Crises of age-related development are the phenomena that every person faces in life. They are manifested in the transformation of people's attitudes to the surrounding reality, psychological changes in connection with development and improvement at a certain age stage.
Most often, age crises are characterized by negative changes manifested in stress and depression.
Most people successfully cope with these stages in life, reaching a new, more productive level of development. However, in some cases, you may need the help of a specialist who can help you cope with the causes and consequences of stressful situations.
Specificity of the definition
Psychologists' opinions on nature age crises are diametrically divided.
Some believe that periods of crisis are a necessary component of physiological and psychological changes. Without them, personal development cannot occur, because during the course of a person's life, the system of values changes, the view of society and oneself.
Other psychologists claim that the emergence of crises in a person's life is associated with mental disorders. That is, the manifestations of these stages are ranked as psychological diseases that must be treated.
In any case, you need to understand that the time of the onset of the age crisis and the severity of its manifestation are individual for each person, although psychologists identify conditional age limits.
The well-known psychologist and pedagogical leader L. S. Vygotsky argued that periods of crisis are not only a normal and natural state of a person due to changes in physical and psychological factors, but also a very useful phenomenon, with the help of which a person can move to a new stage of his development. With their help, a person develops volitional qualities of character, expands his personal and social horizons. However, the teacher emphasizes that such an impact on the personality will occur if the behavior of others has a competent pedagogical and psychological approach.
If a person is ready for changes, then there will be no problems with the psychological state. However, people often feel sorry for themselves, not wanting to change anything in their lives. In this case, we can say that they themselves provoke the onset of such depressive states, from which only a specialist will help.
Manifestation traits
A clear understanding is needed that periods of crisis are stages in a person's life when not only character traits are formed, but important decisions that often change fate are made. After all, the word "crisis" is translated from Greek as "fork in the road." A person chooses his life path, environment, interests.
Changes in the consciousness of people are taking place against the background of the usual way of life. What begins to happen to a person is at first incomprehensible and frightening to him. A constant feeling of discomfort haunts, makes it impossible to feel confident in the future. The feeling that you need to change something in life and change yourself does not leave.
At this time, there are constant conflict situations with family, friends and colleagues. A person expresses dissatisfaction with everything that surrounds him. This happens due to internal throwing, unwillingness to accept reality, search for ideal solutions.
During a crisis, it is important for a person to find the only correct solution that will help him change for the better. Otherwise, he cannot do without the help of a specialist.
All development crises are characterized by the following provisions:
- The crisis period causes complex psychological changes to which every person is subject. This must be accepted, using all the available potential to get out of the current situation;
- The changes in consciousness that have appeared are not the end, but the beginning of a new path. All accumulated contradictions for a certain period of time come out and require a solution;
- There is a way out of any situation, you just need to make an effort to realize your hidden potential;
- Having correctly “survived” the turning point, a person becomes stronger, more confident and more interesting. He gains self-confidence, develops a comfortable lifestyle.
Various crises in humans are based not only on physiological changes associated with age. Critical stages can arise for various reasons related to personal life, professional field or health condition. These are personal crises. Several factors affect their appearance: 
- Physical or psychological trauma;
- Formation of personal qualities and character;
- The impact of others: peers, adults, any significant people for a person;
- Desire to achieve the ideal in all areas of activity;
- Abrupt changes in the course of life that is habitual for a person.
During a turning point, a person always has a certain choice that he must realize and accept. The success of a person's future life will depend on the correctness of this choice.
Characteristics
Psychologists identify "natural" turning points that occur after reaching a certain age in all people.
Crises and age-related changes are closely related. The turning points are of particular importance in childhood and adolescence. At this time, there is an intensive formation of personal qualities, character traits and attitude to the surrounding reality. That is why most age-related turning points occur in childhood.
Basically, any transitional stage in children does not last long; with a competent approach from adults, it takes only a few months. The time frame also cannot be clearly defined, since the physical and psychological capabilities of babies are different.
Children are characterized by abrupt changes in attitudes towards others and themselves.
External changes are manifested in disobedience, manifestation of aggressive behavior, whims.
In adolescence, a protest against an established way of life can be expressed by an addiction to bad habits, a decrease in interest in educational activities, a focus on one problem that does not carry anything important.
An important feature of the turning points is the emergence of new character traits, which indicate an attitude towards society and the surrounding reality. It is worth noting that such neoplasms are temporary in nature and after a short time change to others, deeper and more stable.
Distinctive features
A person who is at the stage of a turning point in life always stands out from the environment. There are several signs that can be used to characterize the onset of a crisis. 
- Absent look. People are constantly immersed in themselves, they may not notice those around them, they may not hear the questions being asked;
- Sudden change in mood. Moreover, this sign is especially pronounced in adolescence, when boys and girls have not yet learned to control their emotions. V mature years it is easier for people to control their mood swings, but here, too, everything is very individual.
- Consciously or unconsciously, a person skips meals, does not sleep well, has nightmares that prevent sleep.
- An overabundance of emotionality. Experiencing a turning point, people go to two extremes: they either see everything in negative colors, or put on rose-colored glasses, developing vigorous activity in all directions.
Regardless of the age at which a certain turning point in life begins, others should not suppress its manifestations. A person must go through this period in order to learn certain lessons from it, otherwise psychological disorders cannot be avoided.
In order to help your loved ones survive development crises, you need to know their approximate age range and the specifics of their manifestation.
Consider the main turning points associated with the maturation of the individual.
Birth
Taking the first breath, the newborn, unlike the parents, does not experience the joy of his birth. The first feeling that visits him is fear of a new, unknown world, where everything is so different from what he had experienced before in the womb.
Bright light, loud sounds, cold - all this causes the strongest psychological discomfort in the baby. The umbilical cord is cut, which provided a reliable connection with the mother. The struggle for life begins.
The beginning of the way
The first attempts at independent movement, sounds that begin to form into words, the desire to touch and taste everything. The child develops conscious desires, which stand out more and more clearly against the background of reflex needs. A slow and painful, often unconscious, first separation from mom begins.
This condition is painful because the baby still really needs her help and support, both physically and psychologically. However, the desire to explore the world is growing stronger. This is the first internal contradiction and causes personality conflict.
Third year
One of the most emotionally difficult turning points in the formation of a little person. Physical development is progressing at a rapid pace, the baby wants to do everything himself. However, he does not always succeed.
A personality begins to form, separating oneself from parents and peers. The desire to show independence, to express their position is expressed in violent protests to the established way of life. Protests are manifested in whims, disobedience, aggression.
Adults should be patient, because their behavior largely determines what kind of personality their baby will grow up to be, how he will relate to the environment and what kind of relationships he will develop in society. After all, the baby's requirements are due to his unconscious needs and desires, which he is not yet able to understand.
It is important for parents to develop a certain strategy of behavior, with the help of which they can show all the diversity of the surrounding reality and teach the baby to correctly use all life opportunities from a positive side.
School realities
This transitional period is not as pronounced emotionally as in three-year-olds. However, children experience the greatest discomfort when entering school, because the usual way of life is changing, the demands made by adults are increasing.
It is important for parents to support the kids during this period, because this is the time for the formation of children's self-esteem. Not only the academic performance of schoolchildren depends on the competent approach of teachers, but also their relationship with peers, confidence in themselves and their actions.
The formation of personality during this period is very intensive. Teachers and peers become people who influence the development of the character of children, because kids spend most of their time at school.
If, for some reason, the child does not have a relationship in the school society, parents must fill this vacuum, show the ways out of dead-end situations, teach how to resolve controversial and conflict situations.
Almost adults
At this time, the formation of personality occurs under the influence of the opinion of society: it is very important for a teenager what people significant to him say about his actions.
The manifestation of negativism, aggression, the desire for independence at any cost are signs of a transitional crisis.
The influence of the authority of the parents depends on their competent position. If adults become friends for matured children who are able to understand, help and guide, rather than condemn, then this will help to avoid conflict situations at home.
It largely depends on the parents how quickly this difficult, but very important period for the formation of the personality passes.
Life definition
After leaving school, when hormonal passions have subsided, young people face a number of new important problems. It is necessary to decide on the choice of a future profession, further life path, setting goals.
Young people are already consciously planning their future adult lives. Modern realities provide a huge selection of different paths, and they are desperately trying to find their own, only necessary and important for them. At the same time, they are often mistaken, taking the one that their parents imposed on them as the only correct option. The price to pay for this mistake will be a prolonged midlife crisis.
Crisis of thirty
It would seem that this time should become reliable and stable for a determined personality. However, it is at this time that a person begins to think about the correctness of the choice made in his youth, clearly sees and can analyze the mistakes made.
For some, these years will be the best time in life, because, having managed to analyze everything that does not suit them, people will be able to achieve great heights in their careers and personal development. Others will begin idle introspection, which will lead to depression and a complete rejection of further self-improvement.
Closer to forty
Perhaps the most difficult period for an already formed personality.
A person comes to the realization that half of his life has already been lived, and much of what he wanted was never realized.
Family, career, familiar surroundings seem to be unnecessary ballast that interferes with "free swimming".
It was during this period that most families are destroyed, people change their profession, social circle and addictions.
Men most often try to realize themselves in love pleasures, women - in introspection. People are trying in any way to change their usual way of life, being careful not to have time to do what, in their opinion, are important things.
Retirement
The age of analysis, comprehension of past years. As soon as a person approaches the retirement threshold, there is a clear realization of the immutable truth: life is coming to an end, the former youth cannot be returned.
Many people, especially those who do not have relatives or for some reason have a bad relationship with them, fall into a depressive state, acutely feeling their loneliness.
This is the moment in life when the support of relatives is vital. It is important for older people to know that they are needed and useful.
It is very pleasing that recently in our country there has been a tendency to increase the number of people who have learned to enjoy their old age. After all, now they have a lot of free time, there are no responsibilities to adult children, and they can live for their own pleasure, doing what they love, for which there was no time in working days.
To spite all crises
If in childhood, turning points in the formation of a personality are helped by parents, then in adulthood, a person has to cope with problems on his own.
Psychologists have developed tips that will help you learn a lesson from any crisis situation, become better, and not get mired in depression.
- Learn to find joy in simple things. Happiness is made up of little things.
- Learn to relax and enjoy being on your own.
- Physical activity can kill any depression. Try dancing, yoga, or just jogging in the morning. A charge of cheerfulness and Have a good mood provided for you.
- Study in free time only that which brings you pleasure.
- Love yourself. Make it a rule to praise yourself for any little things, raise your self-esteem in any way.
- Don't suppress your emotions. If you feel like crying, don't hold back. Thus, you can get rid of the burden of accumulated negative emotions.
- Communicate as much as possible, do not withdraw into yourself. If you feel that any communication makes you uncomfortable, seek help from a specialist.
From all that has been said above, it is obvious that age-related crises are characteristic of every person, without exception. But how these turning points will pass depends on the adult generation, which was able to provide the necessary support in time, directing it on the right path.
The more correct the parents' approach to crises in childhood was, the easier it will be for a person to pass the turning points of life in adulthood.
State educational institution of higher professional education
Chita State Medical Academy
Federal Agency for Health and Social Development
Department of Humanities
COURSE WORK
Topic: Crises of age-related development
Chita - 2009
Introduction
The human psyche is in a state of constant development. Human development is associated with both hereditary factors, and with social, as well as with the activity of the personality itself.
Each age is a qualitatively special stage of mental development and is characterized by many changes that make up the totality of the structure of a person's personality at this stage of his development. Age features can be determined by many conditions:
a system of requirements that are presented to a person at this stage of his life;
relationships with others;
knowledge and skills that he owns;
passport age (age according to passport). However, very often the passport age may not coincide with the psychological and physiological age of a person, which requires momentary correction in assigning him to one or another age group. In addition, a frequent serious illness both physiologically and psychologically ages a person (sometimes in 2-3 months), and then a person is not psychologically ready to realize his age and his capabilities at this qualitatively new stage of life, especially in connection with the emerging limitations (for example , physical activity, previously easily tolerated, but now has become excessive, etc.).
“External conditions that determine the characteristics of age act directly on a person. The same influences of the external environment affect in different ways, depending on which previously developed psychological properties they pass (are refracted). The totality of these external and internal conditions determines the specifics of age, and the change in the relationship between them determines the need and features of the transition to the next age stages. "
Thus, the conditions that determine the characteristics of age can be divided into three groups: physiological conditions, social, psychological. The transition from one age stage to another occurs when the conditions that determine the specifics of age change. Mental development occurs in activity through the resolution of contradictions that have arisen at a certain stage of development. The driving force of mental development is the activity of the individual.
Depending on various geographical and ethnic factors, the following periods of age development are conditionally distinguished:
prenatal (intrauterine period);
newborn (from birth to 1 month);
infancy (from 1 month to 1 year of life);
early childhood (1-3 years);
junior and middle preschool age (3-6 years);
senior preschool age (6-7 years old);
junior school age (7-10 years old);
adolescence that coincides with the senior school age (from 10-11 years old to 13-15 years old);
early adolescence (15-16 years old);
youth (16-18 years old);
maturity:
early (18-25),
medium (25-40),
late (40-55);
elderly (from 55 to 75 years old);
senile (after 75 years);
elderly (after 80 years);
longevity.
Biological crises are caused by the internal laws of the development of the organism.
Biographical crises arise in connection with a change in the socio-psychological status of a person.
During a biological crisis (crisis), mental disorders occur more often, the diseases that developed at this time are more severe. In childhood, during a biological crisis, psychophysiological functions, which are at the stage of the most intensive development, suffer to a greater extent.
Favorable outcomes of the above life events depend on the circumstances and the immediate environment, the level of mental stability and mental protection.
Some children may experience neurotic breakdowns upon admission to kindergarten. In such cases, you need to consult a child psychologist.
After entering into a marital relationship, a conflict often arises between the expected ideal and the real in the relationship of the spouses.
The birth of a child is a joy, but often against the background of natural fatigue, a young mother may develop a fear that she is not coping with her duties, if the woman is not supported by family members, then depression may develop.
Retirement dramatically changes a person's social status in the family and society. Men endure this period worse. It is very important for a person to find a new meaning for their existence.
The human psyche is in the process of constant development. Knowledge of age-related biological crises of personality by medical personnel will help to avoid many difficulties arising in the interaction of medical personnel and patients.
Thus, the problem of prevention and treatment of crisis conditions is one of the most urgent for modern psychiatry. Traditionally, this issue is viewed from the perspective of the theory of stress. Knowledge of the age crises described above has great importance for the organization of medical care for patients.
Subject of research: crises of age-related development.
Object of research: psychological characteristics of a person in different periods his life.
Research objectives:
consider the main features of each period
trace the development of theoretical views on problems of different ages
make the appropriate conclusions summarizing the research.
Purpose of the research: to study crises of age-related development, to characterize age periods, their influence on personality development.
Research methods:
Analysis of theoretical literature on the research topic.
1. Crises of mental development
Until recently, research and pedagogical practice assumed that crises of mental development (or age crises) represent a kind of segments in the life of a child (or an adult), when the inadequacy of those pedagogical conditions in which the child lives and acts is revealed. This view also provoked ways to resolve crises - the child must be provided with what he requires (send him to school, start treating him like an adult), and the crisis will be overcome.
If you take a closer look at this position, it becomes clear that it “serves” the needs of educators. Indeed, in case of difficulties, the teacher makes efforts to eliminate them. The internal mechanisms of the problems that arise, their possible meaning for the child himself, is a traditionally psychological task that is of little interest to the teacher. Pedagogy, unlike psychology, is essentially a practice. Therefore, any obstacle (and a crisis is precisely an obstacle to pedagogical action) must be removed or overcome. This is not a lack of a pedagogical position, but its content.
However, crises, if they are normative age crises, constitute an insurmountable obstacle. The adult gives in to the child, and the child makes new demands. This situation goes on and on, and then it seems to disappear by itself. It becomes clear that a meaningful analysis is required for pedagogical action in a crisis, and therefore we are forced to move from the plane of pedagogical action to the plane of psychological understanding. And only on its basis to build pedagogical action in the new ideology.
The lack of the traditional understanding of the crisis is that it is not seen as a necessary stage of development. In order to transform the words "necessary stage" from a speech structure into an analysis tool and, consequently, into the basis of the design of a pedagogical action, it is necessary to discover the content of the crisis. Or, in other words, to discover the development task that is being solved in a crisis.
How is it possible to set (determine) the content of development in a critical period? Without revealing the reasons for the answer to this question, let us dwell on the following: the content of development in a critical period is the subjectivation of a new formation of the previous stable period. In other words, we assume the following: in a stable period, a neoplasm is formed, but only objectively, an outside observer can detect it, but for a child this neoplasm does not yet exist. Not in the sense that the child himself does not yet possess this new ability. For its detection by the child himself, for the transformation of the child into the subject of a new ability, appropriate conditions are needed, but if they do not exist, the ability is not revealed by such a condition and the psychological space of the crisis turns out to be.
For the emancipation of the ability, some special work is needed, the work of subjectivizing the ability. In fact, we are talking about a kind of two-stroke formation of subjective ability. At the first step (in a stable period), an ability is formed within a certain integrity of conditions; at this step, the ability does not belong to the subject, but to this whole integrity. Further, the next step is to isolate the ability from the conditions that gave rise to it, according to our initial position, this is the crisis of development.
At a stable age, within the framework of the formation situation, the child develops some abilities, but up to a certain time these abilities exist objectively. This means that if this situation of formation is recreated, then the child realizes, discovers these abilities, if the situation turns out to be different, then the child does not demonstrate this ability. In fact, the subject of the ability is not the actor himself, not the child, but the situation of formation. A classic example from a child's play: in play, the child retains the "sentry posture," but outside of play it does not, etc. That is, the ability is not the property of the actor himself. This ability is flickering in nature.
In a crisis, this ability is "detached", this ability is appropriated by the subject himself, and subjectivation occurs. And therefore, very special conditions are needed. The main of these conditions, as it is becoming clear today, is the transformation of a child's action from an action directed at an object, from an effective action, into a trying action. Actually, this is the moment where a child's action and an adult's action meet. The action of an adult, the pedagogical action "finds" its object-action of the child. An adult's action becomes "alive" (in terms of V.P. Zinchenko).
What does the trial mean, what kind of work should happen at this moment? "" The essence of the trial is that the child discovers his own action. This has become clearer today thanks to the works of B.D. Elkonin on a sense of their own activity. A trial is an action that allows you to experience (endure) a sense of your own activity and thereby detect your own action as such.
For me, these words have a special meaning, I will illustrate this with a very funny example of a three-year crisis. The crisis of three years is described as a crisis “I myself”, as the emergence of personal action, as the opposition “I want-I do not want”, etc. A detailed, targeted observation of the child was carried out throughout the year - from two and a half to three and a half years. Along with the well-known symptoms of negativism and self-will, along with these "I myself", "I want - I do not want", etc., there are behavioral symptoms of a different kind. The child calls himself in the third person diminutive words, for example, "Little bear"; at the same time behaves extremely conformally, extremely affectionately, i.e. behaves as it was before the crisis.
This illustration turns out to be a very strong indication that two types of behavior can be found during a critical period. On the one hand, this behavior seems to be running ahead: this is the mastery of one's “I”: “I myself,” “I want - I don’t want” - that which is traditionally associated with critical symptoms. But in order for these new forms to arise for the child himself, it is necessary not only to strengthen them (with traditional pretense, the obsession of negativism) but also to oppose other forms of behavior - an emphasized connection with parents, gentleness, and complaisance. "New" and "old" behaviors become disconnected from each other. But, let us pay attention, both that, and another are again their own behavior; both types of behavior are marked with different speech symbols: one through "I", and the other through a markedly affectionate naming in the third person. At the first observations, it was easy to dismiss them, believing them to be some kind of individual feature. However, it was soon discovered that almost all attentive parents remembered such affectionate names in the behavior of their three-year-old children against the background of a pronounced demonstrative "I".
This observation turns out to be very important when analyzing the development of subjectivity in critical periods. Traditionally, in the logic of formation (activity, mental actions, etc.), they habitually talk about the action of the child and the action of an exemplary, adult. As a child develops, he appropriates an adult (exemplary) action. Today we can hypothetically believe that in a crisis a more complex dismemberment occurs, not of child's and adult's actions, not of mine and someone else's (exemplary), but of mine and mine, but different.
Only in this sense can we talk about subjectivation as such. Otherwise, the child "puts on" new clothes of other people's actions. Can we talk about development in this case? Once A.I. Podolsky mentioned dead concepts. Referring to conversations with P.Ya. Halperin, he said that sometimes it is possible to form something that remains dead. So it seems to me that development proper and subjectivation proper - all this concerns precisely this internal dismemberment; I, my action and I, my action, but different, this inner distinction only makes it possible to talk about development as such.
Development understood in this way is the most important thing that can happen to a person in general. This understanding of development goes far beyond just describing critical periods. In this case, crises are only a very convenient model of the very act of development. For example, the problem of chemical addiction. What does it mean that a person is dependent on some kind of chemical drug? This means that the organismic "I", which requires a drug, and the "I", which does not want to take this drug, are not distinguished. The work of overcoming addiction can only be productively done on this inner distinction. No talk about health, about the future helps, all this is frivolous. When addict learns, fixes the moment when his body begins to demand, when the “I” that prevents the drug intake enters into a dialogue with the “I” -dependent, when a situation of internal resistance and internal dismemberment arises, this is the condition for further overcoming, in this case, a particular situation or development in the broadest sense of the word.
