Bernard Werber

How often can one hear from people a phrase that they understand or even realize something, while all their further actions and reasoning clearly show that they do not really have this understanding. But it's one thing not to understand something and know about it, and quite another to mistakenly think that you understand it. In the latter case, a person deceives himself and does not even know about it. And in the end, this leads to the fact that he closes himself from information that is useful to him, simply ceasing to pay his attention to it and analyze it. So that this does not happen, so that each of us really understands what he wants to understand and what he needs to understand, I decided to write this article in which I will explain to you, dear readers, what a true understanding of something should be, no matter what, and how to get there.

What is confusing understanding?

First, friends, let's find out with you what understanding is not, but what it is often confused with. And many people confuse understanding with a good memory and with what is commonly called obvious things, common truths, in general, with what everyone knows very well. But understanding has practically nothing to do with memory. Of course, you need to remember something from what you understand, but remembering any information in itself does not lead to understanding. The same can be said about the so-called obvious things, which sometimes only seem obvious, but few people properly understand them, and about common truths that can be on everyone’s lips and on the tongue, and everyone can throw abstruse phrases or words, while not being able to properly explain them. In other words, everything that is in your memory and that you have heard many times - you may not necessarily understand well. Although it will seem to you that you understand this, since this information is familiar to you.

It is clear that when a thought is often expressed to you, you memorize it so well that you begin to consider it your own. People in such cases usually say that they have heard about it many times, therefore they do not consider the thought repeated for the hundred and first time to be important. But if you ask them to explain this thought, ask them to tell them about how you can come to it, what consequences follow from it, what conclusions can be drawn on its basis, then here not every person can say something intelligible. That is, if you understand a thought, develop it. And if you just remember it - this is not understanding, friends. Behavior is the same way. If you understand something, you will definitely adjust your behavior in accordance with your understanding. And if a person says that he understands something, but at the same time acts contrary to this understanding, thereby stepping on the same rake and thus harming himself, then what kind of understanding is this. My favorite example here is responsibility. We have all heard many times that in order to solve almost all life problems, a person must first of all take responsibility for his life. A hackneyed thought, isn't it? This is the so-called common truth, which many people know about. To know something they know, but how many people understand it? How many people take responsibility for their lives in order to gain a sense of freedom and with its help begin to solve their problems and achieve any life goals? Not many, do you agree? Well, at the same time they say that they understand this idea.

So friends, please remember - if you have heard something many times or remember something very well - this does not mean that you understand it. Below we will find out what it means to really understand something.

What is understanding?

Now let's answer the question - what is understanding? If you look into Dictionary Ozhegov, it will be said there that understanding is the ability of a person to comprehend, comprehend the content, meaning and meaning of something. That sounds good. But what does it mean to comprehend? How to comprehend the content, meaning, meaning of something? What needs to be done for this? Let's figure it out.

If we talk about comprehending the content of something, then here we are talking about the analysis of this something, that is, about decomposing it into its component parts, in order to study its construction. So you can learn a lot. Even one thought, if you think about it, has a connection with other thoughts, from which it is formed. Some element of its design is the main one, other elements are secondary, but they are all connected with each other. Therefore, in order to comprehend the content of something, one must understand what it consists of and what it depends on. No thought is born out of the blue, it is always a response to some kind of stimulus that determines its meaning. Here, understanding what caused the appearance of this or that thought, this is if we are talking about a thought, and also knowing what constituent parts it consists of, you will be able to comprehend its content.

When we talk about the meaning of something, it is important to understand what functions it has, the meaning of which we want to understand. It does not matter whether we are talking about some device, a natural phenomenon, or the same human thought - we must find out what it is intended for, what work it performs, what goals it pursues, what functions it has. For example, a pencil is not just a lead in a wooden frame, from the point of view of its design, you can say so about it, it is also what it is intended for. What is the main function of a pencil? What is it for? To write, draw, right? From this point of view, from the point of view of its functionality, we are thinking about it in this case in order to understand what it is. Human thought also has different functions and a specific purpose. Some thoughts make people feel good, others feel bad, some encourage them to act, others, on the contrary, force them to give up. That's when you see, know, or at least assume the purpose for which a person shares his thoughts with other people, in particular with you, you can understand these thoughts and understand the person himself. Why and why did he write, say, show something? - You need to ask yourself this question every time you want to understand another person - his words, deeds, thoughts, dreams, desires. Look for the cause that caused something and look for the purpose that something or someone is pursuing in order to understand where something comes from and where it goes.

