It would seem that in difficult times it is more and more difficult to enjoy life, but surprisingly, many succeed. Doctor of Psychology, Professor, Head of the HSE International Laboratory for Positive Psychology of Personality and Motivation talks about the factors that determine life satisfaction, a sense of happiness and well-being Dmitry Alekseevich Leontiev.

Do you work in positive psychology? What is this direction?

It arose at the turn of the century. Until the end of the last century, psychology was mainly concerned with eliminating problems, but then people thought that “living is good, and living well is even better.” Positive psychology analyzes the difference between just "living" and "living well." There are many interpretations of the “good life”, but everyone agrees on one thing: the quality of life cannot be improved only by eliminating all negative factors. In the same way, if all illnesses in a person are cured, he will not become happy and even healthy. Health is more than the absence of disease. The founder of positive psychology, American Martin Seligman, recalled a case from his practice: work with a client went so well, problems were solved so quickly that it seemed to everyone: a couple more months - and the client would become completely happy. “We finished working,” writes Seligman, “and an empty man was sitting in front of me.” Contrary to popular belief, positive psychology has a very indirect relationship with "positive thinking" - an ideology that says: smile, think positive - and everything will work out. It is an experimental science that is only interested in facts. It studies under what conditions a person feels happier, and under what - less.

Surely humanity has thought about this before. Have scientific experiments confirmed the previously widespread points of view?

Some of what was taken for granted in the pre-empirical period was confirmed, some was not. For example, it has not been confirmed that young people are happier than older people: it turned out that they have a higher intensity of all emotions, but this does not affect their attitude to life. The traditional idea of ​​grief from the mind, that intelligence is negatively associated with well-being, has not been confirmed either. Intelligence does not help, but does not prevent us from enjoying life.

What is meant by "happiness", "well-being"? After all, it is one thing to feel happy and another to meet generally accepted criteria for well-being.

Ever since ancient Greece, when the problem of happiness and well-being arose for the first time, it was considered in two aspects: objective and subjective. Accordingly, two lines of research emerged a few decades ago. One focuses on what is called “psychological well-being,” that is, personality traits that help a person approach an ideal life. The other studies subjective well-being - assesses how close a person's life is to the ideal that he sets for himself. It turned out that no matter what virtues a person possesses, they do not guarantee happiness and well-being: the poor, the homeless can be happy, and the rich also cry. Another curious effect was discovered, which the German psychologist Ursula Staudinger called the paradox of subjective well-being. It turns out that many people value the quality of their lives much higher than one might expect from the outside. Back in the 1990s, the American psychologist Ed Diener and co-authors conducted an experiment involving representatives of various socially disadvantaged groups - the unemployed, the homeless, the seriously ill, etc. The researchers asked the observers what percentage of the experiment participants, in their opinion, considered their life as a whole prosperous. Observers named small numbers. Then the scientists interviewed the participants themselves - and in almost all the degree of satisfaction with life was above average.

What explains this?

We often evaluate our own well-being in comparison to others, and we can use different criteria and frames of reference for this. In addition, our well-being depends not only on external circumstances, but also on other groups of factors. First, from the warehouse of our personality, character, stable characteristics, which are often considered as inherited. (Indeed, research has found a strong link between our well-being and that of our biological parents.) Second, the factors we can control: the choices we make, the goals we set, the relationships we build. The make-up of our personality has the greatest influence on us - it accounts for 50% of individual differences in the field of psychological well-being. Everyone knows that there are people whom nothing can bring out of a state of complacency and satisfaction, and there are those whom nothing can make happy. The share of external circumstances accounts for only 10 percent. And almost 40% - to what is in our hands, what we ourselves do with our lives.

I would suggest that external circumstances have more influence on our well-being.

This is a typical misconception. People are generally inclined to shift the responsibility for their own lives to any external circumstances. This is a trend that is expressed to varying degrees in different cultures.

How about in ours?

I did not conduct special studies, but I can say that everything is not very good with us in this regard. Over the past centuries, everything has been diligently done in Russia so that a person does not feel as if he controls his life and determines its results. We are used to believing that for everything that happens - even for what we do ourselves - we need to thank the tsar-father, the party, the government, and the authorities. This is persistently reproduced under different regimes and does not contribute to the formation of responsibility for one's own life. Of course, there are people who take responsibility for everything that happens to them, but they appear not so much because of, but in spite of socio-cultural pressure.

Denial of responsibility is a sign of infantilism. Do infantile people feel more prosperous?

Well-being is determined by how our needs are met and how close our lives are to what we want. Children tend to be much happier than adults because their desires are easier to satisfy. But at the same time, their happiness almost does not depend on them: the needs of children are provided by those who care for them. Today, infantilism is the scourge of our and not only our culture. We sit with open beaks and wait for the good uncle to do everything for us. This is a child's position. We can be very happy if we are pampered, patronized, cared for and cherished. But if the magician in the blue helicopter doesn't come, we won't know what to do. Psychologically adults have a lower degree of well-being in general, because they have more needs, which, moreover, are not so easy to satisfy. But they are more in control of their lives.

Don't you think that the willingness to take responsibility for one's own well-being is partly determined by religion?

Don't think. In Russia, religiosity is now superficial. Although about 70% of the population calls themselves Orthodox, no more than 10% of them go to church, know dogmatics, rules, and differ in their value orientations from non-believers. The sociologist Zhan Toshchenko, who described this phenomenon in the 1990s, called it the paradox of religiosity. Later, a gap was revealed between identifying oneself with Orthodoxy, on the one hand, and trust in the church, and even faith in God, on the other. It seems to me that the choice of religion in different cultures reflects, rather, the mentality and needs of people, and not vice versa. Look at the transformation of Christianity. The Protestant ethic prevailed in the countries of northern Europe, where people had to fight with nature, and in the pampered south, an emotionally charged Catholicism was strengthened. In our latitudes, people needed a justification not for work and not for joy, but for suffering, to which they are accustomed - and we have adopted a suffering, sacrificial version of Christianity. In general, the degree of influence of Orthodoxy on our culture seems to me exaggerated. There are things deeper. Take, for example, fairy tales. In other nations, they end well, because the heroes make efforts to do so. In our fairy tales and epics, everything happens at the behest of a pike or arranges itself: a person lay on the stove for 30 years and three years, and then suddenly got up and went to perform feats. Linguist Anna Verzhbitskaya, who analyzed the features of the Russian language, pointed to the abundance of subjectless constructions in it. This is a reflection of the fact that what is happening is often not the result of their own actions for the speakers: “they wanted the best, but it turned out as always.”

Do geography and climate affect subjective well-being?

Moving around the country, I notice: the further south (starting from Rostov, Stavropol), the more pleasure people get from life. They feel its taste, they try to arrange their everyday space in such a way as to feel joy. The same is true in Europe, especially in southern Europe: there people savor life, for them every minute is a pleasure. A little to the north, and all life is already a struggle with nature. In Siberia, in the Far East, people sometimes have indifference to the environment. It doesn’t matter what kind of houses they have, the main thing is that it is warm there. This is a very functional relationship. They almost do not enjoy everyday life. I, of course, generalize, but such tendencies are felt.

