Cultural and psychological interpretation of the concepts of "development" and "life world"

L.S. Vygotsky distinguished two concepts of development: as an organic process ("evolutionary"), assuming in terms of thinking a hypothesis about the whole (in fact, this is a biological, natural science understanding, where the whole is an organism) and revolutionary development how to rebuild the psyche with the help of signs. In the case of a revolutionary interpretation of development, biological reality is pushed into the background, and formation in two variants comes to the fore ? in the field of education and at the same time as mastering one's own behavior. Describing the evolutionary type of development, Vygotsky writes: "The first sign is that with every change, the substrate underlying the developing phenomenon remains the same... Unity as the constancy of the entire development process, the internal connection between the past stage of development and the change that has occurred ? this is the second main feature that is included in the concept of development" ^{[1, p. 149]}.

And here's how Vygotsky, objecting to some psychologists, explains the revolutionary type of development. This is also a development, he says, however, "of a revolutionary type, in other words, abrupt and fundamental changes in the very type of development, the driving forces of progress themselves, and it is well known that the presence of revolutionary changes along with evolutionary ones is not such a sign that would exclude the possibility of applying the concept of development to this process" ^{[1, p. 151]} "Central to this process, as studies show, is the functional use of a sign or word as a means by which a teenager subordinates his own mental operations to his power, with which he masters the course of his own mental processes and directs their activities to solve the task facing him" ^{[2, p. 132]}

From the point of view of Andrey Puzyrei, the concept of revolutionary development, if brought to its logical end, denies both the evolutionary plan and the development itself. "Development here," writes Bubbles, "therefore occurs only to the extent that some action is performed aimed at development, that is, here "something" develops due to the fact that it is "developed"... This is a “process" that has an indispensable “artificial” component ? the component of our special action. We should be talking here about a special kind of actions to restructure or reorganize the psychological apparatus or its modes of operation. Once again: such actions can be called “psychotechnical" actions. The human psyche itself, according to L.S. Vygotsky, does not have its own laws of development and, moreover, does not have development at all. The mental and spiritual development of a person always occurs due to special, specially organized (developed in history and fixed in culture in a variety of sometimes very unexpected and exotic forms) artificial systems of psychotechnical action, i.e. actions on the psyche, i.e. actions to master and change the psyche through the use of special artificial symbolic means" ^{[5, pp. 85-86]}

It is unlikely that Vygotsky would have agreed with such an interpretation, since, judging by his works, he believed that development has both sides: this is both the process of formation with the help of signs and organic change. In the work "Psyche, consciousness, unconscious" Vygotsky writes: "Dialectical psychology does not mix mental and physiological processes, it recognizes the irreducible qualitative originality of the psyche, it only asserts that the processes are one. Thus, we come to the recognition of peculiar psychophysiological unified processes representing the highest forms of human behavior, which we propose to call psychological processes, in contrast to mental processes and by analogy with what is called physiological processes" ^{[3, p. 138]}.

Another thing is that we do not find a theoretical explanation of the connection between these two sides of development, especially a description of the mechanism of development containing both of these sides, in Vygotsky. However, if we proceed from observations and experience, it seems that, indeed, changes in human development are twofold ? resembling an evolutionary process and a revolutionary one. There is also a culturological approach that allows us to think about and explain their relationship. The cultural discourse distinguishes between the changes that take place within a culture when it has already developed, and the cardinal changes (transformations) that occur when cultures change. For example, within the framework of archaic, animistic culture, ideas about the soul (man, animals, natural elements, social phenomena) certainly changed ^{[6, pp. 99-115]}. Man animated more and more phenomena, and the characteristics of souls became more complicated. Nevertheless, the idea of the soul remained central. During the formation of the next culture, the "Ancient Kingdoms", the idea of the soul was pushed into the background by another ? the idea of the gods, which also changed (the number and types of gods increased, man attributed more and more functions to them) ^{[6, pp. 115-123]}.

A similar process is observed in ontogenesis. In childhood, which the author considered culturologically (I show that this is the first "culture of life"), the child learns the world through schemes and games. Schemes allow the child to solve the problems he faces (to understand what is happening), to master the game and also to understand the adult world. The schemes and the game set the reality and events, living through which the child develops. Here is one example from the book by K.Chukovsky's "From two to five".

