The life and creative path of A.N. Leontiev. Leontiev Alexey Nikolaevich An Leontiev

Alexei Nikolaevich Leontiev was born in Moscow on February 5, 1903, his parents were ordinary employees. Naturally, they wanted to give Alexei a good education. Therefore, it is not surprising that the scientific activity of Alexei Leontiev dates back to student years. In 1924 he graduated from the faculty social sciences Moscow University, where G.I. Chelpanov taught a general course in psychology. - Chelpanov led in those years the Institute of Psychology at Moscow State University, leading a group of students for research work. It was within the walls of this university that Alexei Nikolayevich wrote the first scientific works - the abstract "James' Teaching on Ideomotor Acts" and a work on Spencer. After graduating from the university, Alexei Nikolaevich became a graduate student at the Institute of Psychology. Here in 1924 A.N. Leontiev with L.S. Vygotsky and A. R. Luria. And soon their joint work began, as these three people with outstanding abilities quickly found mutual language, and their union foreshadowed many useful things. But, unfortunately, this activity was interrupted. Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky died. In such a short time joint work The results of their activities were still impressive. The article “The Nature of Human Conflict” published by Leontiev and Luria was a resounding success. it was in it that the technique of "conjugated motor reactions" was presented and the idea of ​​mastering affect through speech output was born. Further, Leontiev personally developed the idea and embodied it in an article entitled "Experience in the structural analysis of chain associative series". This article, published in the Russian-German Medical Journal, is based on the fact that associative reactions are determined by the semantic integrity that lies "behind" the associative series. But it was this development that did not receive worthy recognition. He met his wife in 1929, when he was 26 years old. After a brief acquaintance, they got married. His wife never interfered with the scientific work of Alexei Leontiev, on the contrary, she helped and supported him in the most difficult moments. Leontiev's interests lay in the most various areas psychology: from psychology creative activity to experimental human perception of objectivity. And to the need to find a completely new approach to the subject and content of psychophysiological research, which is currently developing from common system psychological knowledge, Alexei Nikolaevich Leontiev addressed many times. At the end of 1925, his famous “cultural-historical concept” was born, which was based on the well-known formula of L.S. Vygotsky S-X-R, where S - incentive, motive; X - means; R - the result of activity. Aleksey Leontiev began to develop the ideas of this work, but at the Institute of Psychology, which at that time was busy with completely different issues, it was not possible to implement this undertaking. It is for this reason that A.N. Leontiev and A.R. Luria moved to the Academy of Communist Education, also working simultaneously at VGIK, at GITIS, at the clinic of G. I Rossolimo and at the Institute of Defectology. Approximately in 1930, the Health Committee of Ukraine decided to organize a sector of psychology at the Ukrainian Psychoneurological Institute, where A. R. Luria temporarily took the post of head, and A.N. Leontiev - Head of the Department of Child and Genetic Psychology. By this time, Aleksei Nikolaevich had already left VGIK and AKB, and Vygotsky was forced to return to Moscow. Consequently, all the work was taken over by Leontiev, who later became the leader of the Ukrainian group of psychologists. Developing more and more new projects, Alexei Leontiev published the book “Activity. Consciousness. Personality”, where he defends his point of view that a person does not just adjust his activity to external conditions society, and these same conditions of society carry the motives and goals of its activities. In parallel, A.N. Leontiev begins work on the problem of the development of the psyche, namely, the study of extrapolation reflexes in animal individuals. In 1936, Alexei Nikolaevich returned to the Institute of Psychology, where he worked until he left for the department of psychology at Moscow State University. At the institute, he deals with the issue of skin photosensitivity. At the same time, AN Leontiev teaches at VGIK and GITIS. He collaborates with CM Eisenstein and conducts an experimental study of the perception of films. In the prewar years, he became the head of the department of psychology at the Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute. N.K. Krupskaya. In the second half of the 1930s. Leontiev developed the following problems: a) the phylogenetic development of the psyche, and in particular the genesis of sensitivity. b) the “functional development” of the psyche, that is, the problem of the formation and functioning of activity, c) the problem of consciousness And I. Herzen in 1940. Only a part of the results of his research was included in the dissertation. But this work of Leontiev has not been completely preserved. The dissertation contained articles dealing, inter alia, with memory, perception, emotions, will, and arbitrariness. There is also a chapter called "Activity-Action-Operation", where the basic conceptual system of activity-based psychological theory is given. According to Leontiev, activity is inseparable from the object of its need, and in order to master this object, it is necessary to focus on its properties that are vitally indifferent in themselves, but are closely related to other vital properties of objects, i.e. "signal" about the presence or absence of the latter. Thus, due to the fact that the activity of the animal acquires an objective character, a form of reflection specific to the psyche arises in its infancy - a reflection of an object that has properties that are vital, and