Theories of mental development: essence, stages, description

2024 Author: Miguel Ramacey | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 06:11

Often people complain in their hearts that they were born exactly the way they are. Why does a person act this way and not otherwise? What made him the way he is? Why do some people take everything to heart, and some seem impenetrable? Exact answers to these questions have not been found so far, but people have been searching for more than a century, and this has given rise to a lot of theories, some of which are very logical and entertaining. We will talk about the main theories of mental development below.

What is the psyche

This is the combination and interaction of many processes of the soul and body, such as memory, thinking, imagination, perception, emotionality and speech. This is a concept that plays a dominant role in psychology, medicine and philosophy. If we translate the word psychikos literally, then the translation will be “spiritual”. And if we put it in scientific language, then this is a reflection by the subject of the reality around him and how he understands it. Butto put it simply: it is a person's reaction to the outside world.

Today, scientists know for sure that human behavior is not least due to the orchestra of hormones that are produced in a certain amount, laid down genetically. But this production can be influenced by both medications and lifestyle.

Mental Development

The psyche is far from constant, it has properties and states. This system is the most complex, it consists of many levels and sublevels that make up an indivisible whole. A failure on one of them can lead to a chain reaction and destruction of the entire psyche. It is impossible to remove one character trait from a person and not change his psyche as a whole.

All life from the moment of birth, a person has three types of mental processes: cognitive, regulatory and communicative. For scientists, much is still a mystery about this mechanism. There is no general theory of human mental development - there are several of them, and each specialist adheres to a certain one, taking into account his opinion, based on several of them.

Influence of genes

Even in the 19th century, the concept of Hall-Haeckel recapitulation was developed. According to her, all living beings repeat partly or completely the behavior of their ancestors, and people are no exception. The concept undoubtedly has a scientific basis.

There are genotypes that are distributed according to the similarity of the shape of the genes. And thisproven by numerous experiments involving identical and fraternal twins, as well as families with adopted children. And these experiments showed that the influence of genes on mental development is unconditional. With the same upbringing, education and other factors, the character of people will always depend on heredity. But it does not play a leading role, since the set of genes of each person has only part of the similarity with the genes of the father and mother, and the other part is individual. So, the level of intelligence depends on how it was with the parents by about 50%, and the remaining percentages give the favorableness of intrauterine development, environment, upbringing and quality of education. There are cases that children of rather low intellectual development of parents, having been brought up in families with a higher level, eventually surpassed their biological parents in it.

So, over time, it was found that not only genetics affects the formation of the psyche. Then there was a need for new theories, they began to pour in as if from a cornucopia. But there are not so many main actual theories of mental development to this day. Many have been criticized and dismissed.

Thorndike Theory

Its essence is that the main and most important thing a person takes from society and the environment, and not the last role in achieving success is played by the incentive. His main achievement as a scientist is that he formulated two laws of the development of the psyche. The law of repetition, which states that the more often an action is repeated, the stronger and faster its skill is fixed. And secondlaw of effect: that which is accompanied by evaluation is better consolidated.

Skinner Theory

It lies in the fact that the personality of a person can be formed by anyone, if you take it seriously, placing him from birth in certain conditions. He agrees with Thorndike that the external environment completely shapes a person from a psychic point of view, moreover, he rejects any other influence. His concept is that reinforcement is not a reward, and negative reinforcement is not a punishment.

Pandura Theory

The socio-cognitive theory says that the role of reinforcement is overestimated by its predecessors, and the main thing in mental development is to cause a desire to imitate. For the first time, he stated that one should not discount the role in the formation of the personality of such factors as imposed faith, parental expectations and instructions from society. If a person has authorities, then he will simply copy their personalities, and more experienced loved ones are most often authorities.

Piaget's Theory

It is also known as the theory of intellectual development of the personality, which states that personality development should be de alt with from birth. To do this, it is necessary to develop innate reflexes in the child, which can increase his intellectual development. Piaget developed special exercises for this for each period, and he singled out three of them: sensorimotor intelligence, representative intelligence and concrete operations, and the third - formal operations.