"Walking down the street with his aunt, a two-and-a-half-year-old boy stops at a bookstall.

The seller asks:

? Can you read?

? I can.

The boy is given a book:

? Read it.

Imitating his grandmother, he suddenly grabs his pocket:

"I forgot my glasses at home."

In this case , the scheme "I forgot my glasses at home" allows you to understand yourself and explain to the seller why the boy refused to read. And the staged scene is a kind of game: here is an imitation of an adult and a game convention for my aunt and myself. And do not think that the child is deceiving someone, he creates a reality that allows him to avoid reading (to save, as the Japanese say, his face) ^{[7, p. 44]}.

 So during the whole period of childhood, the number and quality of schemes are growing (they are increasingly being created and selected based on experience) and games are constantly becoming more complicated [7. pp. 17-21, 33-46]. But only with the formation of the next culture of life ("teenage"), when a child goes to school and his personality begins to take shape, "schematization" obeys rational thinking, and games go to another sphere (leisure), where they also radically change. 

Shouldn't the concept of development then be attributed only to changes occurring in the established culture (in ordinary culture, if we are talking about phylogeny, or in the culture of life, for ontogenesis)? At the same time, if the transition from one culture to another is analyzed, then in this case the concepts of "completion" and "becoming" are more suitable (one culture ends, seized by a crisis, becomes a new one; childhood ends, teenage culture becomes). The process of change, consisting of both development and formation (completion), can be called "evolution. Let us now consider several specific cases (cases) in which there were changes in the consciousness and behavior of a child and a young person in order to understand what characteristics we can attribute to the formation and development.   

The first case (an example of development within the framework of childhood culture). In the same book "From two to five" there is also such a case:

"I saw a huge thermometer on Nevsky:  ? The street is sick." 

Scheme: "the street is sick." It becomes clear why a thermometer is hanging on the street; then you can call a doctor to the sick street" ^{[7, pp.42-43]}.          It is clear that the parents explained to the girl that the huge thermometer shows not the disease, but the weather, and also that the street is not a person, it was built by builders. What can be attributed to development here?

Firstly, the girl found out that the street is not a person, it was built, and a huge thermometer shows the weather. Secondly, she adjusted her schemes, which involved building new items. The street is now something that resembles a game of cubes or a constructor, and a huge thermometer is actually an incomprehensible thing (where does the weather have an armpit to put a thermometer?). In the girl's life world, the street was now a completely meaningful thing, but the huge thermometer was only partially, because now it became unclear what the weather was. Having received an answer from her parents that the weather is the seasons, cold or hot, wind or quiet, and there is a tinted liquid in the thermometer that rises or falls under the influence of the weather, the girl was able to turn the thermometer into her life world. At the same time, it has not changed dramatically, since new subjects have not shaken the main "whales" on which this world stands ? the sphere of Law, mastering the world with the help of schemes and games, mastering the simplest tools and techniques, expanding the field of knowledge ^{[7, pp. 33-46]}.

The second case (an example of personality formation). "Let's turn to one of K. Jung's teenage memories. One day on a beautiful summer day in 1887, fascinated by the universe, he thought:                          

“The world is beautiful and the church is beautiful, and the God who created all this is sitting far away in the blue sky on a golden throne and... Here my thoughts stopped and I felt suffocated. I was numb and remembered only one thing: Not to think now! Something terrible is coming” ^{[16, p. 46]}.

(After three hard days and sleepless nights from internal struggle and experiences, Jung still allowed himself to think out the idea he had started and such a seemingly harmless thought).

“I gathered," he writes, "all my courage, as if I had suddenly decided to immediately jump into the flames of hell, and gave the thought the opportunity to appear. I saw the cathedral in front of me, the blue sky. God sits on his golden throne, high above the world ? and from under the throne a piece of feces falls on the sparkling new roof of the cathedral, breaks through it, everything collapses, the walls of the cathedral break into pieces.

