The problem of needs in modern psychology. Such conflicting social needs of a person General characteristics of needs

The direction of human activity, his intentions and desires is connected with his needs, which are designed to provide him with a comfortable existence. Of course, needs pass through the filter of a person's self-concept, his value beliefs and attitudes. nevertheless, the needs are the trigger for the activity of the individual. A lot of energy is embedded inside a person and this energy is connected with needs. First of all. activity will be determined by biological, so-called primary needs (search activity, safety, food, sleep, etc.). But besides these, there are social (secondary) needs, which can be both explicit and latent (hidden). It is these unmanifested needs that are the source of personal, interpersonal and social problems of a person. Scientists have been trying to classify needs for a long time, and there are plenty of such classifications to understand their importance for life. One such psychologist was Henry Murray, famous for developing the TAT (Thematic Apperception Test). The purpose of the methodology was to study the intrapersonal conflicts of a person associated with inclinations, interests and motives. Read 32 needs according to Murray and listen to yourself, analyze how these needs manifest themselves in your life or they are not allowed to manifest themselves openly and they act automatically, forcing the consciousness to surrender to their driving force.

List of needs according to G. Murray

1. Autonomy - the need for independence- the desire to get rid of or escape from any restriction, the desire to get rid of guardianship, regime, order, regulation of hard work. Break free from bonds and restrictions. Resist coercion. Avoid or stop activities prescribed by despotic authoritarian figures. Be independent and act according to your impulses. Not to be bound by anything, not to be responsible for anything. Ignore conventions. Stubbornness, non-conformism, conflict, anarchism are also generated by the need for superiority over people and social conditions that must be obeyed. And besides, the desire for independence can also be conditioned by material and practical interests.

2. Aggression - the need for aggression- the desire by word or action to disgrace, condemn, curse, humiliate, destroy the enemy. Strength to overcome opposition. Fight. Revenge for insults. Attack, insult, kill. Resist with violence or punish. prone to aggression). Aggressiveness can be caused both by the need to defend one's material and practical interests (perhaps even illegal ones), and by the same need for superiority, that is, hypertrophied ambition that reacts even to the slightest, and sometimes imaginary, manifestations of someone else's superiority.

3. Affiliation (from English affiliation - connection, connection) - need for intimacy, the desire to be in the company of other people, the human need to create warm, emotionally significant relationships with other people. Search for friendships - the desire for friendship, love; good will, sympathy for other people, suffering in the absence of friendships, the desire to remove obstacles in relationships, the desire to bring people together.Close contact and interaction with loved ones (or those who are similar to the subject himself or love him). To give pleasure to the catheterized object and win his affection. Stay true to friendship. The need for social friendliness, (the desire for unification, communication).

4. Thrift - the need for frugality, conservation.

5. Attention - the need for disclosure, the need to be in the spotlight - the desire to "win" others, draw attention to yourself, surprise with your achievements and personality traits. Make an impression. To be seen and heard. Excite, surprise, enchant, entertain, shock, intrigue, amuse, seduce. The need for demonstrativeness, the desire to manifest itself, to show oneself. No objection, but for the sake of clarity: this need is sometimes defined here as the need to be the object of attention.

6. Dominance - the need for control- the desire and ability to occupy a dominant position in a group and exert a predominant influence on others, dictate their will to others, the desire to control, hinder, influence, direct behavior with a word, order, convince, limit others. Control the environment. Influence or direct behaviorothers - suggestion, temptation, persuasion. indication. Dissuade, restrict, prohibit.Dominate. No objection, butIn what follows, this need will be defined as the need for superiority.

7. Achievement - the need to be first- the desire to overcome something, to surpass others, to do something better, to reach the highest level in some business, to be consistent and purposeful; the desire to overcome, overcome, get ahead of others; to do something quickly and well, to reach heights in any business. Do something difficult. Manage, manipulate, organize - in relation to physical objects, people or ideas. Do this as quickly and independently as possible. Overcome obstacles and achieve high performance. Improve yourself. Compete and get ahead of others. To exercise talents and thus increase self-respect. The need for success. There is no "tendency to overcome" if there is no goal in the effort. The “need to resist” lies not in the process of overcoming, but in the goal of these efforts, that is, in the same “success”. The desire for success can be motivated both by the needs of self-affirmation (the need for superiority, respect, the need to beobject of attention), as well as material and practical interests.

8. Protection- the need to search for a patron - expectation of advice, help, helplessness, search for consolation, advice, gentle treatment. Satisfy needs with the compassionate help of a loved one. To be the one who is taken care of, supported, surrounded by care, protected, loved, who is given advice, who is led, who is forgiven, comforted. Stay close to a dedicated guardian. Always have someone around who will provide support, seeking help (dependence). Need for help (desire to receive help).

9. Game- the need for the game, the preference for the game of any serious activity, love for witticisms; sometimes combined with carelessness, irresponsibility; desire for entertainment, revelry, passion for sports. Act "for fun" - without other goals, to behave aimlessly. Laugh, joke. Seek relaxation after stress in pleasures. desire to play. Participate in games, sports activities, dances, parties, gambling.

10. Avoiding Failure- the need to avoid failures, the need to avoid punishment - restraining one's own impulses in order to avoid punishment, condemnation, the need to reckon with public opinion. To avoid shame. Avoid humiliation. To avoid difficulties or situations in which humiliation, contempt, ridicule, indifference of others is possible. Refrain from action in order to avoid failure, the need for patience. The need for security, the desire to avoid responsibility.

11. Blame avoidance the need to avoid blame.

12. Training- need for clarification, training

13. Danger- the need to avoid danger — fear, anxiety, horror, panic, excessive caution, lack of initiative, avoidance of the fight.

14. rejection - the need to reject others, the desire to reject attempts at rapprochement; criticality, solitude, shamelessness. Get rid of the negatively cathected object. Get rid of, refuse, cast out or ignore the inferior. Neglect the object or deceive it. Rejection. The need to avoid, repulsion of an unpleasant and unwanted person). Emotional need requires not only saturation, but also comfort. Emotional discomfort is generated by a much wider range of causes than just unpleasant people.

15. Cognition - the need for knowledge.

16. Submission- need for obedience- passive obedience - intrapunity, passive submission to force, acceptance of fate, recognition of one's own inferiority. In self-deprecation. Passively submit to external forces. Willingness to accept resentment, accusations, criticism, punishment. Willingness to give up. Submit to fate. To admit one's own "second-rateness", to admit one's delusions, mistakes, defeats. Confess and make amends. Blaming yourself, belittling, exposing yourself in the worst possible way. Look for pain, punishment, illness, misfortune and enjoy them. The need to be lowered, humiliated, the desire to be "below" someone, the need to obey. Let's relate these points to the need for security, which manifests itself in a much more diverse way. The strange "need to obey" probably means the need to neglect one's ambitions in favor of the power that ensures the security of the individual.

17. Patron- the need to be a patron, the need to provide assistance, to be a comforter, to take care of, to provide material assistance, to provide shelter. In guardianship.

Show empathy and help the defenseless in meeting their needs - a child or someone who is weak, exhausted, tired, inexperienced, infirm, defeated, humiliated, alone, dejected, sick, in difficulty. Help in danger. Feed, support, console, protect, patronize, heal. Universal comforter and friend of those who mourn.

18. Understanding - the need to understand, to be understood, accepted.

19. Order — Pneedinessorder- the desire for accuracy, order, accuracy, beauty. Put everything in order. To achieve cleanliness, organization, balance, neatness, accuracy. The scientist strives for consistency, because he knows that the truth has a harmonious form. The master avoids chaos, because order is much more practical. For a housewife, order is a matter of pride. For a bachelor, this is a painful necessity. With a pedant, the desire for order can take on painful and meaningless forms. For an aesthete, order is a matter of aesthetic pleasure. For a technician - a condition that ensures the safety of work. For a commander, order is a requirement of the charter.20.

20. Recognition- the need for recognition.

21 . Acquisition- the need for acquisition. Desire to acquire, collect, collect. Have.

22. Opposition - need overcoming defeat, failure - differs from the need to achieve an emphasis on independence in actions. The main features are willpower, perseverance, fearlessness. In the struggle to master the situation or compensate for failures. To get rid of humiliation by repeated actions. Overcome weakness, suppress fear. Wash away shame with action. Look for obstacles and difficulties. Respect yourself and be proud of yourself. Tendency to overcome defeats, failures.

23. Risk the need to avoid risk.

24. self-preservation- the need for self-defense - difficulties in recognizing one's own mistakes, the desire to justify oneself with references to circumstances, to defend one's rights; refusal to analyze their mistakes; the need to avoid danger, excessive caution, lack of initiative, evasion of the fight. In defense. Protect yourself from attacks, criticism, accusations. Hush up or justify mistakes, failures, humiliations. Advocate ya Harm avoidance. The tendency to defend, justify. Self-defence, as self-justification, is also conditioned by both the need for superiority (one's own rightness) and the protection of one's material and practical interests.

25. Sex- the sexual need to create and develop erotic relationships. Have sexual relations with an individual of the opposite sex. Erotic, sexual attraction.

26 . creation- the need to create

27. Status- the need for status the desire to work under the guidance of a stronger, smarter, more talented person, strives to become someone's follower. Admire the superior and support him. Praise, commend, exalt. Willingness to be influenced by others. Have an example to follow. Obey custom. The need to respect, admire, desire to recognize the superiority of others. The desire for patronage over oneself, in assistance from the patron.

28. Judgment- need for judgment the desire to raise general questions or answer them, a tendency to abstract formulas, a passion for generalizations, a passion for eternal questions about the meaning of life, good and evil, etc. Interested in theory. Reflect, formulate, analyze, generalize. The desire for understanding and for internal analysis. The need for understanding (intellectual orientation, the desire to understand). But after all, no one will understand what is completely uninteresting to him. The “need for understanding” is driven either by an emotional need, which takes pleasure in the game of the mind in the discovery of the unknown, or by material and practical interests, for which awareness can be very useful.

