, attitude). In addition, we find in activity theory a series general concepts, which can be directly used to develop ideas about experience. Among them, the concept of "inner work" or "work of consciousness" should be emphasized.

However, all these ideas and ideas, valuable in themselves, are of a disparate nature in relation to our problem, since they were put forward, so to speak, in passing, in solving completely different theoretical problems, and, of course, they are completely insufficient for the theoretical development of such an important topic as is an experience. (6) In order for this development to be systematic, so that it is not a mechanical transplantation of concepts from other conceptual systems onto a new theoretical ground, but is carried out through the organic growth of the theory of activity itself, it is necessary to introduce a new category into it, around which the development of this theory would be grouped. Problems. As such, we propose the category of experience.

But what does it mean to introduce a new category into the existing conceptual system? This means, firstly, to show such a state or quality of the object studied by this system, before describing and explaining which it comes to a standstill, i.e., to demonstrate the internal need of the system in a new category, and secondly, to correlate it with the main categories this system.

It is enough to take one of the situations classic for theories of psychological defense and coinciding behavior, say, the situation of the death of a loved one, to find that the theory of activity can relatively easily answer the questions of why a psychological crisis arises and how it manifests itself phenomenologically, but it does not even will ask the most important question - how does a person get out of the crisis?

Of course, this is not a fundamental failure of the theory; it just happened so historically that its main interests lay so far on a different plane—on the plane of object-practical activity AND psychic reflection. These categories determined the nature of the main questions with which the researcher approached the psychological analysis of reality. But in this very reality, in life, there are situations the main problem which can be solved neither by the most equipped object-practical action, nor by the most perfect mental reflection. If a person is in danger, writes R. Peters, he may try to flee, "but if he is overwhelmed with grief: his wife has died, then what special action can correct this situation?" . Such an action does not exist, because there is no such objective transformation of reality that would resolve the situation, and, accordingly, it is impossible to set an internally meaningful and at the same time externally adequate situation (i.e., feasible) goal. This means that the subject-practical action is powerless. But the psychic reflection is also powerless, both rational (which is obvious) and emotional. In fact, emotion, as long as it is a special reflection, (7) can only express the subjective meaning of the situation, giving the subject the opportunity to become rationally aware of it, a meaning that is tacitly assumed to be present before and independently of this expression and awareness. Otherwise: emotion only states the relationship between "being and duty", but has no power to change it. This is how things are conceived in the theory of activity. The process of solving the “problem for meaning”, which unfolds on the basis of emotion, does not have the ability to resolve such a psychological situation, since it, as it were, continues the reflection initiated by emotion on a different level.

Thus, the "examination" Situation that we have proposed turns out to be insoluble either for the processes of objective-practical activity or for the processes of psychic reflection. No matter how far we go along the lines of these processes, there will never come a moment when, thanks to them, a person will cope with an irreparable misfortune, regain the lost meaning of existence, "spiritually recover," in the words of M. Sholokhov. He can, at best, very accurately and deeply realize what happened in his life, what this event means for him, that is, realize what the psychologist will call the "personal meaning" of the event and what the person himself in this situation can feel as deprivation meaning as nonsense. (8) The real problem facing him, its critical point, is not in understanding the meaning of the situation, not in revealing the hidden, but the existing meaning, but in its creation, in meaning generation, meaning building.

Processes of this kind constitute the desired dimension of psychological reality, for which there is no corresponding category in the theory of activity. In proposing the concept of experiencing in this place and thus proceeding to the second, "positive" phase of its introduction, it is necessary to avert possible claims to the role of this category on the part of the concept of meaning formation. The latter, in the form in which it is used in the theory of activity, is often used in relation to the process of the emergence of any personal meaning (and not in relation to the emergence of meaningfulness), i.e., regardless of the allocation of special, meaning-forming motives. But the main thing is not even this: meaning formation is considered as a function of motive, and when we talk about meaning generation, we mean the special activity of the subject. (9)

The specificity of this activity is determined primarily by the characteristics of life situations that put the subject before the need for experience. We will call such situations critical. If one were to define the nature of a critical situation in one word, one would have to say that it is a situation of impossibility. Impossibility of what? Inability to live, to realize the inner needs of one's life.