Should we understand the crisis, returning to the pedagogical aspect of this issue? As a moment of meeting between the action of an adult and the action of a child. So far, it was only about the child, about his action. To move on to considering the meeting of child and adult actions, consider the following diagram (Fig. 1).
Here is a simple diagram of age: there is a real child's action corresponding to age 1 and age 2. There are cultural patterns, standards, ideal forms that determine the content of each age. And there is always a culture of broadcasting, a culture of their connections at a stable age. We can call this a leading activity, a social developmental situation, etc., but it is important to understand that there is always something at a stable age that mediates a real child's action and those patterns (cultural standards) that are to be appropriated at a given age. It is the culture of broadcast that makes it possible to understand and describe what the child is actually doing. Imagine, for example, the real actions of a 4.5-year-old child if we do not have the word “game” in our head. In this case, we observe a chaos of strange manipulations with strange objects. But as soon as the idea of play arises, the child's actions are immediately ordered, primarily for the observer.
Consequently, this mediating link gives us the opportunity: firstly, to understand the real actions of the child, and secondly, to understand what is determined from - to meanings and tasks, methods of action, etc. This is how the scheme of stable age looks like - one and the other. What happens at the crossing? What happens at a critical age? At a critical age, the child begins to focus on the ideal form of the next age. In the diagram, we see a connection that is not mediated by the culture of broadcast. And this scheme shows that the actions of a child in a crisis are not mediated by an adult mediating action. The critical age is characterized by the absence of a culture of translation, the absence of an adult (intermediary) who stands on this border.
Let's return to the question of the pedagogy of critical ages. The content of a pedagogical action consists in the fact that it organizes the child's actions in such a way that he discovers new contents, cultural forms, samples in a cultural way. The very actions of the child become culturally determined. In a critical period, when the child discovers new ideal forms directly, he also constructs his actions directly.
A simple example: advertising. Typically, it sets patterns for some attractive behavior, linking that attractiveness directly to the advertised product. A teenager reacts directly to advertising: he simply takes an attractive object, believing that in this way he immediately turns into a strong, handsome, courageous, etc. When a child lights a cigarette, he does not taste anything, he literally becomes here and now, transforms. What is the essence of possible adult action in this situation? The point is to turn this action directed at the object into a trying action, into an action that helps to dismember the "I". A child with a cigarette is a gesture addressed to the audience, "I am an adult": look at me as an adult; those. this is a demonstrative action. For an adult, the same action means another: “you ruin your health, smoking is harmful, etc.”. In this case, the same situation is smoking - for a child and for an adult they appear as fundamentally different. There is no meeting space, no place for them to meet. And here it is appropriate to recall the very curious reasoning of D.B. Elkonin on action. He writes that the action is twofold. The action, on the one hand, is directed at the subject, on the other hand, it has some significance in society, etc. When an adult tells a child to put on a warm coat, the adult says that it is cold and talks about being object-oriented, and when the child refuses to wear this coat, he actually talks about the meaning of this clothes. And in this sense, the objective content of the action (on the part of the adult) and the meaning that the child attaches to it cannot meet at this moment. What is the condition of the meeting? Completion of construction is natural. The adult's detection in this action of its meaning and the child's detection in the same action of its objective content. Only in this case, generally speaking, a dialogue is possible, a meeting is possible.
Children began to work not at their desks, but sitting on the rug with the teacher. The rug is something completely empty and meaningless. And while working, at first - playing with the teacher on this rug, the children, together with the adult, began to distinguish between different forms of work. In particular, they identified for themselves the work with subject positions when teaching reading, separated them from the game forms of work. And as you worked, gradually this initially empty space - the rug - became polarized. There was a workspace, a play space, a workout space, etc. Thus, the space of the room was polarized into a play area and a place for educational work. Due to the fact that initially the children fell into this "empty space", it was possible to polarize it and reveal its content to them, that is, to transfer them virtually to a new age, but transfer them in a cultural way.
A second similar illustration concerns the beginning of a teenage school. Here the situation is much more complicated, because when there are two built, culturally formed ages, the pedagogical action consists in transferring from one to the other, in the transition to a new type of mediation. Unfortunately, adolescence is such that there are currently no culturally structured forms of broadcasting, that is, the pedagogical task is to transfer the child from the formalized primary school age to the next age, where the culture of broadcasting is virtually absent.
For a child, adolescence is a violation of the rules, a kind of outrageousness. An adult, as a rule, begins to "work" in the territory of one teenager: to suppress violation of the rules, to react to shocking. This situation leads to a dead end. The classic question in any conversation between a psychologist and a teacher about adolescence is: "What advice can you give to a teacher?" But until some adequate forms of broadcasting have not been organized at least within the school, there can be no significant progress in this direction.
Therefore, when we talk about adolescent school, firstly, it is necessary to organize the form of broadcasting and, at the second step already, to deal specifically with the work of translating the child's action into a trying action. And here * one can turn to a very interesting and promising, but still limited experience of work of gymnasium No. 1 in Krasnoyarsk. In contrast to the general situation in this school, the space of a teenage school is really organized. Those. there is already reason to talk about the space of a teenage school.
Thus, there is objectively a child with his real actions (expectations, preferences, etc.). And there is a school environment. But this is not yet his environment. Only when we construct his own childish action - a trial - in relation to this environment, when we create conditions for the inner differentiation of different actions, a trial will arise, i.e. a condition for the development of the child will arise. In particular, a child in a critical period.
Age-related crises
Age crises are special, relatively short (up to a year) periods of ontogenesis, characterized by sharp mental changes. Refers to the normative processes necessary for the normal progressive course of personal development (Erickson).
The form and duration of these periods, as well as the severity of the course, depend on individual characteristics, social and microsocial conditions. In developmental psychology, there is no consensus about crises, their place and role in mental development... Some psychologists believe that development should be harmonious and crisis-free. Crises are an abnormal, "painful" phenomenon, the result of improper upbringing. Another part of psychologists argues that the presence of crises in development is natural. Moreover, according to some ideas in developmental psychology, a child who has not really experienced a crisis will not fully develop further. This topic was addressed by Bozovic, Polivanova, Gail Sheikhi.
L.S. Vygotsky examines the dynamics of transitions from one age to another. At different stages, changes in the child's psyche can occur slowly and gradually, or they can happen quickly and abruptly. Stable and crisis stages of development are distinguished, their alternation is the law of child development. The stable period is characterized by a smooth course of the development process, without abrupt shifts and changes in the personality of the child. Long in duration. Minor, minimal changes accumulate and at the end of the period give a qualitative leap in development: age-related neoplasms appear, stable, fixed in the structure of the Personality.
Crises do not last long, several months, with an unfavorable set of circumstances, stretching up to a year or even two years. These are brief but tumultuous stages. Significant developmental shifts, the child changes dramatically in many of its features. Development can become catastrophic at this time. The crisis begins and ends imperceptibly, its boundaries are blurred and indistinct. Aggravation occurs in the middle of the period. For the people around the child, it is associated with a change in behavior, the emergence of "difficult to educate." The child is out of control of the adults. Affective outbursts, moods, conflicts with loved ones. Schoolchildren lose their ability to work, their interest in classes is weakened, their academic performance decreases, sometimes painful experiences and internal conflicts arise.
In a crisis, development takes on a negative character: what was formed at the previous stage disintegrates, disappears. But something new is also being created. The neoplasms turn out to be unstable and in the next stable period are transformed, absorbed by other neoplasms, dissolve in them, and thus die off.
D.B. Elkonin developed the ideas of L.S. Vygotsky on child development. “The child approaches each point of his development with a certain discrepancy between what he has learned from the system of man-man relations, and what he has learned from the system of man-object relations. It is precisely the moments when this discrepancy becomes greatest that are called crises, after which the development of the side that lagged behind in the previous period takes place. But each side prepares the development of the other. "
Thus, the human psyche is in the process of constant development. Knowledge of age-related biological crises of personality will help to avoid many difficulties arising in relationships between people.
Newborn crisis. Associated with a sharp change in living conditions. A child from comfortable habitual living conditions falls into difficult ones (new nutrition, breathing). Adaptation of the child to new living conditions.
Crisis 1 year. It is associated with an increase in the child's capabilities and the emergence of new needs. A surge of independence, the appearance of affective reactions. Affective outbursts as a reaction to misunderstanding on the part of adults. Major acquisition transition period- a kind of children's speech, called L.S. Vygotsky autonomous. It differs significantly from adult speech also in sound form. Words become ambiguous and situational.
Crisis 3 years. The boundary between early and preschool age is one of the most difficult moments in a child's life. This is the destruction, the revision of the old system of social relations, the crisis of separating out "I", according to D.B. Elkonin. The child, separating from the adults, tries to establish new, deeper relationships with them. The emergence of the phenomenon “I myself”, according to Vygotsky, is a new formation “external I myself”. "The child is trying to establish new forms of relationship with others - a crisis of social relations."
L.S. Vygotsky describes 7 characteristics of the crisis for 3 years. Negativism is a negative reaction not to the action itself, which he refuses to perform, but to the demand or request of an adult. The main motive for action is to do the opposite.
The motivation of the child's behavior is changing. At the age of 3, he first becomes able to act contrary to his immediate desire. The behavior of the child is determined not by this desire, but by the relationship with another, adult. The motive of behavior is already outside the situation given to the child. Stubbornness. This is the child's reaction, which insists on something, not because he really wants it, but because he himself told adults about it and demands that his opinion be considered. Obstinacy. It is directed not against a specific adult, but against the entire system of relations that has developed in early childhood, against the norms of upbringing adopted in the family.
The tendency towards independence is clearly manifested: the child wants to do everything and decide for himself. In principle, this is a positive phenomenon, but during a crisis, a hypertrophied tendency towards independence leads to self-will, it is often inadequate to the child's capabilities and causes additional conflicts with adults.
For some children, conflicts with their parents become regular, they seem to be constantly in a state of war with adults. In these cases, they speak of a protest-riot. In a family with an only child, despotism can appear. If the family has several children, instead of despotism, jealousy usually arises: the same tendency towards power here acts as a source of jealous, intolerant attitude towards other children who have almost no rights in the family, from the point of view of a young despot.
Depreciation. A 3-year-old child may begin to swear (the old rules of behavior are devalued), discard or even break a favorite toy offered at the wrong time (old attachments to things are devalued), etc. The child's attitude towards other people and towards himself changes. He is psychologically separated from close adults.
The crisis of 3 years is associated with the awareness of oneself as an active subject in the world of objects, for the first time a child can act contrary to his desires.
The crisis is 7 years old. It can start at age 7, and may shift by age 6 or 8. Discovery of the meaning of a new social position - the position of a student associated with the performance of educational work highly valued by adults. The formation of an appropriate internal position radically changes his self-awareness. According to L.I. Bozovic is the period of the birth of the social. "I" of the child. A change in self-awareness leads to a reassessment of values. There are profound changes in terms of experiences - stable affective complexes. It appears that L.S. Vygotsky calls the generalization of experiences. A chain of failures or successes (in school, in broad communication), each time about the same experience by the child, leads to the formation of a stable affective complex - a feeling of inferiority, humiliation, offended pride or a sense of self-importance, competence, exclusivity. Thanks to the generalization of experiences, the logic of feelings appears. Experiences acquire a new meaning, connections are established between them, a struggle of experiences becomes possible.
This leads to the emergence of the inner life of the child. The beginning differentiation of the child's external and internal life is associated with a change in the structure of his behavior. A semantic orientational basis of an act appears - a link between the desire to do something and the unfolding actions. This is an intellectual moment that makes it possible to more or less adequately assess a future action in terms of its results and more distant consequences. Semantic orientation in one's own actions becomes an important side of inner life. At the same time, it excludes the impulsiveness and immediacy of the child's behavior. Thanks to this mechanism, the childish spontaneity is lost; the child thinks before acting, begins to hide his feelings and hesitations, tries not to show others that he is bad.
A purely crisis manifestation of the differentiation of the external and internal life of children is usually antics, mannerisms, artificial tension of behavior. These external features, as well as the tendency to whims, affective reactions, conflicts, begin to disappear when the child comes out of the crisis and enters a new age.
Neoplasm is the arbitrariness and awareness of mental processes and their intellectualization.
The pubertal crisis (from 11 to 15 years old) is associated with the restructuring of the child's body - puberty. The activation and complex interaction of growth hormones and sex hormones cause intense physical and physiological development. Secondary sexual characteristics appear. Adolescence is sometimes referred to as a protracted crisis. Due to the rapid development, difficulties arise in the functioning of the heart, lungs, blood supply to the brain. In adolescence, the emotional background becomes uneven, unstable.
Emotional instability increases the sexual arousal that accompanies the process of puberty.
Gender identification is reaching a new, higher level. The orientation towards the models of masculinity and femininity in behavior and manifestation of personality traits is clearly manifested.
Due to the rapid growth and restructuring of the body in adolescence, interest in their appearance sharply increases. A new image of the physical "I" is being formed. Because of his hypertrophied significance, the child acutely experiences all the flaws in appearance, real and imaginary.
The image of the physical "I" and self-awareness in general is influenced by the rate of puberty. Children with late puberty are in the least advantageous position; acceleration creates more favorable opportunities for personal development.
A sense of adulthood appears - a feeling of being an adult, a central neoplasm of younger adolescence. There is a passionate desire, if not to be, then at least to seem and be considered an adult. Defending his new rights, a teenager protects many areas of his life from the control of his parents and often goes into conflicts with them. In addition to the desire for emancipation, the adolescent has a strong need for communication with peers. Intimate-personal communication becomes the leading Activity during this period. Teenage friendships and informal groups emerge. There are also bright, but usually replacing hobbies.
Crisis 17 years old (15 to 17 years old). Arises exactly at the turn of the usual school and new adult life. May be displaced by 15 years. At this time, the child is on the verge of real adult life.
The majority of 17-year-old schoolchildren are guided by continuing their education, a few are looking for work. The value of education is a great blessing, but at the same time, achieving this goal is difficult, and at the end of grade 11, emotional stress can sharply increase.
For those who have been going through the crisis for 17 years, various fears are characteristic. Responsibility to oneself and one's family for the choice, real achievements at this time is already a big burden. Added to this is the fear of a new life, of the possibility of error, of failure when entering a university, among young men - of the army. High anxiety and against this background, pronounced fear can lead to neurotic reactions, such as fever before graduation or entrance exams, headaches, etc. An exacerbation of gastritis, neurodermatitis, or other chronic disease may begin.
A sharp change in lifestyle, inclusion in new types of Activities, communication with new people cause significant tension. A new life situation requires adaptation to it. Mainly two factors help to adapt: family support and self-confidence, a sense of competence.
Striving for the future. Personality stabilization period. At this time, a system of stable views of the world and their place in it - a worldview - is taking shape. Known associated with this youthful maximalism in assessments, passion in defending their point of view. The central neoplasm of the period is self-determination, professional and personal.
The crisis is 30 years old. Around the age of 30, sometimes somewhat later, most people experience a crisis. It is expressed in a change in ideas about one's life, sometimes in a complete loss of interest in what was previously the main thing in it, in some cases even in the destruction of the previous way of life.
The crisis of 30 years arises as a result of the failure to implement a life plan. If at the same time there is a "reassessment of values" and "revision of one's own Personality", then we are talking about the fact that the life plan in general turned out to be wrong. If the path in life is chosen correctly, then attachment to "a certain Activity, a certain way of life, certain values and orientations" does not limit, but, on the contrary, develops his Personality.
The crisis of 30 years is often called the crisis of the meaning of life. It is with this period that the search for the meaning of existence is usually associated. This quest, like the entire crisis in general, marks the transition from youth to maturity.
The problem of meaning in all its variants, from private to global - the meaning of life - arises when the goal does not correspond to the motive, when its achievement does not lead to the achievement of the object of need, i.e. when the goal was set incorrectly. If we are talking about the meaning of life, then the common life goal turned out to be erroneous, i.e. life plan.
Some people in adulthood have another, "unplanned" crisis, confined not to the border of two stable periods of life, but arising within this period. This is the so-called crisis of 40 years. It is like a repetition of the crisis for 30 years. It occurs when the crisis of 30 years has not led to the proper solution of existential problems.
A person is acutely experiencing dissatisfaction with his life, the discrepancy between life plans and their implementation. A.V. Tolstykh notes that this is complemented by a change in attitude on the part of work colleagues: the time when one could be considered “promising”, “promising” is passing, and a person feels the need to “pay bills”.
In addition to the problems associated with professional activity, the crisis of 40 years is often caused by the aggravation of family relations. The loss of some close people, the loss of a very important common side of the spouses' life - direct participation in the life of children, daily care for them - contributes to the final understanding of the nature of the marital relationship. And if, apart from the children of the spouses, nothing significant binds both of them, the family may fall apart.
In the event of a crisis for 40 years, a person has to once again rebuild his life plan, to develop a largely new “I-concept”. Serious changes in life may be associated with this crisis, up to a change of profession and the creation of a new family.
The retirement crisis. First of all, a violation of the usual regime and way of life is negatively affected, often combined with an acute feeling of contradiction between the continuing ability to work, the ability to bring benefits and their lack of demand. A person turns out to be, as it were, "thrown to the sidelines" of the current life without his active participation. A decline in one's social status, the loss of the rhythm of life that has been preserved for decades sometimes lead to a sharp deterioration in the general physical and mental state, and in some cases even to a relatively quick death.
The retirement crisis is often aggravated by the fact that around this time the second generation - grandchildren - grows up and begins to live an independent life, which is especially painful for women who have devoted themselves mainly to their families.
Retirement, which often coincides with the acceleration of biological aging, is often associated with a deterioration in the financial situation, and sometimes a more secluded lifestyle. In addition, the crisis can be aggravated by the death of a spouse, the loss of some close friends.
Crises of the age periods of a person's life
mental crisis age-related development
We enter different ages of our life, like newborns, with no experience behind us, no matter how old we are.
F. La Rochefoucauld
Little attention is paid to the issues of age-related personality crises and the existential problems of a person are practically not touched upon. Meanwhile, speaking about crisis conditions and their prevention, one cannot but touch upon the issue of relationships I AM , MY and DEATH , for without considering these relationships, it is impossible to understand the genesis of post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidal behavior and other neurotic, stress-related and somatoform disorders.
To study the psychological characteristics of a person at different periods of his life is an extremely complex and multifaceted task. In this chapter, the emphasis will be placed on the problems characteristic of certain periods of a person's life, which often underlie anxiety, fears, and other disorders that potentiate the development of crisis states, as well as on the age dynamics of the formation of fear of death.
The problem of understanding the origins of the emergence of a personal crisis and its age dynamics have been studied by many authors. Eric Erickson, the creator of the ego theory of personality, identified 8 stages of psycho social development personality. He believed that each of them is accompanied by crisis - a turning point in the life of an individual, which arises as a result of reaching a certain level of psychological maturity and social requirements for the individual at this stage ... Every psychosocial crisis is accompanied by both positive and negative consequences. If the conflict is resolved, then the personality is enriched with new, positive qualities, if not resolved, symptoms and problems arise that can lead to the development of mental and behavioral disorders (E.N. Erikson, 1968).
Table 1. Stages of psychosocial development (according to Erickson)
N Stage Age Psychosocial Crisis Strengths 1. Oral-sensory Birth-1 year Basal trust - basal distrust Hope 2. Muscular-anal 1 - 3 years Autonomy - shame and doubts Will-power 3. Role mixing Loyalty 6. Early maturity 20-25 years Intimacy - isolation Love 7. Mid maturity 26-64 years Productivity - stagnation Caring 8. Late maturity 65 years - death Ego integration - despair Wisdom
At the first stage of psychosocial development (birth - 1 year), the first important psychological crisis is already possible, due to insufficient maternal care and rejection of the child. Maternal deprivation is at the root of basal distrust , which further potentiates the development of fear, suspicion, affective disorders.
At the second stage of psychosocial development (1 - 3 years), a psychological crisis is accompanied by the appearance of a sense of shame and doubt, which further potentiates the formation of self-doubt, anxious suspiciousness, fears, an obsessive-compulsive symptom complex.
At the third stage of psychosocial development (3-6 years), a psychological crisis is accompanied by the formation of feelings of guilt, abandonment and worthlessness, which can subsequently cause addictive behavior, impotence or frigidity, personality disorders.
The creator of the concept of birth trauma, O. Rank (1952), said that anxiety accompanies a person from the moment of his birth and is due to the fear of death associated with the experience of separation of the fetus from the mother during birth. R. J. Kastenbaum (1981) noted that even very young children experience mental discomfort associated with death and often parents do not even know about it. R. Furman (1964) adhered to a different opinion, who insisted that only at the age of 2-3 years the concept of death can arise, since during this period elements of symbolic thinking and a primitive level of assessments of reality appear .. H. Nagy (1948 ), having studied the compositions and drawings of almost 4 thousand children in Budapest, as well as conducting individual psychotherapeutic and diagnostic conversations with each of them, she revealed that children under 5 do not consider death as a final, but as a dream or departure. Life and death for these children were not mutually exclusive. In subsequent studies, she identified a feature that struck her: the children spoke of death as a separation, a kind of boundary. Research by M.C. McIntire (1972), carried out a quarter of a century later, confirmed the revealed feature: only 20% of 5-6 year old children think that their dead animals will come to life, and only 30% of children of this age assume the presence of consciousness in deceased animals. Similar results were obtained by other researchers (J.E. Alexander, 1965; T.B. Hagglund, 1967; J. Hinton, 1967; S. Wolff, 1973) .. M. Miller (1971) notes that for a child of preschool age the concept death identified with the loss of their mother and this is often the cause of their unconscious fears and anxiety. Fear of death of parents in mentally healthy preschoolers was observed in 53% of boys and 61% of girls. Fear of death was noted in 47% of boys and 70% of girls (A.I. Zakharov, 1988). Suicides in children under 5 years of age are rare, but in the last decade there has been a tendency for their growth.