That's it! I felt an unspeakable relief. Instead of the expected curse, grace descended upon me, and with it an unspeakable bliss that I had never known... I understood many things that I did not understand before, I understood what my father did not understand ? the will of God... My father accepted the biblical commandments as a guide, he believed in God, as the Bible prescribed and as his father taught him. But he did not know the living God, who stands, free and omnipotent, stands above the Bible and above the Church, who calls people to become equally free. God, for the sake of fulfilling His Will, can force the father to abandon all his views and beliefs. Testing human courage, God forces us to abandon traditions, no matter how sacred they may be” ^{[16, p. 50]}.

We have a complex scheme in front of us, which Jung went out for three days. It sets a new understanding of God and a setting for practical action – a break with the Creator and the father. The first question that arises here is why such an interpretation of thoughts is following the will of God, and not, on the contrary, heresy and denial of God? After all, Jung agreed to the point that God forced him to deny both the church and the sacred religious traditions themselves. The second question is, why does Jung actually give such an interpretation to his thoughts? The material of memories allows us to answer both questions.

At that time, young Jung was preoccupied with two problems. First. Relationship with the father, a hereditary clergyman. According to Jung, the father dogmatically fulfilled his duty: having religious doubts, he did not try to resolve them. The second problem is to clarify the attitude towards the Church, in which Jung for some reason became disillusioned after the first communion. A little later in the episode under consideration, these problems were resolved by Jung cardinally: he breaks spiritually with both the father and the Church.        

“I no longer found God in this religion. I knew that I would never be able to take part in this ceremony again. The church is a place where I won't go anymore. Everything is dead there, there is no life there. I felt sorry for my father. I realized the tragedy of his profession and life. He was struggling with death, the existence of which he could not admit. A chasm opened up between him and me, it was boundless, and I did not see the possibility of ever overcoming it" ^{[16, p. 64; 7, p. 49-51]}.

The transformation that took place with Jung can be divided into several stages. The first is the crystallization of a problematic situation (disillusionment with the church and dissatisfaction with the father), which they have not yet realized, although it is probably felt in the form of some incomprehensible tension and discontent. The second stage is the reaction of the psyche, which resulted in a fantasy, realizing which Jung is mortally frightened. And there was something, because the content of the fantasy looked like blasphemy, God-fighting, which for a believing boy, which Jung undoubtedly was, threatened with punishment (and suddenly, for example, God would strike him with lightning).

As follows from my theory of dreams, such a fantasy can be attributed to a "waking dream" ^{[8, pp. 371-374]}; the tension and discontent that developed at the first stage programmed and constituted events indicating the direction of resolving a problematic situation, namely a break with the church and the father. But since Jung could not think of such an act yet, he was simply afraid of the possible punishment of heaven.

At the third stage, for three days and nights, Jung builds schemes that allow him to comprehend the fantasy that has visited him. At the same time, relying on them, he constructs a new objectivity: on the one hand, God as a kind of revolutionary who can destroy even his house, the church, on the other ? himself as another, also as a kind of revolutionary, ready to break with the father and the church (God "calls people to become just as free").  Finally, the fifth stage is the translation of the idea into implementation, i.e. the beginning of the act.

Thinking through this case allows us to introduce two important concepts ? "the life world" and "the construction of a new objectivity". According to Husserl, "the life world consists of the sum of immediate evidences that define the forms of orientation and human behavior. Such evidences act as a pre-philosophical, pre-scientific, primary layer of any consciousness in logical terms, being the basis, the condition for the possibility of conscious acceptance of theoretical attitudes by an individual. These conditions of possibility coincide with the domain of well-known representations, which have the character of "automatic" unconscious regulators of meaning… Within the boundaries of the invariants of the life world, something arises that can be identified with the sphere of the subjective" ^[4].

For us, however, no less important is the characteristic that allows us to consider the life world not only a necessary condition for understanding scientific positions, but also, indeed, a reality in which there are objects significant for the individual. In addition, we will proceed from the fact that the life world can be preserved, despite the fact that more and more new objects are included in it, but sometime there comes a period of restructuring of the life world (new objects are created, other relations between them are formed).   

