Leonard Ural: Живой журнал Леонарда Уральского

Psychology: Past, Present and Future. XXI Century - the Century of Psychology

         Great explorer of the 20th century Sigmund Freud, Sigmund - Wikipedia  gave the world a new approach to the study of the mysterious world of man - Psychoanalysis (Psychoanalysis). Being a doctor by profession - psychiatrist, all of his conclusions, he built on the basis of study of the medical history of individual patients and the facts of their biographies, as in the description of a psychological portrait of Leonardo da Vinci's "Leonardo Da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood" And as a great practice in the chosen path has reached perfection and recognition during his lifetime.

         Worldwide recognition, in my opinion, happened because of two reasons. The first is due to the need of people to understand himself, which leads to an interest in psychology.

         Second, Freud had a unique ability to "link the causes" of mental illness, the events in the life of the patient. Since most significant events related to sexual behavior of patients, he concluded that the sexual nature of human mental activity, so-called psychosexual phases of development.

         He obtained empirical finding it, and especially his "exalted" followers extended to all human behavior. It is thanks to Freud in psychology prevailed "biological nature" psychological functions (Oedipus complex - Wikipedia)  and Electra complex - Wikipedia). One theory is the biological nature of the system-vector psychology (Vector Systems Psychology), where the human mind is expanded to "anal", "skin", and the other six components related to the senses of man (according to Freud: oral, anal, falicheskaya, latent and genital).
         The fundamental fallacy of Freud and his many followers is that they are trying to link the psychological characteristics of a person with biological differences, which tend to be descriptive. But in biology narrative timely and successfully completed the classification of Linnaeus in the XVIII century. However, modern psychology operates only with a single generally accepted classification of Hippocrates (Hippocrates) from the IV century BC, "Choleric - Sanguine - Melancholy - Phlegmatic" (temperament). And it is at this level really is today modern psychology XXI century.
         However, the unjustly forgotten and (secretly) into oblivion achieve contemporary of Freud - Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (Carl Jung - Wikipedia), who first proposed to consider the fundamental features that define the basic human psychological characteristics. In my view, this is tantamount to the discovery of Mendel's discovery (Gregor Mendel) fundamental traits in genetics.

         Try to compare the approaches used by them.

Mendel (Mendel's Laws): "Peas is either green or yellow. No middle ground. Pea is either smooth or wrinkled." Green color or smooth surface are distinctive - fundamental features which distinguish one species from another pea. Other properties, the length of the stem, etc. was not significant for the identification of species.

Jung (Jung's concept of psychological types): a person or an introvert or extrovert. Or logic, or ethics, the third also not given. Such pairs of fundamental features he was two more than the above two pairs: rationality, irrationality, intuition-sensing. On the basis of the classification proposed by Young principles of his followers was proposed classification of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), and classification in socionics (Socionics) consisting of 16 different personality types (n = 2⁴ = 16).
         Unfortunately, Jung did not have time to find all the basic features, although it was an attempt to study male and female (Anima and animus). Unfortunately, he did not recognize the "Masculinity - Femininity" as a fundamental feature (Sexual compatibility matrix), proposed on the base of ancient Chinese philosophers' Yang - Yin "( Yin and yang). Moreover, it did not try to understand the meaning of psychological characteristics, proposed by Hippocrates to describe the reaction of the individual's psychological impact. He also made no attempt to identify other fundamental features responsible for a person's behavior, such as honesty and dishonesty (http://leonardural.livejournal.com/2905.html)

         However, Carl Jung took the first step and started the modern psychology, offering basic features to describe the psychological characteristics.
         For genuine flowering of modern psychology as a science is to identify relevant genetic description, responsible for the definition of a fundamental attribute (The Theory of Psychological Systems)

         I hope it will happen in our lifetime, and the XXI century will be a century heyday of psychology as a science. Theoretical foundations are proposed, it remains to find the experimental genetic confirmation.
          And it is the task of our century.

Leonard Urals

03/09/2012, Ufa