As a rule, memories of a serious illness threatening death at this age remain with the child for life and play a significant role in his future fate. So, one of great apostates Vienna psychoanalytic school, psychiatrist, psychologist and psychotherapist Alfred Adler (1870 - 1937), the creator of individual psychology, wrote that at the age of 5 he almost died and in the future his decision to become a doctor, i.e. a person struggling with death was conditioned by these very memories. In addition, the experienced event was reflected in his scientific outlook. In the inability to control the time of death or to prevent it, he saw the deep basis of the inferiority complex.
Children with excessive fears and anxiety associated with separation from significant loved ones, accompanied by inadequate fears of loneliness and separation, nightmares, social autism and recurrent somato-autonomic dysfunctions, need psychiatric consultation and treatment. In ICD-10, this condition is classified as Separation anxiety disorder in childhood (F 93.0).
Children of school age, or stage 4 according to E. Erickson (6-12 years old) acquire knowledge and interpersonal communication skills at school, which determine their personal significance and dignity. The crisis of this age period is accompanied by the appearance of feelings of inferiority or incompetence, most often correlating with the child's academic performance. In the future, these children may lose self-confidence, the ability to work effectively and maintain human contacts.
Psychological studies have shown that children of this age are interested in the problem of death and are already sufficiently prepared to talk about it. The word was included in the vocabulary text dead , and this word was adequately perceived by the overwhelming majority of children. Only 2 out of 91 children deliberately bypassed it. However, if children 5.5 - 7.5 years old considered death unlikely for themselves, then at the age of 7.5 - 8.5 years they recognize its possibility for themselves, although the age of its supposed occurrence varied from in a few years up to 300 years ..P.Koocher (1971) investigated the beliefs of non-believers 6-15 years old children regarding their supposed condition after death. The spread of answers to the question, what happens when you die? , was distributed as follows: 52% answered that their bury , 21% that they will go to heaven , I will live after death , I will undergo God's punishment , 19% organize a funeral , 7% felt that they fall asleep , 4% - reincarnate , 3% - cremated ... Belief in personal or general immortality of the soul after death was revealed in 65% of believing children aged 8-12 years (M.C. McIntire, 1972).
In children of primary school age, the prevalence of fear of death of parents is sharply increasing (in 98% of boys and 97% of mentally healthy 9-year-old girls), which is already observed in almost all 15-year-old boys and 12-year-old girls. As for the fear of their own death, at school age it occurs quite often (up to 50%), although less often in girls (D.N. Isaev, 1992).
Younger schoolchildren (mainly after 9 years of age) already have suicidal activity, which is most often caused not by serious mental illnesses, but by situational reactions, the source of which is, as a rule, intra-family conflicts.
The adolescent period (12-18 years), or the fifth stage of psychosocial development, is traditionally considered the most vulnerable to stressful situations and to the emergence of crisis conditions. E. Erickson identifies this age period as very important in psychosocial development and considers the development of an identity crisis, or role shift, which manifests itself in three main areas of behavior, to be pathognomonic for it:
Career choice problem;
Choice of a reference group and membership in it (reaction of grouping with peers according to A.E. Lichko);
Alcohol and drug use, which can temporarily relieve emotional stress and provide a sense of temporary overcoming of lack of identity (E.N. Erikson, 1963).
The dominant questions of this age are: Who am I? , How will I fit into the adult world? , Where am I going? Teenagers try to build their own value system, often coming into conflict with the older generation, subverting their values. The hippie movement is a classic example.
The concept of death in adolescents as a universal and inevitable end of human life approaches that of adults. J. Piaget wrote that it is from the moment of comprehending the idea of death that the child becomes an agnostic, that is, he has a way of perception of the world inherent in an adult. Although admitting intellectually death to others they actually deny it for themselves on an emotional level. In adolescents, a romantic attitude towards death prevails. They often interpret it as a different way of being.
It is during adolescence that the peak of suicides, the peak of experiments with disturbing substances and other life-threatening activities occur. Moreover, adolescents, in whose anamnesis were repeatedly noted thoughts of suicide, rejected thoughts of its fatal outcome. Among 13-16 year olds, 20% believed in the preservation of consciousness after death, 60% - in the existence of the soul, and only 20% - in death as the cessation of physical and spiritual life.
This age is characterized by thoughts of suicide, as about revenge for an insult, quarrels, lectures on the part of teachers and parents. Thoughts of the type prevail: So I will die to spite you and see how you will suffer and regret that you were unfair to me.
Investigating the mechanisms of psychological defense in anxiety, potentiated by thoughts of death, EMPattison (1978) found that they, as a rule, are identical to those in adults from their immediate environment: intellectual, mature defense mechanisms are more often noted, although in some cases neurotic forms of protection.
A. Maurer (1966) conducted a survey of 700 high school students and to the question What comes to your mind when you think of death? identified the following responses: awareness, rejection, curiosity, contempt, and despair. As noted earlier, the fear of their own death and the death of their parents is observed in the vast majority of adolescents.
In youth (or early maturity according to E. Erickson - 20-25 years) young people are focused on getting a profession and creating a family. The main problem that can arise in this age period is self-absorption and avoidance of interpersonal relationships, which is psychological basis for the emergence of a sense of loneliness, existential vacuum and social isolation. If the crisis is successfully overcome, then young people develop the ability to love, altruism, and moral feeling.
After adolescence, thoughts about death come to young people less and less, and they very rarely think about it. 90% of the students said that they rarely think about their own death, in a personal respect it is of little importance to them (J. Hinton, 1972).
The thoughts of modern domestic youth about death were unexpected. According to S. B. Borisov (1995), who studied female students pedagogical institute Moscow region, 70% of respondents in one form or another admit the existence of the soul after physical death, of which 40% believe in reincarnation, i.e. transmigration of the soul into another body. Only 9% of the interviewees unequivocally reject the existence of the soul after death.
A few decades ago, it was believed that in adulthood a person does not have significant problems associated with the development of personality, and maturity was considered a time of achievement. However, Levinson's works The seasons of human life , Neugarten Awareness of adulthood , Osherson Lost sorrow I AM in the middle of life , as well as changes in the structure of morbidity and mortality in this age period forced researchers to look differently at the psychology of maturity and call this period crisis of maturity.
In this age period, the needs of self-esteem and self-actualization dominate (according to A. Maslow). The time has come to take stock of the first results of what has been done in life. E. Erickson believes that this stage of personality development is also characterized by concern for the future well-being of mankind (otherwise indifference and apathy, unwillingness to take care of others, self-absorption with one's own problems arise).
At this time of life, the frequency of depression, suicide, neurosis, and dependent forms of behavior increases. The death of peers prompts one to reflect on the finiteness of one's own life. According to various psychological and sociological studies, the topic of death is relevant for 30% -70% of people of this age. Nonbelievers in their forties understand death as the end of life, its end, but even they consider themselves slightly more immortal than others ... This period is also characterized by a feeling of disappointment in professional career and family life. This is due to the fact that, as a rule, if the set goals are not realized by the time of maturity, then they are already hardly achievable.
And if implemented?
A person enters the second half of his life and his previous life experience is not always suitable for solving the problems of this time.
The problem of 40-year-old K.G. Jung dedicated his talk Life milestone (1984), in which he advocated the creation high schools for forty-year-olds that would prepare them for the future life , for a person cannot live the second half of his life according to the same program as the first. As a comparison of psychological changes occurring at different periods of life in a person's soul, he makes a comparison with the movement of the sun, meaning the sun, animated by human feeling and endowed with momentary human consciousness. In the morning it appears from the night sea of the unconscious, illuminating a wide, colorful world, and the higher it rises in the firmament, the further it spreads its rays. In this expansion of its sphere of influence associated with sunrise, the sun will see its purpose and see its highest goal in rising as high as possible.
With this conviction, the sun reaches an unforeseen midday height - unforeseen, because because of its one-time individual existence, it could not know in advance its own climax. Sunset begins at twelve o'clock. It represents the inversion of all the values and ideals of the morning. The sun becomes inconsistent. It kind of removes its rays. Light and heat decrease until they are completely extinguished.
Elderly people (stage of late maturity according to E. Erickson). Studies of gerontologists have established that physical and mental aging depends on the personality of a person and on how he lived his life. G. Ruffin (1967) conventionally distinguishes three types of old age: happy , unhappy and psychopathological ... Yu.I. Polishchuk (1994) randomly studied 75 people aged 73 to 92 years. According to the obtained studies, this group was dominated by persons whose condition was classified as unhappy old age - 71%; 21% were persons with the so-called psychopathological old age and 8% were worried happy old age.
Happy old age occurs in harmonious individuals with a strong balanced type of higher nervous activity, engaged in long time intellectual work and did not leave this occupation even after retirement. Psychological condition these people are characterized by vital asthenia, contemplation, a tendency to remember, tranquility, wise enlightenment and a philosophical attitude towards death. E. Erickson (1968, 1982) believed that only in someone who somehow cared about business and people, who experienced triumphs and defeats in life, who was an inspirer for others and put forward ideas - only he can gradually ripen the fruits of the previous stages ... He believed that only in old age real maturity comes and called this period late maturity . The wisdom of old age is aware of the relativity of all knowledge acquired by a person during his life in one historical period. Wisdom is the realization of the absolute meaning of life itself in the face of death itself ... Many prominent personalities created their best works in old age.
Titian wrote Battle of Leranto when he was 98 years old and created his best works after 80 years. Michelangelo completed his sculptural composition in the Church of St. Peter in Rome in the ninth decade of his life. The great natural scientist Humboldt worked on his work up to 90 years Space , Goethe created the immortal Faust at 80 years old, at the same age Verdi wrote Falstaff ... At 71, Galileo Galilei discovered the rotation of the Earth around the Sun. Book Human origins and sexual selection was written by Darwin when he was in his 60s.
Unhappy old age more often occurs in individuals with traits of anxious suspiciousness, sensitivity, the presence of somatic diseases. These persons are characterized by a loss of the meaning of life, a feeling of loneliness, helplessness and constant reflections on death as a deliverance from suffering .They have frequent suicidal thoughts, suicidal actions and recourse to methods of euthanasia are possible.
The old age of the world famous psychotherapist Z. Freud, who lived for 83 years, can serve as an illustration.
In the last decades of his life, Z. Freud revised many postulates of the theory of psychoanalysis created by him and put forward the hypothesis that became fundamental in his later works that the basis of mental processes is the dichotomy of two powerful forces: the instinct of love (Eros) and the instinct of death (Thanatos). Most of the followers and students did not support his new views on the fundamental role of Thanatos in human life and explained the turn in the Master's worldview by intellectual decay and sharpened personality traits... Z. Freud experienced a keen sense of loneliness and incomprehensibility.
The situation was aggravated by the changed political situation: in 1933, fascism came to power in Germany, whose ideologues did not recognize Freud's teachings. His books were burned in Germany, and a few years later 4 of his sisters were also killed in the furnaces of a concentration camp. Shortly before Freud's death, in 1938, the Nazis occupied Austria, confiscating his publishing house and library, property and passport. Freud became a prisoner of the ghetto. And only thanks to the ransom of 100 thousand shillings, which his patient and follower Princess Maria Bonaparte paid for him, his family was able to emigrate to England.
Fatally ill with cancer, who lost his family and students, Freud also lost his homeland. In England, despite enthusiastic reception, his condition worsened. On September 23, 1939, at his request, the attending physician gave him 2 injections, which ended his life.
Psychopathological old age manifested by age-related organic disorders, depression, psychopathic hypochondria, neurosis-like, psychoorganic disorders, senile dementia. Very often, these patients have a fear of ending up in a nursing home.
A study of 1000 Chicago residents revealed the relevance of the topic of death for almost all elderly people, although issues of finance, politics, etc. were no less significant to them. People of this age are philosophical about death and tend to perceive it on an emotional level rather as prolonged sleep than as a source of suffering. Sociological studies have shown that in 70% of the elderly, thoughts about death concerned preparation for it (28% - made a will; 25% - have already prepared some funeral accessories and half have already discussed their death with their immediate heirs (J. Hinton, 1972).
This data, obtained from a sociological survey of older people in the United States, contrasts with the results of similar studies of residents of the UK, where most of the respondents avoided this topic and answered questions as follows: I try to think as little as possible about death and dying , I try to switch to other topics, etc.
In the experiences associated with death, not only age, but also sexual differentiation is quite definitely manifested. .W.Back (1974), investigating the age and sex dynamics of experiencing time by the method of R. Knapp, presented the subject along with metaphors of time and death metaphors ... As a result of the study, he came to the conclusion that men are more reluctant to death than women: this topic causes them associations, imbued with fear and disgust. In women it is described Harlequin complex , in which death seems mysterious and in some ways even attractive.
A different picture of the psychological attitude to death was obtained 20 years later. The National Agency for the Development of Science and Space Research of France studied the problem of thanatology based on the materials of a sociological study of more than 20 thousand French people. The received data was published in one of the issues Regards sur I actualite (1993) - the official publication of the French State Documentation Center, which publishes statistical materials and reports on the most important problems for the country.
The results obtained indicated that thoughts about death are especially relevant for persons 35 - 44 years old and in all age groups women are more likely to think about the finiteness of life, which is clearly reflected in Table 2.
Table 2. Distribution of the frequency of occurrence of thoughts about death by age and sex (in%)
Sex Age 18-2425-3435-4455-69 Men 18143021 Women 22293541
In women, thoughts about death are most often accompanied by fear and anxiety, men are more balanced and rational about this problem, and in a third of cases they are completely indifferent. Attitudes towards death in men and women are reflected in Table 3.
Table 3. Distribution of thoughts about attitudes towards death by gender (in%)
Gender Fear, Anxiety, Serenity, Indifference, Satisfaction, Men3821302, Women5919121
The respondents, who treated the problem of death with indifference or calmness, explained this by the fact that, in their opinion, there are more terrible conditions than death (Table 4)
Table 4.
Men Women Live alone16% 18% Be helpless, addicted 47% 48% Be abandoned by a loved one 17% 10% Lose loved ones 33% 44% Suffer from an incurable disease 44% 47%
Of course, thoughts about death gave rise to a conscious and unconscious fear. Therefore, the most universal desire of all the tested was a quick death. 90% of those surveyed answered that they would like to die in their sleep, avoiding suffering.
Conclusion
Age crises are special, relatively short (up to a year) periods of ontogenesis, characterized by mental changes.
Distinguish between biological crises caused by internal patterns of development of the body and biographical crises that arise in connection with a change in the socio-psychological status of a person.
The first age-related biological crisis is a 3-year crisis. End of character formation. This is a period of stubbornness and negativism. Even an obedient child suddenly becomes moody and stubborn. The desire to do everything independently is associated with the formation of self-awareness, the appearance of the self-image. Many parents during this period panic or begin to brutally suppress the manifestations of the child's self. At this time, the occurrence of enuresis, stuttering, convulsive states and other psychological disorders are frequent.
In the second age crisis (7-8 years), motor and emotional disorders may appear. Due to the load on the speech apparatus, it is possible to identify various speech disorders: stuttering, mutism.
The teenage crisis (11-14 years old) marks the second psychological birth of a child. Adolescents experience this conflict as a fear of losing I.
At puberty (adolescence) there is a peak of different types of deviant (deviant) behavior (psychopathic personality formation and reactions, early alcoholism, etc.). Most often at this age, more serious mental illnesses can appear.
The crisis is 30 years old. The problem of the meaning of life. By the age of 30, most people are in crisis. It arises as a result of unrealized goals in life. The search for the meaning of existence is associated with this period.
The crisis is 40 years old. Correction of a life plan. It is like a repetition of the crisis of 30 years, the crisis of the meaning of life. It is often caused by an exacerbation of family relations. The departure of children to an independent life contributes to the final awareness of marital relations. It often happens that, apart from children, spouses are not connected by anything significant for both of them. A person has to develop a new self-concept. There is a change in the assessment of the meaning of life and, accordingly, the correction of the self-concept of the individual.
Menopause age crisis. It is believed that it is more painful in women. May be accompanied by vegetative disorders, senestopathies, hysterical and emotional disturbances, asthenic conditions. Personal disorders in the form of increased conflict and irritability may also appear. Most often, libido decreases, but there are cases of painful exacerbation of sexuality.
For men, 40 or 50 years are considered critical periods, which may be accompanied by depressive conditions, alcoholism, psychosomatic diseases.
The retirement crisis is the end of an active professional activity.
Biographical crises in different people can occur due to various reasons(death of a loved one, divorce, job loss, criminal record, etc.) at different age periods.
The most common biographical crises should be considered: the arrival of a child in a children's collective (kindergarten, etc.), the beginning of school, the beginning of an independent life (military service, study in another city), marriage, the birth of the 1st, 2nd th child, stages of growing up children, retirement.
In conclusion, it should be noted that, when developing preventive and rehabilitation programs for people with neurotic, stress-related and somatoform disorders, along with the clinical and psychopathological characteristics of patients, it should be borne in mind that in each age period of a person's life, crisis conditions are possible, which are based on specific for this age group, psychological problems and frustrated needs.
In addition, the development of a personal crisis is determined by cultural, socio-economic, religious factors, and is also associated with the sex of the individual, his family traditions and personal experience. It should be especially noted that for productive psychocorrectional work with these patients (especially with suicides, persons with post-traumatic stress disorder), specific knowledge in the field of thanatology (its psychological and psychiatric aspect) is required. Very often, acute and / or chronic stresses potentiate and aggravate the development of an age-related personality crisis and lead to dramatic consequences, the prevention of which is one of the main tasks of psychiatry.
Bibliography
1.Abdurakhmanov R.A. An introduction to general psychology and psychotherapy. - M .: MPSI; Voronezh: Publishing house of NPO MODEK, 2008.
2.Bossart A.B. Paradoxes of age or upbringing. M .: Education, 1991.
.Dobrovich A.B. Educator about the psychology and psychohygiene of communication. - M .: "Education", 1987.
.Dragunova T.V. "The crisis" was explained in different ways // Reader on developmental psychology / Ed. DI. Feldstein. Moscow: Institute of Practical Psychology, 1996.
.Zhbanov E. "We" and "They" // Family and School, 1990, No. 9, P.4-6, No. 10.
.Kulagina I.Yu. Developmental psychology (child development from birth to 17 years). M .: Publishing house URAO., 2007.
.Levi V. Nonstandard child. M .: Knowledge, 1989.
.Medical psychology: textbook. Ed. F.M. Gaiduk. - Minsk: High School, 2006.
.General psychology: a course of lectures. Compiled by E.I. Rogov. - M .: Vlados, 1998.
.O.I. Polyantseva Psychology. - Rostov n / a: "Phoenix", 2008.
.N. D. Tvorogova Psychology (lectures for medical students). - M .: GOU VUNMTs MZ RF, 2009.
.Fromm E. Character and social progress. Psychology of personality: texts. - M .: 1982.
.Shkurenko D.A. General and medical psychology: textbook. - Rostov n / a: "Phoenix", 2007.
Tutoring
Need help exploring a topic?
Our experts will advise or provide tutoring services on topics of interest to you.
Send a request with the indication of the topic right now to find out about the possibility of obtaining a consultation.
Age crises are special, relatively short periods of transition in age development, leading to a new qualitatively specific stage, characterized by sharp psychological changes. Age crises are primarily caused by the destruction of the usual social situation of development and the emergence of another, which is more consistent with a new level of psychological development of a person.
According to L.S. Vygotsky, the most essential content of development at critical ages is the emergence of neoplasms. Their main difference from neoplasms of stable ages is that they are not preserved in the form in which they arise during the critical period, and are not included in the quality the necessary component in the general structure of the future personality.
Age crises accompany a person throughout life. Age crises are natural and necessary for development. A more realistic life position arising as a result of age crises helps a person find a new, relatively stable form of relationship with the world around him.
One year crisis:
Crisis of three years:
One of the most difficult moments in a child's life. This is the destruction, revision of the old system of social relations, the crisis of separating out his “I”. The child, separating from adults, tries to establish new, deeper relationships with them.
L.S.Vygotsky. Characteristics of the three-year crisis:
Negativism (the child gives a negative reaction not to the action itself, which he refuses to perform, but to the demand or request of an adult)
Stubbornness (the reaction of a child who insists on something, not because he really wants it, but because he demands that his opinion be considered)
Obstinacy (directed not against a specific adult, but against the entire system of relations that developed in early childhood, against upbringing norms adopted in the family, against the imposition of a way of life)
Self-will, willfulness (associated with a tendency towards independence: the child wants to do everything and decide for himself)
The crisis also manifests itself in the devaluation of the demands of an adult. The devaluation of what was familiar, interesting, expensive before. The child's attitude towards other people and towards himself changes. He is psychologically separated from close adults. The reasons for the crisis of three years lie in the collision of the need to act on his own and needs to meet the requirements of an adult, the contradiction between "I want" and "I can".
