Primitive thinking. The phenomenon of mass consciousness Primitive thinking in adults

The first years of a child's life are the years of a primitive, closed existence and the establishment of the most elementary, most primitive connections with the world.

We have already seen that a child of the first months of his existence is an asocial "narrowly organic" being, cut off from the outside world and completely limited by his physiological functions.

All this, of course, cannot but influence children's thinking in the most decisive way, and we must say frankly that the thinking of a small child of 3-4 years old has nothing in common with the thinking of an adult in those forms that have been created by culture and long-term cultural evolution. , multiple and active meetings with the outside world.

Of course, this does not mean at all that children's thinking does not have its own laws. No, the laws of children's thinking are completely definite, their own, not similar to the laws of adult thinking: a child of this age has its own primitive logic, its own primitive mental methods; all of them are determined precisely by the fact that this thinking unfolds on the primitive soil of behavior that has not yet come into serious contact with reality.

True, all these laws of childish thinking were very little known to us until very recently, and only in the most last years, especially thanks to the work of the Swiss psychologist Piaget (Piaget), we got acquainted with its main features.

A truly curious sight opened up before us. After a series of studies, we saw that the thinking of a child not only operates according to different laws than the thinking of a cultured adult, but it is fundamentally constructed differently and uses different means.

If we think about what functions the thinking of an adult person performs, we will very soon come to the answer that it organizes our adaptation to the world in especially difficult situations. It regulates our attitude to reality in especially difficult cases, where there is not enough activity of a simple instinct or habit; in this sense, thinking is a function of adequate adaptation to the world, a form that organizes the impact on it. This determines the entire structure of our thinking. In order for it to have an organized impact on the world, it must work as correctly as possible, it must not be separated from reality, mixed with fantasy, each step of it must be subject to practical verification and must withstand such verification. In a healthy adult, thinking meets all these requirements, and only in people who are mentally ill can thinking take on forms that are not connected with life and reality and do not organize an adequate adaptation to the world.

This is not at all what we see in the first stages of a child's development. For him, it often does not matter how correctly his thinking proceeds, how much it will withstand the first test, the first meeting with reality. His thinking often does not have a mindset to regulate and organize an adequate adaptation to the outside world, and if sometimes it begins to bear the features of this mindset, then it does it still primitively, with those imperfect tools that are at its disposal that require still a long development, to be put into action.

Piaget characterizes the thinking of a small child (3-5 years old) with two main features: his self-centeredness and his primitiveness.

We have already said that characteristic of the infant's behavior is his isolation from the world, his preoccupation with himself, with his own interests, with his own pleasures. Try to observe how a child of 2-4 years old plays alone: he does not pay attention to anyone, he is completely immersed in himself, lays out something in front of him and folds it again, talks to himself, addresses himself and himself answers himself. It is difficult to distract him from this game; turn to him - and he will not immediately tear himself away from his studies. A child of this age can perfectly play alone, being completely occupied with himself.

Here is one recording of such a child's play, made on a child of 2 years and 4 months*.

*The entry was borrowed by us from materials kindly provided to us by V. F. Schmidt.

Marina, 2 years 4 months, was completely immersed in the game: she poured sand on her legs, poured mostly above her knees, then began to pour it into her socks, then she took handfuls of sand and rubbed it with her whole palm on her leg. Finally, she began to pour sand on her thigh, covered it with a handkerchief and stroked it with both hands around her leg. The facial expression is very pleased, often smiling to herself.

During the game, he says to himself: “Mom, here ... more ... more ... Mom, pour more ... Mom, more ... Mom, pour ... Mommy, pour more. .. Nothing ... This is my aunt ... Aunt, more sand ... Aunt ... the doll still needs sand ... "

In another way, this egocentrism of children's thinking can be revealed. Let's try to see when and how He speaks child, what goals he pursues with his conversation and what forms his conversation takes. We will be surprised if we take a closer look at the child, how much the child speaks alone, “into space”, with himself, and how often speech does not serve him to communicate with others. One gets the impression that in a child speech often does not serve the social purposes of mutual communication and mutual information, as in adults.

Here is another record of the child's behavior, borrowed by us from the same source. Let's pay attention to how the game of a child of 2 years 6 months. accompanied by "autistic" speech, speech only for oneself...

Alik, 2 years 6 months (having come to his mother’s room), started playing with rowan berries, began to pick them, put them in a rinsing cup: “We need to clean the berries as soon as possible ... These are my berries. They are in bed. (Notices the cookie wrapper.) No more cookies? Is there only paper left? (Eats cookies.) The cookies are delicious. delicious cookies(eats). The cookies are delicious. Dropped! The drop has fallen! It's so small... Big... Small cube... He can sit, cube... He can sit too... He can't write... The cube can't write... (takes the milkman). We put matches there and give them a pie (takes a cardboard circle). Lots of pie...

The same Piaget, already quoted by us, established that the most characteristic form of speech in a child is a monologue, speech for oneself. This form of speech is retained by the child even in a group and acquires specific, somewhat comical forms, when even in a group each child speaks for himself, continues to develop his theme, paying minimal attention to his “interlocutors”, who (if these children are his same age) also speak for themselves.

“The child speaks in this way,” notes Piaget, “usually does not care that the interlocutors listen to him, simply because, after all, he does not address them with his speech. He doesn't talk to anyone at all. He speaks aloud to himself in front of others.

*Piaget J. Le langage et la pensee chez lenfant. P., 1923. P. 28.

We are accustomed to talking in a team to connect people with each other. And yet in children we often do not see this. Let us cite the recording again, this time a recording of a conversation of a 6.5-year-old child in a team of the same age, carried out during the game - drawing **.

** Ibid. P. 14-15. Individual letters are the names of the children.

Pius, 6 years old (referring to Eze, who is drawing a tram with a trailer):

23. “But they don’t have a platform, the trams that are hitched at the back.” (No answer.)

24. (He talks about his tram just drawn.) "They don't have attached wagons." (Does not address anyone. No one answers.)

25. (Turns to B.) "This is a tram, it has no cars yet." (No answer.)

26. (Turns to Hay.) "This tram has no cars yet, Hey, you know, you know, it's red, you know." (No answer.)

27. (L. says aloud: "Here's a funny man..." Playing after a pause, and not addressing Pius, not addressing anyone at all.) Pius; "Here's a funny man." (L. continues to draw his carriage.)

28. "I'll leave my wagon white."

29. Ez., who also draws, declares: "I'll make him yellow.") "No, you don't need to make him yellow."

30. "I'll make a ladder, look here." (B. replies: “I can’t come tonight, I have gymnastics ...”)

The most characteristic of this whole conversation is that the main thing that we are used to noticing in a collective conversation is almost invisible here - mutual addressing each other with questions, answers, opinions. This element is almost absent in this passage. Each child speaks mainly about himself and for himself, not addressing anyone and not expecting an answer from anyone. Even if he is waiting for an answer from someone, but does not receive an answer, he quickly forgets this and moves on to another “conversation”. Speech for a child of this period is only in one part a tool for mutual communication, in another it is not yet “socialized”, it is “autistic”, egocentric, it, as we will see below, plays a completely different role in the behavior of the child.

Piaget and his collaborators also pointed out a number of other forms of speech that are egocentric in nature. Upon closer analysis, it turned out that even many questions in a child are of an egocentric nature; he asks, knowing the answer beforehand, only to ask, to reveal himself. There are quite a few such egocentric forms in children's speech; according to Piaget, their number at the age of 3 - 5 years varies on average between 54 - 60, and from 5 to 7 years - from 44 to 47. These figures, based on long-term and systematic observation of children, tell us how much the child’s thinking and speech are specifically constructed, and to what extent the child’s speech serves completely different functions and has a completely different character than that of an adult*.

* Russian materials obtained during a long-term study by prof. S. O. Lozinsky, gave a significantly lower percentage of egocentrism in children of our children's institutions. This shows once again how a different environment can create a significant difference in the structure of the child's psyche.

Only in Lately Thanks to a special series of experiments, we were convinced that egocentric speech has quite definite psychological functions. These functions consist primarily in the planning of known actions that have begun. In this case, speech begins to play a completely specific role, it becomes functionally special in relation to other acts of behavior. One need only look at at least the two passages cited above to be convinced that the child's speech activity here is not a simple egocentric manifestation, but clearly has planning functions. An outburst of such egocentric speech can be easily obtained by hindering the flow of some process in the child**.

** Compare: Vygotsky L. S. Genetic roots of thinking and speech // Natural History and Marxism. 1929. No. 1; Luriya AR Ways of development of children's thinking // Natural science and Marxism. 1929. No. 2.

But the primitive egocentrism of the child's thinking is manifested not only in the forms of speech. To an even greater extent, we notice features of egocentrism in the content of the child's thinking, in his fantasies.

Perhaps the most striking manifestation of children's egocentrism is the fact that Small child still lives entirely in the primitive world, the measure of which is pleasure and displeasure, which is still touched by reality to a very small extent; this world is characterized by the fact that, as far as can be judged from the behavior of the child, between him and reality there is still an intermediate world, semi-real, but very characteristic of the child - the world of egocentric thinking and fantasy.

