Bratus & Lishin 1983

B. S. Bratus' and 0. V. Lishin

LAWS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF ACTIVITY AND PROBLEMS IN THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PEDAGOGICAL SHAPING OF THE PERSONALITY

The relationship between practical pedagogy and psychological theory may, in a sense, be likened to the relationship between clinical medicine and physiology. A knowledge of the lat- ter, even the most consummate, does not yet make a doctor; without this knowledge, however, the practice of medicine is impossible, since it would have no foundation. In the same way, knowledge of psychology in itself does not make the psychologist a teacher, an educator, o r a psychotherapist, although in all these cases such knowledge is necessary since it contains information about internal processes, structural characteris- tics, and, finally, the weak points of the "material" to which educative and corrective efforts are applied.

In this paper we shall attempt to examine some of the general psychological laws of the development of activity and to show possibilities for applying this knowledge in educative and re- medial practice.

two formulas, which, however, it is of fundamental importance to keep separate. According to the first, need engenders activity directed toward the satisfaction of that need, i.e., need -

The relationship between need and activity is often reduced to

Russian text 0 1982 by Moscow University Press . Vestn. Mosk. Univ., Ser. 14, Psikhologiya, 1982, No. 1, pp.

12- 19.

38

Activity and the Shaping of the Personality 39

activity - need (for abbreviation: N - A -. N). According to the second, activity generates a need and then the process looks as follows: activity - need - activity, or A - N - A. The f i rs t formula is seen by Lucien S6ve, for example, as a paradigm of "simple reproduction" of needs, whereas "the most elementary historical reflection on human needs shows, on the contrary, that their development and, consequently, their differ- entiation from this single point of view require a concept of expanded reproduction of activity.. . . But this recognition is suf- ficient to refute any psychological theory that regards need as a basic concept and to require an investigation of the fundamental concepts of psychology as applied to the domain of the production sphere itself" (SGve, 1972. Pp. 72-73).

In our view, we can agree with such a sharp juxtaposition of the value of these two paradigms only in the most general and abstract sense. When, however, we move to a more concrete psychological level, we find, f irst , that these two paradigms require some modification and, second, that they do not stand in opposition to one another but, on the contrary, a r e in a certain sense correlated and complement one another.

"Every activity," writes A. I. Meshcheryakov, referring to an extremely rich psychological and pedagogical practice, "occurs (or, more accurately, is assumed or assimilated by the child) only if there is also a need corresponding to it, and need develops as part of the activity corresponding to it" (Meshcher- yakov, 1972. P. 327). In other words, the first paradigm by no means reflects simple reproduction since, in fact, at the concrete psychological level, what we have essentially is not the paradigm N - A - N, but the paradigm No - A - N1, where there is some "zero point" need (No) that stimulates activity and then, within this activity, is transformed into a new need that is modified relative to the original ''zero point" need (N1). Thus, through the activity that ar ises on the basis of a need, an initial need is reproduced not as such, but in modified form, and in the end we shall never find the same need as at the beginning.

An adjustment must be made in the second paradigm, since

40 B. S. Bratus' & 0. V. Lishin

(we should recall that we are speaking here of the concrete psychological level), as a rule, it does not reflect the simple reproduction of an initial activity, if only because the outcome of the initial activity is the production, o r formation, of some need, whereas at the end of the cycle, a new activity is already emerging from the newly engendered need, thus unfolding under qualitatively different psychological conditions and from, so to speak, another perspective. Consequently, the paradigm would be more correctly represented as Ag - N - A1, where Ag is the original "zero point" activity during which a need is produced, stimulating a new activity different from the original one (A1).