Seven Years Crisis:
The crisis of seven years is the period of birth of the child's social "I". It is associated with the emergence of a new systemic neoformation - "internal position", which expresses a new level of self-awareness and reflection of the child. Both the environment and the child's attitude to the environment are changing. self-respect, self-respect, self-respect appears. Self-esteem is actively formed. A change in self-awareness leads to a reassessment of values, to a restructuring of needs and motives. What was significant before becomes secondary. Everything that has to do with educational activity, turns out to be valuable, that which is connected with the game - less important.
The child's transition to the next age stage is largely associated with the child's psychological readiness for school.
Youth crisis:
The period of adolescence is characterized by the presence of a crisis, the essence of which is the gap, the divergence of the educational system and the system of growing up. The crisis arises at the turn of school and new adult life. The crisis manifests itself in the collapse of life plans, in disappointment in the correct choice of specialty, in the divergence of ideas about the conditions and content of activities and In the crisis of adolescence, young people are faced with a crisis of the meaning of life.
The central problem is finding a young person of the individual (attitude to his culture, to social reality, to his time), authorship in the development of his abilities, in defining his own outlook on life. their place in life.
Crisis 30years:
It is expressed in a change in ideas about your life, sometimes a loss of interest in what was previously the main thing in it, in some cases even in the destruction of the previous way of life. Sometimes there is a revision of one's own personality, leading to a reassessment of values. This means that the life plan turned out to be wrong. , which can lead to a change in profession, the way of family life, to a revision of their relationships with people around them. The crisis of 30 years is often called a crisis of the meaning of life, in general it marks the transition from youth to maturity. Meaning is what connects the goal and the one behind it. motive is the relationship of the goal to the motive.
The problem of meaning arises when the goal does not correspond to the motive, when its achievement does not lead to the achievement of the object of the need, i.e. when the goal was set incorrectly.
Crisis 40 years:
There is an opinion that middle age is a time of anxiety, depression, stress and crises. There is an awareness of the discrepancy between dreams, goals and reality. A person is faced with the need to revise his plans and relate them to the rest of his life. The main problems of midlife crisis: decrease in physical strength and attractiveness, sexuality, rigidity. Researchers see the reason for the crisis of adulthood in a person's awareness of the discrepancy between their dreams, life plans and the course of their implementation.
Modern research has shown that in adulthood many people experience such a psychological phenomenon as an identity crisis. Identity is understood as a certain non-identity of a person with himself, his inability to determine who he is, what are his goals and life prospects, who he is in the eyes of others. what place it occupies in a certain social sphere, in society, etc.
Retirement Crisis:
In late adulthood, a retirement crisis manifests itself. Disruption of the regime and way of life. There is a lack of demand to benefit people, general health deteriorates, the level of some mental functions of professional memory, creative imagination decreases, and financial situation often worsens. The crisis can be complicated by the loss of loved ones. the reason for psychological experiences in late old age is the contradiction between the psychological, spiritual and biological capabilities of a person.
22) Newborn (0 – 2 (3) months)
Neoplasms: By the end of 1 month of life, the first conditioned reflexes appear. The neoplasm of the neonatal period is a complex of revitalization, that is, the first specific reaction of the child to a person. "The complex of revitalization" goes through 3 stages: 1) smile; 2) smile + hum; 3) smile + vocalization + movement revival (by 3 months).
The appearance of visual and auditory concentration. The need for communication with an adult develops during the neonatal period under the influence of active appeals and influences of an adult.
The emergence of the individual mental life of a child. A complex of revitalization in the need to communicate with adults [VS Mukhina]; the need for impressions [LI Bozhovich].
The central neoplasm of the newborn is the emergence of the child's individual mental life, with a predominance of undifferentiated experiences and the absence of separating oneself from the environment. The newborn experiences all impressions as subjective states.
Social developmental situation: Complete biological dependence on the mother.
Leading activity: Emotional communication with an adult (mother).
The newborn crisis is a direct process of birth. Psychologists consider it a difficult and turning point in a child's life. The reasons for this crisis are as follows:
1) physiological. The child, being born, is physically separated from the mother, which is already a trauma, and in addition to this, it falls into completely different conditions (cold, air, bright light, the need to change the diet);
2) psychological. Separating from the mother, the child ceases to feel her warmth, which leads to a feeling of insecurity and anxiety.
The psyche of a newborn child has a set of innate unconditioned reflexes that help him in the first hours of life. These include sucking, breathing, protective, orienting, grasping (“grasping”) reflexes. fit, it soon disappears.
The neonatal period is considered a time of adaptation to new living conditions: the time of wakefulness gradually increases; visual and auditory concentration develops, i.e. the ability to focus on visual and auditory signals; the first combined and conditioned reflexes develop, for example, to the position when feeding. - sight, hearing, touch, and it occurs much faster than the development of motor skills.
23 question .Infancy (0-1years)
The social situation of development in the first year of life consists of two moments.
Firstly, a baby is even biologically a helpless creature. It is not able to satisfy even basic vital needs on its own. The life of an infant entirely depends on the adult caring for him: nutrition, movement in space, even turning from side to side is carried out in no other way as with the help of an adult. Such mediation allows us to consider the child as a maximally social being - his attitude to reality is initially social.
Secondly, being woven into the social, the child is deprived of the main means of communication - speech. By the whole organization of life, the child is forced to maximum communication with an adult, but this communication is peculiar - wordless.
In the contradiction between maximum sociality and minimum communication opportunities, the basis for the entire development of a child in infancy is laid.
Breast age (the first two months) is characterized by the complete helplessness and dependence of the infant on adults. He has: visual, auditory, taste, olfactory sensations; sucking reflex.
From the 2nd month, the ability to distinguish colors, a single image of the face and voice of the mother (the perception of a human appearance) appears. The baby knows how to keep his head, can concentrate after hearing the speech of adults.
At this stage of life, a complex of revitalization arises (at the sight of the mother, the child smiles, revives, moves).
At each stage of infancy, its own characteristics appear:
♦ 3rd month of life: grasping movements are formed; shapes of objects are recognized.
♦ 4th month: objects are recognized by the baby; he performs intentional actions (picks up, shakes a toy), sits, if there is support; repeats simple syllables; distinguishes the intonation of the statements of adults.
♦ 5-6 months: monitors other people's actions; coordinates their movements.
♦ 7-8 months: the child remembers the image of the object, actively searches for the disappeared object; phonemic hearing is formed; he sits on his own, stands, if supported, crawls. Various feelings appear: fear, disgust, joy, etc. a means of emotional communication and influence on adults (babbling); the baby connects the perceived object with its name / name: turns his head to the named object, grabs it.
♦ 9-10 months: the child establishes a connection between objects, removes barriers, obstacles that interfere with the achievement of the goal; stands by himself, crawls; associative memory is strong enough: recognizes objects by their parts; subject communication with adults - in response to the naming of some the child takes it and hands it to the adult.
♦ 11-12 months: understanding the words of people and commands; the appearance of the first meaningful words; the ability to walk; mastering ways of influencing adults; accidental discovery of new opportunities to achieve the goal; development of visual-effective thinking, research of objects.
♦ The development of speech and the development of thinking go separately. Basic trust or distrust in the world is formed (depending on the living conditions and behavior of the mother).
Neoplasms: walking as a physical expression of the child's independence, the appearance of the first word as a means of emotional situational speech.
One year crisis:
The development of walking. Walking is the main means of transportation in space, the main neoplasm of infancy, marking a break in the old situation of development.
The appearance of the first word: the child learns that each thing has its own name, an increase in the child's vocabulary, the direction of speech development goes from passive to active.
The child develops the first acts of protest, opposing himself to others, the so-called hypobulic reactions, which are especially revealed when the child is denied something (screams, falls to the floor, pushes adults, etc.).
In infancy, "... with autonomous speech, practical actions, negativism, whims, the child separates from adults and insists on his self."
24. Age characteristics of childhood : age framework, social situation, air traffic control, neoplasms, crisis
Early childhood 1-3years
SSR: the child's family while maintaining the position of the mother
VVD: Subject-manipulative activity:
a) correlating (nesting dolls, pyrimids)
b) gun (dishes, cars)
New education:
Formation of fine motor skills, improvement of gross motor skills
Formation of perception that plays the main role among all mental processes
Memory, attention - involuntary, mechanical, motor
Thinking is visual-effective
Development of speech! This period is sensitive for the development of speech (1.5 - 3 thousand words)
The emergence of consciousness (I myself!)
Crisis 3 years:
Negativism
Rebellion against a significant adult
Aggression
Striving for independence
Critical and stable periods of development. The problem of age crises.
Elkonin's periodization.
Eras / Age
Early childhood
Childhood
Adolescence
Periodization
Infant (0-12 months)
2-6 7-12
Early age
1-3 years
Preschool
3-7 years old
Junior school
7-12 years old
Junior teen
12-15 years old
Senior teen
15-18 years old
Development line
Motivational-needs sphere
Situational-personal
Situational-business communication
Operational and technical
Subject-weapon
Motivational-need
Operational and technical
Motivational-need
Operational and technical
Social development situation
Contradiction: helplessness-addiction
An adult is a model, practical cooperation with an adult, an adult as a bearer of cultural and historical experience
An adult as a carrier of social and personal relationships
An adult as a carrier of generalized modes of activity in the system of scientific concepts
Peer as an object and subject of relationships
Adult as a senior ally
Leading activity
Direct emotional communication with a close adult
Subject-tool activity
Play activity
Learning activity (cognitive, thinking, intellectual and cognitive sphere)
Intimate and personal communication with peers
Age problem solved through SSR
Solve the problem of how to communicate with an adult, develop ways of communication
Disclosure of the social functions of objects; awareness of what can be done with objects
Subordination of motives and manifestation of the child's personality characteristics
Mastering the system of scientific concepts
Self-determination of oneself in the system of relations with peers
Professional choice; autonomy
Mental neoplasm
Individual mental life
Revitalization complex
Speech
Perception
Self-awareness
Formation of internal positions
Arbitrariness of thinking (logical type of generalization)
Internal action plan
Reflection
Internal mediation of all mental processes
Self-esteem
Feeling mature
Reflection
System of values
Formation of logical intelligence
Hypothetical-deductive thinking
Thinking style
Result
Destruction of the symbiotic situation
I myself
Self-awareness
Change Proud.
Independence
Own position to the system of social relations (rudiments of worldview social relations)
Own cognitive activity
Cooperation with peers
Self-control
Formation of the "I" system development of self-awareness
Development of worldview and philosophical thinking
Formation of a system of theoretical knowledge
Age-related crises.
Age crises are some temporary periods in human development, during which sharp mental changes are observed. They do not last long, from several months to a year, and are a normal phenomenon in a person's personal development.
The duration of these crises and their manifestations depend on the individual characteristics and the conditions in which a person is in a given period of time. Conditions are understood as both the family and the social environment (at work, in a company, hobby clubs ...).
Psychologists differ on age-related crises. Some believe that the crisis is the result of improper upbringing, that development should proceed smoothly and harmoniously. Others believe that a crisis is a normal process of transition to a more difficult age stage. Some psychologists believe that a person who has not survived the crisis will not develop further.
Domestic psychologists distinguish stable and crisis periods of development. They alternate with each other and are a natural process of the child's development. There are obvious shifts in development, the child changes greatly in behavior (can be extremely emotional), conflicts with adults (not only with loved ones). Interest in classes is lost. This is observed not only at school, but also in circles. Some children have unconscious experiences, internal conflicts.
The well-known Russian psychologist D.B. Elkonin said: “The p-k approaches each point of its development with a certain discrepancy between what he has learned from the system of man-man relations and what he has learned from the system of man-object relations. Just the moments when this discrepancy takes the greatest value, and are called crises, after the cat. is the development of the side, the cat. lagged behind in the previous period. But each side prepares the development of the other. "
Now let's look at crises by age:
- newborn crisis
Associated with a change in living conditions. A child from a familiar environment finds himself in completely different conditions. All nine months he was in the womb. Firstly, it is the aquatic environment. It's warm there. He ate and breathed through the umbilical cord without making any effort. At birth, everything changed dramatically. From the aquatic environment, the child enters the air. You need to breathe and eat on your own. Adaptation to new conditions is in progress.
- one year crisis
During this period, the child has new needs.
This is the age of independence, and various emotional and affective manifestations are the result or, if you want, the child's response to the lack of understanding of adults. It is during this period that children's speech manifests itself. She is quite peculiar, different from an adult, but at the same time she corresponds to the situation and is emotionally colored.
- crisis of three years
The crisis of three years precedes the crisis of the age of seven and is one of the most difficult periods in a child's life. The child singles out his "I", moves away from adults and tries to build other "more adult" relationships with them. The well-known Russian psychologist L.S. Vygotsky identifies 7 characteristics of a three-year-old crisis.
Negativism. Child's negative reaction to an adult's request or demand. This reaction is not directed against the very action that is required of the child. It addresses the request itself. The main thing that motivates the child at this moment is to do the opposite.
The manifestation of stubbornness. The child insists on something, not because he really wants it, but because he demands that his opinion be considered.
The line of manifestation of independence is very clearly traced. The child wants to do everything himself.
In general, this is good. But everything is good in moderation. A hypertrophied manifestation of independence often does not correspond to the child's capabilities. Which can lead to internal conflict with oneself, and conflict with adults.
It happens that conflicts between children and adults become, as it were, a system of relationships. One gets the impression that they are constantly at war. In such cases, we can talk about a protest-riot. In families where the child is alone, despotism can manifest itself. In families with many children, instead of despotism, jealousy towards other children may appear. Jealousy in this case will be regarded as a tendency towards power and intolerance towards the younger.
Devaluation of old rules and norms of behavior, attachments to certain things and toys. Psychologically, the child moves away from close adults and realizes himself as an independent subject.
- crisis of seven years
A seven-year crisis can occur between about 6 and 8 years. Since at this age almost all children go to school, this period is associated with the discovery for themselves of a new social position - the position of a student. At this age, the child's self-awareness changes, and accordingly, a reassessment of values occurs.
According to LS Vygotsky, at this age stage, a generalization of experiences appears. A child has shown himself to be successful or failed in any of his areas of activity (whether it is study or communication with peers, classes in circles or sports ...) - either a sense of self-worth, exclusivity or a feeling of inferiority is formed. These experiences lead to the formation of the inner life of the child. There is a distinction between the external and internal life of the child, which leads to a change in his behavior. This is where the semantic basis of the deed appears. The child thinks before doing anything - an attempt to assess the future action in terms of possible consequences or unfolding actions. Due to the fact that the semantic basis of actions appears, impulsiveness disappears from behavior and children's immediacy is lost. The child tries to think over his steps, begins to hide his feelings.
One of the manifestations of the crisis of seven years is antics, tension of behavior due to the differentiation of internal and external life. All these manifestations disappear when the child enters the next age stage.
- (puberty - 11-15 years old)
This crisis is associated with the puberty of the child. The activation of sex hormones and growth hormones is characteristic at this age stage. Rapid growth of the body, the appearance of secondary sexual characteristics. Due to rapid growth, problems with cardiovascular activity, with lung function, etc. can arise. Emotionally unstable background at this age increases the sexual arousal that accompanies puberty.
Adolescents are guided in behavior by patterns of masculinity or femininity. Consequently, interest in one's appearance increases and a certain new vision of oneself is formed. This age is characterized by strong feelings about their imperfect appearance.
One of the most important neoplasms is the feeling of adulthood. In adolescence, a strong desire arises - to be or at least seem to be an adult and independent. Teenagers do not share any information about their personal life with their parents; quarrels and conflicts with adults often arise. The main social circle in this period is peers. Intimate and personal communication takes the main place in the life of a teenager. Also, this age tends to unite in informal groups.
Age crises are special, relatively short (up to a year) periods of ontogenesis, characterized by sharp mental changes. Refers to the normative processes necessary for the normal progressive course of personal development (Erickson).
The form and duration of these periods, as well as the severity of the course, depend on individual characteristics, social and microsocial conditions. In developmental psychology, there is no consensus about crises, their place and role in mental development. Some psychologists believe that development should be harmonious and crisis-free. Crises are an abnormal, "painful" phenomenon, the result of improper upbringing. Another part of psychologists argues that the presence of crises in development is natural. Moreover, according to some ideas in developmental psychology, a child who has not really experienced a crisis will not fully develop further. This topic was addressed by Bozovic, Polivanova, Gail Sheikhi.
L.S. Vygotsky examines the dynamics of transitions from one age to another. At different stages, changes in the child's psyche can occur slowly and gradually, or they can happen quickly and abruptly. Stable and crisis stages of development are distinguished, their alternation is the law of child development. A stable period is characterized by a smooth course of the development process, without abrupt shifts and changes in the personality of the district. Long in duration. Minor, minimal changes accumulate and at the end of the period give a qualitative leap in development: age-related neoplasms appear, stable, fixed in the structure of the Personality.
Crises do not last long, several months, with an unfavorable set of circumstances, stretching up to a year or even two years. These are brief but tumultuous stages. Significant developmental shifts, the child changes dramatically in many of its features. Development can become catastrophic at this time. The crisis begins and ends imperceptibly, its boundaries are blurred and indistinct. Aggravation occurs in the middle of the period. For the people around the child, it is associated with a change in behavior, the emergence of "difficult to educate." The child is out of control of the adults. Affective outbursts, moods, conflicts with loved ones. Schoolchildren lose their ability to work, their interest in classes is weakened, their academic performance decreases, sometimes painful experiences and internal conflicts arise.
In a crisis, development takes on a negative character: what was formed at the previous stage disintegrates, disappears. But something new is also being created. The neoplasms turn out to be unstable and in the next stable period are transformed, absorbed by other neoplasms, dissolve in them, and thus die off.
D.B. Elkonin developed the ideas of L.S. Vygotsky on child development. “The child approaches each point of his development with a certain discrepancy between what he has learned from the system of man-man relations, and what he has learned from the system of man-object relations. It is precisely the moments when this discrepancy takes on the greatest value that are called crises, after which the development of the side that lagged behind in the previous period takes place. But each side prepares the development of the other. "
Newborn crisis... Associated with a sharp change in living conditions. A child from comfortable habitual living conditions falls into difficult ones (new nutrition, breathing). Adaptation of the child to new living conditions.
1 year crisis... It is associated with an increase in the child's capabilities and the emergence of new needs. A surge of independence, the appearance of affective reactions. Affective outbursts as a reaction to misunderstanding on the part of adults. The main acquisition of the transition period is a kind of children's speech, called by L.S. Vygotsky autonomous. It differs significantly from adult speech also in sound form. Words become ambiguous and situational.
Crisis 3 years... The line between early childhood and preschool age is one of the most difficult moments in a child's life. This is the destruction, the revision of the old system of social relations, the crisis of separating out "I", according to D.B. Elkonin. The child, separating from the adults, tries to establish new, deeper relationships with them. The emergence of the phenomenon “I myself”, according to Vygotsky, is a new formation “external I myself”. "The child is trying to establish new forms of relationship with others - a crisis of social relations."
L.S. Vygotsky describes 7 characteristics of the crisis for 3 years. Negativism is a negative reaction not to the action itself, which he refuses to perform, but to the demand or request of an adult. The main motive for action is to do the opposite.
The motivation of the child's behavior is changing. At the age of 3, he first becomes able to act contrary to his immediate desire. The behavior of the child is determined not by this desire, but by the relationship with another, adult. The motive of behavior is already outside the situation given to the child. Stubbornness. This is the child's reaction, which insists on something, not because he really wants it, but because he himself told adults about it and demands that his opinion be considered. Obstinacy. It is directed not against a specific adult, but against the entire system of relations that has developed in early childhood, against the norms of upbringing adopted in the family.
The tendency towards independence is clearly manifested: the child wants to do everything and decide for himself. In principle, this is a positive phenomenon, but during a crisis, a hypertrophied tendency towards independence leads to self-will, it is often inadequate to the child's capabilities and causes additional conflicts with adults.
For some children, conflicts with their parents become regular, they seem to be constantly in a state of war with adults. In these cases, they speak of a protest-riot. In a family with an only child, despotism can appear. If the family has several children, instead of despotism, jealousy usually arises: the same tendency towards power here acts as a source of jealous, intolerant attitude towards other children who have almost no rights in the family, from the point of view of a young despot.
Depreciation. A 3-year-old child may begin to swear (the old rules of behavior are devalued), discard or even break a favorite toy offered at the wrong time (old attachments to things are devalued), etc. The child's attitude towards other people and towards himself changes. He is psychologically separated from close adults.
The crisis of 3 years is associated with the awareness of oneself as an active subject in the world of objects, for the first time a child can act contrary to his desires.
Crisis 7 years... It can start at age 7, and may shift by age 6 or 8. Discovery of the meaning of a new social position - the position of a student associated with the performance of educational work highly valued by adults. The formation of an appropriate internal position radically changes his self-awareness. According to L.I. Bozovic is the period of the birth of the social. "I" of the child. A change in self-awareness leads to a reassessment of values. There are profound changes in terms of experiences - stable affective complexes. It appears that L.S. Vygotsky calls the generalization of experiences. A chain of failures or successes (in school, in broad communication), each time about the same experience by the child, leads to the formation of a stable affective complex - a feeling of inferiority, humiliation, offended pride or a sense of self-importance, competence, exclusivity. Thanks to the generalization of experiences, the logic of feelings appears. Experiences acquire a new meaning, connections are established between them, a struggle of experiences becomes possible.