As for comprehending the meaning of something, here I think it is important to understand what role does what we want to understand play in the system in which it exists. Well, by system we can understand how some kind of limited environment in which someone or something exists and who or what we want to understand, and in general our whole world. Well, for example, we want to understand why earthquakes occur, and for this we need to find out not only what causes them, the same tectonic processes, but also what they are for, that is, what role in the life of the planet earthquakes play? After all, nothing happens just like that, everything has its purpose, its task, its purpose, its role. When we understand what exactly this role is, and why the system needs it, we comprehend the meaning of this something. Well, speaking of understanding something, we bring all these things together. That is, we study something, be it a material object or some kind of thought, from the point of view of how it is arranged and how all the elements of its construction depend on each other, then what functions it, as a whole, has, and what functions the parts of which it consists have. And also we need to know what role this something plays, within the framework of both the whole system, by which we can understand our whole world, and within the framework of that subsystem, that is, some limited environment in which that something exists. Then we will be able to say that we really understand this something, whether it be a material object or some kind of phenomenon, or a thought expressed or written by someone, an idea.

Everything in this world also has its own life cycle, which fits the above model of understanding something. Therefore, in order to fully understand what we want to understand, we definitely need to look at it in the context of time, and not just as something that happens or exists exclusively here and now. Let's take, for example, a human thought - how do you know that you understand it? You can decompose it into its component parts, you can define the words of which it consists, you can associate these words with some objects and processes that they mean. All this will allow you to understand what in question, but will not give an understanding of the thought itself, as one of the elements of a huge matrix of thoughts, which, probably, has no end. And without this, understanding someone's thought more holistically and broadly, you will not be able to understand its nature, because for this you must study the causal relationship of which it is a part, in order to find out from what other thoughts it was formed, or it is better to say when and why she was born. And, which is also very important, you need to develop this thought - to continue, so to speak, its life in order to fit it into the system of other thoughts and into the general picture of the world, and thus bring it to the point where it becomes irrelevant, unnecessary, that is, until her death. Thoughts are born, live and die, leaving behind the results of those deeds that people did, guided by these thoughts. Some thoughts, as we know, live for a very long time, one might even say forever. And this is also not accidental, you see. Thus, having studied someone else's thought, you can easily create on its basis your own, unique thought in your own way, which will have the same meaning, but a different form. By this you will prove to yourself, and if necessary, to other people, that you understood someone else's thought, someone else's idea, because you were able to use it to create something of your own.

Therefore, if you want to understand something very well, try to describe, explain, retell it in your own words, so you can find, see, study everything that is written above. After all, the design of something can be described in your own words, right? It is not for nothing that various words and concepts have many definitions, and all of them can be correct in their own way, depending on what properties of these concepts they reflect. And the functions of something - some kind of thought, material object, phenomenon, can also be represented differently, in your own way, drawing analogies with other thoughts, objects or phenomena, depending on what exactly you tried to understand. And you can even find a new meaning in something already known, if you try, because the world is so mysterious that we will always learn something new about what we already know well. This is the ability to explain something in your own words, I call understanding. In general, when we convey something in our own words, or we try to convey, of course, without distorting the meaning of the information, we better see all the components and connections between them that make up our message, or the thought that we convey other people. Understanding, as I said, is very well facilitated by the ability to draw analogies between what you want to understand with something similar in meaning. Moreover, the more detailed this analogy is, the better you will be able to understand something. After all, the more similarities and differences we see in various things, the deeper our understanding of them becomes.

What hinders understanding

A person's understanding of something is usually hindered by his strong attitudes about it. People do not like to change their established opinion about something that they already seem to know and understand, for various reasons, including laziness. It's so easy to stick to one single point of view about something or someone, without bothering to think about it. In general, I'll tell you, rooted attitudes are a trap for a person. The rationality of a person, I believe, is determined precisely by his ability to change his mind about something, as he receives new information. Conversely, if a person does not want to change his beliefs, regardless of the evidence provided to him that his beliefs are wrong, this is a sign of unreasonableness. Bone thinking, habits, adherence to one's attitudes, beliefs, fanaticism, blind faith in something - all this is evidence of unreason. People have always suffered because of this and will continue to suffer until they change. In this case, the problem lies not in the inability, but in the unwillingness of a person to understand something. And this, mind you, causes great harm, first of all, to himself, and often to people dependent on him.