Finally, the most important characteristic of the two paradigms, which invalidates their sharp juxtaposition, is their own nature; in other words, neither of the two processes is closed, but can be continued or, to put it more emphatically, requires its own continuation: a need arising according to the first paradigm ( N - A - N) requires an activity for its satisfaction, whereas an activity arising in accordance with the second paradigm (A - N -A) in turn produces a new, altered need. As a consequence, a single, sequential chain of movements, of individual fragments, develops, the units in which can come under either paradigm. In generalized form, this sequence of movements wi l l look as follows:

1 7 ... o N - . A - N - A - N - A - - . a . (1) -

2 Thus, the whole question is which section of this living se-

quence we a re examining: if it is a section beginning with an activity (the first paradigm), the formula is A - N - A; if it is a section beginning with a need (the second paradigm), the formula is N - A - N. If now we insert the above-stated stipulations concerning transformations in the units of this sequence we obtain:

Activity and the Shaping of the Personality 4 1

in which each new expanded need is produced in an activity that in turn is established on the basis of some initial need. Further, activities and needs that developmentally have ar isen earlier may differ quite radically f rom similarly designated needs and activities that have undergone prolonged sequences of transformation, as, for example, the need for knowledge, o r the study, let us say, of psychology, which will differ depending on whether i t is a first-year college student, a third-year college student, o r a professional psychologist [doing the studying]. (Let us once again stress that these changes in need are due pri- marily to the development of the domain of activities, but this domain cannot be understood without an analysis of the corresponding needs.)

It should nonetheless be pointed out that the single sequence of transformations of activities and needs we have examined is, of course, an abstraction, since in the rea l world we must deal not with one, but with a whole series of such modified, sometimes intersecting, sequences, constituting complex struc- tures and hierarchies of needs and activities. W e do not here have the space to go into a detailed analysis of this problem. Leaving aside the question of the correlation between different sequences of activities and needs, we shall limit ourselves to an analysis of the development of only one. Let us consider the question of possible breakdowns, interruptions, and critical junctures in development.

W e should point out that in speaking of cr ises in development, psychologists are usually referring to the crises at the ages of three and seven and the c r i s i s of adolescence; the life of a person beyond the age of youth is sometimes seen as an almost linear development. In any case, when cr ises in maturity are even mentioned, it is usually more in reference to pathological symptoms than to regular, normal phenomena. Nevertheless, the possibility of a cr is is in the development of some activity, including a personally significant activity that ranks high in the hierarchy of other activities, is already latent in the very nature of the sequence of transformations of which we are speaking.


Let us name a few of the mechanisms of development of these crises. But first let us distinguish two basic types and direc- tions for the development of a sequence of transformations: one we shall call an ascending o r normal direction, and the other we shall call descending o r distorted.

First let us point out two variants of possible cr ises in the ascending development of a sequence corresponding to a usually normal, productive development of the personality as a whole. The f i rs t variant is the following: a changing need requires ever newer means and operational and technical possibilities for an activity to satisfy it, and finally a moment may occur when the means necessary to car ry out an activity are not accessible to a person, and this sometimes subjectively may be acutely experienced as a state of dissatisfaction with the existing situation, a state of indeterminacy, even distraughtness, arrest, a crisis. The second variant is as follows: an activity may become so complicated, so ramified, and acquire such new means and operational and technical possibilities for carrying it out that they clearly outgrow the needs on which they are based, and this in turn may give rise to certain c r i s i s situations, which are then resolved by the search for new motives, more appropriate to the altered possibilities of the subject's activity. The mechanisms of such cr ises in development were described for the first time for childhood (El'konin, 1971; Lmnt'ev, 1975); however, studies have shown that similar mechanisms (of course, with the necessary qualifications and specifications) are also common to the development of the personality in maturity (Bratus', 1980).

The second path of transformation is frequent in deviant be- havior and in pathology; hence, we have chosen to call it descending o r distorted. Here, too, there are two possible variants. One has to do with the impoverishment of needs, which leads to a reorganization (by no means automatic and without crisis) in the corresponding activity, while the other occurs when an activity is impoverished, leading to the gradual emergence of needs and motives that are qualitatively new in struc- ture and content. A possible model of the first variant would


be a change in the need for alcohol during the course of alcoholism, while a model of the second variant would be a change in the activity of epileptics as a result of the increasing inert- ness of nervous and mental processes (Bratus', 1974; Zeigar- nik & Bratus', 1980).