This leads to the emergence of the inner life of the child. The beginning differentiation of the child's external and internal life is associated with a change in the structure of his behavior. A semantic orientational basis of an act appears - a link between the desire to do something and the unfolding actions. This is an intellectual moment that makes it possible to more or less adequately assess a future action in terms of its results and more distant consequences. Semantic orientation in one's own actions becomes an important side of inner life. At the same time, it excludes the impulsiveness and immediacy of the child's behavior. Thanks to this mechanism, the childish spontaneity is lost; the child thinks before acting, begins to hide his feelings and hesitations, tries not to show others that he is bad.
A purely crisis manifestation of the differentiation of the external and internal life of children is usually antics, mannerisms, artificial tension of behavior. These external features, as well as the tendency to whims, affective reactions, conflicts, begin to disappear when the child comes out of the crisis and enters a new age.
Neoplasm is the arbitrariness and awareness of mental processes and their intellectualization.
Puberty Crisis (11 to 15 Years) associated with the restructuring of the child's body - puberty. The activation and complex interaction of growth hormones and sex hormones cause intense physical and physiological development. Secondary sexual characteristics appear. Adolescence is sometimes referred to as a protracted crisis. Due to the rapid development, difficulties arise in the functioning of the heart, lungs, blood supply to the brain. In adolescence, the emotional background becomes uneven, unstable.
Emotional instability increases the sexual arousal that accompanies the process of puberty.
Gender identification is reaching a new, higher level. The orientation towards the models of masculinity and femininity in behavior and manifestation of personality traits is clearly manifested.
Due to the rapid growth and restructuring of the body in adolescence, interest in their appearance sharply increases. A new image of the physical "I" is being formed. Because of his hypertrophied significance, the child acutely experiences all the flaws in appearance, real and imaginary.
The image of the physical "I" and self-awareness in general is influenced by the rate of puberty. Children with late puberty are in the least advantageous position; acceleration creates more favorable opportunities for personal development.
A sense of adulthood appears - a feeling of being an adult, a central neoplasm of younger adolescence. There is a passionate desire, if not to be, then at least to seem and be considered an adult. Defending his new rights, a teenager protects many areas of his life from the control of his parents and often goes into conflicts with them. In addition to the desire for emancipation, the adolescent has a strong need for communication with peers. Intimate-personal communication becomes the leading Activity during this period. Teenage friendships and informal groups emerge. There are also bright, but usually replacing hobbies.
Crisis 17 years old (15 to 17 years old)... Arises exactly at the turn of the usual school and new adult life. May be displaced by 15 years. At this time, the child is on the verge of real adult life.
The majority of 17-year-old schoolchildren are guided by continuing their education, a few are looking for work. The value of education is a great blessing, but at the same time, achieving this goal is difficult, and at the end of grade 11, emotional stress can sharply increase.
For those who have been going through the crisis for 17 years, various fears are characteristic. Responsibility to oneself and one's family for the choice, real achievements at this time is already a big burden. Added to this is the fear of a new life, of the possibility of error, of failure when entering a university, among young men - of the army. High anxiety and against this background, pronounced fear can lead to neurotic reactions, such as fever before graduation or entrance exams, headaches, etc. An exacerbation of gastritis, neurodermatitis, or other chronic disease may begin.
A sharp change in lifestyle, inclusion in new types of Activities, communication with new people cause significant tension. A new life situation requires adaptation to it. Mainly two factors help to adapt: family support and self-confidence, a sense of competence.
Striving for the future. Personality stabilization period. At this time, a system of stable views of the world and their place in it - a worldview - is taking shape. Known associated with this youthful maximalism in assessments, passion in defending their point of view. The central neoplasm of the period is self-determination, professional and personal.
The crisis is 30 years old. Around the age of 30, sometimes somewhat later, most people experience a crisis. It is expressed in a change in ideas about one's life, sometimes in a complete loss of interest in what was previously the main thing in it, in some cases even in the destruction of the previous way of life.
The crisis of 30 years arises as a result of the failure to implement a life plan. If at the same time there is a "reassessment of values" and "revision of one's own Personality", then we are talking about the fact that the life plan in general turned out to be wrong. If the path in life is chosen correctly, then attachment to "a certain Activity, a certain way of life, certain values and orientations" does not limit, but, on the contrary, develops his Personality.
The crisis of 30 years is often called the crisis of the meaning of life. It is with this period that the search for the meaning of existence is usually associated. This quest, like the entire crisis in general, marks the transition from youth to maturity.
The problem of meaning in all its variants, from private to global - the meaning of life - arises when the goal does not correspond to the motive, when its achievement does not lead to the achievement of the object of need, i.e. when the goal was set incorrectly. If we are talking about the meaning of life, then the common life goal turned out to be erroneous, i.e. life plan.
Some people in adulthood have another, "unplanned" crisis, confined not to the border of two stable periods of life, but arising within this period. This is the so-calledcrisis 40 years ... It is like a repetition of the crisis for 30 years. It occurs when the crisis of 30 years has not led to the proper solution of existential problems.
A person is acutely experiencing dissatisfaction with his life, the discrepancy between life plans and their implementation. A.V. Tolstykh notes that this is complemented by a change in attitude on the part of work colleagues: the time when one could be considered “promising”, “promising” is passing, and a person feels the need to “pay bills”.
In addition to the problems associated with professional activity, the crisis of 40 years is often caused by the aggravation of family relations. The loss of some close people, the loss of a very important common side of the spouses' life - direct participation in the life of children, daily care for them - contributes to the final understanding of the nature of the marital relationship. And if, apart from the children of the spouses, nothing significant binds both of them, the family may fall apart.
In the event of a crisis for 40 years, a person has to once again rebuild his life plan, to develop a largely new “I-concept”. Serious changes in life may be associated with this crisis, up to a change of profession and the creation of a new family.
Retirement crisis... First of all, a violation of the usual regime and way of life is negatively affected, often combined with an acute feeling of contradiction between the continuing ability to work, the ability to bring benefits and their lack of demand. A person turns out to be, as it were, "thrown to the sidelines" of the current life without his active participation. A decline in one's social status, the loss of the rhythm of life that has been preserved for decades sometimes lead to a sharp deterioration in the general physical and mental state, and in some cases even to a relatively quick death.
The retirement crisis is often aggravated by the fact that around this time the second generation - grandchildren - grows up and begins to live an independent life, which is especially painful for women who have devoted themselves mainly to their families.
Retirement, which often coincides with the acceleration of biological aging, is often associated with a deterioration in the financial situation, and sometimes a more secluded lifestyle. In addition, the crisis can be aggravated by the death of a spouse, the loss of some close friends.
Age period
Signs of the age stage
Social development situation
Characteristics of the leading activity
Crisis manifestations
Major neoplasms
Characteristics of cognitive, motivational-need, emotional spheres of development
Features of behavior
Leading directions
life activity
1. Newborn (1-2 months)
Failure to distinguish oneself and others
breathing, sucking, protective and orienting, atavistic ("grasping") reflexes.
Complete biological dependence on the mother
Emotional communication with an adult (mother)
Birth process, physical separation from mother,
adaptation to new conditions using unconditioned reflexes
Sensory processes (the first types of sensations), the emergence of auditory and visual concentration. revitalization complex.
Personal, need-motivational:
getting pleasure.
Inactivity, sleep, facial expressions of displeasure, crying and well-fed well-being.
Formation of the need for communication
2. Infancy (up to 1 year.)
The stage of "trust in the world": the emergence of upright posture, the formation of an individual mental life, the emergence of the ability to more expressively express one's feelings and
relationship to others,
autonomous
speech - humming, humming, babbling first words.
The common life of a child with a mother (situation "We")
Directly - emotional communication with the mother, objective activity
Crisis 1 year:
The growing contradiction between the needs for cognition of the surrounding world and the capabilities that the child possesses (walking, speech, affect and will), there is a need for new impressions, in communication, and the possibilities are limited - there are no walking skills, he cannot speak yet
Elementary forms of perception and thinking, the first independent steps, words, an active need for knowledge of the world around, the need for communication with adults, trust in the world, autonomous speech.
Cognitive processes: The emergence of the act of grasping, Development of movements and postures
the initial form of visual - effective thinking (based on perception and action with objects), involuntary attention, perception of objects, differentiated sensations and emotional states, the formation of prerequisites for mastering speech, the development of motor skills
Affective outbursts, emotional reactions,
expressive actions, active motor reactions, stubbornness.
The need for communication, as the main factor in the development of the psyche, the formation of basic trust in the world,
overcoming feelings of disunity and alienation, knowledge of objects.
3.Early childhood (1-3 years)
The stage of "independence", he himself can understand the purpose of the subject, autonomous speech is replaced by the words of "adult" speech (phrasal speech), psychological separation from loved ones, development negative traits har-ra, underdevelopment of stable motivational relationships. What was familiar, interesting, expensive before is depreciating.
Cooperative activity with adults, knowledge of the world of surrounding things
situational-business communication in cooperation with an adult, situation ("I am myself")
Subject-manipulative, subject-tool activity
Crisis 3 years:
obstinacy, self-will, devaluation of adults, rebellion, striving for despotism and independence, for the first time says “I myself!”, the first birth of a personality. two lines of independence: negativism, stubbornness, aggressiveness, or a crisis of dependence; tearfulness, timidity, striving for close emotional attachment.
Consciousness "I myself"
Active speech, vocabulary accumulation.
Practical thinking.
"Affective"
perception of objects and situations, emotional reactions, recognition and reproduction, the formation of an internal plan of action, visual-active thinking, self-awareness is born (recognizes itself), primary self-esteem ("I", "I am good", "I myself"), attention and memory involuntary. The emergence of a desire for independence and the need to achieve success.
Impulsive behavior, emotional reactions associated with the child's immediate desires and negative r-s to the demands of adults (crying, throws himself on the sofa, covering his face with his hands, or moves chaotically, shouting incoherent words, his breathing is often uneven, his pulse is frequent; in anger he blushes, screams , clenches fists, can break the thing that has turned up under the arm, hit) affective reactions to difficulties, curiosity
The emergence of a desire for independence and the need to achieve success, the struggle against a sense of shame and strong doubt in their actions for
own independence and independence.
4. Preschool childhood (3-7 years old)
The stage of "choice of initiative": the emergence of personal consciousness,
imitate objective activity and relationships between people. The period of birth of the social "I", there is a meaningful orientation in their experiences. The transition from external actions to internal "mental".
Cognition of the world of human relations and their imitation
Subject-based role-playing game (combination of game activity with communication), didactic and game with rules.
Crisis 7 years "crisis of immediacy":
experiences are associated with the awareness of a new position, the desire to become a schoolboy, but so far the attitude remains as to a preschooler.
Reappraisal of values, generalization of experiences, the emergence of the child's inner life, a change in the structure of behavior: the emergence of a semantic orienting basis for an act (the link between the desire to do something and the unfolding actions, the loss of childish spontaneity.
Subordination of motives, self-awareness (awareness of their experiences) and
arbitrariness.
Personal (consumer - motivational): the need for socially significant and evaluative activities,
the first moral feelings are formed (what is bad and what is good), new motives and needs (competitive, play, the need for independence). The sound side of speech develops,
correct speech, creative imagination, developed involuntary memory, voluntary memory is formed, purposeful analyzing perception, visual-figurative thinking, subordination of motives, assimilation of ethical norms, gender identification, awareness of oneself in time.
It is regulated by the semantic orientational basis of the act (the link between the desire to do something and the unfolding actions), the loss of childish spontaneity.
the emergence of their own activity, instability of will and mood.
deliberation appears, the child begins to act pretentious, to be capricious
Development of active initiative and
moral responsibility for their desires, knowledge of systems of relationships.
Psychological readiness for school - the formation of the main psychological spheres of a child's life (motivational, moral, strong-willed, mental, personal). Intellectual readiness (mental development of the child, stock of elementary knowledge, development of speech, etc.). Personal readiness (formation of readiness to accept the social position of a student who has a range of rights and responsibilities; the child's attitude to school, educational activities, to teachers, to himself). Volitional readiness (development of moral and volitional qualities of the individual, qualitative changes in the degree of arbitrariness of mental processes, the ability to obey the rules).
5. Younger school age (7-11 years old))
Stage of "mastery"
the social status of the student (learning situation),
the main motive is getting high marks
The social status of a student: mastering knowledge, developing intellectual and cognitive activity
Educational and cognitive activity.
Experiences and school maladjustment, high self-esteem, feeling of incompetence.
Evaluation problem.
Arbitrariness of attention, a sense of competence, self-awareness, self-esteem, an internal plan of action, self-control, reflection.
Intellectually - cognitive:
verbal and logical thinking, theoretical thinking, synthesizing perception, voluntary semantic memory, voluntary attention (become conscious and voluntary), educational motives, adequate self-esteem, generalization of feelings, logic of feelings and the appearance of inner life appear.
The child gradually masters his mental processes.
In the organization of activities and the emotional sphere: younger students are easily distracted, unable to concentrate for a long time, excitable, emotional.
Formation of hard work and ability to handle tools
labor, which is opposed by the awareness of one's own ineptitude and uselessness,
learning the beginning of life
6 adolescence (11-15 years old)
The stage of communication with peers: intensive physical and physiological development.
Emancipation from adults and grouping.
Conformity, the formation of national and international identity.
The transition from dependent childhood to independent and responsible adulthood.
Mastering norms and relationships between people.
Intimate and personal communication, hypertrophied need for communication with peers.
Professional-personal communication - a combination of communication on personal topics and joint group activities of interest.
A crisis of character and relationships, claims to adulthood, independence, but there are no opportunities for their implementation. provisions - "no longer a child, not yet an adult", mental and social changes against the background of rapid physiological restructuring, learning difficulties
Feeling of adulthood - the adolescent's attitude towards himself as an adult (younger adolescence),
“Self-concept” (senior adolescence), striving for adulthood, self-esteem, obedience to the norms of collective life. Formation of interests and motivation for learning.
Formation of volitional behavior, the ability to control your emotional state.
Personal (consumer-motivational)
theoretical reflexive thinking, intellectualization of perception and memory, personal reflection, a male and female view of the world appears. Development of creativity,
the ability to perform all types of adult mental work. Ability to operate with hypotheses, solving intellectual problems. Intellectualization of perception and memory. The convergence of imagination with theoretical thinking (the emergence of creative impulses).
Teens become awkward, fussy, make a lot of unnecessary movements,
increased fatigue, anxiety, mood swings; hormonal storm, frequent mood swings, imbalance, accentuation of har-ra.
The task of the first integral awareness of oneself and one's place in the world;
the negative pole in solving this problem is uncertainty in understanding
own "I" ("diffusion of identity", cognition of systems of relations in various situations.
7. Senior school age (16-17 years old)
the stage of self-determination “the world and me”: the leading place among high school students is occupied by motives associated with self-determination and preparation for an independent life, with further education and self-education.
The beginning of true socio-psychological independence in all areas, including: material and financial self-sufficiency, self-service, independence in moral judgments, political views and actions. Awareness of contradictions in life (between the norms of morality, asserted by people and their actions, between ideals and reality, between abilities and capabilities, etc.).
Initial choice of life path Mastering professional knowledge and skills.
Educational and professional activity.
Moral and personal communication.
For the first time, questions of self-determination in the profession arise, questions arise about the meaning and purpose of life, planning a further professional and life path, disappointment in the outlined plans, and in oneself.
Crisis 17 years: fear of choice, of adulthood.
Looking to the future, building life plans and prospects (professional and personal self-determination).
Formation of life plans, worldview, readiness for personal and life self-determination, the acquisition of identity (a sense of adequacy and the person's possession of their own "I", regardless of the situation change).
Cognitive: improvement of mental processes, mental activity becomes more stable and effective, approaching in this respect the activities of adults,
the rapid development of special abilities, often directly related to the chosen professional field, the development of self-awareness. The questions addressed to oneself in the process of introspection, reflection, are of an ideological nature, becoming an element of personal self-determination.
Romantic impulses are not characteristic, a calm, orderly way of life pleases, they are guided by the assessment of others, rely on authority, in the absence of self-knowledge, impulsive inconsistent in actions and relationships, there is an interest in communicating with adults.
Self-determination - social, personal, professional, life plan creation. Knowledge of the professional field of activity.
8. Youth (from 17 to 20-23 years old)
stage of "Human closeness":
The beginning of the establishment of true socio-psychological independence in all spheres, including material and financial self-sufficiency, self-service, independence in moral judgments, political views and actions. Awareness of contradictions in life (between the norms of morality, asserted by people and their actions, between ideals and reality, between abilities and capabilities, etc.)
Professional study, development of professional
labor skills,
labor activity, mastering the norms of relations between people, the situation of choosing a life path.
Labor activity, professional study.
Educational and professional activities
A new life situation, a feeling of incompetence, admission to a university.
youthful maximalism, material independence.
Final self-determination.
Understanding the need for learning. The value of unregulated conditions for the acquisition of knowledge. Willingness and actual ability for various types of learning.
Positive trends in development: striving for knowledge and professionalism, expanding interests in the field of art, a responsible attitude to one's future when choosing a profession, the formation of motives (prestigious motivation, the motive of power, the motive of material wealth and well-being, the motive of creating a prosperous family).
Originality of thinking. Increased intellectual activity.
Student life style; parties, dating, drinking or sports, commitment to study.
Self-determination - social, personal, professional, spiritual and practical. Training, job search, military service.
The challenge of the end of adolescence and the beginning
maturity - finding a life partner and establishing close friendships,
overcoming feelings of loneliness.
9.Youth (20 to 30 years old)
The stage of human maturity, a period of active professional, social and personal development. Getting married, giving birth and raising children, development. Building prospects for future life.
Choosing a life partner, creating a family, establishing oneself in the profession, choosing a life path.
Entering labor collective and mastering the chosen profession, creating a family.
The problem of the meaning of life is the crisis of 30, the reassessment of values, the failure to realize a life plan. Difficulties in professional development, self-absorption and avoidance of interpersonal relationships,
Family relationships and a sense of professional competence, skill, fatherhood.
Intensive cognitive development, dominated by the needs of self-esteem and self-actualization, is also characterized by concern for the future well-being of mankind (otherwise there is indifference and apathy, unwillingness to take care of others, self-absorption by one's own problems), is characterized as “stable conceptual socialization, when stable personality traits are developed”, all mental processes are stabilized, a person becomes stable. Choice of motive: professional, motives of creative achievement, broad social motives - the motive of personal prestige, the motive of maintaining and increasing status, the motive of self-realization, the motive of self-affirmation, material motives.
Optimism and maximum efficiency are characteristic. Creative activity.
Minutes of despair, doubt, uncertainty are short-lived and pass in the stormy stream of life, in the process of mastering more and more new opportunities.
Choosing a life partner, establishing close friendships,
overcoming the feeling of loneliness, creating a family, establishing themselves in the profession, gaining mastery.
Maturity (30 from 60 to 70 years)
The peak of professional, intellectual achievements, "akme" is the peak of the sometimes full flowering of the personality, when a person can realize his full potential, achieve the greatest success in all spheres of life. This is the time of fulfillment of one's human destiny - both in professional or social activities, and in terms of the continuity of generations. Age values: love, family, children .. The source of satisfaction at this age is family life, mutual understanding, the success of children, grandchildren.
Full disclosure of their potential in professional activities and family relationships.
Maintaining social status and taking a well-deserved rest.
Professional activities and family relationships.
Doubt about the correctness of the life lived and the significance for loved ones.
Search for a new meaning in life. Loneliness in adulthood, retirement, Productivity - stagnant. The crisis of the 40-meaning of life, aggravation of family relations.
Rethinking life goals,
awareness of responsibility for the content of his life to himself and to other people, productivity. Corrections of the life plan and related changes "I - concept".
Productivity, creative, professional, caring for people), inertia (self-absorption).
Reaching the maturity of his heyday and the peak of professional productivity, a person stops his development, stops in improving his professional skills, creative potential, etc. Then comes a recession, a gradual decrease in professional productivity: all the best that a person could do in his life is left behind, on the already traveled segment of the path.
Emotional costs increase with age and overload leads to stressful situations and states. The transition from the state of maximum activity, vigorous activity (inherent in the "akme" period), to its gradual curtailment, limitation due to the fact that health is being eaten away, less energy becomes less, arises an objective need to give way to new generations with subjective internal unwillingness (does not feel yourself old).
Wrestling
the creative forces of man against inertia and stagnation, raising children. Unleash your potential and be realized.
Late maturity (after 60-70 years)
Life wisdom, based on experience, the emergence of a feeling of old age, biological aging accelerates, cessation of work.
Reorientation of social activity and adaptation to the new life of a pensioner.
Change of leading activity: satisfaction of one significant or essential motive, providing pleasure and entertainment
Retirement, violation of the usual regime and way of life, deterioration in financial situation, death of a spouse and loved ones.
Attitude towards death, despair.
Attitude towards death, rethinking of life, awareness of the value of the content of life.
Physical, biological and mental aging, decreased memory function, narrowing of interests, the focus of attention from the future goes to the past, emotional instability, egocentrism, distrust of people, exactingness, resentment, the need to transfer accumulated experience, the need for life involvement, belief in the immortality of the soul ...