Haste and fuss - also very much interfere with understanding! This is one of the most serious problems of our time. People have no time, not only to understand something, but to live in general. This is especially noticeable in big cities. This is real madness - everyone is in a hurry somewhere, everyone is doing something all the time, everyone, well, or almost everyone, talks a lot and listens little - the brain does not work at all in such cases - it simply reflects everything that it receives from the outside world . As a result, people listen but do not hear, look but do not see, know but do not understand. And all because they simply have no time to hear something, no time to see something, no time to understand something. They have to hurry, they have things to do, many things that they think are important to them. People today are forced to compete with each other - they are forced to do this so that they can survive, so that they can provide themselves with a good life, so they need to work hard, very hard. But why and for whom they work - they do not understand. They also do not understand that for a good life it is not at all necessary to compete with someone, there are other ways to a better life are, first of all, their own ways. After all, competing with someone means playing someone else's game, on someone else's field and by someone else's rules, while you can play your own game, by your own rules and on your own territory. Just for this you need to come up with this game. But how to do it, or rather, when to do it? - Once. People are so busy, they are playing someone else's game. And those people who once came up with their own game and played it well, who became the first in something, managed to achieve great success in life. The rest are forced to compete because they imitate rather than create. And they do not have the opportunity to escape from this trap, because they do not have time to understand how life works, what rules exist in it, how to play by these rules and whether it is necessary to do this at all. Hurry and fuss is their way of life, and this is a real punishment for them.

Perception also determines how well a person can understand something. Different people they perceive the same information differently, they perceive reality differently, they perceive themselves and other people differently, and consequently, they understand all these things differently. Perception itself depends on many factors - starting with the quality of the information received and ending with the education each individual person has. But I want to say the main thing - the wrong, inadequate perception of reality by a person is a serious problem that must be solved with the help of specialists. For wrong perception leads to wrong understanding, and wrong understanding leads to wrong decisions and wrong actions. Well, accordingly, a person makes mistakes, because of which he has problems, both small and very serious.

In general, it should be noted that many people today do not even know what they want, because they simply do not think about it. After all, they are not used to this - to think about the meaning of their lives and about the correctness or incorrectness of what they do. And they are not used to it because most of them are simply not taught to think too much about something - they are taught to respond, to react, to perform, to imitate, but not to think. For good performance, for good service, people are rewarded, and for bad performance, respectively, they are punished. So a person learns mainly how to behave in such a way that he is rewarded more often and punished less often. And to think about your life, about what you need in it and what you don’t, means to bear responsibility for it yourself and to reward and punish yourself. People would be happy to do it if they were taught to do it. But our society lives by different rules, so this approach to teaching and educating a person in it is not very popular. But, you must admit, friends, if most of us, within the framework of the standard education system, are not taught to think, and to think correctly, efficiently, effectively, and about the things we need, this does not mean that we cannot teach ourselves this. We can teach ourselves whatever we want.

So understanding is not only the desire and ability to understand something, for which a person needs to learn to think very well, it is also an opportunity to think about the need for understanding. And this possibility largely depends on the social environment in which a person lives. After all, the fact is that a person may not understand something and not even guess about it, or think that he does not need to understand anything. But, you see, in order to decide what we need and what we don't, we need to learn about what exists in general, what exists in this world, from which we can choose. Therefore, it is extremely important that in the life of each of us a kind of guide, teacher, mentor, or in the form of some kind of source useful information or, preferably, in the person of an intelligent person who will lead us out of the darkness and help us find the need for understanding. I think that we all, to one degree or another, are such guides, teachers, mentors for each other, since we all can teach each other something.

Thinking - it is a generalized reflection of objective reality in its natural, most essential connections and relationships. It is characterized by commonality and unity with speech.

Thinking manifests itself in solving any problem that arises before a person, as long as it is relevant, does not have a ready-made solution, and a powerful motive prompts a person to look for a way out.

The physiological basis is temporary nerve connections (conditioned reflexes) that are formed in the cerebral cortex. These conditioned reflexes arise under the influence of second signals (words, thoughts), reflecting reality, but necessarily arise on the basis of the first signal system (sensations, perceptions, ideas).