If each of us - an adult - encounters the outside world, fulfilling some need and noticing that the need remains unsatisfied, he organizes his behavior so that by a cycle of organized actions he fulfills his tasks, satisfies the need, or, reconciled with the need, refuse to satisfy the need.

Not so with a small child. Incapable of organized action, he follows a peculiar path of minimal resistance: if the outside world does not give him something in reality, he compensates for this lack in fantasy. He, unable to adequately respond to any delay in fulfilling his needs, also reacts inadequately, creating for himself an illusory world where all his desires are fulfilled, where he is the complete master and center of the universe he created; he creates a world of illusory egocentric thinking.

Such a “world of fulfilled desires” remains in an adult only in his dream, sometimes in his dreams; for a child, this is a “living reality”; he, as we have pointed out, is quite content to replace real activity with play or fantasy.

Freud tells of a boy who was deprived of cherries by his mother: this boy got up the next day after sleeping and declared that he had eaten all the cherries and was very pleased with it. The unsatisfied in reality has found its illusory satisfaction in the dream.

However, the fantastic and egocentric thinking of the child manifests itself not only in a dream. It manifests itself especially sharply in what may be called the "daydreams" of the child, and which is often easily confused with play.

It is precisely from here that we often regard as children's lies, precisely from here a number of peculiar traits in children's thinking.

When a 3-year-old child, when asked why it is light during the day and dark at night, answers: “Because they dine during the day and sleep at night,” this, of course, is a manifestation of that egocentric-practical attitude that is ready to explain everything as adapted for himself, for his good. . We must say the same about those naive notions characteristic of the children that everything around - the sky, the sea, and the rocks - all this was made by people and can be presented to them *; We see the same egocentric attitude and complete faith in the omnipotence of an adult person in the child who asks his mother to give him a pine forest, a place B., where he wanted to go, so that she would cook spinach like this; to make potatoes**, etc.

* It should be noted, however, that these data are typical for children who grew up in the specific environment in which they were studied by Piaget. Our children, growing up in different conditions, can give completely different results.

** See: Klein M. Development of one child. M., 1925. S. 25 - 26.

When little Alik (2 years old) had to see a passing car that he really liked, he insistently began to ask: “Mom, more!” Marina (also about 2 years old) reacted exactly the same way to a flying crow: she was sincerely sure that her mother could make a crow fly by again *.

*Communicated by W. F. Schmidt.

This trend is very interesting in children's questions and answers to them.

We illustrate this by recording one conversation with a child**:

Alik, 5 years 5 months
In the evening I saw Jupiter through the window.

Mom, why does Jupiter exist?

I tried to explain to him, but failed. He again stuck to me.

So why does Jupiter exist? Then, not knowing what to say, I asked him:

And why do we exist?

To this I received an immediate and confident answer:

For myself.

Well, Jupiter is also for itself.

This pleased him, and he said with satisfaction:

And ants, and bedbugs, and mosquitoes, and nettles - also for themselves?

And he laughed happily.

** Reported by V. F. Schmidt.

The primitive teleologism of the child is extremely characteristic in this conversation. Jupiter must necessarily exist for something. It is this “why” that most often replaces the more complex “why” for the child. When the answer to this question is difficult, the child still comes out of this situation. We exist “for ourselves” - this is the answer characteristic of the child’s peculiar teleological thinking, allowing him to decide the question of “why” other things and animals exist, even those that are unpleasant to him (ants, bugs, mosquitoes, etc.). nettle...).

Finally, we can catch the influence of the same egocentricity in the child’s characteristic attitude to the conversations of strangers and the phenomena of the outside world: after all, he is sincerely sure that there is nothing incomprehensible to him, and we almost never hear the word “I don’t know” from the lips of a 4-5-year-old child. We will see even later that it is extremely difficult for a child to slow down the first decision that comes to mind and that it is easier for him to give the most absurd answer than to admit his ignorance.

The inhibition of one's immediate reactions, the ability to delay the response in time, is a product of development and upbringing, which occurs only very late.

After all that we have said about egocentricity in the thinking of the child, it will not be surprising if we have to say that the thinking of the child differs from the thinking of adults and different logic that it is built according to the "logic of the primitive".

Of course, we are far from being able here, within the limits of one short digression, to give any complete description of this primitive logic characteristic of the child. We must dwell only on its individual features, which are seen with such clarity in children's conversations, children's judgments.

We have already said that the child, egocentrically established in relation to the external world, perceives external objects concretely, holistically, and above all from the side that is turned towards him, directly affects him. An objective attitude to the world, abstracting from the concrete perceived attributes of the object and paying attention to objective correlations, regularities, has not yet been developed in the child, of course. He takes the world as he perceives it, not caring about the connection of individual perceived pictures with each other and about building that systematic picture of the world and its phenomena, which is for an adult cultured person; whose thinking should regulate the relationship with the world, is necessary, mandatory. In the child's primitive thinking, it is precisely this logic of relationships, causal connections, etc., that is absent and is replaced by other primitive logical devices.

Let us turn again to children's speech and see how the child expresses those dependencies, the presence of which in his thinking is of interest to us. Many have already noticed that a small child does not use subordinate clauses at all; he does not say: “When I went for a walk, I got wet because a thunderstorm broke out”; he says: "I went for a walk, then it started to rain, then I got wet." Causal connections in the child's speech are usually absent. The connection “because” or “due to” is replaced in the child by the union “and”. It is quite clear that such defects in speech design cannot but affect his thinking: a complex systematic picture of the world, the arrangement of phenomena according to their connection and causal dependence are replaced by a simple "gluing" of individual features, their primitive connection with each other. These methods of thinking of the child are very well reflected in children's drawing, which the child builds precisely according to this principle of listing individual parts without much connection with each other. Therefore, often in a child's drawing you can find the image of eyes, ears, nose separately from the head, next to it, but not in connection with it, not in subordination. overall structure. Here are a few examples of such a drawing. The first drawing (Fig. 24) was not taken by us from a child - it belongs to an uncultured Uzbek woman, who, however, repeats the typical features of children's thinking with such extraordinary vividness that we ventured to give this example here*. This drawing should depict a rider on a horse. Already at first glance it is clear that the author did not copy reality, but drew, guided by some other principles, another logic. Looking carefully at the drawing, we will see that its main distinguishing feature is that it is built not on the principle of the “man” and “horse” system, but on the principle of gluing, summing up individual features of a person, without synthesizing them into a single image. In the figure, we see the head separately, separately - below - the ear, eyebrows, eyes, nostrils, all this is far from their real relationship, listed in the figure in the form of separate, one after another parts. The legs, depicted in such a bent form as the rider feels them, a sexual organ completely separate from the body - all this is depicted in a naively glued, strung order on each other.

*The drawing is taken from the collection of T. N. Baranova, who kindly provided it to us.

The second drawing (Fig. 25) belongs to a 5-year-old boy*. The child tried to depict a lion here and gave appropriate explanations to his drawing; he drew separately the “muzzle”, separately the “head”, and called everything else about the lion “himself”. This drawing, of course, has a much smaller number of details than the previous one (which is quite consistent with the characteristics of children's perception of this period), but the nature of the "glue" is quite clear here. This is especially pronounced in those drawings where the child is trying to depict some complex set of things, for example, a room. Figure 26 gives us an example of how a child of about 5 years old is trying to represent a room in which a stove is heated. We see that this drawing is characterized by the "gluing" of individual objects related to the stove: firewood, and views, and dampers, and a box of matches (huge sizes, according to their functional significance) are prepared here; all this is given as the sum of individual objects, located next to each other, strung on top of each other.

*The drawings were provided to us by V. F. Schmidt and taken from the materials of the Orphanage-Laboratory.

It is this kind of "stringing" in the absence of strict regulatory laws and ordered relationships that Piaget considers characteristic of the child's thinking and logic. The child almost does not know the categories of causality and connects in a single chain in a row, without any order and action, both causes and effects, and separate phenomena that have nothing to do with them. That is why the cause often changes place with the effect in him, and before the conclusion, beginning with the words "because", the child, who knows only this primitive, pre-cultural thinking, turns out to be helpless.

Piaget set up experiments with children in which the child was given a phrase that breaks off at the words "because," after which the child himself had to insert an indication of the reason. The results of these experiments turned out to be very characteristic of the primitive thinking of the child. Here are some examples of such "judgments" of the child (answers added by the child are in italics):

C. (7 years 2 months): One person fell on the street because... he broke his leg and had to make a stick instead.

C. (8 years 6 months): One person fell off the bike because he broke his arm.

L. (7 years 6 months): I went to the bathhouse because ... I after was clean.

D. (age 6): I lost my pen yesterday because I I don't write.

We see that in all the cases cited, the child confuses cause with effect, and it turns out to be almost impossible for him to get a correct answer: thinking that operates correctly with the category of causality turns out to be completely alien to the child. The category of goal turns out to be much closer to the child - if we remember his egocentric attitude, this will be clear to us. So, one of the little subjects traced by Piaget gives the following construction of a phrase, revealing to us in essence a picture of his logic:

D. (3 years 6 months): “I will make a stove ... because ... to heat.”

Both the phenomenon of "stringing" individual categories, and the replacement of the category of causality, alien to the child, by a closer category of purpose - all this can be seen quite clearly in this example.