Physical strength decreases
the frequency of depression and neurosis increases. Memories, serenity.
It is characterized by the formation of the final integral self-image,
your life path as opposed to possible disappointment in life and
growing despair.
2. Characteristics of age-related crises of various periods of development
2.1 Age Crises of Childhood
The child develops unevenly. There are periods of relatively calm, or stable, and there are so-called critical periods. Crises are discovered empirically, and not in turn, but in a random order: 7, 3, 13, 1, 0. During critical periods, the child changes in a very short time as a whole, in basic personality traits. This is a revolutionary, stormy, impetuous course of events, both in pace and in the meaning of the changes taking place. For critical periods, the following features are characteristic:
boundaries separating the beginning and end of the crisis from adjacent periods,
extremely indistinct. The crisis occurs imperceptibly, it is very difficult to define
the moment of its onset and end. A sharp exacerbation (culmination) is observed in the middle of the crisis. At this time, the crisis reaches its climax;
the difficulty of educating children in critical periods at one time
served as a starting point for their empirical study. Observed
obstinacy, decline in academic performance and performance, increase
the number of conflicts with others. The inner life of a child into this
time is associated with painful experiences;
negative nature of development. It is noted that during crises, in
unlike stable periods, it is more likely to be destructive,
rather than creative work. The child does not gain so much as
loses from previously acquired. However, the emergence of the new in development certainly means the withering away of the old. Simultaneously in critical
periods are observed and constructive development processes.
LS Vygotsky called these acquisitions neoplasms.
Neoplasms of critical periods are of a transitional nature, that is, they do not persist in the form in which, for example, autonomous speech occurs in one-year-old children.
During stable periods, the child accumulates quantitative changes, and not qualitative ones, as during critical ones. These changes accumulate slowly and imperceptibly. The sequence of development is determined by the alternation of stable and critical periods.
Let's consider the crises of childhood in more detail and sequentially.
The first is newborn crisis (0-2 months). The newborn crisis was not discovered, but calculated by the latter and singled out as a special, crisis period in the child's mental development. A symptom of a crisis is weight loss in the first days after birth.
The social situation of the newborn is specific and unique and is determined by two points. On the one hand, this is the child's complete biological helplessness; he is unable to satisfy any vital need without an adult. Thus, the baby is the most social being. On the other hand, with the maximum dependence on adults, the child is still deprived of the basic means of communication in the form of human speech. In the contradiction between maximum sociality and minimum means of communication, the foundation of all child development in infancy is laid.
The main neoplasm is the emergence of the child's individual mental life. New in this period is that, firstly, life becomes an individual existence, separate from the mother's organism. The second point is that it becomes mental life, for, according to LS Vygotsky, only mental life can be a part of the social life of people around the child.
One year crisis characterized by the development of speech action. Before that, the baby's body was regulated by a biological system associated with biorhythms. Now she came into conflict with a verbal situation based on self-order or orders from adults. Thus, a child at the age of about a year finds himself without a system at all that allows him to reliably navigate in the world around him: biological rhythms are severely deformed, and speech is not so formed that the child can freely control his behavior.
The crisis is characterized by a general regression of the child's activity, as it were, reverse development. Emotionally manifests itself in affectivity. Emotions are primitive. In this case, various violations are observed:
Violation of all biorhythmic processes (sleep-wakefulness);
violation of the satisfaction of all vital needs (for example
measures, feelings of hunger);
Emotional abnormalities (gloom, tearfulness, resentment).
The crisis is not an acute one.
keen interest in your image in the mirror;
the child is puzzled by his appearance, interested in how he
looks in the eyes of others. Girls have an interest in outfits; boys show concern about their performance, for example in
designing. They react sharply to failure.
The crisis of 3 years is one of the acute ones. The child is uncontrollable, falls into a rage. Behavior is almost impossible to correct. The period is difficult for both the adult and the child himself. Symptoms of the crisis by their number are called the seven-star crisis of 3 years:
negativism is a reaction not to the content of the sentence of adults, but to
that it comes from adults. The desire to do the opposite, even in spite of
their own will;
stubbornness - the child insists on something not because he wants to, but because he demanded it, he is bound by his initial decision;
obstinacy - it is impersonal, directed against the norms of upbringing, a way of life that took shape up to three years;
self-will - seeks to do everything himself;
protest-riot - a child in a state of war and conflict with others;
a symptom of depreciation is when the child begins to
swear, tease and call parents names;
despotism - the child forces the parents to do whatever he requires.
In relation to younger sisters and brothers, despotism manifests itself as jealousy.
Seven Years Crisis reminds one of the crisis of one year - it is a crisis of self-regulation. The child begins to regulate his behavior with rules. Previously docile, he suddenly begins to make claims for attention to himself, the behavior becomes pretentious. On the one hand, a demonstrative naivety appears in his behavior, which annoys, since it is intuitively perceived by others as insincerity. On the other hand, it seems too grown-up: it presents norms to others.
For a 7-year-old child, the unity of affect and intellect breaks down, and this period is characterized by exaggerated forms of behavior. The child does not control his feelings (he cannot restrain, but he also does not know how to control them). The fact is that, having lost some forms of behavior, he has not yet acquired others.
The crisis is followed by seven years adolescent crisis
... This is a crisis of social development, reminiscent of the crisis of three years ("I myself"), only now it is "I myself" in the social sense. Described in the literature as "age of second umbilical cord cutting", "negative phase of puberty." It is characterized by a drop in academic performance, decreased performance, disharmony in internal structure personality. The human self and the world are more separated than in other periods. The crisis is one of the acute ones. The symptoms of the crisis are as follows:
decreased productivity in learning activities;
negativism.
There is a decrease in productivity and ability for learning activity even in the area in which the child is gifted. Regression manifests itself when a creative task is given (for example, an essay). Children are able to perform in the same way as before, only mechanical tasks.
The opening of the psychic world takes place, the attention of a teenager is for the first time drawn to other persons. With the development of thinking comes intense self-perception, self-observation, knowledge of the world of one's own experiences. The world of inner experiences and objective reality are divided. At this age, many teenagers keep diaries.
The second symptom of the crisis is negativism. Sometimes this phase is called the phase of the second negativism by analogy with the crisis of three years. The child is, as it were, repelled from the environment, hostile, prone to quarrels, violations of discipline. At the same time, he experiences internal anxiety, discontent, a desire for loneliness, for self-isolation. In boys, negativism manifests itself more vividly and more often than in girls, and begins later - at the age of 14-16.
The adolescent's behavior during a crisis is not necessarily negative. L. S. Vygotsky writes about three options for behavior:
negativism is pronounced in all areas of a teenager's life. And
it either lasts a few weeks, or the teenager falls out of
family, inaccessible to the persuasion of elders, excitable or, conversely, stupid. it
difficult and acute course is observed in 20% of adolescents;
the child is a potential negativist. This manifests itself only in some life situations, mainly as a reaction to the negative influence of the environment (family conflicts, the oppressive effect of the school environment). These children are in the majority, about 60%;
negative phenomena are not present at all in 20% of children.
Adolescent crisis
resembles crises of one year (speech regulation of behavior) and 7 years (normative regulation). At the age of 17, there is a value-semantic self-regulation of behavior. If a person learns to explain and, consequently, to regulate his actions, then the need to explain his behavior willy-nilly leads to the subordination of these actions to new legislative schemes. 1
A young man has a philosophical intoxication of consciousness, he turns out to be plunged into doubts, thoughts that interfere with his active active position. Sometimes the state turns into value relativism (the relativity of all values).
In adolescence, a young man has the problem of choosing life values. Youth seeks to form an internal position in relation to itself ("Who am I?", "What should I be?"), In relation to other people, as well as to moral values. It is in his youth that a young man consciously works out his place among the categories of good and evil. "Honor", "dignity", "right", "duty" and other categories that characterize a person are acutely worried about a person in his youth. In his youth, a young man expands the range of good and evil to the utmost limits and tests his mind and his soul in a range from the beautiful, the sublime, the good to the terrible, base, and evil. Youth seeks to feel itself in temptations and ascent, in struggle and overcoming, fall and rebirth- in all that diversity of spiritual life, which is characteristic of the state of mind and heart of a person. It is significant for the young man himself and for all mankind if the young man chose for himself the path of spiritual growth and prosperity, and was not seduced by vice and opposition to social virtues. Choosing an inner position is a very difficult spiritual work. A young person who has turned to the analysis and comparison of universal values and his own inclinations and value orientations will have to consciously destroy or accept the historically conditioned norms and values that determined his behavior in childhood and adolescence. In addition, modern ideas of the state, new ideologues and false prophets are precipitatingly attacking it. He chooses for himself a non-adaptive or adaptive position in life, while he believes that it is the position he has chosen that is the only one acceptable to him and, therefore, the only correct one. 1
It is in adolescence that the need for isolation, the desire to protect their unique world from the invasion of outsiders and close people, in order to strengthen the sense of personality through reflection, in order to preserve their individuality, to realize their claims for recognition. Isolation as a means of keeping distance when interacting with others allows a young person to “keep his face” on an emotional and rational level of communication. Identification - isolation in adolescence has its own specifics: a young man is simultaneously "hotter" and "colder" than a person in other age periods. This manifests itself in direct communication with other people, with animals, with nature. Young people dominate at both ends of good and evil, identification and alienation. This is the time of possible reckless love and possible irrepressible hatred. Love- always an identification to the highest degree. Hatred- always extreme alienation. It is in adolescence that a person plunges into these ambivalent states. It is in youth that a person ascends to the highest potential of humanity and spirituality, but it is at this age that a person can sink to the darkest depths of inhumanity. Youth- a period when a young person continues to reflect on his relationship with his family in search of his place among relatives by blood. It passes, growing out of childhood and anxiously entering the period of adolescence, acquires the possibility of a second birth of a personality. Youth self-deeply develops reflexive abilities. Developed reflection makes it possible for a subtle feeling into one's own experiences, motives, interacting motives and at the same time- cold analysis and correlation of the intimate with the normative. Reflections take the young man out of his inner world and allow him to take a position in this world.
2.2 Age crises of an adult
In adults, most researchers distinguish three main crises: the crisis of 30 years, the crisis of "mid-life" and the crisis of old age. The biggest difficulty in organizing psychological support for adults is to direct a person to work with himself. Quite often, there is a projection of the crisis onto the environment, and in this case a person comes to a consultation with a request that is completely inadequate to the real situation. 1
Crisis 30 years lies in the fact that a person discovers that he can no longer change much in his life, in himself: family, profession, habitual way of life. Having realized oneself at this stage of life, in the period of youth, a person suddenly realizes that, in essence, he is facing the same task - a search, self-determination in new circumstances of life, taking into account real possibilities (including limitations that he had not noticed before). This crisis manifests itself in a sense of the need to "do something" and indicates that a person is moving to a new age level - the age of adulthood. "The Crisis of Thirty" is a conventional name. This state can occur earlier and later, the feeling of a crisis state can occur repeatedly throughout the life path (as in childhood, adolescence, adolescence), since the development process goes in a spiral, without stopping.
At this time, men are characterized by a job change or lifestyle change, but their focus on work and career does not change. The most common motive for voluntarily leaving work is dissatisfaction with the job: the working environment, the intensity of labor, wages etc. If dissatisfaction with work arises from the desire to achieve a better result, then this only contributes to the improvement of the employee himself.
Going through a crisis of thirty years, a person is looking for an opportunity to strengthen his niche in adult life, to confirm his adult status: he wants to have Good work, he is committed to security and stability. The person is still confident that the full embodiment of the hopes and aspirations that form the "dream" is possible, and works hard for this.
Midlife crisis - this is the time when people critically analyze and evaluate their life. Some may be satisfied with themselves, believing that they have reached the peak of their capabilities. For others, analyzing past years can be a painful process. Although normative age factors such as gray hair, an increase in waist size, or menopause, combined with abnormal events such as divorce or loss of a job, can cause stress, the likelihood of a midlife crisis is markedly reduced if any of the predictable influences of age are anticipated or are treated as normal moments in life.
At the beginning of the fifth decade of life (maybe a little earlier or later), a person goes through a period of critical self-assessment and reassessment of what has been achieved in life by this time, analysis of the authenticity of the way of life: moral problems are solved; a person goes through dissatisfaction with marital relations, anxiety about children leaving home and dissatisfaction with the level of career development. The first signs of deterioration in health, loss of beauty and physical fitness, alienation in the family and in relationships with matured children appear, the fear that nothing better will turn out in life, in career, in love. This psychological phenomenon is called the midlife crisis (a term coined by Levinson). People critically overestimate their life, analyze it. Very often, this overestimation leads to the understanding that “life has passed meaninglessly and time has already been lost”. 1
The midlife crisis is associated with the fear of aging and the realization that what has been achieved is sometimes much less than anticipated, and is a short peak period, followed by a gradual decrease in physical strength and mental acuity. An exaggerated preoccupation with one's own existence and relationships with others is inherent in man. The physical signs of aging are becoming more evident and are experienced by the individual as a loss of beauty, attractiveness, physical strength and sexual energy. All this, both on a personal and social level, is assessed negatively. In addition, the person is becoming and growing anxiety that he may be one step behind a new generation, trained in accordance with new standards, energetic, with new ideas and a willingness to agree, at least initially, to significantly lower salaries. ...
At the same time, a person begins to realize that inevitable physiological changes take place with his body against his will. A person admits that he is mortal and that he will definitely end, while he will not be able to complete everything that he so passionately desired and aspired to. There is a collapse of hopes associated with an infantile idea of their future life (power, wealth, relationships with others). That is why marriages often break up in middle age.
Some differences were found in the course of the midlife crisis in men and women. It is shown that in women the stages of the life cycle are more structured not by chronological age, but by the stages of the family cycle - marriage, the birth of children, the abandonment of the parental family by grown-up children.
Thus, during the mid-life crisis, the need to find one's own path arises and then increases, but serious obstacles arise along the way. Symptoms typical of a crisis are boredom, change of job and / or partner, noticeable violence, self-destructive thoughts and actions, inconsistency in relationships, depression, anxiety, and increasing obsession. Such symptoms indicate a person's need to significantly change their lives. Individuation is one of the ways out of the crisis. This is a need for development that allows you to achieve the maximum possible completeness of the personality. "The conscious process of isolation, or individuation, is necessary to bring a person to awareness, that is, to raise him above the state of identification with the object."
As long as the initial identification with the external, objective world is preserved, a person feels himself to be detached from subjective reality. Of course, a person always remains a social being, but while maintaining a commitment to external relations with people, he should develop his personality more. The more highly organized a person becomes, the more it enriches relationships with others. “Since a person is not just a separate, isolated being, but by virtue of his very existence is predisposed to social relations, the process of individuation should not lead him to isolation, but, on the contrary, to an expansion of the spectrum of social relations” (ibid.). This is the paradox of individuation. A person meets the interests of society most of all if he becomes an integral person and brings into it his dialectics, which is necessary for the psychological health of any social group. Thus, the pursuit of individuation is not narcissistic; it is the best way to benefit society and support the individuation of others.
The last crisis under consideration isaging and death crisis ... The solution to the common human problem of “living or experiencing old age”, the choice of the aging strategy is not considered narrowly, as a kind of one-step action, it is a prolonged, perhaps for years, process associated with overcoming several crises. 1
In old age (old age), a person has to overcome three sub-crises. The first of them consists in re-evaluating one's own “I” in addition to its professional role, which for many people remains the main one until retirement. The second sub-crisis is associated with the awareness of the fact of deterioration in health and aging of the body, which gives a person the opportunity to develop the necessary indifference in this regard. As a result of the third subcrisis, self-concern disappears in a person, and now he can accept the thought of death without horror (Appendix B).
Now our social structure, as well as philosophy, religion and medicine, have almost nothing to offer to alleviate the mental anguish of a dying person. The elderly and the elderly, as a rule, fear not death itself, but the possibility of a purely vegetable existence devoid of any meaning, as well as suffering and torment caused by disease. We can state the presence of two leading attitudes in their attitude to death: firstly, the unwillingness to burden their loved ones, and secondly, the desire to avoid excruciating suffering. Therefore, many, being in a similar situation, are experiencing a deep and all-encompassing crisis that simultaneously affects the biological, emotional, philosophical and spiritual aspects of life.
During this period, it is important to comprehend the socio-psychological mechanisms of human adaptation to the phenomenon of death. We are talking about the system of psychological defense, certain models of symbolic immortality, and about the social approbation of death - the cult of ancestors, memorial rites, funeral and memorial services, and educational programs of a propaedeutic nature, in which the phenomenon of death becomes the topic of meditation and spiritual quest.
The culture of empathy with the death of another person is an integral part of the general culture of both the individual and society as a whole. At the same time, it is quite rightly emphasized that the attitude towards death serves as a standard, an indicator of the moral state of society, its civilization. It is important to create not only the conditions for maintaining normal physiological vitality, but also the preconditions for optimal life activity, to meet the needs of the elderly and the elderly for knowledge, culture, art, literature, often beyond the reach of older generations.
Causes of the onset and development of crises at different age stages
The neonatal crisis is an intermediate period between the intrauterine and extrauterine lifestyle. If there was no adult next to the newborn, then in a few hours this creature would have to die. The transition to a new type of functioning is provided only for adults. The adult protects the child from bright light, protects it from the cold, protects it from noise, etc.
From the reaction of concentration on the mother's face at the age of about two and a half months (0; 2.15), an important neoplasm of the neonatal period arises - the revitalization complex. The revitalization complex is an emotionally positive reaction that is accompanied by movements and sounds. Before that, the child's movements were chaotic, uncoordinated. Coordination of movements arises in the complex. The revitalization complex is the first act of behavior, the act of singling out an adult. This is the first act of communication. The complex of revitalization is not just a reaction, it is an attempt to influence an adult (N.M.Schelovanov, M.I. Lisina, S.Yu. Meshcheryakova). Craig G. Developmental Psychology. - SPb. Peter, 2007 .-- p. 153
The revitalization complex is the main new formation of the critical period. It marks the end of the newborn and the beginning of a new stage of development - the stage of infancy. Therefore, the emergence of a revitalization complex is a psychological criterion for the end of the neonatal crisis.
Crisis in the first year of life. By the age of 9 months - the beginning of the crisis of the first year - the child gets on his feet, begins to walk. As D. B. Elkonin Obukhova L.F. Age-related psychology. - M .: Higher education; MGPPU, 2007 .-- p. 268, the main thing in the act of walking is not only that the child's space expands, but also that the child separates himself from the adult. For the first time, there is a fragmentation of a single social situation "we": now it is not the mother who leads the child, but he leads the mother wherever he wants. Walking is the first major neoplasm of infancy, marking a break in the old developmental situation.
The second main neoplasm of this age is the appearance of the first word. The peculiarity of the first words is that they have the character of pointing gestures. Walking and enriching object-related actions require speech that would satisfy communication about objects. Speech, like all neoplasms of age, is of a transitional nature. This is an autonomous, situational, emotionally colored speech that is understandable only to those close to you. This is speech, specific in its structure, consisting of scraps of words.
The third main neoplasm of infancy is the emergence of manipulative actions with objects. Manipulating with them, the child is still guided by their physical properties. He has yet to master the human ways of acting with the human objects that surround him everywhere. In the meantime, the exit from the old social situation of development is accompanied by negative emotional manifestations of the child, arising in response to the constraint of his physical independence, when the child is fed, regardless of his desire, dressed against his will. This behavior of L.S. Vygotsky, following E. Kretschmer, called hypobulic reactions - protest reactions in which will and affect are not yet differentiated. Rubinshtein S.L. Fundamentals of General Psychology. - SPb: Peter, 2007 .-- p. 318.
Summing up the first stage of the child's development, we can say that from the very beginning there are two interconnected lines of mental development: the line of development of orientation in the senses human activity and the line of development of orientation in the modes of human activity. Mastering one line opens up new opportunities for the development of another. There is a clear, mainline, for each age its own line of development. However, the main new formations leading to the breakdown of the old social situation of development are being formed along a different line, which is not guiding in the given period; they appear as if latent.
The crisis is three years old. Elsa Keler Obukhova L.F. Age-related psychology. - M .: Higher education; MGPPU, 2007 .-- p. 283-285highlighted several important symptoms this crisis.
Negativism. This is a negative reaction associated with the attitude of one person to another person. The child refuses to submit to certain adult demands at all. Negativism should not be confused with disobedience. Disobedience also occurs at an earlier age.
Stubbornness. It is a reaction to your own decision. Stubbornness should not be confused with persistence. Stubbornness consists in the fact that the child insists on his demand, his decision. This is where a person is singled out, and the requirement is put forward that other people reckon with this person.
Obstinacy. Close to negativism and stubbornness, but it has specific features. Obstinacy is more generalized and more impersonal. This is a protest against the order that exists at home.
Self-will. Striving for emancipation from an adult. The child himself wants to do something. This partly resembles the crisis of the first year, but there the child strove for physical independence. Here we are talking about deeper things - about the independence of intention, design.
Devaluation of adults. S. Buhler described the horror of the family when the mother heard from the child: "fool" Stolyarenko L.D. Fundamentals of Psychology. - Rostov n / a: Phoenix, 2007 .-- p. 635.