29. Respect -needV respect and support - sociality (sociophilia) - forgetting the group's own interests in the name of the interests of the group, altruistic orientation, nobility, compliance, caring for others. The need to care, the desire to help. We refer these points to manifestations of empathic need.

30. Damage- the need to avoid harm, damage, protection from physical harm. In avoiding pain, wounds, disease, death. Avoid dangerous situations. Take precautionary measures.

31. Sensuality- the need for sensory impressions. AND express sense impressions and rejoice in them. The need to feel, the desire to experience sensations.

32. selfishness(narcissism)- the desire to put above all their own interests, complacency, auto-eroticism, painful sensitivity to humiliation, shyness; the tendency to subjectivity in the perception of the external world, often merges with the need for aggression or rejection.

Ivan Kotva, psychologist

Human needs as a source of his activity

08.04.2015

Snezhana Ivanova

The very needs of a person are the basis for the formation of a motive, which in psychology is considered as the “engine” of a personality ...

Man, like any Living being, is programmed by nature for survival, and for this it needs certain conditions and means. If at some point in time these conditions and means are absent, then a state of need arises, which causes the appearance of a selective response of the human body. This selectivity ensures the occurrence of a response to stimuli (or factors) that are this moment are the most important for normal life, preservation of life and further development. The experience by the subject of such a state of need in psychology is called a need.

So, the manifestation of a person's activity, and, accordingly, his life activity and purposeful activity, directly depends on the presence of a certain need (or need), which requires satisfaction. But only a certain system of human needs will determine the purposefulness of his activities, as well as contribute to the development of his personality. The very needs of a person are the basis for the formation of a motive, which in psychology is considered as a kind of “engine” of a personality. and human activity directly depends on organic and cultural needs, and they, in turn, give rise to, which directs the attention of the individual and its activity to various objects and objects of the surrounding world with the aim of their knowledge and subsequent mastery.

Human needs: definition and features

Needs, which are the main source of personality activity, are understood as a special internal (subjective) feeling of a person's need, which determines his dependence on certain conditions and means of existence. The activity itself, aimed at satisfying human needs and regulated by a conscious goal, is called activity. The sources of personality activity as an internal motivating force aimed at satisfying various needs are:

• organic and material needs (food, clothing, protection, etc.);
• spiritual and cultural(cognitive, aesthetic, social).

Human needs are reflected in the most persistent and vital dependencies of the organism and the environment, and the system of human needs is formed under the influence of the following factors: the social conditions of people's lives, the level of development of production and scientific and technological progress. In psychology, needs are studied in three aspects: as an object, as a state, and as a property (a more detailed description of these values ​​is presented in the table).

The Importance of Needs in Psychology

In psychology, the problem of needs has been considered by many scientists, so today there are quite a lot of different theories that understand needs as needs, as well as the state, and the process of satisfaction. For example, K. K. Platonov I saw in needs, first of all, a need (more precisely, a mental phenomenon of reflecting the needs of an organism or personality), and D. A. Leontiev considered needs through the prism of activity in which it finds its realization (satisfaction). Famous psychologist of the last century Kurt Lewin understood by needs, first of all, a dynamic state that occurs in a person at the moment of the implementation of some action or intention by him.

Analysis different approaches and theories in the study of this problem allows us to say that in psychology the need was considered in the following aspects:

• as a need (L.I. Bozhovich, V.I. Kovalev, S.L. Rubinshtein);
• as an object of satisfaction of need (A.N. Leontiev);
• as a necessity (B.I. Dodonov, V.A. Vasilenko);
• as the absence of good (V.S. Magun);
• as an attitude (D.A. Leontiev, M.S. Kagan);
• as a violation of stability (D.A. McClelland, V.L. Ossovsky);
• as a state (K. Levin);
• as a systemic reaction of the personality (E.P. Ilyin).

Human needs in psychology are understood as dynamically active states of the personality, which form the basis of its motivational sphere. And since in the process of human activity, not only the development of the individual takes place, but also changes in the environment, needs play the role of the driving force of its development, and here their subject content is of particular importance, namely the volume of the material and spiritual culture of mankind that affects the formation of needs. people and their satisfaction.

In order to understand the essence of needs as a driving force, it is necessary to take into account a number of important points highlighted E.P. Ilyin. They are as follows:

• the needs of the human body must be separated from the needs of the individual (at the same time, the need, that is, the need of the body, may be unconscious or conscious, but the need of the individual is always conscious);
• a need is always associated with a need, by which it is necessary to understand not a deficit in something, but a desire or a need;
• from personal needs it is impossible to exclude the state of need, which is a signal for choosing a means of satisfying needs;
• the emergence of a need is a mechanism that includes human activity aimed at finding a goal and achieving it as a need to satisfy the need that has arisen.

Needs are passive-active in nature, that is, on the one hand, they are due to the biological nature of a person and the lack of certain conditions, as well as his means of subsistence, and on the other hand, they determine the activity of the subject to overcome the deficit that has arisen. An essential aspect of human needs is their social and personal nature, which finds its manifestation in motives, motivation and, accordingly, in the entire orientation of the individual. Regardless of the type of need and its focus, they all have the following features:

• have their object and are the awareness of need;
• the content of needs depends primarily on the conditions and methods of their satisfaction;
• they are able to reproduce.

In the needs that form human behavior and activity, as well as in the production motives, interests, aspirations, desires, inclinations and value orientations from them, the basis of the individual's behavior lies.

Types of human needs

Any human need initially represents an organic interweaving of biological, physiological and psychological processes, which determines the presence of many types of needs, which are characterized by strength, frequency of occurrence and ways to satisfy them.

Most often in psychology, the following types of human needs are distinguished:

• isolated according to origin natural(or organic) and cultural needs;
• distinguished by direction material needs and spiritual;
• depending on which area they belong to (fields of activity), they distinguish the needs for communication, work, rest and knowledge (or educational needs);
• according to the object, needs can be biological, material and spiritual (they also distinguish human social needs;
• by their origin, needs can be endogenous(there are waters due to internal factors) and exogenous (caused by external stimuli).

Basic, fundamental (or primary) and secondary needs are also found in the psychological literature.

The greatest attention in psychology is paid to three main types of needs - material, spiritual and social (or public needs), which are described in the table below.

Basic types of human needs

material needs of a person are primary, since they are the basis of his life. Indeed, in order for a person to live, he needs food, clothing and housing, and these needs were formed in the process of phylogenesis. spiritual needs(or ideal) are purely human, as they primarily reflect the level of development of the individual. These include aesthetic, ethical and learning needs.

It should be noted that both organic and spiritual needs are characterized by dynamism and interact with each other, therefore, for the formation and development of spiritual needs, it is necessary to satisfy material needs (for example, if a person does not satisfy the need for food, then he will experience fatigue, lethargy, apathy and drowsiness, that cannot contribute to the emergence of a cognitive need).

Separately, one should consider public needs(or social), which are formed and developed under the influence of society and are a reflection of the social nature of man. Satisfaction of this need is necessary for absolutely every person as a social being and, accordingly, as a person.

Classification of needs

From the moment psychology became a separate branch of knowledge, many scientists have undertaken a large number of attempts to classify needs. All these classifications are very diverse and basically reflect only one side of the problem. That is why, to date, a unified system of human needs that would meet all the requirements and interests of researchers from various psychological schools and trends has not yet been presented to the scientific community.

• natural desires of a person and necessary (it is impossible to live without them);
• natural desires, but not necessary (if there is no way to satisfy them, then this will not lead to the inevitable death of a person);
• desires that are neither necessary nor natural (for example, the desire for fame).

Informational author P.V. Simonov needs were divided into biological, social and ideal, which in turn can be the needs of need (or preservation) and growth (or development). According to P. Simonov, social needs of a person and ideal ones are divided into needs “for oneself” and “for others”.

Quite interesting is the classification of needs proposed by Erich Fromm. A well-known psychoanalyst identified the following specific social needs of a person:

• a person's need for connections (belonging to a group);
• need for self-affirmation (sense of importance);
• the need for affection (the need for warm and reciprocal feelings);
• the need for self-awareness (one's own individuality);
• the need for a system of orientation and objects of worship (belonging to a culture, nation, class, religion, etc.).

But the most popular among all existing classifications received a unique system of human needs by the American psychologist Abraham Maslow (better known as the hierarchy of needs or the pyramid of needs). The representative of the humanistic direction in psychology based his classification on the principle of grouping needs by similarity in a hierarchical sequence - from lower needs to higher ones. A. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is presented in the form of a table for ease of perception.

Hierarchy of needs according to A. Maslow

Main groups	Needs	Description
Additional psychological needs	in self-actualization (self-realization)	maximum realization of all the potentials of a person, his abilities and personality development
	aesthetic	the need for harmony and beauty
	cognitive	the desire to learn and know the surrounding reality
Basic psychological needs	in respect, self respect and appreciation	the need for success, approval, recognition of authority, competence, etc.
	in love and belonging	the need to be in a community, society, to be accepted and recognized
	in safety	the need for protection, stability and security
Physiological Needs	physiological or organic	needs for food, oxygen, drink, sleep, sex drive, etc.

Having proposed their classification of needs, A. Maslow clarified that a person cannot have higher needs (cognitive, aesthetic and the need for self-development), if he has not satisfied the basic (organic) needs.

Formation of human needs

The development of human needs can be analyzed in the context of the socio-historical development of mankind and from the standpoint of ontogenesis. But it should be noted that both in the first and in the second case, material needs will be the initial ones. This is due to the fact that they are the main source of activity of any individual, pushing him to maximum interaction with the environment (both natural and social)

On the basis of material needs, the spiritual needs of a person developed and transformed, for example, the need for knowledge was based on satisfying the needs for food, clothing and housing. As for aesthetic needs, they were also formed due to the development and improvement of the production process and various means of life, which were necessary to provide more comfortable conditions for human life. Thus, the formation of human needs was determined by socio-historical development, during which all human needs developed and differentiated.

As for the development of needs during a person's life path (that is, in ontogenesis), here everything also begins with the satisfaction of natural (organic) needs, which ensure the establishment of relationships between a child and adults. In the process of satisfying basic needs, children develop needs for communication and cognition, on the basis of which other social needs appear. An important influence on the development and formation of needs in childhood is provided by the process of education, through which the correction and replacement of destructive needs is carried out.