Types of thinking.

By genesis:

Visual Action Thinking - lies in the practical transformational activity carried out with real objects. This is the most elementary type of thinking that arises in practical activities and is the basis for the formation of more complex types of thinking.

Visual-figurative thinking - is carried out directly with the perception of the surrounding reality and cannot be carried out without this. Thinking visually-figuratively, we are attached to reality, and the necessary images are presented in short-term and operative memory. This form of thinking is dominant in children of preschool and primary school age. Preschoolers think only in visual images and do not yet master concepts (in the strict sense).

Verbal-logical thinking - a kind of thinking carried out with the help of logical operations with concepts. In verbal-logical thinking, using logical concepts, the subject can learn the essential patterns and unobservable relationships of the reality under study. The development of verbal-logical thinking rebuilds and streamlines the world of figurative representations and practical actions.

Abstract-logical (abstract) thinking- a type of thinking based on the allocation of essential properties and relationships of the subject and abstraction from others, non-essential.

Visual-effective, visual-figurative, verbal-logical and abstract-logical thinking are successive stages in the development of thinking in phylogeny and ontogenesis.

By the nature of the tasks to be solved distinguish between theoretical and practical thinking.

theoretical thinking - thinking on the basis of theoretical reasoning and conclusions, this is the knowledge of laws and rules.

practical thinking - thinking based on judgments and conclusions based on solving practical problems. The main task of practical thinking is the development of means for the practical transformation of reality: setting a goal, creating a plan, project, scheme. Practical thinking was studied by B.M. Teplov. He found that an important feature of practical thinking is that it is deployed in conditions of severe time pressure and actual risk. In practical situations, the possibilities for testing hypotheses are very limited. All this makes practical thinking more difficult in a certain respect than theoretical thinking.

According to the degree of development of thinking in time distinguish between intuitive and discursive, or analytical thinking.

Discursive (analytical) thinking - thinking, mediated by the logic of reasoning, not perception. Analytical thinking is deployed in time, has clearly defined stages, is represented in the mind of the thinking person himself.

intuitive thinking - thinking based on direct sensory perceptions and direct reflection of the effects of objects and phenomena of the objective world. Intuitive thinking is characterized by the speed of flow, the absence of clearly defined stages, and is minimally conscious. Three criteria are usually used to distinguish between discursive and intuitive thinking: 1) temporal (time of the process); 2) structural (division into stages); 3) the level of awareness (representation in the mind of the thinker himself).

According to the degree of novelty and originality distinguish between reproductive and productive thinking according to their functional purpose.

reproductive thinking - thinking on the basis of images and ideas drawn from some specific sources.

Productive Thinking - thinking based on creative imagination.

In their activities, people encounter such objects that have a holistic-systemic character. For orientation in such objects, a person needs to be able to distinguish their external and internal content, their internal essence and its external manifestations. In this regard, according to the type of knowledge, theoretical and empirical thinking are distinguished.

theoretical thinking – thinking aimed at understanding the inner content and essence of complex system objects. The main mental action associated with such knowledge is analysis. An analysis of a holistic system object reveals in it some simple connection (or relation), which acts as a genetically initial basis for all its particular manifestations. This initial connection serves as a universal or essential source of the formation of an integral system object. The task of theoretical thinking is to discover this initial essential connection, with its subsequent isolation, i.e. abstraction, and, in the future, reduction to this initial connection of all possible particular manifestations of the system object, i.e. production of generalization action.

empirical thinking - thinking aimed at understanding the external manifestations of the objects and phenomena under consideration. The main operations of empirical thinking are comparison and classification, which are associated with the actions of abstracting and generalizing the same properties, objects and phenomena. The cognitive product of the implementation of these actions are general ideas (or empirical concepts) about these objects and phenomena. Empirical thinking performs very important and necessary functions in the daily life of people, as well as in sciences that are at the initial stages of their development.

thought process aimed at identifying the essential properties of objects and phenomena of reality, cognizable in the sensual and theoretical. human experience. The manifestations of P. are different: the assignment of an object or phenomenon to a certain category; bringing a special case under general concept; clarification of how a thing is arranged (for example, P. of the design of a c.-l. mechanism, device); clarification of the causes of the phenomenon, its origin and development, its consequences; establishing a logical grounds, from which follows what needs to be understood (for example, mathematical mathematical theorems, proofs, etc.). Special place takes P. speech as necessary condition communication of people, their joint labor activity, assimilation of societies. experience.