Rebellion protest, which manifests itself in frequent quarrels with parents. “All the child’s behavior acquires the features of protest, as if the child is in a state of war with others, in constant conflict with them,” wrote L.S. Vygotsky Vygodsky L.S. Questions of child psychology. - SPb .: Soyuz, 2007 .-- p. 60.
Despotism. In a family with an only child. The child manifests despotic power in relation to everything around him and seeks for this in many ways.
Western European authors highlight negative moments in crisis phenomena: the child leaves, moves away from adults, breaks social ties that previously united him with an adult. L.S. Vygotsky Vygodsky L.S. Questions of child psychology. - SPb .: Soyuz, 2007 .-- p. 85stressed that this interpretation is wrong. The child tries to establish new, higher forms of relationship with others. According to D. B. Elkonin Elkonin D.B. Selected psychological works. - M .: ART-PRESS, 2005 .-- p. 268, the crisis of three years is a crisis of social relations, and any crisis of relations is a crisis of the separation of one's “I”.
The crisis of three years is a breakdown in the relationship that has existed until now between the child and the adult. Towards the end of an early age, a tendency towards independent activity arises, which signifies that adults are no longer closed to the child by the object and the way of acting with it, but as if for the first time reveal themselves to him, act as carriers of models of actions and relationships in the world around him. The phenomenon "I myself" means not only the emergence of outwardly noticeable independence, but also at the same time the separation of a child from an adult. As a result of this separation, adults appear for the first time in the world of children's life. The world of children's life is transformed from a world limited by objects into the world of adults.
The restructuring of relations is possible only if there is a separation of the child from the adult. There are clear signs of such a separation, which are manifested in the symptoms of a three-year crisis (negativism, stubbornness, obstinacy, self-will, devaluation of adults).
From the neoplasms of the crisis of three years, a tendency to independent activity arises, at the same time similar to the activity of an adult, because adults act as models for the child, and the child wants to act like them. The tendency to live a common life with an adult runs throughout childhood; the child, separating from the adult, establishes a deeper relationship with him, emphasized D.B. Elkonin Ibid. S. 269 ..
The crisis is seven years old. On the basis of the emergence of personal consciousness, a crisis of seven years arises. The main symptomatology of the crisis: loss of immediacy: the experience of what meaning this action will have for the child himself is wedged between desire and action; pretentiousness: the child builds something of himself, hides something (the soul is already closed); the symptom of "bitter candy": the child feels bad, but he tries not to show it; upbringing difficulties: the child begins to withdraw and becomes uncontrollable.
These symptoms are based on a generalization of experiences. The child has a new inner life, a life of experiences, which is not directly and directly superimposed on the outer life. But this inner life is not indifferent to the outer one, it affects it. The emergence of this phenomenon is an extremely important fact: now the orientation of behavior will be refracted through the child's personal experiences.
Symptom dissecting preschool and younger school ages, becomes a "symptom of loss of immediacy": between the desire to do something and the activity itself, a new moment arises - orientation in what the child will receive from this or that activity. child's activity: satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the place that the child will take in relations with adults or other people. Here, for the first time, an emotional-semantic orientational basis of an act arises. According to the views of D.B. Elkonin there and then, where and when an orientation towards the meaning of the act appears, - there and then the child passes into a new psychological age Elkonin D.B. Selected psychological works. - M .: ART-PRESS, 2005 .-- p. 273.
The crisis requires a transition to a new social situation, requires a new content of relations. The child must enter into a relationship with society as a totality of people who carry out obligatory, socially necessary and socially useful activities. In our conditions, the tendency towards it is expressed in the desire to go to school as soon as possible. Often the higher stage of development, which the child reaches by the age of seven, is confused with the problem of the child's readiness for schooling. Observations in the first days of a child's stay at school show that many children are not yet ready to go to school.
Adolescent crisis. The process of formation of neoplasms that distinguish an adolescent from an adult is stretched over time and can occur unevenly, which is why both "childish" and "adult" exist in a teenager. According to L.S. Vygotsky, Sapogova E.E. Psychology of human development. - M .: Art-Press, 2006 .-- p. 235-236in his social situation of development there are 2 tendencies: 1) inhibiting the development of adulthood (being busy with school studies, the absence of other permanent and socially significant responsibilities, material dependence and parental care, etc.); 2) growing up (acceleration, some independence, a subjective feeling of adulthood, etc.). This creates a huge variety of individual developmental options in adolescence - from schoolchildren with a childish appearance and interests, to almost adult adolescents who have already joined some aspects of adult life.
Puberty development (covers the time interval from 9-11 to 18 years). Within a relatively short period of about 4 years on average, the child's body undergoes significant changes. This entails two main tasks: 1) the need to reconstruct the bodily image of "I" and the construction of a male or female "generic" identity; 2) a gradual transition to adult genital sexuality, characterized by joint eroticism with a partner and the combination of two complementary drives.
Formation of identity (goes beyond adolescence and covers the time from 13-14 to 20-21 years old). Throughout adolescence, a new subjective reality is gradually formed, transforming the individual's ideas about himself and others. The formation of psychosocial identity, which underlies the phenomenon of adolescent self-awareness, includes three main developmental tasks: 1) awareness of the temporal extent of one's own "I", which includes the childhood past and determines the projection of oneself into the future; 2) awareness of oneself as different from the internalized parental images; 3) the implementation of a system of elections that ensure the integrity of the individual (mainly we are talking about the choice of profession, sexual polarization and ideological attitudes).
Adolescence opens with a crisis, according to which the entire period is often called "critical", "turning point".
For adolescents, neither personality crises, nor the collapse of the "I" -concept, nor the tendency to abandon previously acquired values and attachments are atypical. They tend to strive to consolidate their identity, characterized by focus on their "I", the absence of conflicting attitudes and, in general, the rejection of any form of psychological risk. They also retain a strong attachment to their parents and do not strive for excessive independence in their worldview, social and political attitudes.
S.E. Spranger described 3 types of development in adolescence. The first type is characterized by a sharp, stormy, crisis course, when adolescence is experienced as a second birth, as a result of which a new "I" arises. The second type of development is smooth, slow, gradual growth, when a teenager joins adult life without deep and serious shifts in his own personality. The third type is a developmental process when a teenager actively and consciously forms and educates himself, overcoming internal anxieties and crises by an effort of will. It is typical for people with a high level of self-control and self-discipline.
The main new formations of age, according to E. Spranger, are the discovery of the "I", the emergence of reflection, awareness of one's individuality, as well as the feeling of love. Halperin P.Ya. Introduction to Psychology. M. - Education, 2006. - p. 82-83.
S. Buhler distinguishes mental puberty from bodily (physical), which occurs on average between 14-16 years for boys, and between 13-15 years for girls. With the growth of culture, the period of mental puberty is lengthened in comparison with the period of physical, which is the reason for many difficulties in these years Stolyarenko L.D. Fundamentals of Psychology. - Rostov n / a: Phoenix, 2007 .-- p. 292.
The transformation of an adolescent into a young man is manifested in a change in the basic attitude in relation to the world around him: the negative phase of life-denial, inherent in the pubertal stage, is followed by the phase of life-affirmation, characteristic of adolescence.
The main features of the negative phase: increased sensitivity and irritability, anxiety, slight excitability, as well as "physical and mental illness", which find their expression in pugnacity and capriciousness. Teenagers are dissatisfied with themselves, and this dissatisfaction is transferred to the world around them, sometimes leading them to the idea of suicide.
To this is added a number of new internal drives to the secret, forbidden, unusual, to that which goes beyond the usual and orderly everyday life. Disobedience, engaging in prohibited activities have a particularly attractive force at this time. The teenager feels lonely, alien and misunderstood in the life of adults and peers around him. Added to this are disappointments. Common behaviors are "passive melancholy" and "aggressive self-defense." The consequence of all these phenomena is a general decrease in working capacity, isolation from others or an actively hostile attitude towards them and various kinds of asocial actions.
The end of the phase is associated with the completion of bodily maturation. The positive period begins with the fact that new sources of joy open up before the adolescent, to which he was not susceptible until that time: "the experience of nature", the conscious experience of the beautiful, love.
The crisis of adolescence. Adolescence is characterized by a greater, in comparison with adolescence, differentiation of emotional reactions and ways of expressing emotional states, as well as an increase in self-control and self-regulation. Youthful mood and emotional relationship are more stable and conscious than in adolescents, and relate to a wider range of social conditions.
Youth is also characterized by the expansion of the range of personally significant relationships, which are always emotionally colored (moral and ethical feelings, empathy, the need for friendship, cooperation and love, political, religious feelings, etc.). It is also associated with the establishment of internal norms of behavior, and the violation of one's own norms is always associated with the actualization of the feeling of guilt. In his youth, the sphere of aesthetic feelings, humor, irony, sarcasm, and strange associations expands noticeably. One of the most important places begins to take emotional experience the process of thinking, inner life - the pleasure of "thinking", creativity.
The development of emotionality in adolescence is closely related to the individual and personal properties of a person, his self-awareness, self-esteem, etc.
The central psychological neoplasm of adolescence is the formation of a stable self-awareness and a stable image of "I". This is due to the strengthening of personal control, self-government, a new stage in the development of intelligence. The main acquisition of early adolescence is the discovery of his inner world, his emancipation from adults.
Age shifts in the perception of others equally apply to self-perception, self-awareness. At this time, there is a tendency to emphasize their own individuality, dissimilarity from others. Young men form their own personality model, with the help of which they determine their attitude towards themselves and others.
The discovery of "I", his unique inner world is more often associated with a number of psychodramatic experiences.
Adolescence is the most important period of development, during which the main identity crisis falls. This is followed by either the acquisition of "adult identity" or a delay in development - "diffusion of identity".
The interval between adolescence and adulthood, when a young person seeks (through trial and error) to find his place in society,
The severity of this crisis depends both on the degree of resolution of earlier crises (trust, independence, activity, etc.), and on the entire spiritual atmosphere of society.
An unresolved crisis leads to a state of acute diffusion of identity and forms the basis special pathology adolescence. The syndrome of identity pathology, according to E. Erickson, is associated with the following points: regression to the infantile level and the desire to delay the acquisition of adult status as long as possible; vague but persistent state of anxiety; feelings of isolation and emptiness; constant stay in a state of expectation of something that can change your life; fear of personal communication and inability to emotionally affect people of the opposite sex; hostility and contempt for all recognized social roles, including male and female ("unisex"); contempt for everything domestic and an irrational preference for everything foreign (according to the principle "it's good where we are not"). In extreme cases, the search for negative identity begins, the desire to "become nothing" as the only way of self-affirmation, sometimes assuming the character of suicidal tendencies. Sapogova E.E. Psychology of human development. - M .: Art-Press, 2006 .-- p. 287-288.
Adolescence has traditionally been considered the age at which the problem of fathers and children unfolds.
Young men strive to be equal with adults and would like to see them as friends and advisers, not mentors. Since there is an intensive development of "adult" roles and forms of social life, they often need adults, so at this time one can observe how often young men and women seek advice and friendship from their elders. At the same time, parents can remain an example, a model of behavior for a long time.
At the same time, in adolescence there is a growing desire to emancipate, isolate oneself from the influence of the family, and free oneself from dependence. Therefore, the inability or unwillingness of parents to accept the autonomy of their children often leads to conflicts.
In addition, young men often incorrectly reflect on the attitude of adults towards them.
In addition, young men often incorrectly reflect on the attitude of adults towards them. In general, we can say the following: in adolescence, autonomy from adults and the importance of community with peers grow. The general pattern here is this: the worse, the more complicated the relationship with adults is, the more intense communication with peers will be. But the influence of parents and peers is not always mutually exclusive. The "significance" of parents and peers is fundamentally different in different spheres of youthful activity. They demand maximum autonomy in the sphere of leisure, entertainment, free communication, inner life, consumer orientation. Therefore, psychologists prefer to talk not about a decrease in the influence of parents, but about qualitative shifts in youthful communication.
Youth crisis. In youth, life strategies can be varied. One person can immediately determine his life line and professional perspective and stubbornly realize himself in it, the other will prefer to try himself in different qualities, outlining different prospects for self-realization, and only after that he will determine the most important positions for himself
Youth as a whole is characterized by a striving for the spiritual, the sublime, the lofty, the extraordinary, but which is not comprehended in a sentimental-romantic way, as in youth, but realistically - as an opportunity to achieve, change, become, "make oneself".
In cases where the objective conditions of life do not make it possible to reach the necessary "cultural heights", often interpreted as "another (interesting, clean, new) life" (material insecurity, low social and cultural level of parents, household drunkenness, family psychopathization and etc.), a young person is looking for any, even brutal, way to escape from the "inorganic" environment, since age itself presupposes the realization of the presence of a variety of opportunities for life affirmation - "to make life yourself", according to your own scenario. Often, the desire to change, to become different, to acquire a new quality is expressed in a sharp change in lifestyle, moving, changing jobs, etc., usually interpreted as a crisis of youth.
The crisis of youth is often correlated with the crisis of family relationships. After the first years of marriage, illusions and romantic mood disappear in many young people, dissimilarity of views, conflicting positions and values are revealed, negative emotions are more demonstrated, partners more often resort to speculation on mutual feelings and manipulation of each other.
A crisis in family relations may be based on aggression in family relationships, a rigidly structured perception of a partner and an unwillingness to take into account many other aspects of his personality (especially those that contradict the prevailing opinion about him). Strong marriages have been shown to be dominated by husbands. But where their power is too great, the stability of the marriage is compromised. In lasting marriages, compatibility is important in terms of secondary, rather than basic, personal characteristics of the spouses. Marital compatibility increases with age.
The period of youth with the birth of children introduces new social roles into a person's life, and directly confronts him with historical time. These are not only the already mastered professional roles, the roles of husband and wife, sexual partners, etc., but also the roles of mother and father. Mastering these roles is largely the specificity of the growing up process.
Very often in youth, intrapersonal role conflicts are noted.
Middle age crisis. The midlife crisis is the strangest and most terrible time in human mental development. Many people (especially creative ones), not finding the strength in themselves, and not finding a new meaning in life, simply leave it. This period (after adolescence) accounts for the largest number of suicides.
An adult begins to form questions that he is not able to answer, but which sit inside and destroy him. “What is the meaning of my existence !?”, “This is what I wanted !? If so, what's next !? " etc. The concept of life that developed between twenty and thirty years does not satisfy him. Analyzing the path traveled, his achievements and failures, a person discovers that with an already established and outwardly prosperous life, his personality is imperfect, that a lot of time and effort has been wasted, that he has done little in comparison with what he could have done, etc. In other words, there is a reassessment of values, a critical revision of one's “I”. A person discovers that he can no longer change a lot in his life, in himself: family, profession, habitual way of life. Having realized himself in the period of youth, a person suddenly realizes that, in essence, he is facing the same task - a search, self-determination in new circumstances of life, taking into account real possibilities (including limitations that he had not noticed before). This crisis manifests itself in a feeling of the need to "do something" and indicates that a person is moving to a new age level - the age of adulthood. "Crisis of thirty" is the conventional name for this crisis. This state can occur earlier and later, the feeling of a crisis state can occur repeatedly throughout the life path (as in childhood, adolescence, adolescence), since the development process goes in a spiral, without stopping.
At this time, men are characterized by divorce, a change in job or a change in lifestyle, the acquisition of expensive things, a frequent change of sexual partners, and there is a clear orientation towards the young age of the latter. He, as it were, begins to get what he could not get at an earlier age, realizes his children's and youthful needs.
For women, during their 30s crisis, the priorities set in early early adulthood are usually reversed. Women focused on marriage and parenting are now increasingly attracted to professional goals. At the same time, those who gave their energies to work now tend to direct them into the bosom of family and marriage.
Experiencing this critical moment in his life, a person is looking for an opportunity to strengthen his niche in adult life, to confirm his adult status: he wants to have a good job, he strives for security and stability. The person is still confident that the full embodiment of the hopes and aspirations that form the "dream" is possible, and works hard for this.
Middle of life. At the beginning of the fifth decade of life (maybe a little earlier or later), a person goes through a period of critical self-assessment and reassessment of what has been achieved in life by this time, analysis of the authenticity of the way of life: moral problems are solved; a person goes through dissatisfaction with marital relations, anxiety about children leaving home and dissatisfaction with the level of career development. The first signs of deterioration in health, loss of beauty and physical fitness, alienation in the family and in relationships with matured children appear, the fear that nothing better will turn out in life, in career, in love.
This psychological phenomenon is called midlife crisis. People critically overestimate their life, analyze it. Very often, this overestimation leads to the understanding that “life has passed meaninglessly and time has already been lost”.
The midlife crisis is associated with the fear of aging and the realization that what has been achieved is sometimes much less than anticipated, and is a short peak period, followed by a gradual decrease in physical strength and mental acuity. An exaggerated preoccupation with one's own existence and relationships with others is inherent in man. The physical signs of aging are becoming more evident and are experienced by the individual as a loss of beauty, attractiveness, physical strength and sexual energy. All this, both on a personal and social level, is assessed negatively. In addition, anxiety arises and grows in a person that he may be one step behind the new generation that has received vocational training in accordance with the new standards, energetic, with new ideas and a willingness to agree at first, to a significantly lower salary.
As a result, depressive states, a feeling of fatigue from boring reality, from which a person either hides in dreams or in real attempts to “prove his youth” through love affairs or career takeoff, becomes dominant in the general background of moods. During this period, a person reconsiders his life and asks himself a question, which is sometimes very scary, but always brings relief: "Who am I, apart from my biography and the roles that I play?" If he discovers that he lived, forming and strengthening a false "I" - then he discovers the possibility of a second growing up. This crisis is the possibility of redefining and reorienting the personality, a transitional ritual between the continuation of adolescence at the stage of "first adulthood" and the inevitable onset of old age and the proximity of death. Those who consciously go through this crisis feel that their lives have become more meaningful. This period opens up the prospect of finding a new outlook on one's “I”, which, however, is often associated with very painful sensations.
A crisis begins with pressure from the unconscious. The sense of "I" acquired by a person as a result of socialization, together with the perception and set of complexes formed in him, together with his defenses of his inner child, begins to creak and gnash in the struggle with the self, which is looking for opportunities for expression. Before realizing the onset of the crisis, a person directs his efforts to overcome, ignore or avoid the impact of deep pressure (for example, with the help of alcohol).
On the way to a midlife crisis, a person has a realistic mindset, he has experienced so much disappointment and heartache that he even avoids showing a grain of his adolescent psychology.
At the same time, a person begins to realize that inevitable physiological changes take place with his body against his will. A person admits that he is mortal and that he will definitely end, while he will not be able to complete everything that he so passionately desired and aspired to. There is a collapse of hopes associated with an infantile idea of their future life (power, wealth, relationships with others).
The stress in the marriage life is clearly felt. Spouses who have tolerated each other for the sake of their children or ignored serious problems in their relationships are often no longer willing to soften their differences. It should also be taken into account that sexual intimacy by this time is dulled by habit, a tangible decrease in physical fitness, the first symptoms of diseases that weaken the body, the onset of menopause, deep anger with a partner and an unclear feeling of something missed in life. The number of divorces among those who have been married for 15 years or more is gradually increasing. That is why the so-called "third wave" of divorce occurs in middle age.
The social and psychological difficulties that divorced people face are great. These include overcoming the feeling of collapse that followed a long period of personal spending on another; loss of the usual way of life and the probable loss of friends and relatives who have retained their loyalty to a partner who has become a stranger.
Men find it easier to remarry than women, and they sometimes marry women much younger than themselves. Due to the social condemnation of marriages in which the wife is older than the husband, women find that the group of age-appropriate and free men is relatively small. In addition, communication and courting is especially difficult if there are children in the house. Newly formed families are faced with the problems of mixing children from two or more previous marriages, the distribution of the roles of adoptive parents and the continuing influence of the former spouse. If divorce is avoided and married life is preserved, the problem of aging remains. The prospect of long-term addiction continues to weigh on, while the "empty family nest" promises newfound freedom.
Stresses on this basis, in their totality, lead to psychological and emotional tension.
Attitudes towards money and wealth are also changing. For many women, economic freedom means material support that they did not receive. For many men, financial situation means endless restrictions. During the mid-life crisis, a revision takes place in this area as well.
Some differences were found in the course of the midlife crisis in men and women. It is shown that in women the stages of the life cycle are more structured not by chronological age, but by the stages of the family cycle - marriage, the birth of children, the abandonment of the parental family by grown-up children.
Thus, during the mid-life crisis, the need to find one's own path arises and then increases, but serious obstacles arise along the way. Symptoms typical of a crisis are boredom, change of job and / or partner, noticeable violence, self-destructive thoughts and actions, inconsistency in relationships, depression, anxiety, and increasing obsession. There are two facts behind these symptoms: the existence of a tremendous inner force exerting very strong pressure from within, and the repetition of previous patterns of behavior that restrain these internal impulses, but at the same time the accompanying anxiety increases. When the old strategies get worse and worse help to contain the growing internal pressure, there is a sharp crisis in self-awareness and self-awareness.
Old age crisis. In old age (old age), a person has to overcome three sub-crises. The first of them consists in re-evaluating one's own “I” in addition to its professional role, which for many people remains the main one until retirement. The second sub-crisis is associated with the awareness of the fact of deterioration in health and aging of the body, which gives a person the opportunity to develop the necessary indifference in this regard. As a result of the third sub-crisis, self-concern disappears in a person, and now he can accept the thought of death without horror.