properties that signal them. to such influences, which are correlated by the organism with other influences, i.e. which guide Living being in the subject content of his activity, performing a signal function. Leontiev undertakes research in order to test the hypothesis put forward by him. First in Kharkov, and then in Moscow, with the help of the experimental methodology developed by him, he reproduces under artificially created conditions the process of turning imperceptible stimuli into perceptible ones (the process of a person experiencing the color of the skin of the hand). Thus, A.N. Leontiev, for the first time in the history of world psychology, made an attempt to determine the objective criterion of the elementary psyche, taking into account the sources of its origin in the process of interaction of a living being with environment. Summing up the data accumulated in the field of zoopsychology and based on his own achievements, Leontiev developed new concept mental development animals as the development of a mental reflection of reality, due to changes in the conditions of existence and the nature of the process of animal activity at different stages of phylogenesis: the stages of sensory, perceptual and intellectual psyche. This direction of A.N. Leontiev was directly connected with the development of the question of activity and the problem of consciousness. Developing the problem of personality, Alexei Leontiev adhered to two areas of his activity. He worked on the problems of the psychology of art. In his opinion, there is nothing where a person could realize himself so holistically and comprehensively as in art. Unfortunately, today it is almost impossible to find his works on the psychology of art, although during his lifetime Alexei Nikolayevich worked a lot on this topic. In 1966, Alexei Nikolaevich Leontiev finally moved to the Faculty of Psychology of Moscow University, from that time until last day During his lifetime, Leontiev was the permanent dean and head of the department of general psychology. Alexei Nikolaevich left our world on January 21, 1979; it is impossible to overestimate his scientific contribution, because it was he who managed to force many to reconsider their views and approach the subject and content of psychophysiological research from a completely different angle.

LEONTIEV Alexey Nikolaevich

(1903 1979) - Russian psychologist, philosopher and teacher. Specialist in the field of general and experimental psychology, engineering and cognitive psychology, problems of methodology and philosophy of psychology. Dr. Psychological Sciences (1940), Professor (1941). D. ch. APN of the RSFSR (1950), APN of the USSR (1968), in the 1950s. was Ac.-Secretary and Vice-President of the APN of the RSFSR. Laureate of the medal K.D. Ushinsky (1953), Lenin Prize (1963), Lomonosov Prize, I degree (1976), post. dr row foreign high fur boots, including the Sorbonne. Graduated from the Faculty of Social Sciences of Moscow State University (1924) and began his professional activity in the Moscow in-those psychology and other Moscow scientific institutions (1924-1930). that (1930-1935). Returning to Moscow in 1936, he worked at the Moscow Institute of Psychology and at the same time at the Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute. N.K. Krupskaya. In 1940 he defended Dr. Dissertation: Genesis of sensitivity and the main stages in the development of the psyche, in 1941 he received the title of professor. In 1942-43. L. - scientific director of the evacuation hospital in the Urals. Since 1943 - head. laboratory, then the department of child psychology of the Institute of Psychology, and since 1949 - head. Department of Psychology, Moscow State University. From 1966 to 1979 - dean of the psychology faculty of Moscow State University and head. Department of General Psychology. The leitmotif of scientific creativity L. throughout his life was the development of philosophical and methodological foundations of psychological science. L.'s professional development as a scientist took place in the 1920s. under the influence of his direct teacher L.S. Vygotsky, who literally blew up traditional psychology with his methodological, theoretical and experimental works, which laid the foundations new psychology. With his work in the late 1920s L. also contributed to the development created by Vygotsky cultural and historical approach to the formation of the human psyche. However, already in the early 1930s. L., without breaking with the cultural-historical paradigm, begins to discuss with Vygotsky about the ways of its further development . If for Vygotsky the main subject of study was consciousness, then L. seemed more important to analyze the consciousness-forming human practice, life activity. In the works of L. 30-ies, published only posthumously, he sought to approve the idea of ​​the priority role of practice in the formation of the psyche and understand the patterns of this formation in phylo-and ontogeny. His doc. dis. was devoted to the evolution of the mental in the animal world - from elementary irritability in protozoa to human consciousness. L. opposes the thesis about the unity of the structure of external and internal processes to the Cartesian opposition that dominated the old psychology of the external - the internal, introducing a categorical pair of process-image. L. develops the category of activity as a real (in the Hegelian sense) relationship of man to the world, which acts as the basis of this unity. This relationship is not in the strict sense individual, but indirectly through relationships with other people and socio-culturally developed forms of practice. The structure of activity itself is sociogenic in nature. The idea that the formation of mental processes and functions occurs in activity and through activity served as the basis for numerous experimental studies of the development and formation of mental functions in ontogenesis, performed by L. and his colleagues in the 1930s and 60s. These