Such a “stringing” of individual ideas in the primitive thinking of a child is manifested in another interesting fact: the child’s ideas are not arranged in a certain hierarchy (a broader concept - a part of it - an even narrower one, etc., according to a typical scheme: genus - species - family etc.), but individual representations turn out to be equivalent for the child. So, a city - a district - a country for a small child does not fundamentally differ from each other. Switzerland for him is something like Geneva, only further away; France is also something like his familiar hometown, only even further away. That a man, being a resident of Geneva, is at the same time a Swiss, is incomprehensible to him. Here is a small conversation given by Piaget and illustrating this peculiar "plane" of the child's thinking*. The conversation we are citing is between the leader and little Ob. (8 years 2 months).

Who are the Swiss?

Who lives in Switzerland.

Friborg in Switzerland?
Yes, but I'm not a Freeburger or a Swiss...

And those who live in Geneva?

They are Genevans.

And the Swiss?

I don't know... I live in Fribourg, it's in Switzerland, but I'm not Swiss. Here are the Genevans too ...

Do you know the Swiss?

Very few.

Are there Swiss at all?

Where do they live?

Do not know.

*See: Piaget J. Le jugement et le raisonnement chez l`enfant. Neuchatel, 1924. P.163.

This conversation clearly confirms that the child cannot yet think logically in sequence, that concepts related to the external world can be located on several floors, and that an object can belong to both a narrower group and a wider class at the same time. The child thinks concretely, perceiving a thing from the side from which it is more familiar to him; completely unable to abstract from it and understand that, simultaneously with other signs, it can be part of other phenomena. From this point of view, it can be said that the child's thinking is always concrete and absolute, and using the example of this primitive childish thinking, we can show how the primary, still prelogical stage in the development of thought processes differs.

We said that the child thinks in concrete things, with difficulty grasping their relationship with each other. A child of 6-7 years old clearly distinguishes his right hand from his left, but the fact that the same object can be both right in relation to one and left in relation to another is completely incomprehensible to him. It is also strange for him that if he has a brother, then he himself is in turn a brother for him. When asked how many brothers he has, the child answers, for example, that he has one brother and his name is Kolya. “How many brothers does Kolya have?” we ask. The child is silent, then declares that Kolya has no brothers. We can be convinced that even in such simple cases the child cannot think relatively, that primitive, pre-cultural forms of thinking are always absolute and concrete; thinking that abstracts from this absoluteness, correlative thinking, is a product of high cultural development.

We must note one more specific feature in the thinking of a small child.

It is quite natural that among the words and concepts that he has to deal with, a huge part for him turns out to be new, incomprehensible. However, adults use these words, and in order to catch up with them, not to seem lower, more stupid than them, a small child develops a completely unique method of adaptation that saves him from feeling of low value and allows him, outwardly at least, to master expressions and concepts incomprehensible to him. Piaget, who has perfectly studied this mechanism of children's thinking, calls it syncretism. This term means an interesting phenomenon, the remnants of which are present in an adult, but which grows luxuriantly in the psyche of a child. This phenomenon consists in an extremely easy convergence of concepts that have only an external part, and the replacement of one unfamiliar concept by another, more familiar one.

Such substitutions and substitutions for the incomprehensible by the understandable, such a shift in meanings in a child is extremely common, and in an interesting book K. Chukovsky* gives us a number of very striking examples of such a syncretic way of thinking. When little Tanya was told that she had “rust” on her pillowcase, she did not give it a hard time to think about this new word for her and suggested that it was the horse that “nagged” her. A rider for small children is a person who is in the garden, a loafer is one who makes boats, an almshouse is a place where "God is made."

* See: Chukovsky K. Little children. L., 1928.

The mechanism of syncretism turns out to be very characteristic of the child's thinking, and it is clear why: after all, it is the most primitive mechanism, without which it would be very difficult for the child to cope with the first steps of his primitive thinking. At every step he faces new difficulties, new incomprehensible words, thoughts, expressions. And of course, he is not a laboratory or armchair scientist, he cannot climb every time for a dictionary and ask an adult. He can preserve his independence only through primitive adaptations, and syncretism is such an adaptation that feeds on the inexperience and egocentrism of the child*.

*It is interesting that in one case, syncretic thinking can be revived and flourish in an adult - this is in the case of learning foreign language. It can be said that for an adult reading a foreign book written in a language that is not well known to him, the process of syncretic, and not concrete, understanding of individual words plays a huge role. In this, he, as it were, repeats the features of the child's thinking in a more primitive way.

How does it proceed thinking process The child has? By what laws does the child make his conclusions, build his judgments? After all that has been said, it will be clear to us that a developed logic with all the restrictions that it imposes on thinking, with all its complex conditions and patterns, cannot exist for a child. The primitive, pre-cultural thinking of a child is built much more simply: it is a direct reflection of the naively perceived world, and one particular, one incomplete observation is enough for the child to immediately draw an appropriate (albeit completely inadequate) conclusion. If the thinking of an adult follows the laws of a complex combination of accumulation of experience and conclusions from general provisions, if it obeys the laws of inductive-deductive logic, then the thinking of a small child, as the German psychologist Stern puts it, is “transductive”. It goes neither from the particular to the general, nor from the general to the particular; it simply concludes from case to case, taking as a basis each time all the new, conspicuous signs. Each phenomenon immediately receives a corresponding explanation from the child, which is given directly, bypassing all sorts of logical instances, all sorts of generalizations.

Here is an example of this type of conclusion**:

Child M. (8 years old) is shown a glass of water, a stone is placed in it, the water rises. When asked why the water rose, the child replies: because the stone is heavy.

We take another stone, show it to the child. M. says: “He is heavy. He will make the water rise." - "And this one is smaller?" - "No, this one will not force ..." - "Why?" - "He's light."

** See: Piaget J. Le jugement et le raisonnement chez l`enfant. Neuchatel, 1924. P. 239 - 240.

We see that the conclusion is made immediately, from one particular case to another, and one of the arbitrary signs is taken as a basis. That there is no general conclusion here at all is shown by the continuation of the experiment:

The child is shown a piece of wood. "What, is this piece heavy?" - "Not". - "If you put it in water, will it rise?" - "Yes, because it is not heavy." - "Which is heavier - this little stone or this big piece of wood?" - "Stone" (correctly). - "What makes the water rise more?" - From the tree. - "Why?" "Because it's bigger." - "Why did the water rise from the stones?" "Because they are heavy..."

We see with what ease the child throws one sign, which, in his opinion, made the water rise (gravity), and replaces it with another (value). Each time he draws a conclusion from case to case, and the absence of a single explanation is completely ignored by him. Here we come to another interesting fact: for a child there is no contradiction, he does not notice them, opposite judgments can exist side by side, not excluding each other.

The child may argue that in one case the water is displaced by the object because it is heavy, and in the other because it is light. He can say that boats float on water because they are light, and steamships because they are heavy, without feeling any contradiction in this. Here is the full transcript of one of those conversations.

Child T. (7.5 years old).

Why does a tree float on water?

Because it is light, and boats have oars.

And those boats that don't have oars?

Because they are light.

And the big boats?

Because they are heavy.

So heavy things stay on the water?

How about a big stone?

He is drowning.

And the big ship?

It floats because it is heavy.

Just because?

No. Also because he has big oars.

What if they are removed?

He will get better.

Well, what if you put them back?

It will stay on the water because they are heavy.

Complete indifference to contradictions in this example is quite clear. Each time the child makes a conclusion from case to case, and if these conclusions contradict each other, this does not confuse him, because those laws of logic that have their roots in the objective experience of a person, in collisions with reality and verification of the provisions made, - these laws of logical thinking, developed by culture, the child does not yet have. Therefore, there is nothing more difficult than to put a child into a dead end by pointing out the inconsistency of his conclusions.

Thanks to our characteristic features childish thinking, which with extraordinary ease draws conclusions from particular case to particular case, does not think deeper about comprehending real relationships, we have the opportunity to observe in the child such patterns of thinking that sometimes and in specific forms we meet only in adult primitives.

Encountering the phenomena of the external world, the child inevitably begins to build his own hypotheses about the cause and correlation of individual things, and these hypotheses must inevitably take on primitive forms corresponding to characteristic features child's thinking. Usually drawing conclusions from case to case, the child, in his constructions of hypotheses about the external world, shows a tendency to connect any thing with anything, to connect "everything with everything." The barriers to causal dependence, which exist in reality and which only after a long acquaintance with the outside world become self-evident in an adult cultured person, do not yet exist in children; in the mind of a child, one thing can act on another, regardless of distance, time, regardless of the complete absence of connection. Perhaps this character of representations is rooted in the egocentric attitude of the child. Let us recall how a child, who still has little distinction between reality and fantasy, achieves the illusory fulfillment of desires in those cases when reality refuses him this.