Development and formation of human needs according to A.G. Kovalev must obey the following rules:

• needs arise and are strengthened through the practice and systematic consumption (that is, habit formation);
• the development of needs is possible in conditions of expanded reproduction in the presence of various means and ways of satisfying it (the emergence of needs in the process of activity);
• the formation of needs occurs more comfortably if the activity necessary for this does not exhaust the child (lightness, simplicity and a positive emotional mood);
• the development of needs is significantly influenced by the transition from reproductive to creative activity;
• the need will be strengthened if the child sees its significance, both personally and socially (assessment and encouragement).

In addressing the question of the formation of human needs, it is necessary to return to the hierarchy of needs of A. Maslow, who argued that all human needs are given to him in a hierarchical organization at certain levels. Thus, from the moment of his birth, in the process of his growing up and personality development, each person will consistently manifest seven classes (of course, this is ideal) of needs, ranging from the most primitive (physiological) needs and ending with the need for self-actualization (the desire for maximum realization the personality of all its potentialities, the most complete life), and some aspects of this need begin to manifest themselves not earlier than adolescence.

According to A. Maslow, human life for more high level needs provides him with the greatest biological efficiency and, accordingly, a longer life, better health, better sleep and appetite. Thus, purpose of satisfying needs basic - the desire for the emergence of higher needs in a person (in knowledge, in self-development and self-actualization).

The main ways and means of meeting needs

Satisfaction of human needs is an important condition not only for its comfortable existence, but also for its survival, because if organic needs are not met, a person will die in a biological sense, and if spiritual needs are not satisfied, then the individual as a social entity dies. People, satisfying different needs, learn in different ways and learn different means to achieve this goal. Therefore, depending on the environment, conditions and the individual himself, the goal of satisfying needs and the ways to achieve it will differ.

In psychology, the most popular ways and means of satisfying needs are:

• in the mechanism of formation of individual ways for a person to meet their needs(in the process of learning, the formation of various connections between stimuli and subsequent analogy);
• in the process of individualization of ways and means of satisfying basic needs, which act as mechanisms for the development and formation of new needs (the very ways to satisfy needs can turn into themselves, that is, new needs appear);
• in concretizing the ways and means of meeting the needs(there is a consolidation of one method or several, with the help of which the satisfaction of human needs occurs);
• in the process of mentalization of needs(awareness of the content or some aspects of the need);
• in the socialization of ways and means of satisfying needs(they are subordinated to the values ​​of culture and the norms of society).

So, at the heart of any activity and activity of a person there is always some need that finds its manifestation in motives, and it is the needs that are the motivating force that pushes a person to movement and development.

The complex of problems that have grown before mankind dictates the need to find a non-trivial method for the further development of civilization. Global problems humanity can be solved only by combining the scientific knowledge of biology, psychology, sociology, anthropology and other sciences that study the interaction of man, society and nature as a single interconnected system.

Studies of the nature of the anthroposystem have been going on for decades, but, perhaps, it was our school that first made an attempt to systematize this knowledge. To describe the relationship "man-nature", the direction we created used systemic macroanthropological approach as a way of studying a person in the anthroposystem. The systems approach is gaining great importance as a means of studying the integral phenomena of nature, society, group, person.

Need or desire to receive

Mankind develops gradually, and the force of its development is the growing egoism in it. If egoism had not developed in people, the present generation would not have developed the experience of the past, just as we observe it in animals. Egoistic desire is the essential nature of creation at all its levels - it is the only thing that was created in the act of creation of the universe. We called it "the desire to have fun" or "selfishness".

Concepts under consideration:

• selfishness- need, desire to receive, as the driving force of the evolutionary process;
• Human- as an object and subject of macroanthropology, as a creature capable of feeling and developing in order to change.
• anthroposystem evolution- the development of mankind from the moment of the emergence of human society to the present day, as a result of the progress of human needs (egoism).

Our study is based on the following assumptions:

• identity principle: the evolution of the anthroposystem depends on the measure of the identity of the properties of man with the properties of nature;
• altruism: a measure of similarity to the property of the higher control of nature. A person acquires a force that counteracts natural egoism, called altruism, and becomes similar to the property of a higher nature. To the extent of similarity, perception expands;
• there are many laws in the world, but among them there are supreme law to which all others are subject. This is the law of the return to the altruistic nature;
• ultimate purpose of creation achieved on the one hand - through the process of evolution, and on the other hand - through the process of involution (the return of plurality to unity).
• internal inversion: the creation in a person of the prerequisites for self-actualization and growth occurs by the method of inversion of his natural properties;
• self-actualization lies in self-knowledge, in the comprehension by a person of his true "I", his higher nature.

Desire Growth

Satisfaction of the desire to receive is felt by us in the form of fulfillment and pleasure, and dissatisfaction - as emptiness, despair and suffering. Any action, from the simplest to the most complex, is only intended to increase the level of pleasure or reduce the degree of suffering. In fact, these are two sides of the same coin.

It is known that a person will not make the slightest movement without motivation, a driving force, that is, without counting on personal gain. He must imagine and really hope that in the new state he will get more pleasure than in the current one. This assumption about obtaining future benefits is the energy that drives human activity.

Man differs from the rest of nature not only by the strength and nature of his desires, but also by the fact that these desires are constantly changing and growing, both throughout the life of the individual and with the change of generations.

Abraham Maslow divided human needs into five main levels according to a hierarchical principle, which means that a person, when satisfying his needs, moves like a ladder, moving from a lower level to a higher one (Fig. 1).

Figure 1. Pyramid of needs by A. Maslow

The growing desire to receive awakens new needs in a person. The greater the desire, the higher the demands of a person, and this leads to the development of civilization. It is the steady growth of selfishness that has propelled us forward, inspiring the shaping of humanity throughout its history.

In the beginning, human egoism manifested itself only in the essential bodily needs for food, sex, creating a family, and so on. This foundation has been laid in humanity since ancient times.

However, the individual lives in society, and therefore he has higher, social aspirations. The desire to enjoy wealth, honors, power and glory has changed the face of mankind. They led to class and hierarchical stratification, as well as to the formation of new types of socio-economic structures.

Climbing the pyramid of needs, a person wanted to enjoy knowledge. This desire manifested itself in the development of science, education, upbringing and culture. Its historical imprint is most felt by us from the Renaissance, from the time of the scientific revolution, and up to the present day. Mass education and the secularization of society were also consequences of the thirst for knowledge, which requires us to know the surrounding reality. We need to constantly replenish our store of information about the world, we need to know everything, invade, explore and dominate everything.

Desire is a universal driving factor, and if we look at the process of cultural, scientific and technological development of mankind from this angle, we will come to the conclusion that it was the growing desire that gave rise to all ideas, inventions and innovations. In essence, the entire process of development is some kind of technical tools, devices, service tools that were developed only to satisfy the needs caused by the growing desires of man.

It should be emphasized that egoism develops not only in the historical perspective, not only in humanity as a whole, but also in the individual throughout his personal life. One after another, all sorts of needs awaken in us in various combinations, guiding the course of our whole life.

Thus, the desire to receive is the engine of progress. It is it that pushes us forward, causing everything that happens to a person individually and to humanity as a whole. The continuous development of desire shapes the present as well as the future towards which we are moving.

Primal Desires

The need for food and sex are animal desires because animals also experience them. Even being in complete isolation, a person experiences hunger and the desire to procreate. Essential needs are called physical desires, and anything beyond that refers to social, human desires. If any desire awakens in us that exceeds the need for food, sex, physical security, then we can analyze the way it is used along the “selfishness-altruism” vector.

social desires

According to Maslow, our desires are divided into two types: physical and human or urgent and social. Let's take a look at social desires to see which factor in our relationship with our neighbor is causing the most tangible imbalance.

M. Laitman divides social desires into three main categories:

• desire for wealth;
• desire for honors and power;
• desire for knowledge.

Social desires are called such for two reasons:

1. A person adopts them from society. Living alone, he would not seek such pleasures.
2. These desires can be realized only within the framework of society.

Each of us has a particular combination of social desires. Moreover, this combination changes throughout life. Speaking schematically, one person has a strong desire for money (the desire for wealth), another - a desire for honors, a third - a desire for knowledge.

"Money" personify the desire to take possession of something, turning it into a personal acquisition. Ideally, a person wants to gain the whole world, so that everything belongs to him alone.

"Honors" - this is already a "higher" desire. Man no longer wants to take everything into his own hands, like little child. On the contrary, he understands that he is surrounded by a huge world, and prefers to work all his life in order to achieve respect and honor from those around him. He is even willing to pay to be respected. Unlike the primitive thirst for money, which allows one to “inflate” oneself with countless acquisitions, the desire for honors attracts a person not by the abolition of his neighbor, but by the presence of a full-fledged personality that will respect him, elevating him above himself. Thus, "honours" personify the desire of a person to gain the whole world - but no longer in his own property. On the contrary, let the world remain outside and honor us, reverent to the point of self-forgetfulness.

"Knowledge" symbolize even greater power. It's about about the desire to gain wisdom, to know all aspects and details of reality, to study the mechanism of the universe and understand how to turn nature and people to your advantage. Knowledge means unlimited power through reason.

Any desire that goes beyond the basic needs is adopted by us from society. Accordingly, the degree of success or failure in satisfying these desires is measured only in relation to society. Thus, D. Kahneman's research showed that people evaluate the intensity of their emotional feeling of happiness mainly in accordance with social criteria. It also turned out that the degree of happiness we experience depends not so much on our personal success, but on comparing it with the success of others. Less for them - more for us, more for them - less for us. We are ashamed to admit it, but when someone else succeeds, envy awakens in us, and sometimes a natural uncontrollable reaction flares up automatically, and then inside ourselves we frankly want him to fail. When someone else stumbles, we rejoice, because in comparison with this our condition immediately improved. If many suffer, this is in itself comforting, as it is a vivid example of the “relativity” and social orientation of our assessments.

