S. L. RUBINSTEIN
Sergey Leonidovich Rubinstein is a well-known Soviet psychologist and philosopher, one of the founders of the activity approach in psychology, the author of the fundamental work "Fundamentals of General psychology". One of the important methodological foundations of this work is the consideration of consciousness and personality from the standpoint of the principle of development.
In his opinion, defining for the person as a whole are social, but not biological laws of its development and therefore studying of aspects of the person, including consciousness and self-consciousness, has to occur not abstractly, and in real life conditionality of "real live individuals".
Organic life can only be a prerequisite of self-consciousness, not its source. This source, according to Rubinstein, is in the developing real independence of man, an indicator of which is the change in his relationships with others. Self-consciousness appears in the process of development of human consciousness in the course of its becoming an independent individual. Independence in its development goes through several stages.
The first stage is associated with the mastery of their own bodily functions and the emergence of voluntary movements in the process of performing the first objective actions.
The second stage-the beginning of self-walking. At this stage, the child becomes a relatively independent initiator of various actions and already realizes that he stands out from the environment. With this realization is connected the first conception of the personality of his "I". At the same time, a person comes to the knowledge of his own "I" only through relations with people around him: "there is no "I" outside the relationship to "You", and there is no self-consciousness outside the awareness of another person as an independent subject".
The next essential stage in the formation of the "I" − the mastery of speech as a new form of consciousness and thinking. Speech significantly increases the impact of the child and leads to even greater changes: from the object of influence, he becomes a subject who has the opportunity to direct at will the actions of others and through them to influence the world.
In adolescence, the approach of entering into an independent life puts before the individual the task of setting goals and determining the direction of their activities, which requires the formation of a holistic worldview and intensive development of the ability to think independently. At this stage, there is an awareness of their personal identity and the transition to a more Mature criteria of self-esteem.
Once a person has entered into an independent life, the development of his personality and self-consciousness is increasingly becoming his conscious choice. If a person as a result of a lot of conscious work develops a holistic worldview and reasonable beliefs, such a person, according to Rubinstein, finds his face and becomes a person in the full sense of the word. At the same time, the personality in its real being is what, as a result of the awareness of oneself as a subject, man calls his "I". The " I " is the personality as a whole, in the unity of all aspects of being, reflected in self-consciousness.
Considering the question of what exactly includes a person's personality, Rubinstein talks about the bodily and spiritual components, which do not exist separately, but are two parties, entering into the personality only in its unity and internal relationship. The internal mental content of the character, ability, temperament, there are also components of personality. Feelings and experiences are recognized as their own only if they "entered the history of the inner life" and were decisive for life and activity. As for the thought, the person recognizes only that which he deeply and comprehensively thought over, "mastered", i.e. the thought which is result of conscious own activity.
S. L. Rubinstein argues with W. James that man is what he has, putting forward the idea that his man considers not so much appropriated objects as the matter to which he devoted himself and the social whole to which he relates himself: "for us man is determined primarily not by his attitude to his property, but by his attitude to his work. Therefore, his self-esteem is determined by what he does for society as a social individual. It is a conscious, social attitude towards work is the backbone on which rebuilds the entire personality psychology; it also becomes the basis and core of her self-consciousness " [2, p. 504].
Self-consciousness, according to Rubinstein, is not an original given, it is the result of personal development, during which a person not only acquires life experience, but also rethinks his life as a whole. This reinterpretation determines the motivation and meaning of the tasks to be solved in life and forms the basic innermost content of the "I".