Under the influence of such an attitude towards the world, he gradually develops a primitive idea that in nature any thing can be connected with anything, any thing can itself act on another. This primitive and naive-psychological character of children's thinking has become especially indisputable for us after a series of experiments that were most recently carried out simultaneously in Switzerland by Piaget, whom we have already quoted, and in Germany by the psychologist Carla Raspe*.

*See: Raspe C. Kindliche Selbstbeobachtung und Theoriebildung // Zeitechrift f Angewandte Psychol .1924. Bd. 23.

The experiments that were performed last boiled down to the following: the child was presented with an object that, for known reasons, changed its shape after a while. Such an object could, for example, be a figure that gives an illusion under certain conditions; one could use a figure, which, when placed on a different background, began to appear larger in size, or a square, which, when turned on an edge (Fig. 27), gave the impression of an increase. On purpose, during the appearance of such an illusion, an extraneous stimulus was presented to the child, for example, an electric lamp was lit or a metronome was set in motion. And so, when the experimenter asked the child to explain the cause of the illusion that had taken place, to answer the question of why the square had grown, the child invariably pointed to a new, simultaneously acting stimulus as the cause. He said that the square grew because a light bulb was lit or a metronome was pounding, although, of course, there was no obvious connection between these phenomena.

The child’s confidence in the connectedness of these phenomena, the logic “post hoc - ergopropter hoc” is so great that if we ask him to change this phenomenon, to make the square smaller, he will approach the metronome without any hesitation and stop it.

We tried to repeat such experiments in our laboratory and invariably obtained the same result in children of 7-8 years old. Only a very few of them were able to put a brake on this initially suggestive answer, construct another hypothesis, or confess their behavior. A significantly larger number of children showed much more primitive features of thinking, directly declaring that simultaneously occurring phenomena are connected with each other and by a causal relationship. At the same time - means due to; this is one of the basic tenets of the child's thinking, and one can imagine what kind of picture of the world such primitive logic creates.

It is interesting to note that even older children retain such a primitive character of judgments, and the figures that Raspe gives us confirm this: out of ten studied ten-year-olds, eight indicated that the figure had grown due to the inclusion of a metronome, one constructed a theory of a different nature, and only one refused to give explanation.

This mechanism of "magic thinking" can be observed especially clearly in children 3-4 years old. These guys immediately show how a purely external assessment of some phenomenon pushes the child to a hasty conclusion about its role. A girl observed by one of us remarked that the little orders her mother gave her were successful when her mother repeated to her two or three times what she had to do. A few times later, we managed to observe such a case: when one day the girl was sent to another room with a small assignment, she demanded: “Mom, repeat three times,” and she herself, without waiting, ran into the next room. The primitive, naive attitude to the words of the mother is here quite clear and needs no further explanation.

Such is the general picture of the child's thinking at that stage when he still stands before the ladder of cultural influence, or at its lowest rungs.

Starting his life path as an "organic being", the child retains his isolation, egocentrism for a long time, and a long cultural development so that the primary weak connection with the world is fixed and in place of the primitive thinking of the child, that harmonious apparatus develops, which we call the thinking of a cultured person.

Primitive thinking M. figurative, elementary-concrete nature, poor logical operations; observed in oligophrenia.

Big Medical Dictionary. 2000 .

See what "primitive thinking" is in other dictionaries:

Thinking is primitive- a common and incorrect name for thinking disorders characterized by a decrease in the level or its insufficient development. In the specialized literature, the term is practically not used due to its evaluative nature ...

thinking in complexes- "THINKING IN COMPLEXES" concept introduced by L.S. Vygotsky to designate the main stage in the development of children's thinking, as well as the characteristics of archaic thinking. The development of thinking and its characteristic ways of forming concepts, ... ...

syncretic thinking- SYNCRETIC THINKING (from the Greek. synkretismos connection) childish and primitive thinking, in which heterogeneous ideas are undifferentiated connected with each other. Up to 7 8 years, syncretism permeates almost all the judgments of the child. ... ... Encyclopedia of Epistemology and Philosophy of Science

syncretic thinking- (from the Greek. synkretismos connection) childish and primitive thinking, in which heterogeneous ideas are undifferentiated associated with each other. Up to 7-8 years ...

Thinking- Mediated - based on the disclosure of connections, relationships, mediations - and generalized knowledge of objective reality (Rubinshtein S.L., 1940). M. is a reflection of the essential connections and relationships between the objects of reality. Thinking... ... Dictionary psychiatric terms

Thinking is syncretic- [Greek. synkretismos connection, union] childish and primitive thinking, in which heterogeneous ideas are undifferentiated connected with each other. Until the age of 7-8, syncretism pervades almost all of the child's judgments. This is expressed in... encyclopedic Dictionary in psychology and pedagogy

Thinking is syncretic- (from the Greek synkretismos connection) childish and primitive thinking, in which a variety of ideas are undifferentiated. Up to 7 8 years, syncretism permeates almost all the judgments of the child, which creates incredible hypotheses about the causes ... ... Pedagogical Dictionary

As a system and dialogue of semiotics. systems. Relig. thinking is often described as mythological, prelogical, primitive, archaic. etc., i.e. is identified with a certain stage or a certain form of thinking in general. Studying the history of religion, you can ... ... Encyclopedia of cultural studies

practical thinking- Etymology. Comes from the Greek. praktikos active, active. Category. Form of thinking. Specificity. In it, problem solving is carried out in external practical activities. Unlike theoretical thinking, the task is not set here ... ... Great Psychological Encyclopedia

At A. m. actions of animals and physical. objects are interpreted as the result of processes similar to those to which people lead. to certain conscious actions related to knowledge, motivation, planning and choice. In the XIX and early XX centuries. many… … Psychological Encyclopedia

The child and his behavior

Chapter Three

§5 Primitive thinking

The first years of a child's life are the years of a primitive, closed existence and the establishment of the most elementary, most primitive connections with the world.

We have already seen that a child of the first months of his existence is an asocial "narrowly organic" being, cut off from the outside world and completely limited by his physiological functions.

All this, of course, cannot but influence children's thinking in the most decisive way, and we must say frankly that the thinking of a small child of 3-4 years old has nothing in common with the thinking of an adult in those forms that are created by culture and long-term cultural evolution. , multiple and active meetings with the outside world.

Of course, this does not mean at all that children's thinking does not have its own laws. No, the laws of children's thinking are completely definite, their own, not similar to the laws of adult thinking: a child of this age has its own primitive logic, its own primitive mental methods; all oiy are determined precisely by the fact that this thinking unfolds on the primitive ground of behavior that has not yet come into serious contact with reality.

True, all these laws of children's thinking were very little known to us until very recently, and only in very recent years, especially thanks to the work of the Swiss psychologist Piaget, have we become acquainted with its main features.

If we think about what functions adult thinking performs, we will very soon come to the answer that it organizes our adaptation to the world in especially difficult situations. It regulates our attitude to reality in especially difficult cases, where there is not enough activity of a simple instinct or habit; in this sense, thinking is a function of adequate adaptation to the world, a form that organizes the impact on it. This determines the entire structure of our thinking. In order for it to have an organized impact on the world, it must work as correctly as possible, it must not be separated from reality, mixed with fantasy, each step of it must be subject to practical verification and must withstand such verification. In a healthy adult, thinking meets all these requirements, and only in people who are mentally ill can thinking take on forms that are not connected with life and reality and do not organize an adequate adaptation to the world.

This is not at all what we see in the first stages of a child's development. For him, it often does not matter how correctly his thinking proceeds, how well it will withstand the first test, the first encounter with reality. His thinking often does not have a mindset to regulate and organize an adequate adaptation to the outside world, and if sometimes it begins to bear the features of this mindset, it does so primitively, with those imperfect tools that are at its disposal and which require a still long development. to be activated.

Marina, 2 years old 4 months, she was completely immersed in the game: she poured sand on her legs, poured mostly above her knees, then began to pour it into her socks, then she took handfuls of sand and rubbed it with her whole palm on her leg. Finally, she began to pour sand on her thigh, covered it with a handkerchief and stroked it with both hands around her leg. The facial expression is very pleased, often smiling to herself.

In another way, this egocentrism of children's thinking can be revealed. Let's try to observe when and how the child speaks, what goals he pursues with his conversation, and what forms his conversation takes. We will be surprised if we take a closer look at the child, how much the child speaks alone, “into space”, with himself, and how often speech does not serve him to communicate with others. One gets the impression that in a child speech often does not serve the social purposes of mutual communication and mutual information, as in adults.

Here is another record of the child's behavior, borrowed by us from the same source. Let us pay attention to how the game of a child of 2 years 6 months is accompanied by "autistic" speech, speech only for himself ...