To what extent does wealth determine human well-being?

In poor countries, to a very large extent. Many basic needs are not met there, and if they are satisfied, people feel more confident and happier. But at some point, this rule ceases to apply. Research shows that at some point there is a turning point and the growth of well-being loses its unambiguous relationship with well-being. This point is where the middle class begins. Its representatives have all basic needs met, they are well fed, they have a roof over their heads, medical care, the opportunity to educate their children. The further growth of their happiness no longer depends on material well-being, but on how they manage their lives, on their goals and relationships.

If we talk about goals, what is more important: their quality or the fact of their achievement?

The goals themselves are more important. They can be our own, or they can come from other people - that is, they can be associated with internal or external motivation. Differences between these types of motivation were identified in the 1970s. Guided by internal motivation, we enjoy the process itself, external - we strive for results. By realizing internal goals, we do what we like and become happier. Reaching external goals - we assert ourselves, we get fame, wealth, recognition and nothing more. When we do something not of our own choice, but because it will increase our status in the community, we most often do not become psychologically well. External motivation, however, is not always bad. It defines a huge part of what people do. Studying at institutes, schools, division of labor, any action that is not done for oneself, to please a loved one, to please him, is an external motivation. If we produce not what we consume ourselves, but what we bring to the market, this is also external motivation. It is less pleasant than internal, but no less useful - it cannot and should not be excluded from life.

Work is often also associated with external motivation. This is reflected, for example, in the saying "business, nothing personal." It is logical to assume that such an attitude has a bad effect, firstly, on our well-being and, secondly, on the results of the work itself.

The Austrian psychologist Viktor Frankl said that the meaning of work for a person lies precisely in what he brings into his work as a person over and above office instructions. If you are guided by the principle of "business, nothing personal", the work loses its meaning. Losing a personal attitude to work, people lose their internal motivation - only the external one remains. And it always leads to alienation from one's own work and, as a result, to adverse psychological consequences. Not only mental and physical health suffers, but also the results of work. They may be good at first, but gradually get worse. Of course, some activities provoke depersonalization - for example, work on the assembly line. But in a job that requires decision-making, creative input, you cannot do without a person.

What principles should work in a company be based on so that people not only give good results, but also feel fulfilled, satisfied, happy?

Back in the late 1950s, the American social psychologist Douglas McGregor formulated theories X and Y, describing two different attitudes towards employees. In Theory X, workers were viewed as disinterested, lazy people who needed to be rigidly “built up” and controlled in order for them to start doing something. In "Theory Y" people are carriers of various needs, who may be interested in many things, including work. They do not need a carrot and a stick - they need to be interested in order to direct their activity in the right direction. In the West, already in those years, the transition from “Theory X” to “Theory Y” began, but we largely managed to get stuck on “Theory X”. This needs to be corrected. I'm not saying that a company should strive to meet all the needs of employees and make them happy. This is a paternalistic position. Moreover, this is impossible: it is difficult to fully satisfy a person - in new circumstances, he has new requests. Abraham Maslow has an article "On Low Complaints, High Complaints, and Meta Complaints" in which he showed that as the working conditions in an organization improve, the number of complaints does not decrease. Their quality is changing: in some companies, people complain about drafts in the shops, in others - about the insufficient accounting of individual contributions when calculating salaries, in others - about the lack of professional growth. To whom the soup is liquid, to whom pearls are shallow. Managers should build relationships with employees in such a way that they feel responsible for what happens to them. People must understand that what they receive from the organization: salary, bonuses, etc. - directly depends on their contribution to the work.

Let's get back to talking about goals. How important is it to have a big, global goal in life?

Do not confuse purpose with meaning. A goal is a specific image of what we want to achieve. A global goal can play a negative role in life. The goal is usually rigid, but life is flexible, constantly changing. Following one goal set in youth, you may not notice that everything has changed and other more interesting paths have appeared. You can freeze in one state, become slaves to yourself in the past. Remember the ancient Eastern wisdom: "If you really want something, then you will achieve it and nothing else." Achieving a goal can make a person unhappy. In psychology, the Martin Eden syndrome is described, named after the hero of the eponymous novel by Jack London. Eden set himself ambitious goals that were difficult to realize, achieved them at a relatively young age and, feeling disappointed, committed suicide. Why live if the goals are achieved? The meaning of life is different. This is a sense of direction, a vector of life, which can be realized for various purposes. It allows a person to act flexibly, refuse some goals, replace them with others within the same meaning.

Do you need to clearly define the meaning of life for yourself?

Not necessary. Leo Tolstoy in his "Confession" says that he understood: firstly, the question must be raised not about the meaning of life in general, but about the proper meaning of life, and, secondly, there is no need to look for formulations and follow them - it is important that life itself Every minute of it was meaningful and positive. And then such a life - real, and not the one that, in our opinion, should be - can already be intellectually comprehended.

Is the feeling of well-being connected with freedom?

Yes, and more economically than politically. One of the recent studies by the American sociologist Ronald Inglehart and co-authors, which summarized monitoring data for fifty countries over 17 years, showed that the feeling of freedom of choice predicts approximately 30% of individual differences in people's satisfaction with their lives. This means, among other things, that the trade of "exchanging freedom for well-being" is largely illusory. Although in Russia, most likely, it is done unconsciously, moving along the path of least resistance.

Are you saying that people in Russia do not feel free?

A few years ago, sociologists and I conducted a study that confirmed that in our country, freedom is rather indifferent to most people. But there are those who appreciate it - they, as it turned out, have a more meaningful, thoughtful attitude to life, they feel control over their own actions and tend to take responsibility, including for how their actions will affect others. Freedom and responsibility are interrelated things. Most people do not need freedom with such a load: they do not want to answer for anything either to themselves or to others.

How can you improve your life satisfaction and your own well-being?

Since this is largely related to the satisfaction of needs, you need to pay attention to their quality. You can fixate on the same needs and endlessly raise the bar: “I don’t want to be a pillar noblewoman, but I want to be a free queen.” Of course, it is important to satisfy such needs, but it is even more important to develop them qualitatively. It is necessary to look for something new in life, in addition to what we are used to and what they impose on us, and also to set goals for ourselves, the achievement of which depends on ourselves. The younger generation is now more than the older one is engaged in self-development in various fields: from sports to the arts. This is very important, because it provides a tool for meeting one's own needs and for their qualitative development.

However, you need to understand: satisfaction in itself is not an end in itself, but a kind of intermediate indicator. In some ways, dissatisfaction can be useful, but satisfaction is bad. The writer Felix Krivin had this phrase: “To demand satisfaction from life means to challenge it to a duel. And there, how lucky: either you are her, or she is you. This should not be forgotten.