P. should not be identified with knowledge, since knowledge is possible without P. and P. without knowledge (“direct discretion”). P. is characterized by a feeling of clear internal. connectedness, organization of the phenomena under consideration. It might be logical. orderliness, a clear "vision" of causal relationships, when previously mechanically enumerated facts are combined into a single logical. system (P. proof of a mathematical theorem, P. formula, law of natural science, etc.). Perhaps a clear feeling by the subject of the coherence and meaningfulness of phenomena and without the discretion of their logical. frame. A person understands the behavior of another person, his thoughts, motives, etc.; on the same basis, "P." behavior of animals and natural phenomena, associated with attributing to them analogies with the behavior of people. Perhaps P. on the basis of empathy (P. of human emotions; indivisible “P. of a person”; P. of ethical and aesthetic phenomena, etc.).

P. is achieved only on the basis of knowledge and skills already obtained in previous experience. At the same time, the subject of P. is not only what is already reflected in human experience, but also the still unknown, the new. P. is based on a complex analytical-synthetic. brain activity. Like all thinks, processes, P. is expressed in verbal form.

P. - the process is subjective, internal and in the final form is not based on k.-l. external actions of a person. However, P. does not acquire such a form immediately. Initially, this is a detailed process of getting acquainted with things and phenomena. Facts ontogenetic. child development show that only through repeated practical. objective actions with things, with constant communication with people, the child achieves the P. properties of things. These actions change significantly and are constantly improved throughout life, especially in the early and preschool years. ages, becoming the most important basis for P. of the features of things and phenomena, the whole variety of their connections and relationships.

High demands on P. are put forward by school. training in connection with the task of mastering the account. material. Solving math., physical, chemical. tasks, revealing the meaning of verbal descriptions, figurative lit. text suggests P. causal and spatio-temporal relationships, functional dependencies between otd. components of the whole being studied. The act of well-known words, phenomena, deeds, etc. occurs immediately, instantly. However, P. is often a process that unfolds over time and goes through a series of stages from the initial vague, undifferentiated P. to more and more clear, clear and differentiated. At the same time, in some cases, the otd. elements of what needs to be understood, and only after that the P. of the whole is achieved; in other cases, the whole is comprehended at once, but the paradigm is still vague, indefinite, and significant analytical is required. work to achieve a clear P., with which each part of the whole would take a certain place. Depending on how significant the relationship is, to-rye are established between the elements of the phenomenon under study, qualitatively different are distinguished. elements - P levels. They depend not only on age stage mental development, but to a greater extent from the organization of the learning process. P. is an active process. It is not enough just to perceive a rule, law, concept, descriptive text and illustrate them with examples. When receiving explanations from the teacher, students need to make their own. work on understanding the material: to understand the structure of its elements, to understand their connection and sequence, the function of each in a holistic structure, etc. to P. of one content or another.

P. is largely determined by prior knowledge and skills. For example, at the beginning classes understanding the conditions of arithmetic. The task is facilitated by the correct reading of its text, a clear selection of what is known and the question posed in it. If the child has poor reading skills, it is difficult for him to do such an analysis and that is why it is difficult to understand the problem.

In the development of P. important role plays checking its correctness. P. is found during the verbal reproduction of the studied material, in action, in the form of applying knowledge to new tasks, etc. However, each of these forms of manifestation of P. taken separately does not necessarily mean the correctness of P. To check P., more than one is usually used , but several dec. criteria. The ability to characterize in words what was comprehended often indicates the correctness of the P. Verbal reproduction of the material can be done without sufficient P. Sometimes, as is known from ped. practice, it is enough to put the question in a slightly different way. - and the student finds it difficult to answer. Therefore, it is important to pose a variety of questions, according to the answers to which one can only judge P. A good criterion for P. verbal material is the ability to retell it in your own words, change the wording of thoughts, redesign the text, convey it in a more concise or expanded form, indicate the idea text, as well as correct practical. actions performed in accordance with P. For example, about P. physical. law is evidenced not only by the ability to retell its content, but also to fulfill laboratory work, solve the problem on this law, apply it to explain the relevant life phenomena.