If we rely on the analysis of the second case, generalizing it, then the construction of a new objectivity can be conceived as follows. Initially, an unintelligible phenomenon appears in the life world (for example, Jung's fantasy or the image of a weather thermometer). On its basis, under two conditions, a new subject is formed: first, the individual manages to invent a scheme or create some other semiotic construction (metaphor, symbol, narrative, etc.), and secondly, compare the new subject with others for similarities and differences (this work, as a rule, is not realized). As a result, the object enters the reality of the life world. I will explain the latter with another example.

The third case (an example of constructing a new object in childhood). "I remember a dream I had during the war near Kuibyshev, when I was five or six years old. My mother worked day and night at an aircraft factory and only occasionally snatched a few hours a month to visit me and my brother in kindergarten. But almost always she brought something delicious-cocoa in a thermos, or chocolate or something else. And so I stubbornly began to have a dream with my mother and delicious things to boot. It is clear how upset I was when I woke up: there was no mom, no cocoa. Finally, in order not to be deceived and not to be upset unnecessarily, I decided to check myself: pinch my ear if it hurts, I don't sleep, if it doesn't hurt, I sleep. And that same night I had another dream.  Mom arrives, I pull my ear, make sure I'm awake, drink cocoa and then... I wake up. Then everything is clear. The power of grief has firmly imprinted this dream in my memory. I also remembered about how I reasoned.

Since there was no one and nothing after the dream, I decided, it means "there is neither mom, nor chocolate, nor me in the dream." And therefore, "I won't feel pain if I pull my ear," unlike how I feel pain when I'm not sleeping. These are the two schemes I built, and the second one was not quite right" ^{[7, p. 45]}. In addition, I stopped understanding what a "mom in a dream" is, it seems that I see and hear her, but at the same time she is not there.

Probably, this paradoxical phase is usually present at the first stage, so God in Jung's fantasy was completely incomprehensible at first. The second step is the construction of a new object, which involves understanding it as an object and comparing it with certain objects of the life world. So, I did not deny that "mom in a dream" is my mom (i.e. I put a new item), and comparing this mom with the usual one, I realized that "mom in a dream" is seriously different from the usual one (she disappears when I wake up, and it turns out I didn't drink cocoa and didn't eat chocolate). But it is important that now the "mom in a dream" has found its rightful place in my life world ? this is the mom from my dreams. It turns out that this objectification entailed the first distinction between the realities of wakefulness and dreams.      

The fourth case (the cycle of the existence of the life world, based on the material of the novel "Resurrection" by L.N. Tolstoy). "The main character of the novel, Prince Dmitry Ivanovich Nekhludoff, while still a student, is visiting his aunts and seduces their 16-year-old half-maid, half-educated Katyusha Maslova. Having given her a hundred-ruble piece of paper on the last day, he leaves. Katyusha finds out that she is pregnant, leaves her young ladies-owners, and then her fate is very sad. The child dies and after a series of life vicissitudes, Maslova finds herself in a house of tolerance. Seven years later, she is being tried on suspicion of poisoning the merchant Smelkov, who spent the whole day before and the last night before his death with Maslova in a house of tolerance. Nekhludoff is horrified to recognize the girl he seduced in the suspect. Although Maslova was innocent, a miscarriage of justice leads to her being sentenced to hard labor. During the trial and after it, there is a struggle in Nekhludoff's soul, which ends with the prince's decision to change his life and atone for Katyusha, which Nekhludoff does. At the same time, a real spiritual rebirth takes place with him" ^[9].    

This is how Tolstoy characterizes the state of Nekhludoff's life world during the seduction period. "In Nekhludoff, as in all people, there were two people. One is a spiritual person who seeks the good for himself only that which would be good for other people, and the other is an animal person who seeks the good only for himself and is ready to sacrifice the good of the whole world for this good. During this period of his madness of egoism, caused in him by the Petersburg and military life, this animal man dominated him and completely crushed the spiritual man…The animal man who lived in him not only raised his head now, but also trampled under his feet the spiritual man he was on his first visit and even this morning in church, and this terrible animal man now ruled alone in his soul…He stood looking at Katyusha's pensive face, tormented by inner work, and he felt sorry for her, but, strangely, this pity only increased his lust for her. Lust possessed them all" ^{[12; 13; 14]}.