The article deals with the formation of the concept of motive in the theory of A.N. Leontiev in correlation with the ideas of K. Lewin, as well as with the distinction between external and internal motivation and the concept of the continuum of regulation in the modern theory of self-determination by E. Deci and R. Ryan. The separation of extrinsic motivation based on reward and punishment and "natural teleology" in the works of K. Levin and (external) motive and interest in the early texts of A.N. Leontiev. The ratio of motive, purpose and meaning in the structure of motivation and regulation of activity is considered in detail. The concept of the quality of motivation is introduced as a measure of the consistency of motivation with deep needs and the personality as a whole, and the complementarity of the approaches of the theory of activity and the theory of self-determination to the problem of the quality of motivation is shown.

The relevance and vitality of any scientific theory, including the psychological theory of activity, is determined by the extent to which its content allows us to get answers to the questions that confront us today. Any theory was relevant at the time when it was created, giving an answer to the questions that were at that time, but not every theory retained this relevance for a long time. Theories that apply to the living are able to provide answers to today's questions. Therefore, it is important to correlate any theory with the issues of today.

The subject of this article is the concept of motive. On the one hand, this is a very specific concept, on the other hand, it occupies a central place in the works of not only A.N. Leontiev, but also many of his followers who develop the activity theory. Earlier, we have repeatedly addressed the analysis of the views of A.N. Leontiev on motivation (Leontiev D.A., 1992, 1993, 1999), focusing on such individual aspects as the nature of needs, polymotivation of activity and motive functions. Here, having briefly dwelled on the content of previous publications, we will continue this analysis, paying attention, first of all, to the origins of the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation found in the activity theory. We will also consider the relationship between motive, purpose and meaning and correlate the views of A.N. Leontiev with modern approaches, primarily with the theory of self-determination by E. Deci and R. Ryan.

The main provisions of the activity theory of motivation

Our earlier analysis was aimed at eliminating contradictions in the traditionally cited texts by A.N. Leontiev, due to the fact that the concept of "motive" in them carried an excessively large load, including many different aspects. In the 1940s, when it was only introduced as an explanatory term, this extensibility could hardly have been avoided; the further development of this construct led to its inevitable differentiation, the emergence of new concepts and the narrowing of the semantic field of the concept of “motive” due to them.

The starting point for our understanding of the general structure of motivation is the scheme of A.G. Asmolov (1985), who singled out three groups of variables and structures that are responsible for this area. The first is the general sources and driving forces of activity; E.Yu. Patyaeva (1983) aptly called them "motivational constants". The second group is the factors of choosing the direction of activity in a particular situation here and now. The third group is the secondary processes of “situational development of motivation” (Vilyunas, 1983; Patyaeva, 1983), which make it possible to understand why people complete what they have begun to do, and do not switch each time to more and more new temptations (for more details, see .: Leontiev D.A., 2004). Thus, the main question of the psychology of motivation is “Why do people do what they do?” (Deci, Flaste, 1995) breaks down into three more specific questions corresponding to these three areas: “Why do people do anything at all?”, “Why do people currently do what they do, and not something else? » and “Why do people, when they start doing something, usually finish it?” The concept of motive is most often used to answer the second question.

Let's start with the main provisions of the theory of motivation by A.N. Leontiev, discussed in more detail in other publications.

1. Needs are the source of human motivation. A need is an objective need of an organism for something external - an object of need. Before meeting with the object, the need generates only non-directional search activity (see: Leontiev D.A., 1992).
2. An encounter with an object - the objectification of a need - turns this object into a motive for purposeful activity. Needs develop through the development of their subjects. Precisely because the objects of human needs are objects created and transformed by man, all human needs are qualitatively different from animal needs sometimes similar to them.
3. The motive is “the result, that is, the subject for which the activity is carried out” (Leontiev A.N., 2000, p. 432). It acts as “... something objective, in which this need (more precisely, the system of needs. - D.L.) is concretized in these conditions and what the activity is directed to as encouraging it” (Leontiev A.N., 1972, p. 292). A motive is a systemic quality acquired by an object, manifested in its ability to induce and direct activity (Asmolov, 1982).

4. Human activity is polymotivated. This does not mean that one activity has several motives, but that, as a rule, several needs are objectified in one motive to varying degrees. Due to this, the meaning of the motive is complex and is set by its connections with different needs (for more details, see: Leontiev D.A., 1993, 1999).

5. Motives perform the function of motivation and direction of activity, as well as meaning formation - giving personal meaning to the activity itself and its components. In one place A.N. Leontiev (2000, p. 448) directly identifies the guiding and meaning-forming functions. On this basis, he distinguishes two categories of motives - meaning-forming motives, which carry out both motivation and meaning-formation, and "motive-stimuli", only stimulating, but devoid of a meaning-forming function (Leontiev A.N., 1977, p. 202-203).

Statement of the problem of qualitative differences in the motivation of activity: K. Levin and A.N. Leontiev

The distinction between “meaning-forming motives” and “stimulus motives” is in many respects similar to the distinction, rooted in modern psychology, of two qualitatively different types of motivation based on different mechanisms - internal motivation, due to the process of activity itself, as it is, and external motivation, due to benefit, which the subject can receive from the use of the alienated products of this activity (money, marks, offsets and many other options). This breeding was introduced in the early 1970s. Edward Deci; The relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation began to be actively studied in the 1970s and 1980s. and remains relevant today (Gordeeva, 2006). Deci was able to articulate this dilution most clearly and illustrate the implications of this distinction in a number of beautiful experiments (Deci and Flaste, 1995; Deci et al., 1999).

Kurt Lewin was the first to raise the question of qualitative motivational differences between natural interest and external pressures in 1931 in his monograph “The Psychological Situation of Reward and Punishment” (Levin, 2001, pp. 165-205). He examined in detail the question of the mechanisms of the motivational action of external pressures that make the child “perform an action or demonstrate behavior different from the one to which he is directly drawn at the moment” (Ibid., p. 165), and about the motivational action of the “situation” opposite to this. in which the child's behavior is governed by a primary or derivative interest in the matter itself” (Ibid., p. 166). The subject of Levin's immediate interest is the structure of the field and the direction of the vectors of conflicting forces in these situations. In a situation of direct interest, the resulting vector is always directed towards the goal, which Levin calls "natural teleology" (Ibid., p. 169). The promise of a reward or the threat of punishment create conflicts of varying intensity and inevitability in the field.

A comparative analysis of reward and punishment leads Levin to the conclusion that both methods of influence are not very effective. “Along with punishment and reward, there is also a third possibility to cause the desired behavior - namely, to arouse interest and cause a tendency to this behavior” (Ibid., p. 202). When we try to force a child or an adult to do something on the basis of a carrot and a stick, the main vector of his movement turns out to be directed to the side. The more a person strives to get closer to an undesirable but reinforced object and to start doing what is required of him, the more the forces that push in the opposite direction grow. Levin sees a cardinal solution to the problem of education in only one thing - in changing the motivation of objects through changing the contexts in which the action is included. “Inclusion of a task in another psychological area (for example, transferring an action from the area of ​​“school assignments” to the area of ​​“actions aimed at achieving a practical goal”) can radically change the meaning and, consequently, the motivation of this action itself” (Ibid., p. 204).