Alik, 2 years old 6 months (having come to his mother’s room), he started playing with rowan berries, began to pick them, put them in a rinsing cup: “We need to clean the berries as soon as possible ... These are my berries. They are in bed. (Notices the cookie wrapper.) No more cookies? Is there only paper left? (Eats cookies.) The cookies are delicious. Delicious cookies (eats). The cookies are delicious. Dropped! The drop has fallen! It's so small... Big... Small cube... He can sit, cube... He can sit too... He can't write... The cube can't write... (takes the milkman). We put matches there and give them a pie (takes a cardboard circle). Lots of pie...

Pius, 6 years old (referring to Eze, who is drawing a tram with a trailer):

23. “But they don’t have a platform, the trams that are hitched at the back.” (No answer.)
24. (He talks about his tram just drawn.) "They don't have attached wagons." (Does not address anyone. No one answers.)
25. (Turns to B.) "This is a tram, it has no cars yet." (No answer.)
26. (Turns to Hay.) "This tram has no cars yet, Hey, you know, you know, it's red, you know." (No answer.)
27. (L. says aloud: “Here is a funny man ...” Playing after a pause, and not addressing Pius, not addressing anyone at all.) Pius: “Here is a funny man.” (L. continues to draw his carriage.)
28. "I'll leave my wagon white."
29. Oz, who is also painting, declares: "I'll make him yellow.") "No, you don't need to make him yellow."
30. "I'll make a ladder, look here." (B. replies: “I can’t come tonight, I have gymnastics ...”)

The most characteristic of this whole conversation is that here you can hardly see the main thing that we are used to noticing in a collective conversation - mutual addressing each other with questions, answers, opinions. This element is almost absent in this passage. Each child speaks mainly about himself and for himself, not addressing anyone and not expecting an answer from anyone. Even if he is waiting for an answer from someone, but does not receive an answer, he quickly forgets this and moves on to another “conversation”. Speech for a child of this period is only in one part a tool for mutual communication, in another it is not yet “socialized”, it is “autistic”, egocentric, it, as we will see below, plays a completely different role in the behavior of the child.

Piaget and his collaborators also pointed out a number of other forms of speech that are egocentric in nature. Upon closer analysis, it turned out that even many questions in a child are of an egocentric nature; oh asks, knowing the answer in advance, only to ask, to reveal himself. There are quite a few such egocentric forms in children's speech; according to Piaget, their number at the age of 3-5 years varies on average between 54-60, and from 5 to 7 years - from 44 to 47. These figures, based on long-term and systematic observation of children, tell us how the child's thinking and speech are specifically constructed and to what extent the child's speech serves completely different functions and has a completely different character than that of an adult.

Only recently, thanks to a special series of experiments, have we become convinced that egocentric speech has quite definite psychological functions. These functions consist primarily in the planning of known actions that have begun. In this case, speech begins to play a completely specific role, it becomes functionally special in relation to other acts of behavior. One need only look at at least the two passages cited above to be convinced that the child's speech activity here is not a simple egocentric manifestation, but clearly has planning functions. An outburst of such egocentric speech can be easily obtained by hindering the flow of some process in the child**.

Perhaps the most striking manifestation of childish egocentrism is the fact that a small child still lives entirely in a primitive world, the measure of which is pleasure and displeasure, which is still touched by reality to a very small extent; the atoro world is characterized by the fact that, as far as one can judge from the behavior of the child, between him and reality there is still an intermediate world, semi-real, but very characteristic of the child - the world of egocentric thinking and fantasy.

If each of us - an adult - encounters the outside world, fulfilling some need and noticing that this need remains unsatisfied, he organizes his behavior in such a way that by a cycle of organized actions he realizes

** Compare: Vygotsky L. S. Genetic roots of thinking and speech // Natural History and Marxism. 1929. No. 1; Lu p and ya A. R. Ways of development of children's thinking // Natural History and Marxism. 1929. No. 2.

their tasks, satisfy the need, or, reconciled with the need, refuse to satisfy the need.

It is precisely from here that we often regard as children's lies, precisely from here a number of peculiar traits in children's thinking.

When a 3-year-old child, when asked why it is light during the day and dark at night, answers: “Because they dine during the day and sleep at night,” this, of course, is a manifestation of that egocentric-practical attitude, ready to explain everything as adapted for himself, for his good. . We must say the same about those naive notions characteristic of the children that everything around - the sky, the sea, and the rocks - all this was made by people and can be presented to them *; we see the same egocentric attitude and complete faith in the omnipotence of an adult person in the child who asks his mother to give him a pine forest, a place B., where he wanted to go, so that she would boil spinach to make potatoes **, etc. d.

* It should be noted, however, that these data are typical of children who grew up in the specific environment in which they were studied by Piaget. Our children, growing up in different conditions, can give completely different results.

** See: Klein M. Development of one child. M., 1925. S.25-26. 142

This trend is very interesting in children's questions and answers to them.

We illustrate this by recording one conversation with a child**:

Alik, 5 years 5 months

In the evening I saw Jupiter through the window.
- Mom, why does Jupiter exist?

I tried to explain to him, but failed. He again stuck to me.

So why does Jupiter exist? Then, not knowing what to say, I asked him:
- Why do we exist?

To this I received an immediate and confident answer:

For myself.
- Well, Jupiter, too, for himself.

This pleased him, and he said with satisfaction:

And ants, and bedbugs, and mosquitoes, and nettles - also for themselves? -Yes.
And he laughed happily.

In this conversation, the primitive teleologism of the child is extremely characteristic. Jupiter must necessarily exist for something. It is this “why” that most often replaces the more complex “why” for the child. When the answer to this question is difficult, the child still comes out of this situation. We exist “for ourselves” - this is the answer characteristic of the child’s peculiar teleological thinking, allowing him to decide the question of “why” other things and animals exist, even those that are unpleasant to him (ants, bugs, mosquitoes, etc.). nettle...).

Finally, we can catch the influence of the same egocentric™ in the child’s characteristic attitude to the conversations of strangers and the phenomena of the outside world: after all, he is sincerely sure that there is nothing incomprehensible to him, and we almost never hear the word “I don’t know” from the lips of 4 - 5 - summer child. We will see even later that it is extremely difficult for a child to slow down the first decision that comes to mind and that it is easier for him to give the most absurd answer than to admit his ignorance.

inhibition of one's immediate reactions, the ability to delay the response in time - this is a product of development and education, which occurs only very late.

* Reported by W. F. Schmidt. ** Reported by V. F. Schmidt.

After all that we have said about the egocentricity in the thinking of the child, it will not be surprising if we have to say that the thinking of the child differs from the thinking of adults in a different logic, that it is built according to the "logic of the primitive."

We have already said that the child, egocentrically established in relation to the external world, perceives external objects concretely, holistically, and above all from the side that is turned towards him, directly affects him. An objective attitude to the world, abstracting from the concrete perceived attributes of the object and paying attention to objective correlations, regularities, has not yet been developed in the child, of course. He takes the world as he perceives it, not caring about the connection of individual perceived pictures with each other and about building that systematic picture of the world and its phenomena, which is necessary, obligatory for an adult cultured person, whose thinking should regulate the relationship with the world. In the primitive thinking of a child, it is precisely this logic of relations, causal connections, etc. missing and replaced by other primitive logical devices.

not in connection with it, not in subordination to the general structure. Here are a few examples of such a drawing. The first drawing (Fig. 24) was not taken by us from a child - it belongs to an uncultured Uzbek woman, who, however, repeats the typical features of children's thinking with such extraordinary vividness that we ventured to give this example here*. This drawing should depict a rider on a horse. Already at first glance it is clear that the author did not copy reality, but drew, guided by some other principles, a different logic. Having carefully looked at the drawing, we will see that the main distinguishing feature of it is that it is built not on the principle of the “man” and “horse” system, but on the principle of gluing, summing up individual features of a person, without synthesizing them into a single image. In the figure, we see the head separately, separately - below - the ear, eyebrows, eyes, nostrils, all this is far from their real relationship, listed in the figure as separate, one after another

* The drawing is taken from the collection of T. N. Baranova, who kindly provided us with

other running parts. The legs, depicted in such a bent form as the rider feels them, a sexual organ completely separate from the body - all this is depicted in a naively glued, strung order on each other.

The second drawing (Fig. 25) belongs to a 5-year-old boy*. The child tried to depict a lion here and gave appropriate explanations to his drawing; he drew separately the “muzzle”, separately the “head”, and everything else, the lion called “he himself”. This drawing, of course, has a much smaller number of details than the previous one (which is quite consistent with the characteristics of children's perception of this period), but the nature of the "glue" is quite clear here. This is especially pronounced in those drawings where the child is trying to depict some complex set of things, for example, a room. Figure 26 gives us an example of how a child of about 5 years old is trying to represent a room in which a stove is heated. We see that this drawing is characterized by the "gluing" of individual objects related to the stove: firewood, and views, and dampers, and a box of matches (huge sizes, according to their functional significance) are prepared here; all this is given as the sum of individual objects, located next to each other, strung on top of each other.