It follows that human pleasures that do not fit into the framework of physical vital needs depend on our attitude towards our neighbor, in other words, on the key in which we perceive our relationships with others. What warms our hearts is not so much new acquisitions as such, but gaining dominance over others, respect in the eyes of society (and therefore in our own eyes) and the power that we seek.

Such a selfish attitude towards our neighbor causes an imbalance, a discrepancy between us and the general law of nature, the law of altruism. The egoistic desire to rise above others, to enjoy at their expense and isolate themselves from them, contradicts the desire of nature to collect all its parts together through altruism. This is the source of our suffering.

Let us be unfamiliar with certain laws of nature, but they still affect us, being absolute and unshakable. If someone violated one of them, its very deviation becomes a factor of influence and obliges the person to return to the observance of the “rules of the game”. We already know many of the laws of nature that operate at the inanimate, vegetative and animal levels, including man. However, we mistakenly believe that at the human level, in the sphere of relationships, there are no absolute laws.

This delusion is caused by the fact that, being at a certain stage of development, it is very difficult to understand its laws - for this you need to ascend to a higher stage. Therefore, we are unable to draw clear parallels between selfish behavior towards our neighbor and the negative phenomena of our lives.

supreme need

Maslow describes this need as "... the desire to become more and more what you are, to become everything that you are capable of becoming." A person who has reached the actualization of the highest need in his development enjoys the pleasure of other people, which allows us to call him an altruist.

He found that self-actualizing people enjoy life more. They value her more; they have more interests; they see more beauty in the world. They have less fear and anxiety and more confidence. They are much less prone to feelings of boredom, despair, shame, and lack of purpose. In Maslow's words, "They are directly inclined to do the right thing because that's what they want, that's what they need, that's what they approve of, enjoy it, and tend to keep enjoying it."

If the first four categories of desires (the desire of the body - for food, shelter, sex; the desire for wealth; the desire for power, honor; the desire for knowledge) are completely understandable and tangible to us, then we have no idea about the highest - spiritual - desire.

A person does not know what a spiritual desire is until he can satisfy his desires from those around him in our world. He sees these objects and knows exactly what he is striving for. But when he has a desire for something higher, he does not see in our world a source that could fill this desire.

A person finds himself in a state of helplessness and confusion: there is no longer a sense of taste for life, there is nothing to fill it with. He's just bad. He is being pulled somewhere. But where is it? He does not know where to turn, because the source of pleasure is not visible. A person has the opportunity to forget for a while, which, as a rule, he does.

And the one who urgently demands an answer to it is not able to fill the emerging void. And then the search for a remedy begins, which has been forgotten by mankind for many centuries.

The dead end of civilization and the search for a way out

Everything in nature, except for man, consumes only what is necessary for its existence. Whereas human desires, even concerning the simplest needs - food, sex, physical comfort - are not limited to the necessary. The simplest and most striking example: a person uses food by no means only to maintain life, as an animal does. But people are well aware that the quantitative and qualitative excess in nutrition harms them, but in the vast majority of cases this cannot stop them. Man's desires are excessive in everything.

And yet, the insatiability of a person who stands apart in nature is especially brightly manifested in the desires inherent only to him: in the pursuit of wealth, power, honors, fame, even in the pursuit of information. It is in these desires that a person is selfish, because in order to satisfy them he uses the company of his own kind. A person, unlike an animal, enjoys when he humiliates another, rules over him. Power over one's neighbor, which harms him, can safely be called the quintessence of human egoism.

Selfish use by a person of his desires leads to a threatening imbalance with the outside world. That is why “philanthropic altruism”, which we sometimes notice, cannot fix the world in any way, since its basis is a natural, often not even conscious desire for personal satisfaction. The internal flaw in the relation of the person to the person cannot be corrected by "humanitarian help". The more we help financially, the more clearly we see how far we really are from each other. People are increasingly lacking an understanding of what really unites them.

The habitual use of all social desires only to achieve personal satisfaction leads to a dead end in development. The highest desire is not realized, and this makes it impossible to maintain homeostasis - that great balance, beyond which the disintegration of society and its death begin.

For thousands of years, man has been constantly increasing the scope of his egoistic aspirations, pushing society to development, to the emergence of new social formations, to the development of various forms of knowledge and creativity in the field of science, culture, upbringing, and education. And today we can state the sad result of uncontrolled egoistic development: society has entered a period when every thinking person sees that civilization has reached a dead end. And the transition to a new level requires a change in the vector of his desire from egoism to altruism.

After all, it was globalization that made us realize that today, even in the planetary community, everyone depends on everyone, and everyone determines what our common future will be like. The analysis shows that the source of the crisis is the basic error inherent in the "program" of a person's relationship to the outside world: to other people, to society, to the universe. The snowball of problems that has grown over the centuries of this error has led to the fact that modern humanity is a terminally ill organism that devours itself.

Condition for moving to the last step of desires

If a person changes the vector of his egoism from receiving to bestowing, then altruism becomes his need, i.e. "to give for the sake of giving." In his perception, the world becomes whole, and all people become close.

Necessary conditions for a new civilization: that everyone should take upon himself the duty to take care of everyone and take care of satisfying the needs of everyone to a degree no less than nature has instilled in a person to take care of providing for his own needs. So that everyone in the world feels that he is responsible for everyone.

However, if a part of the world does not want to fulfill such a guarantee, but remains immersed in selfish desires, then the rest will be forced to remain at this level, without any possibility of getting out of the crisis.

Figuratively, a guarantee can be compared with two people sailing in the same boat. Suddenly, one began to drill a hole in the bottom of the boat under him, and when asked by the other why he was doing this, he answered: “What do you care? I'm drilling a hole under me, not under you." To which the second said: “Fool! After all, being in the same boat, we will drown together.

However, it is impossible to arrive at universal guarantee in one leap, but only by a slow stepwise development. As figuratively written by the sages: "Until the scales tilt to the side of merit." That is, in the end, everyone contributes to the development of mankind, just as a person who weighs sesame seeds adds one grain to the scale until he finishes weighing. And of course, each grain matters, because without it it is impossible to complete the weighing.

Thus, the first condition that operates in a new civilization, that is, at the last stage of our needs, is the exit from one's "I" and the readiness to give to everyone, without making any difference between them. Since everything that is outside a person is the same for him - whether it is far or close - and so he must correct himself to correspond to the highest level, fulfilling this first condition, allowing him to ascend to it.

Solution

The main indicator that characterizes our civilization today is the inability to actualize the highest human need. Hence the feeling of the loss of the meaning of life, the feeling of the emptiness of existence.

Mankind is faced with the need to work out the right single solution - an altruistic attitude towards society and nature.

The need to actualize the highest need obliges each individual to altruistic activity in relation to the system of which he is a part. If any individual does not obey this principle of life, the principle of altruism, he thereby hinders development.

If we realize how each of us influences the world with our thoughts, our inner “I”, then we will understand why the world is so cruel to us. If we develop a methodology for interacting with each other, we will no longer be able to destroy our lives. And this will be the beginning of a new civilization.

Bibliography:

1. Arshinov V.I., Laitman M. Svirsky Ya.I. Sefirot of knowledge. M., URRS 2007.

2. Vakhromov E. Psychological concepts of human development: the theory of self-actualization. M., 2001.

3. Laitman M., Rozin V. Kabbalah in the context of history and modernity. M., URRS 2005.

4. Lektorsky V. A., Sadovsky V. N., On the principles of systems research // Questions of Philosophy, 1960, No. 8.

5. Maslow A. V. Psychology of being. M., 1997.

6. Maslow A. V. Far limits of the human psyche. SPb., 1997.

7. Prigogine I., Stengers I. Order out of chaos. 1999.

8. Rogers K. A look at psychotherapy. The formation of man. Moscow: Progress, 1998.

9. Frankl V. Man in search of meaning. M., 1990.

The need for consolation, support, and help from others, especially in dealing with one's vicious impulses—the so-called "sins of the flesh"—stems from a real sense of one's helplessness and intense physical suffering. As the physical excitation of a religious person grows under the influence of religious concepts, the vegetative irritation intensifies, which reaches a level close to satisfaction, which, however, does not lead to real physical relaxation. The experience of the treatment of mentally ill priests shows that at the moment of reaching the peak of religious ecstasy, involuntary ejaculation often occurs. Normal orgiastic satisfaction is replaced by a general physical excitation, which does not affect the genitals and, as if inadvertently, contrary to desire, causes a discharge.

At first, sexual satisfaction was naturally regarded as something good and beautiful, something that unites man with all of nature. After the separation of sexual and religious feelings, sexuality began to be seen as something bad, infernal, diabolical.

Now I would like to briefly summarize. People who have lost the ability to discharge, over time, begin to feel sexual arousal as something painful, burdensome, destructive. Indeed, not finding discharge, sexual arousal becomes destructive and painful. Thus, we were convinced that the basis of the religious approach to sex as a destructive, diabolical force, dooming a person to eternal damnation, are real physical processes. As a result, the attitude towards sexuality becomes ambivalent. At the same time, the usual religious and moralistic assessments of "good - bad", "heavenly - earthly", "divine - devilish" turn into symbols of sexual pleasure, on the one hand, and punishment for it, on the other hand.

Passionate desire for salvation and liberation from "sins" on a conscious level and from sexual tensions on an unconscious level is carefully guarded. The states of religious ecstasy are nothing but states of sexual excitation of the autonomic nervous system, which cannot be discharged. Religious excitement cannot be comprehended and, therefore, overcome without understanding the contradiction that determines its existence. For religious excitement is not only anti-sexual, but also to a large extent sexual in nature. From a sexual-energetic point of view, such arousal is unhygienic.