Undoubtedly, the problem of death is age-specific. Nevertheless, it is precisely for the elderly and the elderly that it does not seem far-fetched, premature, transforming into the problem of natural death. For them, the question of attitude towards death is transferred from the subtext to the context of life itself. The time comes when the intense dialogue between life and death begins to sound distinctly in the space of individual being, the tragedy of temporality is realized.
Nevertheless, aging, fatal diseases and dying are perceived not as integral parts of the life process, but as a complete defeat and a painful lack of understanding of the limited ability to control nature. From the point of view of a philosophy of pragmatism, which emphasizes the importance of achievement and success, the dying person is the defeated person.
The elderly and the elderly, as a rule, fear not death itself, but the possibility of a purely vegetable existence devoid of any meaning, as well as suffering and torment caused by disease. We can state the presence of two leading attitudes in their attitude to death: firstly, the unwillingness to burden their loved ones, and secondly, the desire to avoid excruciating suffering. This period is also called "nodular", because, not wanting to burden them with old age and death, many elderly people begin to prepare for death, collect the things accompanying the ceremony, and save money for a funeral. Therefore, many, being in a similar situation, are experiencing a deep and all-encompassing crisis that simultaneously affects the biological, emotional, philosophical and spiritual aspects of life. In this regard, it is important to understand the socio-psychological mechanisms of human adaptation to the phenomenon of death. We are talking about the system of psychological defense, certain models of symbolic immortality, and about the social approbation of death - the cult of ancestors, memorial rites, funeral and memorial services, and educational programs of a propaedeutic nature, in which the phenomenon of death becomes the topic of meditation and spiritual quest.
The culture of empathy with the death of another person is an integral part of the general culture of both the individual and society as a whole. At the same time, it is quite rightly emphasized that the attitude towards death serves as a standard, an indicator of the moral state of society, its civilization. It is important to create not only the conditions for maintaining normal physiological vitality, but also the preconditions for optimal life activity, to meet the needs of the elderly and the elderly for knowledge, culture, art, literature, often beyond the reach of older generations.
Death crisis. Death from the point of view of psychology is a crisis of individual life, the last critical event in a person's life. Being at the physiological level an irreversible cessation of all vital functions, having an inevitable personal significance for a person, death is at the same time an element of the psychological culture of mankind.
A person's attitudes towards death at a certain stage of historical development are directly related to self-awareness and humanity's understanding of itself. He identifies five stages of changing these attitudes.
The first stage is fixed by the "we will all die" attitude. This is the state of "tamed death", i.e. treating it as a natural inevitability, an everyday phenomenon that must be treated without fear and not perceived as a personal drama. F. Aries designates the second stage with the term "one's own death": it is associated with the idea of an individual judgment on the soul of a person who has lived and died. The third stage, which he calls "near and distant death," is characterized by the collapse of defense mechanisms against inevitability - their wild, untamed natural essence returns to death, like to sex. The fourth stage is "your death", giving rise to a complex of tragic emotions in connection with the death of a loved one. As the bonds between people become closer, the death of a loved one is perceived as more tragic than one's own death. The fifth stage is associated with the fear of death and the very mention of it (repression).
The attitude towards death changed in several directions: 1) the development of individual self-awareness; 2) the development of defense mechanisms against the forces of nature; 3) transformation of belief in the afterlife; 4) transformation of faith into the connection between death and sin, the suffering of Sapogova E.E. Psychology of human development. - M .: Art-Press, 2006 .-- p. 392-394 ..
There are five stages of changing a person's attitude towards their own death. These are the stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
The first reaction to a fatal illness is usually: "No, not me, that's not true." This initial denial of death is very similar to the first desperate attempts of a climber to stop his fall, and it is a natural human response to stress. As soon as the patient realizes the reality of what is happening, his denial is replaced by anger or frustration: "Why me, because I still have so much to do?" Sometimes this stage is replaced by the stage of trying to make a deal with yourself and with others and buy more time for life.
When the meaning of the disease is fully realized, a period of fear or depression sets in. This stage has no analogs among the experiences associated with sudden death, and, apparently, arises only in those situations when the person faced with death has time to comprehend what is happening. The final stages of the cycle, preceding the onset of clinical death, are the same for both instant and slow death. If dying patients have enough time to cope with their fears and come to terms with the inevitability of death, or receive appropriate help from others, then they often begin to experience a state of peace and tranquility.
People who do not face immediate death have more time to get used to the prospect of death. In the last years of their lives, many view their lives in retrospect. Such a review fulfills the most important functions: a person resolves old conflicts in himself, rethinks his actions, forgives himself for mistakes and even discovers something new in himself. Death opens up the necessary perspective for the aging person, and, paradoxically, dying can be a process of confirming a person's commitment to life.
So, in this work, the features and characteristics of age-related crises were presented: their symptoms, psychological content, dynamics of the course. To overcome age-related crises at different age stages, it is necessary to carry out psychocorrectional work among children and adults.
Age crises are transitional stages that are natural for every person, knowledge about which is in great demand. If a person, living a specific period, does not achieve the goals set by age, a number of problems of a general and psychological kind appear. Everyone wants to live happily and for a long time, moreover, to remain in the mind to the last, to remain active. Only desire, however, is not enough here, psychologists are sure that it is the success of the passage of age crises that affects the fullness of life.
At what age do crises begin, do they have age restrictions how do crises unfold in different genders? In a crisis, you usually do not want to act, how to find the desire to move again?
Age crisis concept
How is the concept of a crisis revealed, what are its symptoms, time frames? How to distinguish a crisis from other psychological problems, ordinary fatigue? The word crisis, from its ancient Greek root, means a decision, a turning point, an outcome. Indeed, a crisis is always associated with the adoption of some kind of decision, the need for change. A person realizes the onset of a crisis period, when he sums up the achievement of goals set earlier in life, and is dissatisfied with the result - he looks into the past and analyzes what he did not receive.
Throughout our life, we go through several crisis periods, and each of them does not come suddenly, but through the accumulation of dissatisfaction due to the discrepancy between what was expected and what actually happened. Therefore, he is known more than others, because a person has lived most of his life and began to think about the past and achievements, and often compare himself with others.
It happens, with a word of crisis, a person covers up his other mental ailments that have nothing to do with the passage of age stages. If age-related crises in children are easily observed, then in an adult the time frame can be shifted, usually each stage is given 7-10 years, moreover, one can pass almost without a trace, while the other will be obvious even to others. However, the content of the crisis at each age is universal, taking into account time shifts, for example, people of 30 and 35 years old may be in one crisis, solving approximately the same problems.
Crises of age-related development should be distinguished from personal biographical crises associated with such objective conditions as, for example, graduation from school, loss of relatives or property. Crises of age-related development are characterized by the fact that outwardly everything is normal, bad, but inside. A person begins to provoke changes, sometimes destructive, in order to change life and the internal situation, while those around him may not understand him, consider a person's problems far-fetched.
Age crises in psychology
Vygotsky also said that an ideally adapted child does not develop further. An adult is literally insured against such stagnation - as soon as he has somehow got used to life, a crisis arises that requires changes. Then a period of rather long lull ensues, followed by another crisis. If a crisis forces a person to develop, then what is development? More often it is understood as some kind of progress, improvement. However, there is a phenomenon of pathological development - regression. We are talking about development that brings changes of a higher order. Almost everyone goes through some crises safely, while a crisis, for example, mid-life, often confuses a person and unfolds in his development. The essence of the crisis is conveyed well by the Chinese character, which contains two meanings at once: danger and opportunity.
Psychologists have identified general age-related patterns of crises, which allows us not only to prepare in advance for them, but also to successfully pass each stage, fully mastering the tasks of each beautiful age. At literally every age stage in mandatory there is a need for decision making, which is given by the advantage of society. Solving problems, a person lives his life more prosperously. If a person does not find a solution, he has a certain number of problems of a more acute nature, which must be dealt with, otherwise it threatens not only with neurotic states, but also unsettling life. Each stage has the so-called normative crises, some of which, such as the crises of 20 and 25 years, are rather poorly described, while others, crises of 30 and 40 years, are known to almost everyone. These crises owe such fame to their often obscure destructive force, when a person who is in visible well-being suddenly begins to dramatically change his life, commit reckless acts associated with the collapse of earlier meanings, which he hoped for.
Age crises in children are well observed and require the attention of parents, since the failure to overcome each crisis is superimposed on the next. Crises of children are especially deeply imprinted on a person's character and often set the direction of a whole life. For example, a child without basic trust may be incapable of deep personal relationships as an adult. A person who has not felt independence in childhood does not have the opportunity to rely on personal strength, remains infantile and all his life looking for a replacement for a parent in a spouse, superiors, or seeks to dissolve limply in a social group. A child, not taught hard work, in adulthood experiences problems with, internal, external discipline. If you miss time and do not develop the child's skills, then he will have a number of complexes and experience difficulties because of this, he will need many times more efforts. A huge number of adults did not go through the adolescent age crisis, did not take full responsibility for their lives, their natural rebellion was muted, but now it runs unresolved throughout their lives. Even in the midlife crisis, childhood reminds of itself, since the largest number of shadow contexts were formed in childhood.
In each crisis, a person needs to stay for the allotted time, without trying to get around sharp corners, to live the themes of the crisis in full. There are, however, gender differences in crisis management. This is especially noticeable in the midlife crisis, when men evaluate themselves by career achievements, financial security and other objective indicators, and women - by family well-being.
Age crises are also directly related to the acute topic of age, since it is widely believed that all good things can be present only in youth, this conviction is in every possible way fueled by the media and often even thanks to the opposite sex. Significant external changes, when it is no longer possible to convince others and oneself of their own youth, raise a lot of psychological problems, some people just at this stage, through their appearance, realize the need for internal personal changes. If a person is trying to youth inappropriately for his age, this speaks of unresolved crises, rejection of his age, body and life in general.
Age crises and their characteristics
The first stage of crisis, corresponding to the age from birth to one year, correlates with trust in the surrounding world. If a child does not have the opportunity from birth to be in the arms of close people, at the right moment to receive attention, care - even as an adult, he will hardly trust the people around him. The reasons for the painful caution in relation to others often lie precisely in those children's unmet needs that we tried to tell parents about with our loud cry. Perhaps the parents were not at all nearby, which becomes a prerequisite for the basic distrust of the world. Therefore, it is important that close people are nearby for up to a year, who can satisfy the child's need at the first cry. This is not a whim, not self-indulgence, but a necessity inherent in a given age.
The second stage, which psychologists usually identify, is the age from 1 to 3 years. Then the formation of autonomy occurs, the child often wants to do everything himself - it is important for him to make sure that he is capable of this. At the same time, we often meet with stubbornness, which was not there before, rejection and rejection of an adult, the child's attempts to establish himself above the adult. These are natural moments for this period, it must be passed. Adults should definitely set boundaries for the child, tell what can be done, what not, why. If there are no boundaries, a little tyrant grows up, who subsequently torments the whole family with his problems. It is also important to support the child, to allow him to do something on his own. Also, now the concept is being laid, children are often interested in their genitals, the realization of the difference from the opposite sex comes. It is important not to tug at the child, not to be ashamed of the natural interest.
In the next period, from 3 to 6 years, the foundations of hard work, love for everyday affairs are assigned. A child can already perform almost all household work under the supervision of an adult himself, if at the same time the child is not given the opportunity to show his initiative - later he will not get used to setting goals and achieving them. If the child wants to wash the floor, water the flowers, try vacuuming - teach him. But this should be done not by prodding and orders, but by playing. Role-playing games are becoming more important, you can play with dolls, with book characters, even make figures yourself, for example, from paper, play out a scene that will be interesting to your child. Take your child to the puppet show to watch the characters interact. The child receives information precisely through the parents, the development of the child in a correct and harmonious way depends on them.
The subsequent period is the period of the circles, from 6 to 12 years. The child now needs to be loaded to the maximum with what he wants to do. You need to know that now his body remembers the accepted experience well, all the skills mastered in a given period of time, the child will retain for his entire life. If he dances, he will dance beautifully all his life. Singing and doing sports are the same. Perhaps he will not become a champion, but he will be able to further reveal his abilities in any period of his life in the future. When there is an opportunity to take your child to circles - do it, take as much time as possible with classes. Intellectual development is useful, because now the child receives basic information that will be useful to him later, will help form his thinking.
The period of adolescence, the next then, is probably the most difficult, since most parents resort to psychologists precisely in connection with the difficulties of communicating with a teenage child. This is a period of self-identification, if a person does not pass it, then in the future he may remain limited in his potential. A growing person begins to think about who he is and what he brings to the world, what is his image. It is in adolescence that different subcultures are born, children begin to pierce their ears, change their appearance sometimes even to self-destruction, unusual hobbies may appear. Teenagers resort to interesting forms of clothing that attract attention, emphasize, or, conversely, reveal all the flaws. Experiments with appearance can be limitless, they are all tied to the child's acceptance of his body, which changes significantly at this age. The teenager likes it or doesn't like it, everyone's problems are strictly individual, so it makes sense for parents to carefully talk about the complexes associated with changing his appearance.
Parents should carefully monitor the behavior of a teenager when they are sure that the form of clothing they have chosen does not suit the child - it is worthwhile to gently tell him this, and also look at who the teenager is surrounded by, who is part of the company, because what he will take from the world around him, will play a dominant role in the future. It is also important that before the teenager's eyes there are examples of worthy adults that he would like, since later he will be able to adopt their behavior, manners, habits. If there is no such example, for example, a family consists only of a mother and a son - you need to give him the opportunity to communicate with relatives of his same sex, so that he knows how a man should behave. It is important that a teenager finds his style, his image, how he wants to express himself to this world, what are his goals and plans. Right now, adults should discuss all this with a child. Even if the child does not seem to want to listen to you, he probably listens to you anyway, your opinion weighs heavily on him.
In the next period from 20 to 25 years, a person completely separates from his parents, begins an independent life, therefore this crisis is often more noticeable than others. This is a crisis of separation, however, there is also an opposing urge to merge. At this stage, it is important to start a close personal relationship with a person of the opposite sex. If there is no such relationship, then the person did not go through the previous adolescence as it should, did not understand who he is, who he wants to see next to him. At this age, relationship issues are highly relevant, it is important to learn to communicate with the opposite sex. Friendship and professional contacts are also important, the search for a new circle of friends, in which a person is already included, as an adult. Will he take responsibility for personal steps? Mistakes will certainly be, it is important how the person will act - whether he will return under the parental wing or find a replacement for the parents in a partner, thereby regressing again into childhood, or will become responsible for the decisions made with their consequences. The neoplasm of this crisis is responsibility. The complexity of this age is still the prevailing image of social acceptability, when a very young person is expected to be successful in school, work, have deep relationships, look good, have many hobbies, be active and active. The conflict here is that to begin to please social desirability means to lose oneself, not to allow personal, individual potentials to unfold, separation will not occur, a person will walk along the well-trodden road for him, beaten by the expectations of those around him, and will not take maximum responsibility for his life.
Social unacceptability at the described stage often indicates that the person is in contact with himself. Guys do it better because society gives them more opportunities to do it. Resistance to authority, left over from adolescence, here goes beyond the family, instead of mom and dad, a person begins to resist, for example, the authorities. One of the scenarios for the passage of this crisis is a predetermined fate, when the family has outlined and painted a person's path in advance. Often this is a professional direction, but family life may also turn out to be in conservative traditions. In this scenario, a person does not use the opportunity to separate from his parents, as if the crisis of 20 years will pass, deceiving him, however, the topic of personal self-determination and separation remains, returning to the person sometimes even after 10-20 years, already being sore. The unresolved crisis is superimposed on the next one, and it will be necessary to choose a direction already often having a family, children, which is much more difficult. Prolonged professional self-determination, when you have to change the field of work by the age of 30, starting with a new one, is also a difficult task.
A very fruitful period begins at the age of 25, when the opportunity comes to receive the benefits of life, which he hoped for as a teenager. Usually, in this period, I really want to quickly get a job, start a family, have children, make a career. Will and aspiration are laid from childhood, if this has not happened, life may turn out to be boring and hopeless. The crisis echoes the theme when a person asks himself why he can respect himself. The topic of achievements and their collecting is at its peak here. By the age of 30, there is an assessment of the previous life, the opportunity to respect oneself. Interestingly, at this stage, it is more common to equip the outer part of life, forming a tree of social connections, while introverts rely on their own personal resources and deep relationships in a limited circle. If there is a significant bias, when, for example, a person has been engaged in social contacts for a long time, succeeded at work, made a career, created a circle of friends and an image in society - now he begins to think more about home comfort, children, family relationships.
On the contrary, if the first 10 years of mature life were devoted to the family, which is often a female scenario, when a girl got married, became a mother and a housewife, then this crisis requires leaving the nest into the outside world. To get through this crisis, a person needs to have a collection of achievements. Everyone has it, but not everyone is able to respect themselves, which is often the case when focusing on shortcomings. Also at this stage there is an opportunity to work personally on oneself, to change life to the one that you like. See what you are missing. Perhaps this is a close person, think about what he should be like, what kind of person you wanted to see next to, and how much you yourself respond to the image of a loved one whom you have in mind for yourself. If you are not completely satisfied with the job, you want to change the field of activity, but you have no idea how to do it - try to start with a hobby, a passion that you can transfer to the category of permanent work. Also think about how you are resting, what brings your rest to you - good or bad. After all, rest takes up most of your personal time, and the lack of it negatively affects the quality of life, various distressing situations develop that would not exist if you had a good and full rest. During this period, a person often already becomes a parent and wants to help children live their lives better. Think about what foundations you will lay in them, going through your own life, what you received in your childhood, what was lacking, is there trust in the world, if not - what prevented it from forming.
The next crisis in the middle of life was treated kindly not only by psychologists, but also by ordinary people. For the majority, in the middle of life, everything is stabilized, when a person suddenly begins to toil for reasons incomprehensible to others, and sometimes even to himself, he finds himself in a confused situation. The onset of the crisis is accompanied by a state of boredom, a loss of interest in life, a person begins to make some external changes that do not lead to the desired relief, nothing changes inside. It is the internal change that should be primary, which, if it occurs, may not bring external changes. Many films have been shot about the midlife crisis, when men more often have mistresses, and women go into children, which does not change the situation. The successful passage of the crisis is not associated with external attempts at change, but with an internal absolute acceptance of life, which gives a wonderful, harmonious state of mind. At this stage, there is no longer a question of achievements and self-esteem, but only acceptance of oneself, life, as they are. Acceptance does not mean that everything will stop - on the contrary, development will only go more intensively, since a person stops the war within himself. A truce with oneself frees up a lot of energy for a more productive life, more and more new opportunities open up. A person asks questions about the mission of his life, moreover, he can do a lot, discovering his true meanings.
The crisis for 40 years has initiated a spiritual search, poses global questions for a person, to which there are no unequivocal answers. This conflict is associated with the psychological structure of the Shadow - those unacceptable contexts that a person endlessly supplants, trying to lie even to himself. Growing up children do not give an opportunity for a person to be younger than he is, demanding wisdom from a parent. The existential nature of this crisis is reinforced by the experience of the transience of time, when it will no longer be possible to write drafts, you have to live clean, and it is good that there is still an opportunity for this.
The crisis of 50-55 years again puts a person at a fork, along one road he can go to wisdom, along the other - to insanity. A person makes an internal choice, will he live or survive, what's next? Society informs a person that often he is no longer in trend, in different positions one has to give way to growing youth, including in the profession. Often here a person seeks to be needed by others, leaves to completely take care of grandchildren, or clings to work, fearing to go to the outskirts. However, the harmonious outcome of the crisis will be to let go of everything, to tell yourself before that you have paid all possible social debts, you are not obliged to anyone, now you are free to do whatever you want. For such an acceptance of life and desires, you need to go through all the previous crises, because you will need material resources, resources of relationships and self-perception.
Features of age crises
What if a person does not note the passing of crises in his life, does it mean that there were none? Psychologists are convinced that a psychological crisis is as natural as changes in the human body with age. People with a low level, inattention to themselves, when they push their distress further away, can not realize that they are now going through a psychological crisis. Or a person in every possible way restrains feelings within himself, fearing to destroy his positive image in front of others, to show himself as a person with problems. Such non-living, ignorance of the crisis subsequently results in the unification of all the stages that have not been passed, like an avalanche. Needless to say, this is a difficult outcome, a huge psychological burden, which a person sometimes cannot cope with.
Another variant of an atypical course of crises is often observed in hypersensitive individuals who are open to changes, personality transformations. They are prone to prevention, and when the first symptoms of an impending crisis appear, they try to immediately draw conclusions, adapt. Their crises are softer. However, such an anticipatory approach does not allow one to fully immerse oneself in the lesson that a crisis brings to a person.
Each crisis contains something that will help a person in the further segment of his life, provides support for the passage of the next crises. A person does not develop linearly, he develops stepwise, and a crisis is just that moment of a breakthrough in development, after which a period of stabilization, a plateau, begins. Crises help an individual to grow, we do not grow of our own free will, we don’t want to get out of balance on our own, and, it seems, there is no need. Therefore, the psyche involves our internal conflicts. Thanks to crises, a person, although unevenly, grows all his life.
What is the Android status bar?
How to choose a gift for the new year for yourself
How to choose gifts for the New Year?
Excel status bar options What the status bar is for
Complete Lessons - Knowledge Hypermarket