However, in the following years, Tolstoy shows, Nekhludoff experienced almost unconscious changes: he became increasingly disillusioned with the society around him, and with his values. The evolution of Nekhludoff's personality was undermining his life world, but so far he did not understand this. At the trial, this world literally collapsed, the cycle of its existence ended.

"The difference between him as he was then and as he was now was enormous: it was the same, if not greater, than the difference between Katyusha in church and that prostitute who was drunk with a merchant, whom they tried this morning. Then he was a cheerful, free man, before whom endless possibilities opened up — now he felt trapped on all sides in the snares of a stupid, empty, purposeless, insignificant life, from which he saw no way out, and even for the most part did not want to get out. He remembered how he had once prided himself on his directness, how he had once made it a rule to always tell the truth and was really truthful, and how he was now all in a lie -in the most terrible lie, in a lie recognized by all people around him as the truth. And there was no way out of this lie, at least, he did not see any way out of this lie. And he lived in it, got used to it, basked in it" ^[6].          Nekhludoff decides to repent and change his life (this can be understood as the first stage of the formation of a new life world in his mind). "How to make amends for your sin before Katyusha? You can't leave it like that. "You can't leave the woman I loved and be satisfied that I will pay money to a lawyer and save her from hard labor, which she does not deserve, to make amends with money, as I then thought I did what I should, giving her money."

And he vividly remembered the moment when he caught up with her in the corridor, shoved money at her and ran away from her... - Only a scoundrel, a scoundrel could do that! And I, I am that scoundrel and that scoundrel! – he spoke out loud. "Really, really," he stopped walking, "am I really, am I really a scoundrel? Who else? – he answered himself…

"I will break this lie that binds me, no matter what it costs me, and I will admit everything and tell everyone the truth and do the truth," he said resolutely aloud to himself…

He prayed, asked God to help him, to inhabit him and purify him, and yet what he asked for has already been accomplished. The God who lived in him woke up in his consciousness. He felt like him, and therefore felt not only freedom, cheerfulness and joy of life, but also felt the full power of goodness. Everything, all the best that a person could do, he now felt able to do" ^{[10; 11]}.        

Here Tolstoy not only described the cycle of existence of the life world of his hero, but also the constitution of his personality by him anew. At the same time, Tolstoy tries to show, the process of Nekhludoff's transformation became possible because he believed in God. In other words, faith in God was the invariant foundation of his life world. Tolstoy asserts the same thing about himself in The Confessions.

"I also realized," Tolstoy writes, "that no matter how unreasonable and ugly the answers given by faith are, they have the advantage of introducing into each answer the relation of the finite to the infinite, without which there can be no answer. No matter how I put the question: how do I live? ? answer: according to the law of God. ? What will come out of my real life? ? Eternal torment or eternal bliss. ? What is the meaning, not destroyed by death? ? Union with the infinite God, paradise.

 So, in addition to reasonable knowledge, which seemed to me the only one before, I was inevitably led to the recognition that all living humanity has some other knowledge, unreasonable - faith, which makes it possible to live. All the unreasonableness of faith remained for me the same as before, but I could not but admit that it alone gives humanity answers to the questions of life and, consequently, the opportunity to live" ^[15].

What does all this mean? Isn't it about the fact that the foundation of the life world is set by ideas like God, nature, life, I, people, love, etc.? It is these "immediate realities" that do not change at the end of the cycle of the life world, and if they are rebuilt, then very rarely, and this happens under the influence of a cardinal change in life or a deep existential crisis.

In which cases, analyzing changes, it is possible to do without the concepts of the life world and the construction of objectivity, and in which cases it is impossible? If, for example, we are talking about the concept of formation, then these concepts are not necessary. Development here is understood as one for all and the result of formation. If the student's personality is recognized and different types of personalities are relied on, then different development trajectories have to be recognized. In this case, it is impossible to explain the development, considering the consciousness of different students to be the same. It is difficult to do without such concepts in all those cases when it is necessary to take into account different types of personality (psychological assistance, rehabilitation, building life scenarios, working with staff, some management tasks, etc.)