Piaget set up experiments with children in which the child was given a phrase that ended with the words "because," after which the child had to insert an indication of the reason himself. The results of these experiments turned out to be very characteristic of the primitive thinking of the child. Here are some examples of such "judgments" of the child (answers added by the child are in italics):

C. (7 years 2 months): One man fell on the street because... he broke his leg and had to make a stick instead.

* The drawings were provided to us by V.F. Schmidt and taken from the materials of the Orphanage-Laboratory.

K. (8 years 6 months): One man fell off his bicycle because ... he broke his arm.

L. (7 years 6 months): I went to the bathhouse because... I was clean afterwards. D. (6 years old): I lost my pen yesterday because I don't write.

We see that in all the cases cited, the child confuses cause with effect, and it turns out to be almost impossible for him to get a correct answer: thinking that operates correctly with the category of causality turns out to be completely alien to the child. The category of goal turns out to be much closer to the child - if we remember his egocentric attitude, this will be clear to us. Thus, one of the little subjects traced by Yjaje gives the following construction of a phrase, revealing to us in essence a picture of his logic:

D. (3 years 6 months): “I will make a stove ... because ... to heat.”

Both the phenomenon of "stringing" individual categories, and the replacement of the category of causality, which is alien to the child, by a closer category of purpose - all this can be seen quite clearly in this example.

Such a “stringing” of individual ideas in the primitive thinking of a child is manifested in another interesting fact: the child’s ideas are not arranged in a certain hierarchy (a wider concept - a part of it - is even narrower, etc., according to a typical scheme: genus - species - family, etc.), but individual ideas turn out to be equivalent for the child. So, a city - a district - * a country for a small child does not fundamentally differ from each other. Switzerland for him is something like Geneva, only further away; France is also something like his familiar hometown, only even further away. That a man, being a resident of Geneva, is at the same time a Swiss, is incomprehensible to him. Here is a small conversation given by Piaget and illustrating this peculiar "plane" of the child's thinking*. The conversation we are citing is between the leader and little Ob. (8 years 2 months).

Who are the Swiss?
- Who lives in Switzerland.
- Friborg in Switzerland?
- Yes, but I'm not a Freiburger or a Swiss ...
- And those who live in Geneva?
- They're from Geneva.
- And the Swiss?
- I don't know... I live in Friborg, he is in Switzerland, but I'm not Swiss. Here are the Genevans too ...
- Do you know the Swiss?
- Very few.
- Are there Swiss at all? -Yes.
- Where do they live?
- I do not know.

This conversation clearly confirms that the child cannot yet think logically in sequence, that concepts related to the external world can be located on several floors, and that an object can belong to both a narrower group and a wider class at the same time. The child thinks concretely, perceiving a thing from the side from which it is more familiar to him, completely unable to distract himself from it and understand that, along with other signs, it can be part of other phenomena. From this point of view, it can be said that the child's thinking is always concrete and absolute, and using the example of this primitive childish thinking, we can show how the primary, still prelogical stage in the development of thought processes differs.

We said that the child thinks in concrete things, with difficulty grasping their relationship with each other. Child 6-7 years old

* See: P i a g e t J. Le jugement et le raisonnement chez l "enfant. Neuchatel, 1924. P. 163.

he firmly distinguishes his right hand from his left, but the fact that the same object can be simultaneously right in relation to one and left in relation to the other is completely incomprehensible to him. It is also strange for him that if he has a brother, then he himself is in turn a brother for him. When asked how many brothers he has, the child answers, for example, that he has one brother and his name is Kolya. “How many brothers does Kolya have?” we ask. The child is silent, then declares that Kolya has no brothers. We can be convinced that even in such simple cases the child cannot think relatively, that primitive, pre-cultural forms of thinking are always absolute and concrete; thinking that abstracts from this absoluteness, correlative thinking, is a product of high cultural development.

We must note one more specific feature in the thinking of a small child.

It is quite natural that among the words and concepts that he has to deal with, a huge part for him turns out to be new, incomprehensible. However, adults use these words, and in order to catch up with them, not to seem lower, more stupid than them, a small child develops a completely unique method of adaptation that saves him from feeling of low value and allows him, outwardly at least, to master expressions and concepts incomprehensible to him. Piaget, who has perfectly studied this mechanism of children's thinking, calls it syncretism. This term means an interesting phenomenon, the remnants of which are present in an adult, but which grows luxuriantly in the psyche of a child. This phenomenon consists in an extremely easy convergence of concepts that have only an external part, and the replacement of one unfamiliar concept by another, more familiar one.

See: Chukovsky K. Little children. L., 1928.

How does the thought process proceed in a child? By what laws does the child make his conclusions, build his judgments? After all that has been said, it will be clear to us that a developed logic with all the restrictions that it imposes on thinking, with all its complex conditions and patterns, cannot exist for a child. The primitive, pre-cultural thinking of a child is built much more simply: it is a direct reflection of the naively perceived world, and one particular, one incomplete observation is enough for the child to immediately draw an appropriate (albeit completely inadequate) conclusion. If the thinking of an adult follows the laws of a complex combination of accumulation of experience and conclusions from general provisions, if it obeys the laws of inductive-deductive logic, then the thinking of a small child, as the German psychologist Stern puts it, is “transductive”. It goes neither from the particular to the general, nor from the general to the particular; it simply concludes from case to case, taking as a basis each time all the new, conspicuous signs. Each phenomenon immediately receives a corresponding explanation from the child, which is given directly, bypassing all sorts of logical instances, all sorts of generalizations.

Here is an example of this type of conclusion**:

Child M. (8 years old) is shown a glass of water, a stone is placed in it, the water rises. When asked why the water rose, the child replies: because the stone is heavy.

We take another stone, show it to the child. M. says: “He is heavy. He will make the water rise." - "And this one is smaller?" - "No, this one will not force ..." - "Why?" - "He's light."

Interestingly, in one case, syncretic thinking can revive and flourish in an adult - this is the case of learning a foreign language. It can be said that for an adult reading a foreign book written in a language that is not well known to him, the process of syncretic, and not concrete, understanding of individual words plays a huge role. In this, he, as it were, repeats the primitive features of the child's thinking.

** See: Piaget J. Le jugement et le raisonnement chez l "enfant. Neuchatel, 1924. P. 239 - 240.

The child is shown a piece of wood. "What, is this piece heavy?" - "Not". - "If you put it in water, will it rise?" - "Yes, because it is not heavy." - "Which is heavier - this little stone or this big piece of wood?" - "Stone" (correctly). - "What makes the water rise more?" - From the tree. - "Why?" "Because it's bigger." - "Why did the water rise from the stones?" "Because they are heavy..."

We see with what ease the child throws one sign, which, in his opinion, made the water rise (gravity), and replaces it with another (value). Each time he draws a conclusion from case to case, and the absence of a single explanation is completely ignored by him. Here we come to another interesting fact: for a child there are no contradictions, he does not notice them, opposite judgments can exist side by side, not excluding each other.

Child T. (7.5 years old).

Why does a tree float on water?
"Because it's light, and boats have oars."
What about those boats that don't have oars?
Because they are light.
What about the big boats?
Because they are heavy.
- So, heavy things remain on the water?
- Not.
- What about the big stone?
- He's drowning.
What about the big boat?
- It floats because it is heavy.
- Just because?
- Not. Also because he has big oars.
What if they are removed?
- He'll get better.
- Well, what if you put them back?
- It will stay on the water because they are heavy.

Thanks to the characteristic features of children's thinking we have indicated, which with extraordinary ease draws conclusions from particular cases to particular cases, without thinking deeper about comprehending real relationships, we have the opportunity to observe in the child such patterns of thinking that we sometimes meet in specific forms, except in adults. primitives.

Encountering the phenomena of the external world, the child inevitably begins to build his hypotheses about the cause and correlation of individual things, and these hypotheses must inevitably assume primitive forms that correspond to the characteristic features of the child's thinking. Usually drawing conclusions from case to case, the child, in his constructions of hypotheses about the external world, shows a tendency to connect any thing with anything, to connect "everything with everything." The barriers to causal dependence, which exist in reality and which only after a long acquaintance with the outside world become self-evident in an adult cultured person, do not yet exist in children; in the mind of a child, one thing can act on another, regardless of distance, time, regardless of the complete absence of connection. Perhaps this character of representations is rooted in the egocentric attitude of the child. Let us recall how a child, who still has little distinction between reality and fantasy, achieves the illusory fulfillment of desires in those cases when reality refuses him this.

The experiments that were carried out last boiled down to the following: the child was presented with some object, which, by virtue of the known

* See: Raspe C. Kindliche Selbstbeobachtung und Theoriebildung // Zeitechrift f. angewandte Psychol. 1924. Bd. 23.