Kolberg's Theory

The scientist gave the leading role to the presence of morality in a person. Identified three stages of developmentmorale:

1. Domoral, when all moral norms are imposed and fulfilled in order to get what you want.
2. Conventional morality, when norms are fulfilled in order to justify the expectations of personalities authoritarian for a person.
3. Autonomous, when actions are conditioned by their own morality.

He developed Piaget's theory, applying the method of clinical conversations to correct personality.

Freud's Theory

This theory of mental development is notorious for its scandal. Sigmund Freud came up with his theory that a person goes through several stages of development of sexuality from birth. And the scandalous thing about it is that through this sexuality the personality of a person also develops. According to Freud, everything a person does and his personality is directly tied to sexual preferences. And these five stages.

1. Oral - proceeds from birth and up to about a year. During this period, a person receives all the pleasure orally, that is, through the mouth. The mouth during this period is the main and only erogenous zone. With his help, he receives the treasured food and reassurance from the unthinkable stress that has piled on him. Women who have breastfed a child know that children “ask for breasts” not only from hunger, but also when they are worried about something or simply miss their mother. According to Freud, how often a child asks for breasts and how he sucks mother's milk already indicates his psyche in the future, and depriving him of "breasts" is fraught with mental trauma.
2. Anal - begins after the end of the oral and lasts until about threeyears. It is characterized by the fact that the erogenous zone of a person and all his basic instincts are concentrated around his anus. This means that the process of emptying the bowel causes the child pleasure and brings him comfort. It is during this period that children learn cleanliness and learn to go to the potty, and not in shorts. During this period, as Freud believed, a person lays down how he will treat his property, how neat he will be and even his openness to people and a tendency to conflict.
3. The phallic stage will last from three to five years. At this stage, the child gets acquainted with his genitals and becomes aware of them, begins to guess that they are needed not only to empty the bladder, they also have a different meaning. The main scandal of Freud's theory of the mental development of a child is that he believed that during this period the child experiences sexual attachment to an adult, and the first object of desire in a person's life is his parent of the opposite sex. Ideally, with age, you need to switch to other objects, but some slow down at this stage and look for mother and father in all partners or do not even try to look for someone else, but live with a parent. This relationship between parent and child he called with his famous terms "Oedipus complex" in boys and "Electra complex" in girls. At this stage, in his opinion, a person learns to think rationally, to be reasonable and to be able to look deep into himself. The attitude of his parent of the opposite sex towards him is very strongly influenced by the personality of a person at this stage. The way a mother treats her son will affect his attitude towards himself and the future choice of women, if she was cold to him and rarely paid attention to him, then he will lust for cold and inaccessible women.
4. The latent stage completes the phallic and lasts up to 12 years. After the sexual interest has awakened at the previous stage, but the child has not yet realized this, he fades away and completely different interests appear in him. But only until, during puberty, desire blossoms with renewed vigor.
5. The genital stage will last the entire period of puberty, that is, from about 11-12 to 18 years. All erogenous zones, namely oral, anal, genital, which used to wake up quietly and one by one, wake up at once and with renewed vigor. A person is literally torn apart by sexual desire, hormones go crazy. All his actions come down to one thing - to have sexual contact, to arouse lust in the majority of the opposite sex. If sexual interest is condemned, it becomes impossible to express it, or a person’s sexuality is ridiculed, then in the future this is fraught with phobias, complexes, regressions to previous stages and other mental deviations.

In addition to these stages, Freud's innovation was that he divided the human psyche into three layers:

• unconscious;
• preconscious;
• conscious.

And all the sexual energy, which Freud first called libido, while lurking on the unconscious layer. That is why in alcoholIntoxicated, people often come into sexual contact with those with whom they would not dare to sober, this breaks out the unconscious, which was closed there by all dogmas and prohibitions. On the second layer - the preconscious, there are fears and experiences in which a person is afraid to admit to himself, but deep in his soul he is aware of them.

8 phases of development according to Erickson

Erikson's theory is no less famous in narrow circles, according to which development occurs throughout life in 8 stages from birth to old age.