One can see a direct continuity with this work of Levin, which took shape in the 1940s. ideas of A.N. Leontiev about the meaning of actions given by the integral activity in which this action is included (Leontiev A.N., 2009). Even earlier, in 1936-1937, based on research materials in Kharkov, an article was written "Psychological study of children's interests in the Palace of Pioneers and Octobrists", published for the first time in 2009 (Ibid., pp. 46-100), where in the most detailed way not only the ratio of what we call today internal and external motivation, but also their interrelation and mutual transitions is investigated. This work turned out to be the missing evolutionary link in the development of A.N. Leontiev on motivation; it allows us to see the origins of the concept of motive in the activity theory.

The subject of the study itself is formulated as the child's relationship to the environment and activity, in which an attitude to work and other people arises. The term “personal meaning” is not yet here, but in fact it is precisely this term that is the main subject of study. The theoretical task of the study concerns the factors of formation and dynamics of children's interests, and the behavioral signs of involvement or non-involvement in a particular activity act as interest criteria. We are talking about Octobrists, junior schoolchildren, specifically, second-graders. It is characteristic that the task of the work is not to form certain, given interests, but to find common means and patterns that make it possible to stimulate the natural process of generating an active, involved attitude to different types of activity. Phenomenological analysis shows that interest in certain activities is due to their inclusion in the structure of relationships that are significant for the child, both subject-instrumental and social. It is shown that the attitude towards things changes in the process of activity and is associated with the place of this thing in the structure of activity, i.e. with the nature of its connection with the goal.

It was there that A.N. Leontiev is the first to use the concept of "motive", and in a very unexpected way, opposing motive to interest. At the same time, he also states that the motive does not coincide with the goal, showing that the child's actions with the object are given stability and involvement by something other than interest in the very content of the actions. By motive, he understands only what is now called "external motive", as opposed to internal. This is “external to the activity itself (i.e., to the goals and means included in the activity) the driving cause of the activity” (Leontiev A.N., 2009, p. 83). Younger schoolchildren (second graders) are engaged in activities that are interesting in themselves (its goal lies in the process itself). But sometimes they engage in activities without interest in the process itself, when they have another motive. External motives do not necessarily come down to alienated stimuli like grades and demands from adults. This also includes, for example, making a gift for mother, which in itself is not a very exciting activity (Ibid., p. 84).

Further A.N. Leontiev analyzes motives as a transitional stage to the emergence of a genuine interest in the activity itself as one is involved in it due to external motives. The reason for the gradual emergence of interest in activities that had not previously caused it, A.N. Leontiev considers the establishment of a connection of the means-end type between this activity and what is obviously interesting to the child (Ibid., pp. 87-88). In fact, we are talking about the fact that in the later works of A.N. Leontiev was called personal meaning. At the end of the article A.N. Leontiev speaks of the meaning and involvement in meaningful activity as a condition for changing the point of view on the thing, the attitude towards it (Ibid., p. 96).

In this article, for the first time, the idea of ​​meaning appears, directly related to the motive, which distinguishes this approach from other interpretations of meaning and brings it closer to Kurt Lewin's field theory (Leontiev D.A., 1999). In the completed version, we find these ideas formulated several years later in the posthumously published works “Basic Processes of Mental Life” and “Methodological Notebooks” (Leontiev A.N., 1994), as well as in articles of the early 1940s, such as “ Theory of the development of the child's psyche, etc. (Leontiev A.N., 2009). Here, a detailed structure of activity already appears, as well as an idea of ​​a motive, covering both external and internal motivation: “The subject of activity is at the same time what prompts this activity, i.e. her motive. …Responding to one or another need, the motive of activity is experienced by the subject in the form of desire, wanting, etc. (or, conversely, in the form of experiencing disgust, etc.). These forms of experience are forms of reflection of the relationship of the subject to the motive, forms of experience of the meaning of activity” (Leontiev A.N., 1994, pp. 48-49). And further: “(It is precisely the non-coincidence of the object and the motive that is the criterion for distinguishing the action from the activity; if the motive of a given process lies in itself, this is activity, but if it lies outside this process itself, this is an action.) This is a conscious relation of the object of action. to his motive is the meaning of the action; the form of experience (consciousness) of the meaning of an action is the consciousness of its purpose. (Therefore, an object that has meaning for me is an object that acts as an object of a possible purposeful action; an action that has meaning for me is, accordingly, an action that is possible in relation to this or that goal.) A change in the meaning of an action is always a change in its motivation ”( Ibid., p. 49).

It was from the initial distinction between motive and interest that the later breeding of A.N. Leontiev, motives-stimuli that only stimulate genuine interest, but are not connected with it, and sense-forming motives that have a personal meaning for the subject and, in turn, give meaning to the action. At the same time, the opposition of these two varieties of motives turned out to be excessively pointed. A special analysis of motivational functions (Leontiev D.A., 1993, 1999) led to the conclusion that the incentive and meaning-forming functions of the motive are inseparable and that motivation is provided solely through the mechanism of meaning formation. "Incentive motives" are not devoid of meaning and sense-forming power, but their specificity lies in the fact that they are associated with needs by artificial, alienated connections. The rupture of these bonds also leads to the disappearance of motivation.

Nevertheless, one can see distinct parallels between the distinction between the two classes of motives in the theory of activity and in the theory of self-determination. It is interesting that the authors of the theory of self-determination gradually came to realize the inadequacy of the binary opposition of internal and external motivation and to the introduction of a motivational continuum model that describes the spectrum of different qualitative forms of motivation for the same behavior - from internal motivation based on organic interest, "natural teleology" , to extrinsic controlled motivation based on “carrot and stick” and amotivation (Gordeeva, 2010; Deci and Ryan, 2008).

In the theory of activity, as in the theory of self-determination, there are motives of activity (behavior) that are organically related to the nature of the activity itself, the process of which arouses interest and other positive emotions (sense-forming, or internal, motives), and motives that stimulate activity only in the strength of their acquired connections with something directly significant for the subject (motives-stimuli, or external motives). Any activity can be carried out not for its own sake, and any motive can enter into submission to other, extraneous needs. “A student may study in order to win the favor of his parents, but he may also fight for their favor in order to be allowed to study. Thus, we have before us two different relations of ends and means, and not two fundamentally different types of motivation” (Nuttin, 1984, p. 71). The difference lies in the nature of the connection between the activity of the subject and his real needs. When this connection is artificial, external, motives are perceived as stimuli, and activity is perceived as devoid of independent meaning, having it only due to the stimulus motive. In its pure form, however, this is relatively rare. The general meaning of a particular activity is an alloy of its partial, partial meanings, each of which reflects its relation to any one of the needs of the subject, connected with this activity directly or indirectly, in a necessary way, situationally, associatively, or in any other way. Therefore, activity prompted entirely by "external" motives is just as rare a case as activity in which they are completely absent.