In generalizing from these variants, it is not difficult to see that a breakdown in the sequence of activity is possible at two points: either at the point N - A , when a need cannot be satis- fied by the previous set of means of activities; o r at point A - N, when, on the contrary, the existing operational and technical means do not correspond to the previous needs. In either of these cases some special state of indeterminacy may arise i n which desires, as it were, lose their object, and one may say that a person desires (sometimes very passionately) something he himself does not know and cannot clearly describe.

This peculiar state of indeterminant, temporarily objectless desire may be called a need state, to use Leont'ev's term (Leont'ev, 1975). In contrast to needs as such, whose chief fea- ture, according to the theory of activity, is that they have a rel- atively clear-cut object reference, these states have only potential, possible, hypothetical, but by no means rigorously fixed objects.

Schematically this may be represented as follows: to a need state (S,) will correspond a range of diverse potential objects (01, 02, 0 3 ... 0,) or:

t O2

A need, on the other hand, is matched by a more or less definite objectormotive (l), i.e., need -object -motive (or N - 0 [MI).

However, a need state cannot last long. Sooner o r later an encounter with, discovery, or active testing action of some ob-


ject occurs; this object fits the particular need state, which places it in a qualitatively different rank, the rankof anobjecti- fied need, i.e., a need that has found its object o r motive. Then, through the discovered motive, the need stimulates activity, during the course of which the need is reproduced and, as we have already said above, is somewhat modified, impelling it on to a new cycle of activity that is different compared with the previous one, etc., i.e., a sequence of transformations emerges (2). In turn, the internal logic of the transformation of needs and activities can lead to a new cr is is in the development of activity and the emergence of a new need state requiring resolution. W e might depict this as follows:

01

0 2 I- On

-Snl -...( 3)

In this schema we can distinguish three principal zones: 1 - the zone of a need state; 2 - the zone of motive-formation; 3 - the zone of transformation of needs and activity.

logical content and, at the same time, demonstrate how it can be applied to the construction of tactics and strategies for ex- erting an educative influence on the personality. In support of our contention that our theoretical constructs are of a general psychological nature, let us examine two completely different processes, one related to child psychology, and the other, to pathology.

Extracurricular work with adolescents has demonstrated that experienced educators often unconsciously take into account the above-described features of the principal zones of formative activity. Thus, in trying to draw adolescents into socially useful activity, an educator will, as a rule, have al-

Let us try now to f i l l in this scheme with a concrete psycho-


ready thought out a number of "objects" of future activity to offer these adolescents.

V. A . Eremin, the director of a young people's club in the city of Pavlodar, found that it was possible to suggest to the young people a choice of boxing, dancing the samba, athletics, motor sports, tourism, a theater group, and a work brigade. The organizer of the Pioneer Brigade Karavell, in Sverdlovsk, the writer V. P. Krapivin, taking into account the age and re- gional specifics of his group of youths, proposed to them another set of choices: dueling, movie-making, sailboating, tourism, and reading literature. Theater groups and studios working with adolescents and young people (N. Vershinina in Pskov, S. K. Bystrova in the village of Sheksna in the Vologod region, and 0. S. Romanovskaya in Moscow) were able to use a set of choices of specialized activities in the theater: actor, costume maker, art designer, stagehand, lighting technician, sound technician, musician, decorator, and even director and stage technician.

In any of these cases, a group of adolescents and youth would gather around the organizer of the activity, having been at- tracted by one of the proposedobjects of future activity. Among those wishing to take part there were usually none who had already chosed another object for their activity (another pas- time), such as soccer o r radio technician, dog raising, o r participating in a choir. Those whose need states had not yet been connected to the choice of an object and, moreover, fit in with the proposed alternatives responded. The selection of an objec of course, precedes the formation of the motive to participate in the new activity.