In no social group does hysteria and perversion flourish as in the ascetic circles of the church. It does not follow from this, however, that such ascetics should be treated as perverted criminals. In conversations with religious people, it often turns out that they understand their condition quite well. They, like other people, life is divided into two parts - official and personal. Officially they consider sexuality a sin, but unofficially they realize only too well that they could not live without substitute pleasure. Indeed, many of them are able to understand the sexual-energy resolution of the contradiction between sexual arousal and morality. If you do not deny them a human relationship and win their trust, then they discover an understanding that the state of unity with God they describe is a sense of involvement in the life of all nature. Like all people, they feel they are a microcosm within a microcosm. It must be admitted that their true essence is a deep conviction. Their faith really has a real basis, which is made up of vegetative currents in the body and achievable states of ecstasy. In poor men and women, religious feeling is absolutely genuine. This feeling loses its authenticity only to the extent that it rejects and hides from itself its source and unconscious desire for pleasure. Thus, a psychological attitude is formed among priests and religious persons, which is characterized by invented kindness.

With all the incompleteness of the given characterization and religious feeling, nevertheless, it is possible to generalize the main provisions as follows.

1. Religious excitement is a vegetative excitement, the sexual nature of which is presented in a false light.

2. By misrepresenting arousal, the religious person denies the existence of their sexuality.

3. Religious ecstasy serves as a substitute for orgastic-vegetative excitation.

4. Religious ecstasy does not free one from sexuality; at best, it causes muscular and mental fatigue.

5. Religious feeling is subjectively authentic and has a physiological basis.

6. The denial of the sexual nature of the indicated excitement leads to the loss of sincerity of character.

Children do not believe in God. Generally speaking, the belief in God is fixed in the psychological structure of children when they learn to suppress sexual arousal, accompanied by masturbation. Due to this suppression, children develop a feeling of fear of pleasure. Now they begin to sincerely believe and fear God. On the one hand, they are afraid of God, because they see in him some kind of omniscient and omnipotent being. On the other hand, they turn to him with a request to protect them from their sexual arousal. In this case, only one goal is pursued - the prevention of masturbation. Thus, the rooting of religious ideas occurs in early years childhood. Nevertheless, the idea of ​​God could not fetter the sexual energy of the child if it were not connected with the real figures of father and mother. He who does not honor his father is a sinner. In other words, one who is not afraid of the father and indulges in sexual pleasure is punished. A strict father does not indulge the desires of the child and therefore is the representative of God on earth. To the imagination of the child, he appears as the executor of God's will. A clear understanding of the human weaknesses and shortcomings of the father can shake respect for him, but this does not lead to rejection of him. He continues to personify the abstract-mystical concept of God. In a patriarchal society, turning to God really means turning to the real authority of the father. When referring to "God", the child actually refers to the real father. In the psychological structure of the child, sexual arousal, the idea of ​​a father, and the idea of ​​God constitute a kind of unity. In therapeutic practice, this unity occurs in the form of a spasm of the genital muscles. When such a spasm is eliminated, the idea of ​​God and the fear of the father are deprived of support. This shows that genital spasm not only implements the physiological rooting of religious fear in the personality structure, but also leads to the emergence of fear of pleasure, which becomes the basis of any religious morality.1

Between various cults, the socio-economic structure of society and the structure of the individual, there are complex and subtle relationships that, of course, need further research. Genital timidity and fear of pleasure constitute the energy support of all patriarchal religions with an anti-sexual orientation.

Published according to the edition: V. N. MYASISCHEV Psychology of relations.

The problem of human needs, with its enormous and sufficiently conscious difficulties by psychologists, is a branch of psychology, an attempt to bypass which, when solving any psychological issue, always leads to failure in solving this issue. Therefore, it is not so much the maturity of the prerequisites for investigating the problem as the consciousness of inevitable necessity that compels us here to formulate some preliminary propositions related to the development of the problem of needs.

It is known that questions of cognitive activity represent a more developed area of ​​psychology. However, the psychology of cognition suffers from one-sided rationalism, an incorrect interpretation of the cognitive process due to an underestimation of the role of all aspects of the mental activity of the cognizing subject.

In this area, something remains insufficiently developed, without which the development of the problem itself is largely hampered and conditional.

We know what an important role was played by the turn of Soviet psychology towards the teachings of I.P. Pavlov on higher nervous activity, but at the same time, one cannot but say about those temporary mistakes and failures that psychology experienced during the same time, incorrectly applying Pavlov's ideas under the influence of one-sided physiology, dogmatism and dogmatism. Let us only point out that the indisputable principle of the study of nervous activity in the unity of the organism with its environment and the correct materialistic position about the external conditioning of both biological and psychological life were accompanied by incorrect conclusions.

Problems of the inner and deep in the psyche were suppressed and pushed aside. In attempts to study the role of the internal, they saw the “odor of idealism”, identified the external with the objective, avoided the question of the internal, brought the deep closer to the deep in the instinctive-biological and psychoanalytic sense of the word.

If it can be said that a consistently materialistic science of man is only that which includes both the organism and the psyche in the plan of materialistic research, then it is absolutely necessary and inevitable for psychology to consider psychological problems in terms of the unity of internal and external, deep and superficial.

There will hardly be objections to the fact that needs are the deepest component in the dynamics of human behavior and experiences, and it is clear that the task of a consistently materialistic study of the psyche, the development of a theory of the psychological and applied questions, in particular, of a pedagogical nature, inevitably require us to include a difficult problem needs in the plan of our study.

Rational psychology explained everything and defined everything verbally; empirical psychology in the positive sense of the word demanded a struggle for psychological facts against psychological speculation. This is primarily related to the problem of needs.

An objectively correct view of the need as the body's need for something has also found its expression in a language in which need and need are expressed in one word (in English, need means both). However, this is the most general, so to speak, philosophical, but not yet psychological plan of definition.

It is characteristic of the psychological plan that the need for an object arises in the subject and is experienced by him, that it exists as an objective and subjective connection, characterized both objectively and subjectively as an attraction to the object of need, which determines the system of human behavior and experiences in connection with the object or in relation to this subject. Internal attraction and motivation are a reflection and state of the subject (hence, his body and brain) and the subjective-objective relationship to the object of need.

This preliminary, very general and insufficiently specific psychological definition only outlines the range of questions in which the tasks of research and the search for its psychological solution arise.

Before moving on to psychological issues proper, it is impossible not to mention that the problem of human needs can and should be considered from the standpoint of a number of disciplines. In addition to the above psychological range of questions, the knowledge that man is a product of socio-historical conditions makes it necessary to limit the sociological, or historical-materialistic, plan of consideration from the psychological one. As is known, the founders of Marxism-Leninism shed light on the social origin and nature of needs.

Solving this problem from a socio-historical standpoint, they laid the socio-genetic basis of the psychology of needs. The problems of human needs are closely related to political economy and its issues such as consumption, supply, demand, price, etc.

These problems are also closely connected with questions of law and morality, with the history of culture and life of people. But it would be wrong to conclude from this that the need does not belong to the psychological field. Of course, it would not be worth stopping at this if it were not for this extreme and incorrect assertion. At the same time, it is important to touch on this side of the question because it represents a particular example of an important fundamental problem of connection and differences in the social and psychological consideration of the same facts. Fact concerning a known group of people associated with general conditions their activities and behavior, even observed on one person, since it characterizes a group of people and their relationships, is the subject of historical materialistic consideration. The fact that concerns an individual person in connection with the regularity of his behavior, activities and experiences as an individual person, even with his social conditioning, is a psychological fact. One and the same fact can be the subject of both psychological and socio-historical study, but the plan of analysis in the first and second cases is different. Thus, ethical and unethical, noble and vile, legal and criminal actions can be subjected to different considerations in both respects.

Along with the socio-historical study of needs, there is, as is well known, a natural-historical examination of them, which primarily has two planes—comparative zoological and physiological.

As is known, Loeb's theory of taxises and tropisms is valid for the stage of development that objective research has established in the simplest organisms, the stage at which the quantitative and qualitative features of the animal's selective reactions are clearly expressed - attraction to an object and repulsion from it, a tendency to master an object or avoid it. him.

Without dwelling here on comparative biology and different stages of the biogenesis of needs, which should be the subject of a special study, we note only a few points that are important for further discussion of the problem. At higher levels of animal development, we meet with complex acts of behavior, or reactions, which in psychology have long been called instincts. As you know, there was a heated discussion between I. P. Pavlov and V. A. Wagner on the question of the nature of instincts. The first called them complex unconditioned reflexes, the second considered them to be a formation of a special kind, but from the point of view of the issue we are considering, what is more important is that which did not cause a divergence of both outstanding scientists and at the same time was not subjected to sufficient consideration by them.

If we compare the tendon reflex with the salivary alimentary or cuddling and erection sexual reflexes, we will see that external stimulation and the reflex response are correlated in different ways in these two types of reflexes. While the tendon reflex is fairly constant, the food and sex reflexes clearly fluctuate depending on the state of the body and the state of the brain centers associated with it, and the response clearly depends not only on external influences, but also on internal conditions.

These conditions are for the food reflex the degree of saturation associated with filling mainly the stomach, as well as with the chemical composition of the blood, due to food intake and absorption of food in the gastrointestinal tract. The role of blood composition shows the dependence of instinctive, otherwise complex, unconditionally reflex, actions on physicochemical conditions, which at a high level of development are based on the same insufficiently clear physicochemical basis that determined the tropisms of protozoa at a low level. To an even greater extent, the role of internal conditions appears in sexual reflexes, in which both elementary reflexes and a complex chain of sequential actions are determined by the powerful influence on the nervous system of the biochemical processes of the body and special endocrine products - hormones. Hormonal and biochemical dynamics are a somatic part of the internal component of the activity of the nervous system. Enough has been written about the relationship between internal biochemical regulation and external regulation. Therefore, there is no need to dwell on this; we can only note here the correctness of the formula - the internal is the external that has passed into or assimilated. The genetic dependence of the internal on the external does not exclude the importance of the internal, the role of which is all the more pronounced, the more complex the organism and the more the role of individual experience grows.

Diversity, variability, inconsistency, multiplicity of external influences are opposed by an internal single, albeit complex and contradictory whole, the integrity of the organism, representing the synthesis of many-sided complex external influences. Being the result of external influences, the internal plays a more significant role, the richer the assimilated external experience. This applies, of course, to humans as well. But, returning to the animal, we must dwell on the second point in the characterization of instincts, not only little touched upon in the controversy between Pavlov and Wagner, but generally insufficiently developed. This is a question about the plasticity of instincts, about the adaptability of instinctively conditioned behavior and actions. We are now only interested in the question of what constitutes a modified instinct and what is the force that remakes instincts.