The struggle against this impossibility for the creation of a situation of the possibility of realizing the necessities of life is experiencing. Experience is overcoming a certain "gap" of life, it is a kind of restoration work, as if perpendicular to the line of life realization. The fact that the processes of experiencing are opposed to the realization of life, i.e., activity, does not mean that these are some kind of mystical extra-life processes: in terms of their psychophysiological composition, these are the same processes of life and activity, but in terms of their psychological meaning and purpose, these are processes aimed at life itself, at providing the psychological possibility of its realization. Such is the ultimate abstract understanding of experience at the existential level of description, that is, in abstraction from consciousness.

What at the level of being appears as an opportunity to realize vital necessities, as an opportunity for life-affirmation, then at the level of consciousness, or rather one, its “lowest” layer of “existential consciousness”, (10) appears as the meaningfulness of life. Meaningfulness of life is a common name (obtained at the level of a phenomenological description) for a number of specific psychological states that are directly identifiable in consciousness in the corresponding series of experiences * from pleasure to a feeling of "justification of existence", which, according to A. N. Leontiev, "meaning and happiness of life." "Impossibility" also has its own positive phenomenology, whose name is meaninglessness, and concrete states are despair, hopelessness, unrealizability, inevitability, etc.

Since life can have different kinds of internal necessities, it is natural to assume that the realizability of each of them corresponds to its own type of states of possibility, and the unrealizability corresponds to its own type of states of impossibility. What exactly these types of needs and these conditions cannot be predetermined - this is one of the main questions of the whole study. One can only say that in a situation of impossibility (meaninglessness), a person in one form or another faces the “task of meaning” - not the task of translating into meanings what is objectively present in individual being, but not clear to the consciousness of the meaning, which is all we are talking about. in the theory of activity of A. N. Leontiev, (11) and the task of obtaining meaningfulness, searching for sources of meaning, "elaborating" these sources, actively extracting meaning from them, etc. - in a word, the production of meaning.

It is this general idea of ​​the production of meaning that makes it possible to speak of experiencing as a productive process, as a special work. Although it can be presumed in advance that the idea of ​​production, to varying degrees and in different form applicable to various types of experience, it is ontologically, epistemologically and methodologically central for us. Ontologically, because productivity, and in the limit - the creative nature of experience, is, as we will see later, an inalienable property of its higher types. In epistemological terms, because, according to the well-known Marxist position, it is precisely the higher forms of development of the object under study that provide the key to understanding its lower forms. And finally, in the methodological one, because in this idea, like in no other, the essence of the activity approach in psychology is concentrated, the methodological model and guideline of which is the Marxian idea of ​​production and its essential "superiority" over consumption.

If at the level of being, experiencing is the restoration of the possibility of realizing the internal necessities of life, and at the level of consciousness, it is the acquisition of meaningfulness, then within the framework of the relation of consciousness to being, the work of experiencing is to achieve a semantic correspondence of consciousness and being, which in relation to being is to provide it with meaning, and in relation to consciousness - the semantic acceptance of being by it.

As for correlating the concept of experiencing with the concept of activity, the assertion that the need for experiencing arises in situations that cannot be resolved directly by objective-practical activity, no matter how perfect a reflection it may be provided, as already mentioned, cannot be understood in such a way that it is generally inapplicable to experiencing. category of activity and that, consequently, it is either an auxiliary functional mechanism within activity and reflection, or, by its "nature", falls out of the activity-theoretic picture of psychological reality. In reality, experiencing completes this picture, representing, along with external practical and cognitive activities, a special type of activity processes, which are specified primarily by their product—sense (meaningfulness). (12)

Experience is precisely an activity, that is, an independent process that relates the subject to the world and solves his real life problems, and not a special mental "function" that is on a par with memory, perception, thinking, imagination or emotions. These "functions", together with external objective actions, are included in the realization of experiencing in exactly the same way as in the realization of any human activity, but the significance of both the intrapsychic and behavioral processes involved in the realization of experiencing can be clarified only on the basis of the general task and direction of experiencing, from the holistic work carried out by it to transform the psychological world, which alone is capable of resolving the situation in a situation where adequate external activity is impossible.

Turning to the question of the bearers, or implementers, of experience, let us dwell first of all on outward behavior. External actions carry out the work of experiencing not directly, by achieving certain objective results, but through changes in the consciousness of the subject and in general his psychological world. This behavior sometimes has a ritual-symbolic character, acting in this case by connecting the individual consciousness to the special symbolic structures organizing its movement, worked out in culture and concentrating in itself the experience of human experience of typical events and circumstances of life.