Verbal expression of comprehended material and practical. actions with him serve not only as a criterion for P., but also contribute to P. Presentation of c.-l. material, the answer to the question, attempts to apply the verbally expressed principle in practice lead to a better P. of this material. For example, solving problems, putting into practice spelling. rules, the student understands them better. An important role in the development of P. is played by the combination of words with visual images, examples illustrating general provisions. It is especially important for students to come up with examples on their own. Such techniques as drawing up a text plan, highlighting the sequence of its parts, etc. also contribute to P.

The more or less developed process of learning the objective content of the material being studied is the most important link in assimilation. P. gives knowledge and skills a meaningful character, which distinguishes them from knowledge based on “me-chanich. memorization."

Great Definition

Incomplete definition ↓

understanding
-
1) the ability to comprehend the meaning and meaning of something and the result achieved due to this;
2) a specific state of consciousness caused by external or internal influences, fixed by the subject as confidence in the adequacy of the recreated ideas to the content of the influence.
Without P. as a special state of the subject, it is impossible to continue communication, coordinate actions, and any other meaningful actions and influences. P. is characterized by a feeling of clear internal coherence and organization of the phenomena under consideration. It can be a logical order, a clear "vision" of cause-and-effect relationships. The role of language in writing has been studied most thoroughly (in particular, in writing texts and oral messages in natural and artificial languages). TO psychological mechanisms Items include identification, projection, social perception (see social perception), empathy, insight, intuition, causal attribution (see causal attribution).

Brief psychological dictionary. - Rostov-on-Don: PHOENIX. L.A. Karpenko, A.V. Petrovsky, M. G. Yaroshevsky. 1998 .

understanding
1. The ability to comprehend the meaning and meaning of something and the result achieved due to this.
2. A specific state of consciousness caused by external or internal influences, fixed by the subject as confidence in the adequacy of the recreated ideas and the content of the influences.
Without understanding as a special state of the subject, it is impossible to continue communication, coordinate actions and, in general, any meaningful actions and influences. There is a special science of understanding - hermeneutics, the art and theory of text interpretation.
Understanding should not be identified with knowledge - the ability to assimilate and reproduce the amount of information, the correctness of which a person does not doubt - for knowledge without understanding and understanding without knowledge, "direct discretion" is possible.
Understanding is characterized by a feeling of a clear internal coherence, organization of the phenomena under consideration. This can be a logical order, a clear “vision” of cause-and-effect relationships, when previously mechanically enumerated facts are combined into a single logical system (understanding the proof of a theorem, understanding a formula, natural law, etc.). It is possible to have a clear sense of the connectedness and meaningfulness of phenomena even without considering their logical framework. In this case, the phenomenon acts as directed towards a certain goal comparable to the goals of the subject: a person understands the behavior of another person, his thoughts, motives, etc.; in a similar way, it is possible to understand socio-cultural, including historical events, written monuments; on the same basis, it is possible to understand the behavior of animals and natural phenomena, associated with their anthropomorphization, attributing to them analogies with human behavior.
It is also possible to understand on the basis of empathy, identification: understanding the emotions of another person; indivisible "understanding of man"; understanding of ethical and aesthetic phenomena, etc. The result of understanding - meaning - is subjectively unique for the subject, but involuntary, because understanding is ultimately determined by socio-cultural conditions that are independent of the individual.
The role of language in understanding has been studied in particular detail - in particular, in the understanding of texts and oral messages in natural and artificial languages. The psychological mechanisms of human understanding include identification, projection, social perception, empathy, insight, intuition, and causal attribution.

Dictionary practical psychologist. - M.: AST, Harvest. S. Yu. Golovin. 1998 .

understanding
Category. cognitive process.
Specificity. Identification of essential features of objects of the surrounding reality, determining their occurrence or reproduction. It is carried out, as a rule, through symbolic modeling in speech.

Psychological Dictionary. THEM. Kondakov. 2000 .