We obtain instructive data for the problem of interest to us on tamed domestic animals. On the one hand, we know that a dog can get along well with a cat, being brought up with her with early age. On the other hand, we know that in such domestic animals as dogs and horses, inhibition of the immediate impulses of instinct is brought up by the prohibitions of the owner, i.e. the influence of individually acquired experience, which, being a conditioned reflex connection - an association, is at the same time a force that opposes the elemental force of instinct and subjugates the behavior of the animal.

If the domestication of an animal makes it possible for him to observe the process of the formation of behavior under the influence of man, then the so-called herd instinct is especially significant in the behavior of an animal of the species that is close to the ancestors of man. (Note: Do not forget in what year the work was written 🙂)

F. Engels came to the conclusion that the anthropoid ancestors of man were monkeys living in a herd. A number of domestic and foreign authors studied the behavior of a group of monkeys, the diverse forms of which allow us to speak of the powerful influence of tendencies towards communication, towards a joint stay, towards a joint system of actions.

One might think that here, more than anywhere else, the instinctive urge to work together and to stay together is regulated by individual experience in accordance with the requirements that have been worked out by the experience of the herd and to which the members of the herd are subject.

A descriptive comparative zoological study provides factual material, without which a genetic understanding of needs is impossible. Physiology is working on revealing the mechanism of needs, on the laws of this mechanism and its development.

There is no doubt that the psychology of needs finds its natural basis in the physiology of higher nervous activity.

We will confine ourselves here to only a few questions that are important for our positions. I. P. Pavlov did not use the term need, but he repeatedly spoke about the main life tendencies - self-protective, sexual, food, etc. These instincts, or complex unconditioned reflexes, are carried out, according to Pavlov, mainly by the activity of the subcortical formations of the brain. The state of these tendencies and their central formations is associated with the "infection" of brain cells, which is essential condition formation and identification of a conditioned reflex connection. The charge of subcortical formations entails a state of charge of the cortical representation, unconditioned reflexes. But with the development of the teachings of I.P. Pavlov on the role of the subcortical region of the brain charging the cortex, attention should be paid to the fact that in the relationship between the cortical and subcortical regions of the brain, a topically different distribution of the processes of excitation and inhibition is found, depending on the nature of the unconditioned reflex - sexual, food , defensive, etc.

At the same time, a one-sided idea of ​​only the antagonism of the cortex and subcortex or individual relationships between them should be supplemented by the idea of ​​synergy with a dynamic change in these relationships. In this regard, the physiological foundations of both needs and emotions require proper coverage. If little is said about the needs in the physiology of IP Pavlov, then the question of emotions has repeatedly attracted his attention. IP Pavlov brought together emotions and instincts, or complex unconditioned reflexes, attributing them to the activity of the subcortical region. But for the psychology of emotions and for their physiological explanation, their proximity to feelings and the need to correctly understand intellectual and ethical emotions and complex emotional states of uplift, inspiration, etc. are important. These latter, in accordance with the integrity of the work of the brain, include cortical processes and are inconceivable without them. And this makes us look more broadly at the brain substrate of emotions and, considering the active state of the subcortical region as the main dynamic condition of emotion, not to exclude, but to include in the understanding of the mechanism of emotion, the role of the cortical component, which differs depending on its level.

At the same time, taking into account the role of general somatic, vegetative-visceral, endocrine-biochemical components of the manifestation of emotion, it is necessary to take into account the role of a powerful wave of intero- and proprioceptive impulses going to the brain. This leads to a view of emotions as integral states of the organism of various neurodynamic structures and confirms V. M. Bekhterev's idea of ​​mimic-somatic reflexes as components of emotions.

It is not difficult to see that our excursion into the realm of emotions is directly related to the problem of human needs. The unity of the internal and external instinctive tendencies of animal behavior represents the mechanism of a complex unconditioned reflex, which is carried out by the subcortical part of the brain. The very excitation of the instinctive reaction mechanism combines external influences with viscerogenic nervous and endocrine-biochemical phenomena. Obviously, all these systems of impulses, with their intensity and vital significance, cannot but penetrate the cerebral cortex, not be reflected in the cortex and not change its state in accordance with what has been said above. But, as we know, people have long shared (and this has a certain relation to animals) instinctive drives, mostly innate, organically unconditional, and acquired in life, brought up at the highest human level, cultural, ideological needs. Unlike innate drives - tendencies that are basically unconditionally reflex in nature, acquired needs reflect those dynamic tendencies that characterize a dynamic stereotype. We have already noted that the conditioned reflex, or associative, connection has a motivating force. It is likely that the pain of remaking a strong stereotype is due not only to the strength of ties, but also to the strength of the tendency to react and repeat it. This applies entirely to so-called habits and to the power of habits that create so-called habitual needs. The role of experience affects not only the creation of needs, but also the way to satisfy them. This explains to us the pathology of drives and needs: abnormal forms of satisfaction of needs, for example, sexual perversions in the genital area.

At the same time, the habitual satisfaction of a need can lead to its hypertrophy and to such a differentiation of it, which is called refinement, sophistication, refinement of it, without touching the positive or negative meaning of these words. In this regard, it is impossible not to mention the fact that some needs, being satisfied, create such biochemical changes in the body that they have an effect not only due to conditioned reflex connections, but also due to the upcoming biochemical consequences of satisfying the need, which are the source of increased needs and painful state of so-called abstinence in the absence of satisfaction. This, as you know, applies to drug addicts and to the most common form of drug addiction - alcoholism.

From all of the above, we see how wide the range of the problem of human needs and its correct and complete, in particular, physiological coverage.

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Returning to the psychological side of the problem, we must first of all talk about the need for a developed state in order for genetic research to be purposeful; otherwise, so that it can raise questions in relation to the past in order to explain what has been developed in the present, and on the basis of this present it can predict development trends in the future.

Accordingly, the central content of the study is a developed need, i.e. a conscious need, which in a conscious form reflects an attraction to the object of need and an internal motivation that directs a person’s capabilities to possess an object or to possess an action. It should be mentioned that the formation of a conscious need is also a task of physiological explanation, the solution of which is possible only in the future.

The degree of awareness of the need is characterized by different levels, of which the highest corresponds not only to the report in the object of the need, but also in its motives and sources. The lower level is characterized by unclear attraction in the absence of awareness of the subject and the motive of attraction to it. At the same time, the highest conscious level of need is characterized by yet another feature, which is also subject to further physiological explanation, namely, higher self-regulation - possession of the need and the entire system of actions arising from it. The concept of high self-control refers to the control of one's impulses to the maximum degree of their tension.

The integrity of the organism, the nervous system and the psyche is expressed in need by the fact that, reflecting even some kind of partial need, it is always the need of the individual as a whole, as a mental individuality. The unity of the individual, the organism, and life experience does not exclude, but, given the diversity of life experience, it presupposes an organic connection, a system of needs. For some individuals, it can be more coordinated and harmonious, for others it can be a contradictory expression, which is also reflected in the nature of the unity of the resulting action.

The need represents the main type of a person's attitude to objective reality. It is the main type of a person's relationship to the environment, because it represents the connection of the organism with vital objects and circumstances. Like any relation, it expresses the selective connection of a person with various aspects of the surrounding reality. Like any relation, it is potential; is revealed under the action of the object and with a known state of the subject. Like any relationship, and even more than any other kind of relationship, it is characterized by activity. If we can conditionally speak of an indifferent or passive attitude, then this term is not even conditionally applicable to needs, since a need either exists as an active attitude or does not exist at all. Needs, like other relationships, are clearly affected not only by the different degree of their consciousness, but also by the different ratio of innate and acquired components.

The different course of life processes is reflected in the rhythmic nature of the tension of needs. Depending on the conditions of life, the need grows, escalates, is satisfied and fades away. However, this dynamics is all the more pronounced, the more organic the need is. So, the need for air, more precisely, for oxygen, is expressed by respiratory rhythm; in food and sexual activity, the rhythm also clearly affects. If, on the contrary, we turn to the need for cleanliness, the need for communication, work, intellectual and artistic needs, then there is no rhythm in them, although the undulating nature of the rise and fall of the need in connection with its satisfaction is also found here.

As the most important component of a person's neuropsychic life, the need is associated with all aspects of higher nervous or mental activity. This connection is all the more pronounced, the more intense the need.

First of all, of course, the question arises about the relationship between needs, desires and aspirations.

What is important here is not a verbal-logical distinction, but the establishment of objective differences. It has been correctly pointed out that desires and aspirations differ from drives in that the latter reflect a direct, organically conditioned impulse that does not even require a differentiated consciousness of the object and motives of this impulse. In addition, desire and striving do not represent one or another level and type of need, but only moments of the subjective reflection of the attractive action of the object, and in striving they are reflected with great active motive power.

Above, we have already pointed out the connection between needs, drives-tendencies and emotions. The dynamics of the relationship between needs and emotions requires a special study, but the question of the relationship between the characteristics of emotions and needs should be posed in two ways.

Firstly, it is a reflection of temperament in the unity of needs and emotions. Typical options for the ratio of strength - the severity of needs and emotional ardor with the persistence of tension characterize the main types of temperaments and are closely related to the typological features of the nervous system, we will not dwell on something here due to the comparative clarity of the issue. However, here, too, the correlation of type and systemicity, which we have already paid attention to (1954), requires attention, saying that the main typical properties - strength, mobility, balance - could be different for the same person in different systems. Therefore, an indication of the general type in a person is usually insufficient. This has the closest connection with needs. Thus, ordinary life and clinical observation, as is known, notes that a great desire for food is not necessarily accompanied by an intense sexual desire. The intensity and expressiveness of drives is neither in direct nor in contrast with intellectual or other cultural needs, and this does not depend on the different level of culture and needs determined by the whole history of human development. The needs for labor and for intellectual satisfaction are not parallel. Also, the needs for literature, music, and painting are not parallel. It would be wrong to reduce the whole difference in these last needs to education, just as it would be wrong to reduce the difference in abilities to explain education. Without touching on the subtle and complex relationships in these issues, we will only repeat that in needs, as in general types, the underestimated and still insufficiently developed Pavlovian principle of systemicity must be taken into account.