We shall not here describe in detail the technique of this educative influence, which resulted in a gradual development of the motives of the groups' members for taking part in activity, and the consequent formation of new needs. W e shall s a y only that as a result of the development of collective activity in the club in Pavlodar directed by V. A . Eremin, the young members of the club not only helped the tractor factory assemble and load a metal-working machine but also participated in complex and


serious work with difficult youths in a military athletic camp ("Operation Incognito,'' as it was called); many of the youths had themselves been "difficult." But as a result of the proposed and properly directed activity, the adolescents developed the need for socially useful activity and the interests and attitudes corresponding to this need. "If there were no educators in the club, the work of the camp would not have been so successful," commented the city educators.

A similar psychological mechanism for transforming needs b y means of transforming a motive into a goal, such as was described for the first time by A . N. Leont'ev, took place in other cases.

"Theater is the surest means for reforging and sharply raising morality,'' writes S. K. Bystrova. "Our children are between the ages of 5 and 17, and I have the possibility of seeing every- thing with my own eyes."

Experience has shown that the transformation of motives for participating in a socially useful activity chosen by an adoles- cent as a rule adheres to the following pattern: individualistic motives - group motives - collectivist motives (social). By social collectivist motives we mean motives based on the need to do something useful for unknown, distant people. This transformation is related to the limiting conditions for developing an activity requiring collective organization, the guidance of that activity through dialogue with adults, and the real self-regulation of the youth collective; collective self-regulation, in which all members of the group participate, without exception, shifts the goal toward giving a greater social meaning to the activity being carried out.

The data from our study showed that, as a result of partici- pation in socially useful activity, the consistently collectivist motivation for work activity by youth, which under ordinary conditions (with no socially useful activity) was 22%-23%, in- creased to 46.4%, while openly individualistic motivation, which in activity that is not useful ordinarily makes up 10%-12.3%, disappeared completely in the young people who participated in socially useful activity.


The correlation of figures referring to the motivation of or- ganizational and social activity was as follows: in youth not en- gaged in socially useful activity, collectivist motivation was found in 13%-28.2% of the measurements, and individualistic motivation in 8.6%. In schoolchildren who took part in socially useful activity for a prolonged period, collectivist motivation was found in 35% of the measurements, and individualist motivation was absent. It should be added that the organization of socially useful collective activity in accordance with the above psychological schema requires some training of the teacher. In particular, the teacher should know how to evaluate the need state of youth, find appropriate objects for forming motives, and create the necessary conditions for the development of activity.

Now let us very briefly compare our scheme for the movement of activity with another process, the work and social rehabilitation of the mentally ill. A case in point is the experi- ment carried out at the psychiatric hospital in Havana, Cuba. (2) Within the overall compact process of the measures c a r r i e d out therefor the social and job rehabilitation of the mentally ill, the three zones of educative influence (in this case, psychotherapeutic) stand out, we think, quite clearly: a zone of a need state, a zone of motive formation, and a zone of need transformation.

The first zone includes measures to determine and stimulate the patient's desire to work. This desire v e r y often is not pro- nounced, and what is most important is quite structured and definite. Many patients in a mental hospital, for example, gen- erally want to work, but do not know in what area and to what extent (from time to time o r regularly, a full- o r part-time working day, in a group o r individually, etc.), i.e., a t this point we a r e dealing with a need state, not a need.

Following the initial diagnosis of this need state, the patient is offered the possibility of familiarizing himself and testing out his strength in the most varied types of work, from simple me- chanical operations to complex and creative types of work activity. Much emphasis is placed on the different crafts and on


artistic work a t this point: there a re also the production of national souvenirs, making coins, drawing pictures, making toys, etc. There are a180 well-equipped carpentry, metal- working and furniture workshops, fruit orchards, a hairdress- e r , and even an orchestra on the hospital grounds. In a word, a very wide range of objects is offered that can give defini- tion to the originally diffuse need state and car ry the patient into the next zone of educative psychotherapeutic influence, the motive- forming zone.