It is expedient to describe these differences in terms of the quality of motivation. The quality of activity motivation is a characteristic of the extent to which this motivation is consistent with deep needs and the personality as a whole. Intrinsic motivation is motivation that comes directly from them. External motivation is a motivation that is not originally associated with them; its connection with them is established by building a certain structure of activity, in which motives and goals acquire an indirect, sometimes alienated meaning. This relationship can, as the personality develops, be internalized and give rise to fairly deep formed personal values, coordinated with the needs and structure of the personality - in this case we will deal with autonomous motivation (in terms of the theory of self-determination), or with interest (in terms of the early works of A. N. Leontieva). Activity theory and self-determination theory differ in how they describe and explain these differences. In the theory of self-determination, a much clearer description of the qualitative continuum of forms of motivation is proposed, and in the theory of activity, the theoretical explanation of motivational dynamics is better developed. In particular, the key concept in the theory of A.N. Leontiev, explaining the qualitative differences in motivation, is the concept of meaning, which is absent in the theory of self-determination. In the next section, we will consider in more detail the place of the concepts of meaning and semantic connections in the activity model of motivation.

Motive, purpose and meaning: semantic connections as the basis of motivation mechanisms

The motive “starts” human activity, determining what exactly the subject needs at the moment, but he cannot give it a specific direction except through the formation or acceptance of a goal, which determines the direction of actions leading to the realization of the motive. “The goal is the result presented in advance, to which my action aspires” (Leontiev A.N., 2000, p. 434). The motive “determines the zone of goals” (Ibid., p. 441), and within this zone a specific goal is set, which is obviously associated with the motive.

Motive and goal are two different qualities that the object of purposeful activity can acquire. They are often confused, because in simple cases they often coincide: in this case, the end result of the activity coincides with its object, being both its motive and goal, but for different reasons. It is a motive because needs are objectified in it, and a goal - because it is in it that we see the final desired result of our activity, which serves as a criterion for assessing whether we are moving correctly or not, approaching the goal or deviating from it.

A motive is what gives rise to this activity, without which it will not exist, and it may not be realized or realized distortedly. The goal is the end result of actions anticipated in a subjective way. The goal is always present in the mind. It sets the direction of action accepted and sanctioned by the person, regardless of how deeply motivated it is, whether it is associated with internal or external, deep or surface motives. Moreover, the goal can be offered to the subject as a possibility, considered and rejected; this cannot happen with a motive. Marx's statement is well-known: "The worst architect differs from the best bee from the very beginning in that, before building a cell out of wax, he has already built it in his head" (Marx, 1960, p. 189). Although the bee builds very perfect structures, it has no purpose, no image.

And vice versa, behind any acting goal, a motive of activity is revealed, which explains why the subject accepted this goal for execution, whether it is a goal created by him or given from outside. The motive connects this particular action with needs and personal values. The question of the goal is the question of what exactly the subject wants to achieve, the question of the motive is the question of "why?".

The subject can act straightforwardly, doing only what he wants directly, directly realizing his desires. In this situation (and, in fact, all animals are in it), the question of the goal does not arise at all. Where I do what I immediately need, from which I directly enjoy and for what, in fact, I do it, the goal simply coincides with the motive. The problem of purpose, which is different from motive, arises when the subject does something that is not directly aimed at satisfying his needs, but will ultimately lead to a useful result. The goal always directs us to the future, and goal orientation, as opposed to impulsive desires, is impossible without consciousness, without the ability to imagine the future, without time. ABOUT th perspective. Realizing the goal, the future result, we are also aware of the connection of this result with what we need in the future: any goal makes sense.

Teleology, i.e. goal orientation, qualitatively transforms human activity in comparison with the causal behavior of animals. Although causality persists and occupies a large place in human activity, it is not the only and universal causal explanation. Human life can be of two kinds: unconscious and conscious. By the former, I mean life governed by causes; by the latter, life governed by purpose. A life governed by causes may rightly be called unconscious; this is because, although consciousness here participates in human activity, it is only as an aid: it does not determine where this activity can be directed, and also what it should be in terms of its qualities. Causes external to man and independent of him are responsible for the determination of all this. Within the boundaries already established by these reasons, consciousness performs its service role: it indicates the methods of this or that activity, its easiest ways, possible and impossible to perform from what the reasons force a person to do. A life governed by a goal can rightly be called conscious, because consciousness is here the dominant, determining principle. It belongs to him to choose where the complex chain of human actions should go; and in the same way - the arrangement of all of them according to the plan that best meets what has been achieved ... ”(Rozanov, 1994, p. 21).

Purpose and motive are not identical, but they can be the same. When what the subject consciously seeks to achieve (goal) is what really motivates him (motive), they coincide, overlap each other. But the motive may not coincide with the goal, with the content of the activity. For example, study is often motivated not by cognitive motives, but by completely different ones - career, conformist, self-affirmation, etc. As a rule, different motives are combined in different proportions, and it is precisely a certain combination of them that turns out to be optimal.

The discrepancy between the goal and the motive arises in those cases when the subject does not do what he wants right now, but he cannot get it directly, but does something auxiliary, so that later, in the end, he gets what he wants. Human activity is built that way, whether we like it or not. The purpose of the action, as a rule, is at odds with what satisfies the need. As a result of the formation of a jointly distributed activity, as well as specialization and division of labor, a complex chain of semantic connections arises. K. Marx gave an exact psychological description of this: “For himself, the worker produces not the silk that he weaves, not the gold that he extracts from the mine, not the palace that he builds. For himself, he produces wages ... The meaning of twelve hours of work for him is not that he weaves, spins, drills, etc., but that this is a way of earning money that gives him the opportunity to eat, go to a tavern sleep” (Marx, Engels, 1957, p. 432). Marx describes, of course, an alienated meaning, but if this semantic connection did not exist, i.e. connection of the goal with motivation, then the person would not work. Even an alienated semantic connection connects in a certain way what a person does with what he needs.

The above is well illustrated by a parable often retold in philosophical and psychological literature. A wanderer was walking along the road past a large construction site. He stopped a worker who was pulling a wheelbarrow full of bricks and asked him, "What are you doing?" "I'm bringing bricks," the worker replied. He stopped the second one, who was pulling the same wheelbarrow, and asked him: “What are you doing?” “I feed my family,” the second answered. He stopped a third and asked, "What are you doing?" “I am building a cathedral,” answered the third. If at the level of behavior, as the behaviorists would say, all three people did exactly the same thing, then they had a different semantic context in which they entered their actions, meaning, motivation, and the activity itself were different. The meaning of labor operations was determined for each of them by the breadth of the context in which they perceived their own actions. For the first there was no context, he did only what he was doing now, the meaning of his actions did not go beyond this particular situation. "I carry bricks" - this is what I do. A person does not think about the wider context of their actions. His actions are not correlated not only with the actions of other people, but also with other fragments of his own life. For the second, the context is connected with his family, for the third - with a certain cultural task, in which he was aware of his involvement.