1. Infancy, or the first year of life, at this stage either gullibility or distrust is formed.
2. Early childhood, namely 2-3 years old - attitudes towards modesty and doubt are formed.
3. Preschool age, on the 4th and 5th year of life, a person develops initiative and conscience.
4. School age lasts from six to the onset of puberty, during this period a person learns to appreciate, prioritize and form an attitude to work.
5. Youth - the moment of puberty comes and it is accompanied by the formation of individuality, awareness or diffusion of identity.
6. Youth begins at 18-20 and lasts until about 30 years of age, these are the years of formation of attitudes towards intimacy, isolation and closeness with the opposite sex.
7. Maturity begins immediately after youth and will last until the age of 40. This is a period of flowering in a person of a creative beginning, there is an awareness of one's place in life, often the period is accompanied by personal conflict and stagnation.
8. Older adulthood, and then old age, are characterized bycollected and whole person, but accompanied by a sense of despair and duality.

Even those who haven't heard of Erickson himself must have heard of this theory.

Vygotsky's theory of mental development

In his writings, he focused on the study of the psyche at the stage of its formation, that is, in childhood, the problems of socialization, lack of education and the role of artistic creativity. It was Vygotsky who for the first time clearly separated and differentiated the two dominant lines of development: social and innate. At the same time, the social environment gives the same role in the formation of the child's psyche, as well as its genes.

Moreover, in his cultural-historical theory of the development of mental functions, he proposed to accept as a fact that the social environment plays a major role in mental development. And not the last place in this development is occupied by the cultural heritage, which the child masters as he grows up. By cultural heritage, he understands both sign and verbal systems such as language, writing, counting system. Therefore, one of the names of his theory of mental development is cultural-historical. The child is forced to be locked in a certain “zone of proximal development”, which will determine his cultural level for many years to come. Everyone knows how hard it is for a person who grew up in the countryside to adapt to the culture of city dwellers. Such a person can be seen from afar for the first time, and sometimes for the rest of his life.

Vygotsky in the theory of the development of higher mental functions draws attention to the fact that the path of human development is alwaysbegins with interaction with adults. A child from the first second of life and for a long time is always under the supervision of adults, he "absorbs" their culture. How they talk, what they talk about, how they have fun and how they eat. And after the child grows up a little, and he joins this cultural life, he begins to learn to cooperate with the same adults. And all this, according to the scientist, cannot but leave a huge mark on the soul and psyche of a person.

The perception of reality and thinking is directly affected by the cultural environment in which the child grew up. And this is the main thesis of Vygotsky's cultural-historical theory of mental development. Honing it to perfection, he discovers that in the process of mastering and later simply applying cultural skills, they reach automatism, that is, they are literally recorded on the subcortex of the brain and become part of the human psyche.

Another name for it is "The Theory of the Development of Higher Mental Functions". After all, according to Vygotsky, a person, acquiring the skills of a high culture, hones such basic functions of the psyche as memory, thinking, perception and attention to the highest degree. Like his predecessors, he recognizes that the psyche is formed in stages and leaps, but does not clearly differentiate them. Vygotsky only draws attention to the fact that calm periods are always replaced by crisis ones, and that it is precisely at these moments that jumps in the development of the psyche occur.

On the theory of mental developmentVygotsky, the so-called psychological school of Vygotsky was founded, the adherents of which were the following prominent scientists:

• A. N. Leontiev;
• D. A. Elkonin;
• A. V. Zaporozhets;
• P. Ya. Galperin;
• L. A. Bozovic;
• A. R. Luria.

The latter became the founder of such a promising direction in psychology as neuropsychology.

Stern Theory

Psychologist William Stern suggested that the social environment plays a significant role, but that heredity also affects the mental development of a person. He formed his theory together with his wife, watching his own children and their comrades. They noted that the environment in which children are located can slow down or accelerate development, but there is no escape from genetics. The German psychologist gave this theory the name of the theory of convergence of mental development, which indicated the duality of the factors that influenced the development of the psyche.

They also noticed that children who grow up in an environment of more developed peers or slightly older comrades are pulled up with knowledge and skills to them, in contrast to those who develop in isolation. But at the same time there are innate qualities that the child is not able to “jump over”. And therefore, according to his theory, the mental development of a child depends on two factors at once and nothing else. In those days, it was nonsense to point so directly to the "biologization" of the soul, such scientists were accused of earthiness.

Unlike cultural-historical theorydevelopment of higher mental functions, Stern's theory still gave the palm to genetics, relegating the social factor to the background.