Secondly, the connection between the need and the type of emotional reaction is characteristic. It is known that obstacles and failures in meeting needs cause emotions of irritation, i.e. emotions with a predominance of excitation processes - from irritable discontent to rage. The role of obstacles is shown in the experiments of both the physiological school of I. P. Pavlov and psychological school K. Levin (K. Lewin, 1926).

In the experiments of IP Pavlov's school, it was found that difficulty in solving a problem causes a breakdown in the direction of excitation or inhibition. A breakdown in the direction of inhibition can pass through the phase of an excitation or irritation reaction. Psychologically, the dissatisfaction of a need can cause a refusal and the extinction of a need or, according to clinical experience, depression, depression as the psychological equivalent of physiological inhibition in some cases and as a complex indirect reaction to failure (frustration) (see: Rosenzweig, I946) with an exacerbation of feelings low value - in other cases (see: A. Adler, 1922). Solving a problem, mastering an object, and satisfying a need evoke the emotion of satisfaction. Thus, joy, anger and sadness are expressions of the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of a need. Not clear enough, but fear occupies a special place in the satisfaction of needs. Although this vague relationship has been the center of special interest in the question of the correlation of emotions and needs in the constructions of psychoanalysis, but regardless of the numerous critical remarks on this subject, the emotion of fear has long been firmly associated with the problem of the self-protective instinct, or the complex unconditioned reflex. Psychological and psychobiological research is clearly not enough here. It is impossible not to notice that the physiological study of higher nervous activity, having given a general interpretation of states of fear, did not receive sufficient experimental material. Therefore, both from the physiological and psychological side, this issue requires further elucidation. At the same time, it is clear that the emotion of fear associated with the defensive reflex - repulsion, rejection and repulsion, is clearly incompatible with the attractive nature of the object, the attraction to it and the need for it. Although much has been written about the self-protective instinct, about the instinctive attraction to self-defense, but the reflection of the instinctive tendency to self-defense can in no way be attributed to needs.

We have repeatedly pointed out the importance and necessity of developing a connection between the principles of reflection and attitude (1953, 1956) in psychology: the need as a type of attitude is associated with other types of relationships and with various types reflections. As for other types of relationships, here we can first of all mention love and interest.

The possession of a beloved object, or the reciprocity of a beloved person, is a means of satisfying a need. In love as well as in need, the loved object is the source of an actively positive attitude. However, need and love act as two sides of a single relationship, as its emotional-evaluative side, on the one hand, and as its incentive-conative side, on the other. We cannot here touch on the dynamic relationship of both concepts in general, but in connection with what has been said about the reaction of rage, we note the importance of turning love into an emotional attitude of a different sign in the absence of reciprocity.

If love is a kind of predominant emotional relationship, then another kind of it - interest - is associated with a predominantly cognitive attitude (see: V. G. Ivanov, 1955).

Of course; we are far from thinking of a one-sided intellectualization of the concept of interest. It, as in any respect, contains all the functional components of mental activity, but cognitive emotion, associated with the need for intellectual mastery, dominates in interest, and volitional effort is associated with the predominance of the intellectual difficulty of the task. Therefore, we defined interest as an actively positive attitude towards a cognitive object and as a need for intellectual mastery. If interest is genetically connected with the orienting reflex “what is it” (Pavlov), which arises and persists only in relation to new objects, then interest is not only and not so much a reaction as an attitude, which is expressed by a system of subjectively and objectively active components defined as the need for knowledge, i.e. intellectual mastery of the new, the unknown. However, interest expresses not only the attitude to cognition, for example, to a particular science, but a more general attitude to a significant object of reality, to the cognitive mastery of it.

Interest as a tendency of cognitive reflection at the same time coincides with the need for knowledge from primitive curiosity to scientific knowledge.

As you know, different aspects of mental activity represent different aspects of the process of reflecting reality. The simplest form of reflective activity in psychological terms is sensation. The tension of need as a holistic and active relationship reflects the charging of the centers, which, due to the integrity of the brain and body, affects all aspects of activity, including sensations. An article by B. G. Ananiev (1957) is devoted to this issue, showing important relationships that exist between sensation and need, different in the stage of need, various relationships with sensation depending on the nature of the need and the influence not only of needs on sensations, but also the role of sensation in development of needs.

It is possible, joining the data presented by B. G. Ananiev, to add some more considerations.

Thus, the charging of the centers, associated with an exacerbation of need, causes a change in the entire functional state of the brain. Physiological studies by P. O. Makarov (1955), which should be supplemented by what has been said above about the physiological side of needs, show that during experimental thirst, the electroencephalogram changes, the nature of sensitivity, the data of adequate optical chronaxy, the interval necessary to distinguish between optical or acoustic stimuli increases, etc. The complex nervous activity also changes. For example, when assessing the degree of experimental thirst by the amount of water consumed to quench it, it is clear that some subjects correctly estimate the required amount by drinking the same amount that they indicated to quench their thirst, others overestimate, and still others underestimate thirst.

The clinic presents pathological material, which is very essential for understanding the question, in which we will note here only what relates to sensations.

In addition to the complex, and not linear, relationship of taste acuity to different food substances, both during experimental starvation and in persons suffering from alimentary dystrophy (see: N. K. Gusev, 1941), one can point out in one case to what we observed (in the Leningrad Psychoneurological Institute named after Bekhterev) extreme, exceeding any expectation sharpening of the sense of smell in a patient who suffered from ideas of "bad smell" emanating from her body. Because of this, she felt an irresistible need to constantly sniff. This overstrain, due to complex experiences, caused a sharp increase in olfactory sensitivity. In another case, in a patient with a painfully sharp exacerbation of sexual desire, stimuli extremely remotely related to sexual irritation, not only shaking the man's hand, not only the sound of his voice, but even the sound of footsteps, caused severe sexual overexcitation, marked by the patient's complaints and a picture of sharp pathological changes. in the electroencephalogram.

Here the picture of the dominant emerges clearly, reflecting a pathological need, which determines the entire course of neuropsychic processes. At the same time, it is impossible not to point out the features specific to human psychology. With a psychological sexual dominant, the patient struggled with it, and her visit to the clinic expresses not only the struggle, but also the search for help in the fight against this attraction.

Therefore, as a characteristic of the human psyche, it must be pointed out that the physiological need under normal conditions cannot fully become the dominant of a person with a intact personality, since they are opposed by socially conditioned behavioral tendencies, and a decrease in human behavior to the level of an animal is associated with the decay of socially conditioned impulses.

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The need, expressing the state of the brain and the organism as a whole, most of all affects the systems of reactions aimed at perceiving an object and mastering it. Physiologically, it is connected with the mechanism of the dominant and with the systemic excitation and inhibition corresponding to the need. The correlate of this physiological mechanism, as is known, is the mental process of attention, which is associated with the direct interest and orientation of not only simpler, but also more complex processes mental and even wider creative activity. I. P. Pavlov spoke of "relentless thinking", of "the heat of knowledge", of "intellectual passion", which are an expression of the need for intellectual activity. It must be emphasized, however, that it is not only an intellectual need that matters, but that any need also directs the highest reflective activity towards the object of the need.

Therefore, not only feeling, but also all aspects of intellectual activity are involved in satisfying the artistic musical need. The need also mobilizes the higher processes of a person's neuropsychic activity, his creative imagination, in which consciousness in the fullest sense of the word, as Lenin said, not only reflects, but also creates the real world.

The scientific grouping of needs, their classification, is an essential task. The existing disparity in classifications, of course, speaks of a different understanding of needs, depending on the fact that much in the understanding of needs is still speculative. For example, the tendencies inherent in all organisms, including man, and in particular the self-protective tendency, are often identified with instincts. There is no doubt about the existence of this trend, but the question arises whether it can be attributed to needs. In any case, - firstly, from the point of view of the synthesis of subjective and objective experience, as mentioned above, this cannot be done. The self-protective tendency appears in the form of reactions, not needs. Secondly, there is a desire to define the basic needs of life in overly broad terms.

So, 3. Freud, who has a lot of concrete experience, at the same time speaks of "the drive to life and the drive to death." Both concepts seem overly abstract or collective, which, perhaps, could be used in natural philosophy, but for psychology they turn out to be too broad, since there is no real experience of the need for life.

A very broad, but more real concept is the need for activity. Carried out at every step of life, it represents the realization of a number of needs in various forms of activity, and the highest form of its manifestation in a person is labor, i.e. productive, socially useful activity. It is perfectly clear that needs not only vary in terms of their intensity in connection with living conditions, but they also vary depending on the individual. The need is the main source of the vital activity of the individual, its main manifestation and the most important differentiating moment in the characterization of the individual. The vast variety of dominant tendencies from food and sexual desire to the need for work provides essential grounds for the differentiation of personalities and characters. The ratio of acquired and innate needs is therefore an important indicator of personality and character.

It is impossible not to return, as an example of a solid construction of concepts, to the second need - the drive indicated by Freud, "the drive to death or to destruction", which at the last stage of his activity he recognized as the main one. Suicide and sadism, as examples of this drive, are not only not proof of its universal validity, but, on the contrary, a clear example of the unfoundedness of Freud's assertion, since they represent an exception, and not a common example in life.

This implies the need to build a classification of needs based on genetic research, which alone can scientifically resolve the issue of developing a mechanism and classifying needs. Accordingly, needs must be studied from a very early age, when we are still dealing with that state of inner motives in which one can speak only of drives or preneeds. One of the first and important manifestations of life is the sucking reflex, which is sometimes called the sucking need (sucking need), although it is, in essence, an age-related infantile form of satisfying food needs. Here the role of the internal charging of the food centers is especially clear, which causes certain reactions that give satisfaction, and which, when dissatisfied, causes characteristic and violent reactions. It is extremely important that on this basis a relationship arises between the infant and the mother, which includes the "need for communication with the mother." The huge role of this original type of communication with people and the need for it does not require argumentation. The human need to communicate with his own kind, which is characteristic of a person, is already noticeable, therefore, in the first stages of infancy, and later becomes a characteristic feature of the human personality. Since this connection between the infant and the female mother is also characteristic of all mammals, it is obvious that it is here that it is important and necessary to look for the differences between man and animals close to him. This area, of course, requires attention and study. Here, the object of the attractive force of the need for communication becomes a person with his face, voice and speech as the most important components of this object.