The classical definition characterizes the meaning as expressing “the relationship of the motive of activity to the immediate goal of the action” (Leontiev A.N., 1977, p. 278). This definition needs two clarifications. First, meaning is not just expresses this attitude, he and eat this attitude. Secondly, in this formulation we are not talking about any sense, but about the specific sense of action, or the sense of purpose. Speaking about the meaning of an action, we ask about its motive, i.e. about why it is being done. The relation of the means to the end is the meaning of the means. And the meaning of a motive, or, what is the same, the meaning of activity as a whole, is the relation of a motive to something that is larger and more stable than a motive, to a need or personal value. Meaning always associates the lesser with the b ABOUT Lshim, private with the general. Speaking about the meaning of life, we correlate life with something that is greater than individual life, with something that will not end with its completion.

Conclusion: the quality of motivation in the approaches of the theory of activity and the theory of self-determination

This article traces the line of development in the theory of activity of ideas about the qualitative differentiation of forms of activity motivation, depending on the extent to which this motivation is consistent with deep needs and with the personality as a whole. The origins of this differentiation are found in some works of K. Levin and in the works of A.N. Leontiev in the 1930s Its full version is presented in the later ideas of A.N. Leontiev about the types and functions of motives.

Another theoretical understanding of the qualitative differences in motivation is presented in the theory of self-determination by E. Deci and R. Ryan, in terms of the internalization of motivational regulation and the motivational continuum, in which the dynamics of “growing” inside motives, initially rooted in external requirements, irrelevant to the needs of the subject, can be traced. In the theory of self-determination, a much clearer description of the qualitative continuum of forms of motivation is proposed, and in the theory of activity, the theoretical explanation of motivational dynamics is better developed. The key is the concept of personal meaning, which connects goals with motives and motives with needs and personal values. The quality of motivation seems to be an urgent scientific and applied problem, in relation to which a productive interaction between the theory of activity and leading foreign approaches is possible.

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To cite an article:

Leontiev D.A. The concept of motive in A.N. Leontiev and the problem of the quality of motivation. // Bulletin of Moscow University. Series 14. Psychology. - 2016.- №2 - p.3-18

Russian psychologist, Doctor of Psychology, Professor of the Faculty of Psychology of the Lomonosov Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov, Head of the Laboratory for Problems of Personal Development of Persons with Disabilities, Moscow City Psychological and Pedagogical University.

Representative of the scientific dynasty of Russian psychologists: son of A. A. Leontiev, grandson of A. N. Leontiev.

Director of the Institute of Existential Psychology and Life Creation (Moscow). Specialist in the fields of personality psychology, motivation and meaning, theory and history of psychology, psychodiagnostics, psychology of art and advertising, psychological and comprehensive humanitarian expertise, as well as in the field of modern foreign psychology. Author of over 400 publications. Winner of the Victor Frankl Foundation Vienna Award (2004) for achievements in the field of meaning-oriented humanistic psychotherapy. Editor of many translated books by the world's leading psychologists. In recent years, he has been developing issues of non-therapeutic practice of psychological assistance, prevention and facilitation of personal development based on existential psychology.

Video:

Interview text:

(00.00.) Dmitry Alekseevich, good afternoon. Thank you very much for agreeing to give us an interview. And the first question is about success. You have achieved almost all possible heights in the scientific field. You are a professor, doctor of psychological sciences, you teach at the best universities in Russia.
Tell me, please, do you consider yourself a successful person?

Dmitry Leontiev: Probably not for this. Because the heights are determined not by titles, nor by the place of work, nor by positions, the heights in science are determined by the result. Results? On the one hand, I get a lot of feedback from different people who talk about what is important and necessary for them. On the other hand, I myself am very dissatisfied with everything that I do. It all depends on the criteria for comparison. And in many ways, this is our choice of what level to set for ourselves, with what we compare what we really have. This has a lot to do with how we solve the problem of happiness. It is easy to become happy if you set the bar lower, make desires more modest, and make comparison criteria more modest. Then it is easy to be at the level, and even above the level of these criteria. If you strive for something higher, more extraordinary, then it is more difficult to achieve this. And different people prefer different strategies here.
In general, I do not really like the word success.

(01.52) This is a very common criterion.

Dmitry Leontiev: This is a very common criterion. Wise people felt and talked about the fact that something is not right at all with the very concept of success. In particular, Viktor Frankl wrote about this. But relatively recently, psychologists have figured out what exactly is wrong. I mean the authors of the theory of self-determination Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. Thanks to which, in general, now in the psychology of motivation, the separation of external and internal motivation is taking root and plays an important role. Distinguishing between what we do for the sake of interests and pleasure from the process itself, and what we would do simply regardless of any external factors, because we like it. This is the so-called intrinsic motivation. And external motivation is what we do in order to get something as a result of this for some other good that is not related to the very ideological good, so that someone will encourage us, or get rid of troubles. At the same time, the process itself, what exactly we do, does not play a role. This is the so-called extrinsic motivation.
And most of the life of modern advanced progressive humanity is based on external motivation. True, now it is moving in the opposite direction, and people are starting to pay more and more attention to whether they like what they are doing. But, nevertheless, now external motivation purely quantitatively prevails. And in schools, studying for the sake of grades, for the sake of EG scores, is purely external motivation, which discourages interest in the essence, interest in the process itself. And work... For some reason, it is believed that management with the help of material goods, rewards, such things as fame, success, recognition,... What does this mean? This means that I myself cannot know for sure whether what I am doing is good, but if they tell me that it is good, well done, right, excellent, then everything is fine. I depend on others. I can't rate my own work in any way. Everything is in the hands of those who evaluate me. And it turns out that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation have very different effects on our development, on our psychological well-being.
If we successfully achieve the goals that we set for ourselves, which are related to our internal motivation, this success makes us happier. But if we successfully achieve the goals that are set to us from the outside, and which are evaluated from the outside, goals associated with external motives, fame, wealth, success, then the achievement of these goals does not make us happier.
Here is one of the main paradoxes. And a lot of research in recent years on this topic convincingly confirms that this breeding of internal and external motivation plays a huge role in our lives. And that success, as a category, is purely external motivation, it is a double-edged sword.
On the one hand, it gives us unconditional certain benefits, but psychologically it largely undermines our well-being, internal, and harmony with ourselves.
I have always tried to do what I like, what interests me. I consider it my great happiness that I really do all my life doing what I personally find interesting.

(05.48) Can you formulate 3 rules of success from Dmitry Leontiev?