studies laid the foundation for a number of innovative psychological and pedagogical concepts of developmental education and upbringing, which have become widespread in pedagogical practice in the last decade. The period of the late 1930s and early 1940s also included the development of well-known L. ideas about the structure and units of analysis of activity and consciousness. According to these ideas, three psychological levels are distinguished in the structure of activity: the actual activity (the act of activity), which is singled out according to the criterion of its motive; For the analysis of consciousness, the dichotomy introduced by L., meaning - personal meaning, turned out to be fundamentally important, the first pole of which characterizes the impersonal, universal, socio-culturally assimilated content of consciousness, and the second - its partiality, subjectivity, due to unique individual experience and the structure of motivation. In the second half of the 1950-60s. L. formulates the thesis about the systemic structure of the psyche and, following Vygotsky, develops on a new conceptual basis the principle of the historical development of mental functions. Practical and internal mental activity are not only one, but can pass from one form to another. In fact, we are talking about a single activity that can move from an external, expanded form to an internal, folded one (internalization) and vice versa (exteriorization), can simultaneously include proper mental and external (extracerebral) components. In 1959, the first edition of L.'s book, Problems of the Development of the Psyche, summarized his work of the 1930-50s, for which he was awarded the Lenin Prize. In the 1960s and 70s L. continues to develop an activity approach or a general psychological theory of activity. He uses the apparatus of activity theory to analyze perception, thinking, mental reflection in the broad sense of the word. Considering them as active processes, having an activity nature, made it possible to advance on new level their understanding. In particular, L. put forward and supported by empirical data the hypothesis of assimilation, which states that in order to build sensory images, counter activity of the organs of perception is necessary. In the late 1960s L. addresses the problem of personality, considering it within the framework of a single system with activity and consciousness. In 1975, the book L. Activity was published. Consciousness. The personality in which he, summing up his works of the 60-70s, sets out the philosophical and methodological foundations of psychology, seeks to psychologically comprehend the categories that are most important for constructing complete system psychology as a specific science about the generation, functioning and structure of the mental reflection of reality, which mediates the life of individuals. The category of activity is introduced by L. in this book as a way to overcome the postulate of the immediacy of the impact of external stimuli on the individual psyche, which found the most complete expression in the behaviorist formula stimulus - reaction. Activity acts as a molar, non-additive unit of the life of a bodily, material subject. The key feature of activity is its objectivity, in the understanding of which L. relies on the ideas of Hegel and the early Marx. Consciousness is that which mediates and regulates the activity of the subject. It is multidimensional. Three main components are distinguished in its structure: sensory fabric, which serves as a material for constructing a subjective image of the world, a meaning that connects individual consciousness with social experience or social memory, and a personal meaning that connects consciousness with real life subject. The basis for the analysis of the personality is also the activity, or rather the system of activities that carry out various relations of the subject with the world. Their hierarchy, or rather the hierarchy of motives or meanings, sets the structure of a person's personality. In the 1970s L. again turns to the problems of perception and mental reflection, but in a different way. The key for him is the concept of the image of the world, which is primarily the idea of ​​the continuity of the perceived picture of reality and the images of individual objects. It is impossible to perceive a separate object without perceiving it in the integral context of the image of the world. This context sets the perceptual hypotheses that guide the process of perception and recognition. This area of ​​work has not had time to get any completion. L. created an extensive scientific school in psychology, his work had a significant impact on philosophers, educators, culturologists and representatives of other humanities. In 1986 it was created International Society research on the theory of activity. L. is also the author of books: Development of memory, M., 1931; Restoration of movement, co-author, M., 1945; Selected psychological works, in 2 vols., M., 1983; Philosophy of psychology, M., 1994. A.A. Leontiev, D.A. Leontiev

Alexei Nikolaevich Leontiev (1903-1979) - an outstanding Soviet psychologist, full member of the RSFSR APS, doctor pedagogical sciences, Professor.
Together with L. S. Vygotsky and A. R. Luria, he developed a cultural-historical theory, conducted a series of experimental studies revealing the mechanism for the formation of higher mental functions (voluntary attention, memory) as a process of "growing", internalizing external forms of tool-mediated actions into internal mental processes. Experimental and theoretical works are devoted to the problems of the development of the psyche, the problems of engineering psychology, as well as the psychology of perception, thinking, etc.
He put forward a general psychological theory of activity - a new direction in psychological science. A wide range of mental functions (perception, thinking, memory, attention) were studied on the basis of the activity structure scheme proposed by Leontiev.