This zone comprises, in our view, the following measures undertaken by the hospital personnel. A s soon as a patient shows an inclination and selects a specific object, the psychotherapist, together with the instructor o r craftsman in the particular type of work, helps the patient deepen his interest in the area he has chosen and discover i ts attractive aspects. Thus, a specific, object-related motive arises, making it possible to move on to the third zone of educative psychotherapeutic influence, the zone of successive transformation of need (in this case, the need for work),

At this stage the doctors and instructors help the patient acquire specific work habits and expand his operational and technical abilities in the chosen area. Then the patient is brought into actual production; he becomes a helper and, under the ob- servation of the doctor and instructor, works industriously in one of the workshops in the hospital. A t the next stage he is given an opportunity to do his work outside the hospital, return- ing to the hospital only at night to sleep. Finally, in the last stage, the patients are sent out for a long time to community housing facilities outside the hospital to go to work in workshops and plants where real industrial production is going on and where the patients work with normal people. This stage essentially marks the patient's transition to independent work activity and his leaving the direct tutelage of the hospital, i.e., the beginning of a new, already socially rehabilitated stage of life.

Let u s here emphasize those points that stand out as the most important in work habilitation in the eyes of the special-


ists themselves at the Havana Psychiatric Hospital:

1. The work is done collectively, and social coopera-

2. The work is chosen in accordance with the interests tion is stressed.

of the patients themselves, taking into account both their physical and mental capacities.

plicated form, so that the patient can himself observe his own development, thus helping to eliminate his sense of inferiority.

4. Involved is real and socially useful work, through which the patient derives a sense of satisfaction when he sees the results of his labor.

5. The work is paid work. 6. The conditions under which the job is carried out

must approximate as closely as possible the conditions in which similar jobs are carried out in the society of which the patient is a part. (Hosp. Psiq., 1978, pp. 23-

3. The work is presented in an increasingly more com-

24)

Thus, in this process, as in the one analyzed above, it is not only a precise diagnosis of the existence and the nature of a need state, not only reliance on the interests and needs of the person, and not only the construction of an expanding, ever more complicated activity based thereon that are important but also the continual orientation of a whole series of transformations of needs and activity toward movement from a narrowly personal, individualistic standpoint to a collectivist and social one.

Notes

1) Let us recall that according to the theory of activity, a motive is an object that corresponds to some activity and that in some form o r other is reflected by the subject, guiding his activity (Leont'ev, 196 5).

50 13. S. Bratus' & 0. V. Lishin

2) The author expresses his deep thanks to the Director of the Havana Psychiatric Hospital, Dr. Ordas, the Assistant Director, Dr. Noemi, the Vice-chairman of the Department of Psychology of Havana University, Fernando Gonzales, and the Director of the Laboratory of Neuropsychology of the Havana Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery, Luis Oliva, for allow- ing us to acquaint ourselves with the work being done at the Havana mental hospital.

References

Bratus', B. S. [Psychological analysis of personality changes in alcoholism]. Moscow: MGU, 1974. 95 pp.

Bratus', B. S. [On problems of personality development in maturity]. Vestn. Mosk. Univ., ser. 14, Psikhologiya, 1980, No. 2, pp. 3-12.

Zeigarnik, B. V., & Bratus', B. S. [Essays on psychological anomalies in personality development]. Moscow: MGU, 1980. 156 pp.

"Mysl' Publishers, 1965. 572 pp.

cow: Politizdat, 1975. 304 pp.

gogika" Publishers, 1972. 327 pp.

Leont'ev, A. N. [Problems in mental development]. Moscow:

Leont'ev, A. N. [Activity. Consciousness. Personality]. Mos-

Meshcheryakov, A. I. [Deaf-blind children]. Moscow : "Peda-

SGve, L. [Marxism and the theory of personality]. (Trans. from the French.) Moscow: "ProgressTT Publishers, 1972. 584 pp.

El'konin, D. B. [On the problem of periodicity in development in childhood]. Vop. Psikhol., 1971, No. 4, pp. 6-20.

Hospital Psiquiatrico de la Habana. Havana, 1978. 33 pp.

Bratus & Lishin 1983

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