Dmitry Leontiev: I don't want to formulate rules for success. You don't have to strive for success. This is the first rule of success. Do what you like. You can trust yourself, trust your inner feelings, but you can trust your feelings only if you develop sensitivity to your inner states, to what you are doing.
Because too much self-confidence leads to a decrease in sensitivity. To what is really happening to you. If you are a priori confident in yourself and have no doubts, then you do not understand what is really happening to you. You go forward through all the walls, breaking through, not doubting that what you are doing is obviously right, and at the same time you have little understanding of what is really happening.
The most important thing is to be sensitive not so much to the opinions and assessments of other people, but to what is really happening to you around you.

(07.08) What does happiness mean to you? And how to become happy?

Dmitry Leontiev: I have dealt with this issue a lot. Over the past 30 years, there has been a huge amount of experimental research in world psychology, which quite convincingly shows what happiness depends on, what it does not depend on, to what extent it is connected with external circumstances, and to what extent with what is in our hands.
It turns out that we greatly underestimate the possibility of our own influence on our happiness. And we overestimate the influence of some external objective circumstances. It is mainly in us, it is mainly within us. It is connected not so much with some external factors, but with what we choose, what relationships and with what people we establish, and how, to a very large extent.
But if very briefly, happiness can be of different quality, different levels. There can be such a simple happiness, children. Children are easy to make happy. They don't have very big requests, and their expectations are usually not that hard to meet. Happiness, in short, is a state of some coincidence, or the distance between the desired and the real, between what is and what we want. It depends on two things. From how we manage to get closer to what we want, and from what we want.

(08.48) To give an example, I recently did some statistics on the Internet. Added up the number of people who leave this life due to the effects of alcohol, drugs, suicide. It turned out that this is about 7 million people a year on the planet. After all, they also strive for happiness. What is their mistake, these people?

Dmitry Leontiev: Judging people is somehow not very ... I would not talk about a mistake here, this is too strong a word. Because maybe it's a mistake, or things like luck, bad luck, favorable, unfavorable circumstances. This, too, has not been canceled. If some kind of tornado occurs somewhere, and several thousand people die in a natural disaster, one cannot say that someone made a mistake among the dead. He was unlucky in this case. But of course... You see, you want me to give you some universal recipe. A universal recipe, this is not part of psychology. It's part of the populist politicians who beat their chests with their fists that they will make everyone happy, they know how to do it. And at the same time, all politicians say about the same thing.
On the one hand, I can talk for a very long time about various factors that make people happier or less. It would take a very long time. I teach a whole course on this topic at the university, on positive psychology.
One of the moments, for example, is a comparison with others. Those people who compare themselves with others, according to research, are less happy than those who do not compare themselves with others. Those who value their lives regardless of what others think. Such a small detail, comparison, does not help us become happy, on the contrary.

(11.35) Such a concept that Viktor Frankl voiced, and some other philosophers that if a person strives for happiness, then this becomes an obsession.

Dmitry Leontiev: Yes. It's right. To strive for happiness, strictly speaking, is impossible. Because happiness is a kind of emotion. And emotions are some feedback signals that tell us whether things are going well or badly in our lives, everything is right or wrong with us. The state of happiness is a signal that at the moment everything is very close to the ideal, and the reality is exactly what it should be, and it cannot be better.
But what is really behind this is unknown. Questions may vary. What are these desires that have received their satisfaction, what are we striving for. Therefore, experiences can be very similar for different people. And different things can stand behind them. Someone can be happy, for someone it can be creative achievements, for someone it can be a drug.
Drugs are a way to get positive emotions, bypassing life. It doesn't matter what actually happens in life, the main thing is that I can artificially, chemically get positive emotions, and then I become independent of my life. And this is what happens if we make happiness an end in itself. If we strive for happiness, we strive for signals. And if the most important thing for us is not real life, but receiving positive signals about it, then there is a natural desire to falsify these signals, convince ourselves, create the impression that everything is fine, excellent. And in life itself, it can be anything. The main thing is to feel good.
This is the psychological strategy of falsification, blocking, which is inevitably a consequence of that idea, if we are trying to become happy at any cost, to receive these positive signals. The shortest path, short circuit, as Martin Seliger, one of the largest researchers in this field, said. There are many forms of short circuits that allow us to receive these signals, no matter what is actually happening in life. And this is a very unhealthy way. Yes, of course, Frankl was one of those who articulated this very clearly and emphasized that happiness cannot be the goal. Happiness can only be a by-product of realizing meaning. And a few decades before Frankl, Russian religious philosophers, Solovyov, Taliev, Vedensky, Berdyaev, practically criticized the idea of ​​the principle of happiness from the same positions. Berdyaev analyzed in more detail just this dilemma of meaning - happiness. And he contrasted just the idea of ​​happiness and the idea of ​​focusing on meaning. And in fact, what Viktor Frankl developed a little later, it practically coincides with those positions of the great philosophers of the early 20th century.

(15.18) Dmitry Alekseevich, I will probably not be mistaken if I say that today you are one of the most authoritative specialists in Russia on the issue of the meaning of human life. In your book The Psychology of Meanings, you write that you have been working on the materials of this book for 20 years. Could you tell me, please, how and why did you choose the topic of meaning for such a thorough study?

Dmitry Leontiev: You know, this is largely due to the traditions of our psychological school, in which I was formed and developed. The concept of personal meaning was one of the central concepts that were developed in great detail in academic psychology by my teachers, including my grandfather, who did a lot for the emergence of this concept. And I got carried away in my student years, and discovered a number of such white spots ... On the one hand, there are a lot of important things related to the concept of meaning, on the other hand, there are a lot of some imperfections. And I began to continue this work, starting from the work of many senior colleagues, teachers, including my grandfather, from my student years, starting with my thesis. And I began to try to combine and look at different approaches to meaning, different traditions, and began to study different approaches, and not only in psychology, but also outside of psychology. In my Ph.D. thesis, I described more than 20 different approaches to the meaning of world psychology of different theories. This topic turned out to be so big, so inexhaustible, that now it is not 20, now almost 30 years. This is certainly not the only topic that I deal with, but remains at the center of my interests. It is big, it is inexhaustible, and there is much more to do.

(17.42) Is it possible to simply answer the question, what is the meaning of human life, your personal experience in processing such a layer of theory

Dmitry Leontiev: It is impossible to answer in general what is the meaning of human life. One can only answer the question, what is the meaning of the life of a particular person. And only one person can answer. Because there is no general meaning of life.
Leo Tolstoy also wrote about this on this topic in his book Confession. This is one of the first sources of such, connected with the philosophical understanding of the problem of meaning. And the main things that Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy came to, they retain their significance, they are in many ways the key to understanding the meaning.
Two things. The first thing Tolstoy realized was that one should not ask the question about the meaning of life in general. But only about the meaning of life of a particular person. And the second. That this is not some kind of intellectual construction cannot be answered with words, but only with life itself. First, Leo Tolstoy said, life must be comprehended, filled with meaning, and secondly, the mind in order to understand this. The sequence is just that. First, there must be some meaningfulness of what you are really doing. And already in the second place, somehow try to formulate it in words not in the reverse order. The reverse order doesn't work. Trying to solve it like an intellectual puzzle, but what is the meaning of life? But, the meaning of life is in this, so I will live like this. That doesn't work. This is what Leo Tolstoy said. And this was confirmed by many after him.