An important task is to trace the development of the two most important needs for the entire history of man - communication and activity, their combination as a need for active communication, or communication in activity, which is a characteristic specifically human need. In the 4th half of the year, the child begins to more and more clearly detect personal activity. He begins to master the means of his will. The words “give, I want” express his need for an object and a primitive strong-willed attitude towards it. The need for communication is expressed both in reactions and in words. Crying at the departure of the mother, as well as joy at her arrival, is a well-known phenomenon. Behavior in the absence of a mother is increasingly accompanied by a refusal to work, from food, crying and the expressions “I want to see my mother”, “where is my mother”, is a clear expression of the fact that the image of the mother as a trace of past experience becomes internal, characteristically determining the content of behavior, and the need to communicate with his mother - his driving force. There is no need to say that the circle of contacts is expanding, that the need for communication is spreading to other people. It should be noted that, depending on the circle and nature of communication, this need forms from childhood pronounced character traits: sociability, isolation, free or inhibited behavior in the presence of others.

The metaphorically and psychologically important term “attachment” vividly expresses sometimes a short-term, but extremely vivid, sometimes long-term expression of the attraction of one person to another, which appears in childhood with a relentless desire to be together according to the formula “with you”. It also expresses the desire to be closer to the object of affection, to sit, eat, sleep nearby, put on his things, talk to him, perceive the same as him, draw his attention to your impressions, share or act like him, etc. . This irresistible need to be together often meets a tactless rebuff with the words "don't bother, don't bother, leave me alone, go do something."

The following formula deserves the greatest attention. different options we met already in the 3rd year of a child’s life: “I don’t want to play, I want to work with you.”

Just like affection, imitation deserves attention. From the standpoint of the foregoing, the idea of ​​the imitative is considered too mechanically reflex point of view and requires much more consideration of attachment, the need for communication, i.e. attitude to the person imitated by the child and which has the greatest educational value, since it forms the image of the child's action.

Speaking about the developing activity of the child and the need for it as a driving factor, we see how, as he develops from isolated and poorly coordinated movements, he passes to operating with objects. The need for human activity in accordance with its essence represents the need for creatively transformative activity. This character of activity is found in a child from an early age.

I will allow myself to express, perhaps somewhat not coinciding with the generally accepted idea that the well-known formula - play is the main form of activity of a child of an early age, for example, preschool - does not always correctly and does not always deeply enough reflect the meaning of the child's activity and, in particular, , his gaming activity. A child free from duties engages in creatively transformative activity in a form accessible to him.

In our society, unreasonable mothers are sometimes guided by the formula: "I worked, let my son be free from the hardships of work." Not infrequently, the school does not do enough work either with the family or with the students to instill a correct attitude towards the work of children.

In a capitalist society, the children of the poor classes, who are employed, have very little time left for play. However, the reserves of their energy that are available at the same time are also spent on the game, which represents the imagination in activity. The same, in essence, remains in adults, of course, with changes corresponding to development. For the whole doctrine of needs, their structure, their role in the development of the relationship between play and work, the needs for both are extremely important. Objective reality, reflected by a person, exists for him as a system of stimuli only in theoretical physiological terms. Psychologically, it exists as a system of objects and requirements. The upbringing of a person lies in the fact that the system of his behavior, through the influence of the social environment, otherwise the requirements of other people, is directed in the direction of these requirements. As you know, the directions of external and internal requirements may not coincide. We meet with a number of children at the age of four already the formula: “You don’t want to, but you need to.”

The game is a form of transformative activity, which is determined not by necessity, but by desire. On the contrary, labor is obligatory and does not depend on desire, but is determined by social requirements.

The task of social labor education lies in the synthesis of desire and duty in labor, in uniting the necessity and freedom of labor.

From these provisions follows the most important task of education - to make the required activity an object of need. For a student, this is learning, industrial work, social activity. In successful examples of pedagogical experience, which, although there are many, are still not enough, we have a harmonious development of these three elements, but their discrepancies are not uncommon. The most difficult thing to resolve is that if we find in a student a combination of a developed need for learning and social activity, then productive labor does not yet appear in the necessary unity with them.

The development of students and the development of their needs go hand in hand with the development of independent behavior.

From childish stubbornness to conscious independence lies a huge path of development. And if the behavior of a stubborn child is a complex of aggressively defensive reactions, then independence in behavior is an internal need based on the synthesis of individual and social and moral requirements. On the way to this free independence, a person carries out significant work on mastering the highest forms of self-regulation. The moral imperative, mystified by idealistic philosophy, combines the unity of necessity and freedom in independent acts, representing a real product of the history of human development under the conditions of a system of social requirements. The integrity of behavior, and hence the internal coordination of needs, is not just a consequence of favorable conditions, but the result of a lot of work on self-education. Is there a need for self-education? Apparently, it arises from a certain moment. Materials on the formation of a personality from the stage of the emergence of moral requirements for oneself show that from this moment an internal prerequisite for self-education arises. This process of synthesis of the highest social demands, with numerous fluctuations and often disruptions, reaches its full development when the main life goals and the main plan of the life path are formed.

The foregoing makes it possible to see the diversity and complexity of the problem, sets tasks for further research, and, above all, allows us to approach the methodological provisions of the study of needs, which, of course, are the basis of scientific research.

The need represents the internal inclination of the individual to some object, action or state, therefore, the need must be studied in terms of the individual's connection with this object, process, etc. as a stimulus of need.

The criteria for the intensity of demand are:

a) overcoming difficulties in its satisfaction;

b) stability of gravity in time. They are easy to install externally. Two other criteria must be added to this;

c) an internal impulse, which is either clearly, explicitly, or implicitly expressed in speech, in a speech report. Of course, it is easy to say that an inner impulse, not expressed in speech, represents an unconscious need, but can this state be called a need? It is not difficult to see that here we are dealing with the huge question of the conscious or unconscious mind. Considering that even a child up to two years old can express desire and need in words, it can be argued that, to a greater or lesser extent, a need always finds its expression in a word, although this word reflects the object and motives of the need with varying degrees of distinctness. Thus, a person's word necessarily participates to some extent in the formation and expression of a need. At a high level of development of the need, as already mentioned, the degree of awareness of his goal - the object, its motives reaches maximum clarity and depth. Accordingly, verbal expression should be recognized as an important objective indicator not only of awareness, but of the existence of a need in a person in general;

d) finally, in connection with what was also said, it is necessary to take into account the relationship between the needs and requirements of the environment. External demands can be an internal obstacle to the fulfillment of needs, to their inhibition. As mentioned above, the need can be recognized, i.e. reflected in speech, but hidden. It must be emphasized that this side of the question of need must also find its physiological elucidation, but it is obvious that here inhibition, although it has an internal character, but its form, different from the known types of inhibition in animals, requires a special characterization and further development of the doctrine of higher human nervous activity. These tasks also relate to the question of the relationship between requirements and needs, their possible coincidence, divergence, struggle, victory of one or the other. Here the need appears in relation to other aspects of the psyche.

It is enough known that the methods of studying the needs not only have not been developed, but are very difficult to develop. The above fundamental provisions are significant for both observation and experiment. The difficulty of the experiment is all the more great because, to a greater extent, important life circumstances play a role in the emergence of needs, and consequently in the study of them. If this creates difficulties for natural-experimental research, then it is even less accessible for laboratory experiment.

In this regard, two types of experimental research should be mentioned. You can explore hunger and thirst, the need for oxygen, artificially creating a lack of necessary substances. Thus did P.O. Makarov and others. It is possible to cause a temporary formation of desire, aspiration, desire, create a state in which this or that object acquires an attractive force, and study the dynamics of such a need, as K. Levin did. However, the more interesting his experimental and dynamic experiments, the more strange his external mechanical interpretation seems, if we do not consider it metaphorical. The most important thing is that in his study, without sufficient preliminary clarification, what is perhaps more correctly considered as temporary aspirations, desires, tendencies of a transient nature and of little vital importance is considered as a need. Considering that in a number of studies by K. Levin and his school the issue of replacing formations is covered, it is possible to raise the question of whether everything that Levin investigated is not so much needs as their replacement formations.

In art, as in play, we have a kind of substitute for life and much in common with it, but we cannot ignore the essential difference between life, play and art and identify them, forgetting their essential differences.

K. Levin does not cover this vital issue, perhaps that is why his lively and interesting experiment and the conclusions drawn from it allow for a combination with a methodologically and vitally unacceptable theory. However, approaching it from the standpoint of the proposed methodological criteria, it should be said that the use in the experiment, Levin of various methods of disrupting activity - breaks, obstacles, etc. - brings it closer to the task of studying needs and allows us to recognize that the connection between K. Levin's research methods and the question of needs is not accidental. Therefore, in natural-experimental conditions for studying purposeful gaming or labor (educational, production) activities, taking into account those methodological points that were indicated, it is possible to correctly approach the issue of needs and, as experience shows, as well as ongoing work, to obtain material for studying the needs . The natural experiment has received wide recognition among us, but its practical use inversely proportional to this widespread acceptance. In school conditions, in production conditions and in the clinic, even its methodologically insufficiently perfect application has given, gives and will give undoubtedly important facts.

The foregoing consideration, far from elucidating all aspects of the question, nonetheless, already at the beginning of our systematic work in the field of needs, sets tasks, the solution of which, as we have tried to show, seems to be theoretically important. At the same time, one can hardly doubt that pedagogical psychology and practice, not only educational, but also educational, need to develop a psychology of needs, since external conditions and external requirements only have a positive effect when they turn into internal impulses of behavior.

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