For other reasons, it changed its shape after a while. Such an object could, for example, be a figure that gives an illusion under certain conditions; one could use a figure, which, when placed on a different background, began to appear larger in size, or a square, which, when turned on an edge (Fig. 27), gave the impression of an increase. On purpose, during the appearance of such an illusion, an extraneous stimulus was presented to the child, for example, an electric lamp was lit or a metronome was set in motion. And so, when the experimenter asked the child to explain the cause of the illusion that had taken place, to answer the question of why the square had grown, the child invariably pointed to a new, simultaneously acting stimulus as the cause. He said that the square grew because a light bulb was lit or a metronome was pounding, although, of course, there was no obvious connection between these phenomena.

The confidence in the connectedness of these phenomena, the logic of "post hoc - ergopropter hoc" in the child is so great that if we ask him to change this phenomenon, to make the square smaller, he will approach the metronome without any thought and stop it.

We tried to repeat such experiments in our laboratory and invariably obtained the same result in children of 7-8 years old. Only a very few of them were able to put a brake on this initially suggestive answer, construct another hypothesis, or confess their behavior. A significantly larger number of children showed much more primitive features of thinking, directly declaring that simultaneously occurring phenomena are connected with each other and by a causal relationship. At the same time - means due to; this is one of the basic provisions of the child's thinking, and one can imagine what kind of picture of the world such primitive logic creates.

Such is the general picture of the child's thinking at that stage when he still stands before the ladder of cultural influence, or at its lowest rungs.

Starting his life path as an “organic being”, the child retains his isolation, egocentrism for a long time, and long-term cultural development is needed so that the primary weak connection with the world is fixed and in place of the child’s primitive thinking that harmonious apparatus develops, which we call the thinking of a cultured person.

The entry was borrowed by us from materials kindly provided to us by V.F. Schmidt.
P i a g e t J. Le langage et la pensée chez l "enfant. P., 1923. P. 28. Ibid. P. 14-15. Individual letters are the names of children.

To denote this thinking, Lévy-Bruhl uses the concept "primitive thinking". The expression "primitive" is a purely conventional term, which is not to be taken literally.

When the whites came into contact with such peoples as the Australians and the natives, for example, they did not yet know metals, and their civilization resembled the social system of the Stone Age. Hence the name of the primitive peoples, which they were given. This "primitiveness", however, is very relative.

Many believe that primitive thinking is illogical, that is, incapable of realizing, judging and reasoning in the same way as we do. It is very easy to prove otherwise. Primitive people very often give evidence of their amazing dexterity and skill in organizing their hunting and fishing enterprises, they very often show a gift of ingenuity and amazing skill in their works of art, they speak languages, sometimes very complex, sometimes with as fine a syntax as and our own languages, and in missionary schools Indian children learn as well and as quickly as white children.

However, other facts show that in a huge number of cases primitive thinking differs from ours. It is oriented in a completely different way. Where we're looking secondary causes, stable antecedent moments, primitive thinking pays attention exclusively to mystical causes, the action of which it feels everywhere. It admits without difficulty that the same being can be in two or more places at the same time. It reveals a complete indifference to contradictions that our minds cannot stand. That is why it is permissible to call this thinking, pralogical.

It does not at all follow from this, however, that such a mental structure is found only in primitive people. There are no two forms of thinking in mankind, one pralogical, the other logical, separated from one another by a blank wall, but there are different thought structures that exist in the same society and often, perhaps always, in the same consciousness. .

There are features common to all human societies:

Traditions that are passed down from generation to generation

institutions of a more or less stable nature

Consequently, the higher mental functions in these societies cannot but have some common basis everywhere.

To study the thinking of primitive people, a new terminology is needed. In any case, it is necessary at least to specify the new meaning that a certain number of conventional expressions must acquire when applied to an object different from the object they used to designate. For example, this is the case with the term "collective views" .

In common psychological language, which divides facts into emotional, motor (volitional) and intellectual, "representation" classified in the latter category. By representation they mean the fact of cognition, since our consciousness simply has the image or idea of some object. This is not the way to understand the collective ideas of primitive people. The activity of their consciousness is too little differentiated in order to be able to independently consider the ideas or images of objects, regardless of the feelings, emotions, passions that cause these ideas and images or are caused by them. To keep this term, we need to change its meaning. This form of activity among primitive people is not an intellectual or cognitive phenomenon in its pure or almost pure form, but a much more complex phenomenon in which what is actually considered to be "representation" among us is mixed with other elements of an emotional or volitional order, painted and impregnated with them. Not being pure representations in the exact sense of the word, they signify, or rather presuppose, that primitive man at a given moment not only has the image of an object and considers it real, but also hopes for or fears something, which is connected with what any action emanating from or affecting him. This action is invariably recognized as a reality and constitutes one of the elements of the representation of an object.

To sum it up in one word common property collective ideas that occupy such a significant place in the mental activity of lower societies, I will allow myself to say that this mental activity is mystical .

In other words, the reality in which primitive people live and act is itself mystical. Not a single creature, not a single object, not a single natural phenomenon is in the collective ideas of primitive people what they seem to us. Almost everything that we see in them escapes their attention or is indifferent to them. But, however, they see in them much that we do not even guess. So primitive people endowed many things with mystical power.

For primitive consciousness no purely physical fact in the sense we give to the word. Flowing water, blowing wind, falling rain, any natural phenomenon, sound, color are never perceived the way they are perceived by us. The whole psycho-physiological process of perception takes place in them in the same way as in us, but they do not perceive with the same consciousness as we do.

It is a well-known fact that primitive people, and even members of already sufficiently developed societies who have retained a more or less primitive way of thinking, consider plastic representations of beings, painted, engraved or sculpted, as real as the depicted beings. If primitive people perceive the image differently than we do, it is because they perceive the original differently than we do. We grasp in the original objective real features, and only these features: for example, the shape, height, body size, eye color, facial expression, etc. For primitive man, the image of a living being is a mixture of features that we call objective, and mystical properties.

Primitive people regard their names as something concrete, real and often sacred ("The real name of the king is secret...").

Primitive man worries about his shadow no less than about his name or image. In West Africa "murders" are sometimes carried out by sticking a knife or a nail into a person's shadow: a criminal of this kind, caught red-handed, is immediately executed.

In addition, primitive people quite consciously attach as much faith to their dreams as to real perceptions.

This also explains the reverence and reverence that is given to visionaries, clairvoyants, prophets, and sometimes even to madmen. They are credited with a special ability to communicate with invisible reality.

For members of our society, between these visions, magical manifestations, on the one hand, and the facts known as a result of ordinary perception and everyday experience, on the other hand, there is a clear dividing line. For primitive man, on the contrary, this line does not exist. For primitive thinking, there is only one world.

If the collective ideas of primitive people differ from ours in their essentially mystical character, if their thinking, as I tried to show, is oriented differently than ours, then we must admit that the combination of ideas in the mind of primitive man occurs differently than in ours. . The thinking of lower societies does not obey exclusively the laws of our logic, it may be subject to laws that are not wholly logical in nature.

Very often, observers have had the opportunity to collect such reasonings, or, more precisely, such combinations of ideas, which seemed to them strange and inexplicable. For example, "In Landan, the drought was once specifically attributed to the fact that the missionaries wore a special headdress during worship. The missionaries showed the native leaders their garden and drew their attention to the fact that their own plantations were dying from lack of water. Nothing, however, could convince the natives, whose excitement did not subside until heavy rains poured down.

The generally accepted explanation of all these facts boils down to the following: we have here an incorrect (naive) application by primitive people of the law of causality, they confuse the antecedent circumstance with the cause. Even experience can neither dissuade them nor teach them anything. In an infinite number of cases, the thinking of primitive people, as we have seen above, is impenetrable to experience.

Mystical relations, which are so often captured in the relations between beings and objects by primitive consciousness, have one common basis. All of them are in different form and varying degrees suggest the existence of "participation" (complicity) between beings or objects associated with a collective representation. That is why, in the absence of better term, I will call "law of participation" characteristic principle of "primitive" thinking, which governs the association and connections of representations in primitive consciousness.

What we call the natural causal relationship between events and phenomena is either not captured by the primitive consciousness at all, or is of minimal importance to it. The first place in his mind, and often his whole mind is occupied by different kinds mystical participation.

That is why the thinking of primitive people can be called pralogical with the same right as mystical. They are rather two aspects of the same basic property than two independent traits. Primitive thinking, if we consider it from the point of view of the content of representations, must be called mystical, it must be called pralogical, if we consider it from the point of view of associations. By the term "pralogical" one should by no means mean that primitive thinking represents some kind of stage that precedes in time the appearance of logical thinking. It is not antilogical, nor is it illogical. Calling it pralogical, the author only wants to say that it does not seek, first of all, like our thinking, to avoid contradiction. It has no inclination to run into contradictions without any reason, but it does not even think about avoiding contradictions. Most often it treats them with indifference. This explains the fact that it is so difficult for us to trace the course of this thinking.

The collective representations of primitive people are not the product of intellectual processing in the true sense of the word. They contain emotional and motor elements as components, and, what is especially important, instead of logical relations (inclusions and exclusions), they imply more or less clearly defined, usually vividly felt, "participations" (communities).