The participation of various intrapsychic processes in the work of experiencing can be clearly explained by paraphrasing the "theatrical" metaphor of Z. Freud: in the "performances" of experiencing, the entire troupe of mental functions is usually occupied, but each time one of them can play the main role, taking on the main part of the work of experiencing , i.e., work to resolve an unsolvable situation. This role is often played by emotional processes (disgust for "too green" grapes eliminates the contradiction between the desire to eat it and the inability to do so), however, in contrast to the strong association (and sometimes identification) between the words "emotion" and "experience", which exists in psychology, it must be specially emphasized that emotion does not have any prerogative to play the main role in the realization of experience. The main performer can be both perception (in various phenomena of "perceptual defense"), and thinking (cases of "rationalization" of one's motives, the so-called "intellectual processing" of traumatic events), and attention ("protective switching of attention to moments extraneous to the traumatic event" ( 13) ), and other mental "functions".

Thus, experience as an activity is realized both by external and internal actions. This position is extremely important from the methodological and philosophical point of view. Traditional psychology in its idealistic versions closed the experience in the narrow world of individual subjectivity, while the vulgar-materialist currents understood the experience as an epiphenomenon, thereby leaving it outside scientific study. Only materialistic psychology, based on the Marxist doctrine of the active social essence of man, is capable of overcoming the confinement of experiences, which seemed self-evident for traditional psychology, exclusively to internal, mental processes. A person manages to survive a life crisis often not so much due to the specific internal processing of traumatic events (although one cannot do without it), but with the help of active creative socially useful activity, which, realizing, as a subject-practical activity, the conscious goal of the subject and producing social - a significant external product, at the same time acts as an activity of experiencing, generating and increasing the reserve of meaningfulness of a person's individual life.

Analysis of overcoming critical situations.

Moscow: Moscow University Press, 1984

Fedor Efimovich Vasilyuk

PSYCHOLOGY OF EXPERIENCE (analysis of overcoming critical situations)

Moscow: Moscow University Press, 1984. - 200 p.

Brief annotation

The monograph is devoted to the study of critical life situations and the processes of their overcoming. Situations of stress, frustration, internal conflict and life crisis are analyzed. To cope with these situations, to survive them, a person needs to do sometimes painful inner work to restore peace of mind, meaningfulness of life. Establishment and systematization of the basic patterns of the process of experiencing is something new that the book introduces into the psychology of overcoming critical situations.

The book is intended for psychologists, psychotherapists, philosophers, educators, employees of services of social and psychological assistance to the population.

W--------------------- 40-84

© Publishing House of Moscow University, 1984.

From the author.

Domestic psychology has long ceased to be a purely academic discipline, but it still owes a great deal to practice. In various areas of public life, this debt is being actively paid - the figure of a psychologist is becoming more and more familiar in a modern factory and in a medical institution, in pedagogy and jurisprudence. But the need for psychological help exists not only in social practice, but also in personal and family life, and this need is so far completely insufficiently satisfied. On the other hand, psychology itself, especially the so-called "interesting psychology" that studies motives, emotions, and a person's personality, cannot continue to develop productively only within the walls of a laboratory without taking an active part in real human life.

Under the influence of this mutual interest, a new (and long-awaited) period is now opening in the development of domestic practical psychology: literally before our eyes, the sphere of psychological services for the population is emerging - a family service, a suicidological service with a network of "social and psychological assistance" offices and crisis hospitals, a psychological service of the university etc. .

The specific organizational forms of separating the "personal" psychological service into independent practice are not yet completely clear, but whatever they may be, the very fact of its appearance poses the task of developing the fundamental theoretical foundations by which this practice could be guided by general psychology.

These foundations themselves must be based on the awareness of the not yet quite familiar professional position occupied by a psychologist who practically works with a person. If, within the framework of pedagogical, legal, medical and other fields of activity, the psychologist acted as a consultant and assistant to a teacher, doctor or lawyer serving these specialists, then, taking this position, he becomes a responsible producer of work, directly serving the person who turned to him for help. And if earlier the psychologist saw him through the prism of the questions facing other specialists (clarification of the diagnosis, determination of sanity, etc.), or his own theoretical questions, now, as a responsible subject of independent psychological practice, for the first time he professionally encounters not sick, students, suspects, operators, subjects, etc., but with a person in the fullness, concreteness and intensity of his life problems. This does not mean, of course, that a professional psychologist should act, so to speak, purely "humanly"; the main question lies precisely in isolating the psychological aspect proper from this life problem and thereby delineating the psychologist's area of ​​competence.