UNDERSTANDING
(English) understanding,comprehending) is a term that is broad in meaning and scope of application and does not have a strictly fixed content and scope. Let us note some of the most frequent and important for psychology meanings of the word “P.”.
1. The ability of a person to comprehend, comprehend the content, meaning, meaning of something. In this sense, O. Mandelstam gave his assessments to 3 poets: “Pasternak is a man of understanding. I am a person of exceptional understanding. Goethe is a man of all understanding.
2. Cognitive process of comprehension of content, meaning; this process m. successful or unsuccessful, independent or dependent, fast or slow, voluntary and conscious or involuntary and intuitive.
3. The product of the P. process is the very interpretation of something (text, behavior, dreams, etc.). In this sense, right and wrong, deep and superficial, complete and incomplete P.
4. P. as one of the goals of knowledge and learning.
As a special process and method of cognition, P. was considered by the founder understanding psychology and the culturological school of the "history of the spirit" V.Dilthey. Contrasting P. as a method of cognition in the sciences of the spirit with methods of cognition in the sciences of nature, Dilthey gave a purely semantic interpretation of P.: “P. extends from understanding baby talk to understanding Hamlet or the Critique of Pure Reason. In stone, marble, sounds of music, gestures, words, works of art, in behavior, economic procedures and legal institutions, the same human spirit is expressed, which requires its own interpretation. P. is considered by him as a process of knowing 1) the inner world of another on the basis of external signs (behavior), 2) oneself on the basis of introspection, and 3) culture, including written documents, with the help of the art of interpretation ( hermeneutics, exegesis). “The ability to understand reality, natural and social, to understand other people and oneself, the texts of culture - this ability underlies the existence of a person” (A. A. Brudny, 1998).
P. is not only a method, but also an object of knowledge (research), and it is very many-sided. The variety of forms and methods of P. in the human world is due to the real diversity languages and texts. The language of movements and actions corresponds not only to operational, but also to emotional and objective meanings; the language of images - objective and even non-objective, irrational (for example, in dreams) meanings; verbal language - conceptual or conceptual meanings; language expressive movements(facial expressions, pantomimes) can correspond to operational, subject, and conceptual meanings. Their interweaving in talented pantomime evokes an emotional response and generates aesthetic meanings. Objects, utensils, tools, understood as a text, primarily have a purpose (functional value). However, P. their appointment is impossible without the operational and objective meanings that develop when they are used.
In order for P. to happen, the text spoken or read in any language must be perceived, and its meanings comprehended, that is, translated into one's own language meanings. It is far from easy to prove or show to another that P. happened, which is well illustrated, for example, by misunderstandings in exams. To do this, it is necessary to carry out the reverse procedure for the meaning of the constructed meanings. If you put together all the attempts to interpret Hamlet, you get a decent library, but the attempts nevertheless continue. Difficulties are connected with the fact that emotional meanings and experiences are difficult to verbalize, they seem to resist conceptualization, their conceptual design.
In writings M.M.Bakhtin P. literary text is presented as a complex and creative process: “To understand the text as it was understood by the author of this text. But P. m. and should be the best. Powerful and deep creativity is largely unconscious and multi-meaningful. In P. it is replenished by consciousness and revealed by the variety of meanings. That. P. completes the text: it is active and creative. Creative P. continues creativity. It makes sense to listen to this testament of the outstanding thinker, who did a great deal of work, the genius of P. Dostoevsky.
P. oral speech arises already on the 2nd year of life. Very conditional inside early age distinguish between the stage of pre-speech (from 1 to 1.5 years) and the stage of speech development (from 1.5 to 3 years). In the 3rd year, the child's speech activity sharply increases during play activities, including individual ones, as well as in the process of communicating with an adult. On the 3-4th year of life, the child enters the 2nd period of questions (the age of "why"), for the first time he awakens the consciousness of the incomprehensibility of what he perceives, and arises need for P.(J. Baldwin, WITH.L.Rubinstein). The productivity of misunderstanding is related to the fact that it entails the search for meaning. The points of development and growth of a person (and culture) are precisely in the delta of understanding-misunderstanding. (V.P. Zinchenko.)

Big psychological dictionary. - M.: Prime-EVROZNAK. Ed. B.G. Meshcheryakova, acad. V.P. Zinchenko. 2003 .

Synonyms:

well-being, understanding of God, mutual understanding, perception, perception, perception, all-understanding, unanimity, knowledge, interpretation, comprehension, marking, dimness, understanding of the world, opinion, insight, comprehension, comprehension, awareness, awareness, evaluation, cognition, comprehension, comprehension, representation, insight, insight, penetration, unraveling, understanding, cracking, reasoning, unraveling, self-consciousness, ingenuity, consciousness, consideration, judgment, interpretation, catching, understanding, assimilation, truncation, grasping, understanding, feeling

Antonyms:

• misunderstanding