The generation of the 20th century consigned morality and spirituality to oblivion, replacing the external rules of morality and religiosity.

1. Primitive thinking is the basis of mass consciousness

Mass consciousness is a new form of life modern people, who have forgotten their individuality and the right to be themselves, adhering to the external rules of decency, have turned into a "reasonable biomass".

Thinking with "two buttons" has a huge advantage for controlling the mass consciousness (crowd, herd, society) so as not to get lost!

Primitive thinking is a sign of limited knowledge, that is, thinking blocked by boundaries that do not allow human thought to freely penetrate the essence of things and beyond the established boundaries.

Religious morality led to such a worldview, dividing God and man, locking in on itself the sole right to spirituality (this idea states the result for today, and not the historical purpose of religion).

This is an amazing phenomenon, which today is more and more manifested in the beliefs and behavior of people: I am small and weak - there is, someone big and powerful! (eyes are usually raised at the same time, up). Instead of cooperation with the divine power, a slavish philosophy of being, dependent on everything in the material world of man, is proposed.

Mass lack of spirituality and immorality in the 21st century are sad results for modern civilization. The consequences are sad: the widespread revelry of hypocrisy (double standards), greed and money-grubbing have become synonymous with prestige and social success.

The legitimization of aggression in the last century (20th century) - extremism quite recently had an aura of romanticism and was a symbol of the struggle of the downtrodden for "mythical" freedom. That is, in the eyes of the layman, who himself is not at the epicenter of the conflict and is not a living witness to cruelty, this phenomenon is associated with something positive, causing sympathy. It is these associations that "settle" in the mass consciousness instead of objective information.

Thus, the very manifestation of aggression, used by one group of people in relation to another, received legitimacy at the end of the last century. It is important that the words that cover up the true actions sound convincing and evoke associative sympathy.

At the individual level, the manifestation of aggression is not allowed by society, through the laws and established rules governing public order, which in turn are formulated on the basis of moral ideas. Religion offers its own way, relief from internal "sins": repent! But the existing causes of internal aggression do not go anywhere, and this is a manifestation of lack of spirituality, or what we put in the concept of morality.

The psychiatrist, prescribing a medicine, relieves the manifestation of symptoms: "loss of control over the mental state." It is customary to blame a person for sins, to treat a sick person. But the proposed methods do not open an internal channel of communication with the spiritual principle inside a person. The rites of repentance and confession themselves are present in all religions and have not yet led to mass spirituality, in contrast to mass religiosity.

The exploited image of weak, unfortunate peoples, built by analogy with a poor and unfortunate person, causing, again, sympathy, is used in selfish political games in order to seize power and gain access to finances. Let's think about what we veiledly sympathize with - the desire to kill, capture and rob? We are not talking about creating prosperity with our own hands, even with the help provided by more economically developed countries.

The passion for aggression becomes the central value of the "humiliated peoples". But to create and create, to develop, even with the help of someone, this is already a spiritual act. Here we clearly see the complete opposite of spirituality, under the guise of religious slogans, open evil is being committed on a global scale and a civilized society finds ways to approve what they would not wish for themselves.

The culmination of modern religiosity is the fanaticism of killers who openly demonstrate the power of Evil and prove the effect of their Power, in the impossibility of stopping it, punishing it or defending itself from it.

Let's look at the results of what the formal understanding of morality, built into the human mind through primitive thinking, has led to. Seven billion of the world's population - what percentage of them are happy, successful, wealthy, healthy and powerful people? But after all, the formal understanding of goodness and moral principles, entrenched in the mass consciousness, is reverse system values, servility and sacrifice!

Here it is being realized before the eyes of all mankind! Do we like it? Does everyone sincerely want to join the ranks of prosperous earthlings? Or from sympathy for poverty, disease, primitivism and wretchedness (in the worst possible sense) - to join the victims and "human waste" blown up everywhere, as an "act of purification"?

As long as the approval of Evil is present in the individual consciousness in the form of tolerance for the bad, as unreasonable sacrifice, the psychology of the poor and dependent people who do not believe in themselves, Evil, as a phenomenon, is indestructible. It is fueled by our own dissatisfaction, fears for survival and natural defensive reactions - aggression against personal evil inside me, through negative (primitive) thinking.

2. Social dependence and complete paralysis of spirituality, through primitive thinking

The psychology of dependent people is imbued with the belief that they themselves are worthless and cannot - low self-esteem and devalued self-esteem. This, in turn, generates and keeps in an unchanged position the psychology of the "poor in spirit", or people who have devalued the strength of their spirit, who are accustomed to relying on others, and not on themselves. Such people are obliged (according to instilled pseudo values) to be afraid of everything, to look around at those walking nearby - have they fallen out of the general clip, from the general party, from the imposed stereotypes?

Any person who has come out from under the influence of stereotypical thinking (does not mean people with a mental disorder), who is able to think independently, looks a little strange, different, alien and dangerous in the eyes of the "correct majority". But these are just primitive "assessments" based on the principle of polarity and dissimilarity. In a distorted worldview, they are read as a violation of established rules and a violation of following "generally accepted" norms, imposed life path according to universal morality, which also comes into conflict with individuality.

"Never go obediently, like cattle to the slaughterhouse, on the lead of the blind, shamelessly pretending to be sighted and ready, in order to achieve their primitive goals, to lead crowds of people who trusted them along the very edge of the abyss"(saying about false spirit guides).

90% of the population of the Earth, theoretically knowing what exactly they must do according to the principles of morality, still cannot do it, they stumble all the time, make mistakes, sin and do not get where there is a center of spiritual power!

The fulfillment of the 10 commandments has become an impossible problem for intelligent, developed, experienced and highly moral people. As a result, they receive only the promised suffering, assuming that this is the "punishment of God."

The worldview, formed on the foundation of religious morality, led to restrictive and regulatory norms. social behavior. It is imbued with distrust of man.

At the heart of spiritual development lies faith or trust, and not fear of God or punishment. Fear itself is a symptom of threat or lack of trust. As a result, the entire civilized world looks at the deeds of its own hands and in horror seeks salvation in the same primitive regulations of sanctimonious morality, inventing double standards for different social groups.

3. The concept of spirituality is replaced by the concept of religiosity

As soon as we focus our attention on the concept of spirituality, bewilderment arises - by definition, all people are spiritual only because each of us is the owner of his own "individual soul".

It is the helplessness of people who do not know what to do with this living, but not material part of their I, that creates a candidate for "trading" religion in "spiritual norms". Under strict control and condemnation, spiritual knowledge becomes lifeless, that is, devoid of the very spiritual power, which is the only one that makes a person powerful and independently discriminating.

Knowledge is a form that contains the energy or power of knowledge itself. But forms that claim to be powerful and do not carry spiritual energy turn into an empty shell, that is, they are essentially meaningless, and therefore aggressive, defending themselves by imposing and suppressing. When religious faith is built on fear, threat, authoritarianism, this is the most immoral act in relation to a person.

The use of the power of authority (religion) to suppress the individual will, instead of giving spiritual power that fills the individual consciousness and encourages growth, actually suppresses and prevents individual contact with the divine principle within himself.

So for many centuries a primitive form of thinking was formed, which characterizes itself as "forbidding" knowledge, preserving the eternal image of the "little man", filled with fears, ignorance (ignorance), darkness (not awareness).

Thanks to the primitive form of thinking, it became very convenient to control the crowd or the mass consciousness by pressing only "two buttons": it is possible - it is impossible, good - bad, moral - immoral.

The weakness of a person with blocked individual spiritual activity is encouraged and approved, but also behind the scenes! But everyone knows that "obedient are comfortable"; everyone also knows that the initiative is punishable, the one who is the first to take responsibility will be the first to be "punched" if he did not please the crowd, leaving the stereotypes of imposed morality. That is, religiosity with its dogmatic morality stimulates the "ears", instead of developing an independent understanding that awakens the individual spiritual principle.

This paradox is also observed in the scientific field - in order to openly and freely comprehend the world in all its manifestations (physics, astronomy, biology, chemistry), scientists fundamentally get out of the influence of religiosity, as a worldview that does not allow comprehending. That is, a squeamish attitude towards religion is manifested precisely in the associations of a primitive way of knowing the world, through limited thinking.

As a result, materialism was separated from spirituality and became the opposite of everything that is not comprehensible by known scientific methods. There are known things, but they do not bear traces of spirituality. There is a clear limit, a limit to which they themselves reach scientific methods, that is, a tangible barrier where the cognized part is perceived as integrity or completeness. And this is what exists in the minds of materialists.

And the part that remains on the other side of this barrier is invisible, unknowable by existing methods, does not exist! The essence of knowable things, reaching the visible limits of comprehension, is defined as non-existent, because it is not knowable.

The methods themselves create the illusion that everything that is less physical, according to the degree of increase from the material to the more spiritual, (that is, in the dynamics of elevation to understanding) has its limit and finiteness. And this is a fundamental mistake.