The fundamental limitation of this zone is given by the fact that the professional activity of a psychologist does not coincide in its direction with the pragmatic or ethical aspiration of the person who applied for help, with the orientation of his emotional-volitional attitude into the world: a psychologist cannot directly borrow his professional goals from a set of actual goals and desires patient, and consequently his professional actions and reactions to the events of the patient's life cannot be automatically determined by what the patient wants.

This does not mean, of course, that a psychologist should kill sympathy and empathy in himself and once and for all oblige himself to have the right to respond to a "cry for help" not as a specialist, but simply as a person, that is, ethically: to give friendly advice, to console to provide practical assistance. These actions lie in a dimension of life where there can be no talk of any professional duty, just as there can be no talk of prescribing or forbidding a doctor to give his own blood to a patient.

What a psychologist really must, if he wants to be useful to a person as a specialist, is, having retained the ability for compassion, which forms the emotional-motivational soil that nourishes his practical activity, learn to subordinate his immediate ethical reactions, directly arising from compassion, to a positively determined pathological program. help, as a surgeon can do in his circle during an operation or a teacher, who uses one or another educational influence is by no means always pleasant for the pupil.

But why, in fact, is this ability to subordinate direct ethical reactions to a professional psychological attitude necessary? Because, firstly, that consolation and pity are not exactly (and often not at all) what the patient needs to overcome the crisis. Secondly, because the advice of life, to which many patients are greedy, is for the most part simply useless or even harmful to them, indulging their unconscious desire to relieve themselves of responsibility for their own lives. A pedologist is not a specialist in everyday advice at all, the education he received does not at all coincide with the acquisition of wisdom, and, therefore, the fact of having a diploma does not give him the moral right to make specific recommendations on how to act in a given life situation. And one more thing: before turning to a psychologist, the patient usually considered all possible ways out of a difficult situation and found them unsatisfactory. There is no reason to believe that by discussing his life situation with the patient on the same plane, the psychologist will be able to find a way out that he did not notice. The very fact of such a discussion maintains unrealistic hopes in the patient that the psychologist can solve life's problems for him, and the almost inevitable failure strikes at the authority of the psychologist, reducing the chances of the ultimate success of his case, not to mention the fact that the patient often experiences unhealthy satisfaction. from the "game" won by the psychologist, described by E. Berne (1) under the title "And you try. - Yes, but ..." And finally, the third of the possible direct ethical reactions to the misfortune of another person - practical help to him - cannot to enter the arsenal of professional psychological actions simply because the psychologist, with all the desire, cannot improve his financial or social situation, correct his appearance or return the lost loved one, that is, he cannot influence the external, existential aspect of his problems.

All these points are very important for the formation of a sober attitude of patients (and the psychologist himself) to the possibilities and tasks of psychological assistance. However, the main reason that forces the psychologist to go beyond the limits of direct ethical response in search of proper psychological means of assistance is that a person can always and only himself survive the events, circumstances and changes in his life that gave rise to the crisis. No one can do this for him, just as the most sophisticated teacher cannot understand the material being explained for his student.

But the process of experiencing can be managed to some extent - stimulate it, organize it, direct it, provide favorable conditions for it, striving to ensure that this process ideally leads to the growth and improvement of the personality - or at least does not go pathological or socially unacceptable way (alcoholism, neuroticism, psychopathization, suicide, crime, etc.). Experience, thus, is the main subject of the application of the efforts of a practical psychologist who helps a person in a situation of a life crisis. And if so, then in order to build the theoretical foundation of this practice, it is quite natural to make the process of experiencing the central subject of general psychological research into the problem of overcoming critical situations.

The reader has probably already noticed that we use the term "experience" not in the usual sense for scientific psychology, as a direct, most often emotional, form of giving the subject the contents of his consciousness, but to denote a special internal activity, internal work, with the help of which a person it is possible to endure certain (usually difficult) life events and situations, to restore the lost peace of mind, in a word, to cope with a critical situation.

Why, to designate the subject of our study, we found it possible to use an already "occupied" term, we will answer this question later, in the Introduction. But why is it necessary to go for terminological innovation at all? The point, of course, is not that the area of ​​psychic reality we are studying is terraincognita for psychology and should be named for the first time, but that its existing names - psychological defense, compensation, coping behavior (copingbehavior), etc. - do not suit us, since the categories they express fix only particular aspects of the whole problem that we see here, and none of them, therefore, can claim the role of a general category. On the other hand, a new term is required because we want to immediately, from the threshold, dissociate ourselves from the theoretically limited methodology that dominates the study of this sphere of mental reality, and conduct an analysis from the standpoint of a certain psychological concept - the theory of activity of A. N. Leontiev, and there is simply no corresponding concept in her arsenal.

The last circumstance is not accidental. Although many studies within the framework of this theory, to one degree or another, affect the subject of interest to us, no attempts have yet been made to clearly formulate this problem in the most general theoretical terms. The probable reason why the theory of activity has hitherto touched only in passing on this sphere of psychic reality is that this theory has devoted its main attention to the study of objective-practical activity and psychic reflection, and the need for experience arises precisely in such situations that cannot be be directly resolved by practical activity, no matter how perfect reflection it may be provided. This cannot be understood in such a way that the category of activity is generally inapplicable to experiencing, and that, therefore, it “by nature” falls out of the general activity-theoretic picture; on the contrary, experience completes this picture, representing, in comparison with external practical and cognitive activities, a special type of activity processes, (2) which are specified primarily by their product. The product of the work of experiencing is always something internal and subjective - peace of mind, meaningfulness, peace, a new value consciousness, etc., in contrast to the external product of practical activity and internal, but objective (not in the sense of indispensable truth in content, but in the sense of relatedness external in form) of the product of cognitive activity (knowledge, image).

Thus, in the problem of experience, the theory of activity reveals a new dimension for itself. This determined the main goal of the study - from the standpoint of the activity approach, to develop a system of theoretical ideas about the patterns of overcoming critical life situations by a person and thereby expand the boundaries of the general psychological theory of activity, highlighting the psychology of experience in it as a special subject of theoretical research and methodological developments.

It is clear that such a goal cannot be achieved empirically, by accumulating already numerous facts. Its achievement involves the application of a theoretical method. As such, we used Marx's method of "ascent from the abstract to the concrete". At the specific methodological level, our theoretical movement was organized by the method of categorical-typological analysis, the principles and techniques of which we borrowed from the works and oral presentations of O. I. Genisaretsky. (3)

The goal formulated in this way, the chosen method for achieving it, and the available historical and scientific conditions determined the following sequence of tasks that were solved in our study.

First, it was necessary to put the problem of experiencing in the context of the psychological theory of activity, to systematically introduce the category of experiencing into this context. The word “introduce”, perhaps, does not quite accurately express the inner essence of this task, because we did not take the category of experience in a ready-made form outside the theory of activity from any other theory, but rather tried to “limit” the extrascientific, intuitive idea of ​​experience with concepts and categories of the psychological theory of activity. Such "limiting" is akin to the process of remembering, when we cannot name a certain content exactly, but gradually narrow the search area, determining what it refers to and what it is not.

Only by crystallizing the idea of ​​the object of interest to us in the body of the “parental” general psychological theory and thus obtaining a certain point of support, it was possible to begin reviewing the ideas about it available in the psychological literature without the risk of drowning in an abundance of material, getting bogged down in details and missing the main thing. The review is almost completely devoid of historicity, it is built strictly systematically. The reader hoping to get acquainted with the original ideas about stress, conflict, frustration and crisis, about psychological protection and compensation, will apparently be disappointed with this review. He will discover in the first chapter not a gallery of independent theoretical positions, but rather a construction site where individual elements and entire blocks of a future, in some places already guessed construction, are being prepared.

The purpose of the second, constructive chapter was to, taking the initial abstractions of the psychological theory of activity and being guided, on the one hand, by the general idea of ​​experiencing, and, on the other, by the data of an analytical review, to deploy these abstractions in the direction of the empiricism of interest to us with the aim of its theoretical reproduction in this kind of knowledge that captures the patterns of processes, and not their general features.

Of course, the “ascent to the concrete” does not end with the identification of these regularities. The third and final chapter poses the problem of the cultural-historical determination of experience, the development of which, according to our plan, should throw a bridge from the general laws of this process, i.e. from experience in general, the experience of some abstract individual, to the experience of a specific person living among people in a particular historical period. This chapter contains a hypothesis about the mediation of the process of experiencing by certain structures of social consciousness, as well as a detailed analysis of a specific case of experiencing, performed on the material of fiction. This analysis is intended not so much to prove the hypothesis (it is clearly not enough to prove it), but rather to illustrate it, and at the same time a number of provisions of the previous parts of the work.

The author considers it his duty to honor with words of gratitude the blessed memory of A. N. Leontiev, under whose leadership the research began, and also to sincerely thank Professor V. P. Zinchenko, without whose participation and support this book could not have been published, N. A. Alekseev , L. M. Khairullaev, and I. A. Pitlyar for help in the work.