(19.36) If a person feels a sense of meaninglessness, it becomes quite often such a state, where to start? How to act in this situation?

Dmitry Leontiev: I would say that the first thing is to understand what happens, that it is not scary. That if there is a meaning, then any fool can live. And you try, live, if it makes no sense. This does not mean that it will never happen. Yes, the first thing I would advise is to treat this as some kind of challenge. Yes, of course, you need to find the meaning, you need to look for the meaning, but sometimes you have to go through some periods and segments of life and live without such an important resource as meaning. Some smart people once said that life is a play with short acts and long intermissions. And it is important to be able to behave during intermissions. Perhaps this is the main thing.
You see, advice does not work here. I do not want to talk about some arguments here, because advice does not work here. Here you need to work with a specific person, with his picture of the world, with some of his actions. In addition to this, I would also say that one should not try to solve this problem intellectually, to find it somewhere through reflection. And it is important to develop sensitivity, if you like, a sense of meaning. Here you do something, you feel mine - not mine. You take on some kind of work, no matter for what reason, and what kind of occupation it is. Either someone accidentally called, or money needs to be earned. My feeling is not mine. Somehow trying to figure out what you're doing makes sense to you or doesn't? Inner sensitivity, some kind of inner compass, to find what will bring some meaning to you, what will not. Here is the important thing.
It is difficult to say in words how to develop this, this is a question of specifically psychotherapeutic and other work. But this is the strategy. Through the inner feeling of what connects, what is happening between you and the world. Where is yours and where is not yours. Where is this feeling? Because the meaning in its most general form is a connection with some general contexts. It is a connection with the whole world, with other people, with the past, with the future. If something makes sense to me, it is connected to my life. If I feel like it doesn't make sense to me, then it has nothing to do with my life. So, somewhere it is in itself aside from it.
And if we begin to feel that our life is not indifferent to what makes sense, then we come to some wider connections. And we comprehend this life connected and connected. Associated with some other contexts, and associated within itself. The fact that it is about one thing is predictable. About what I am doing now, it is somehow connected with what I did yesterday and what I will do the day after tomorrow, it lies in some general way. A small child does not. The animal does not. What a small child does now is completely independent of what he will do in 2 days, and what he did yesterday. These are separate episodes. And in humans, these individual episodes are built in, somehow linked into a single whole picture. By this very life is filled with semantic connections within itself, and connections with something that is more in our life.

(23.42) Tell me, please, how Dmitry Alekseevich Leontiev defines for himself his personal meaning of life?

Dmitry Leontiev: But no way. I feel it. I don't want to define it in words. So I feel that my life as a whole is mine, there is a feeling that it makes sense, it is not just like that, it is not accidental. It has... I can, of course, if I try, find some kind of formulation, but it will still be artificial. I do not want to do this. Words change, but feelings remain. Feelings that this is not in vain, that this is not just.
There is a wonderful anecdote about meaning. Very good:
- Tell me, father, am I living right?
“That’s right, my son! Only in vain!
That's the meaning, it means not in vain. And it has nothing to do with correctness or success. This feeling is not in vain, and not just like that. And specifically, for what. Variations are possible here and words are not the main ones here.

(24.55) If I understand you correctly, each person has his own meaning of life.

Dmitry Leontiev: Yes.

Is it possible to scale this question to social groups, societies, countries, and argue that each social group, country, has its own unique meaning?

Dmitry Leontiev: Complex issue. But, firstly, the meaning is not at all unique.
You can say so. At one time I considered such questions as the question of group psychology. There are such real social groups, they have some common meaning for all of them, connected with the common place that this group occupies in the general life of society, in the system of distribution of labor, and so on.
But about real groups, we can talk about some common sense that cements this group. About some big communities, hardly.

(26.18) I just want to bring to the question of the national idea.

Dmitry Leontiev: The football team has a meaning, a single, common, cementing one. This is a single group that interacts, which is united by a common ideology, it has a common meaning that unites all the players.
The national idea is an artificial construction.

(26.44) There are simply two extreme points of view. Some say that each country has its own mission, or a national idea. And there are those who claim that there is nothing like it. I understand that you are more inclined towards the second?

Dmitry Leontiev: Each country has its own cultural specificity. Each country has its own way of life, each culture. Because there are countries that include many different cultures. And purely historically...
Do you understand? If one person studied at an engineering university, and the other person studied at a philological university, then the first person will as a result be able to deal well with a technical instrument, and the other will write texts well and competently. Because they were trained to do so. And learning is no accident either.
There are also cultures, different cultures, they also specialize in some different things. Let's say the French are good at growing wine. The Swiss make watches. Americans - to invent. The most different things.

(28.17) And the Russians?

Dmitry Leontiev: Russians know how to philosophize, and secondly, how to fight. And, thirdly, it is known that the Russians are poorly adapted to mass production, but they are good at solving non-standard tasks.
Every culture has its own quirks, you might say. But that has nothing to do with the idea. Every culture has its own face. Each culture has its own strong competitive advantages, so to speak, and vice versa, some weak points. That is why all cultures are doomed to interaction, mutual influence, to the exchange of everything that anyone gets. And finally, to unity.
The idea... You know, a lot of people throughout history, and especially the last 100 years, have been fooling their heads with different ideas. Ideas replace reality. And when they talk about an idea, people are very often turned away from reality, they make it difficult. ... One of the purely psychological problems is the problem of contact with reality, understanding the connection between cause and effect, understanding what leads to what, understanding what is real and what is not, where is the fairy tale, where is the true story.
Just one of the problems that is typical for our culture is some problems with distinguishing where is the idea and where is the reality, where is the fairy tale, where is the true story. This is just one of such weaknesses of the Russian mentality. For us, ideals have always been more real than reality. And so we are a little more influenced by ideas than other cultures. And ideas turn away from reality, and lead away from reality.
Therefore, it seems to me that the talk about the national idea, which is now going on instead of talking about the national culture, is manipulative talk, the meaning of which is to turn people away from reality.
The main problem, the main deficit is the understanding of reality. Where do these ideas come from? These ideas are, in fact, also invented and composed by certain specific people who are actually no better than these people.
And I again return to what Leo Tolstoy said, Leo Tolstoy put an end to this 150 years ago. It is impossible to first come up with a meaning, and then build a life for it. And you need to find what makes sense in life itself, and then you can somehow describe and formulate it. It was with these words of Leo Tolstoy that I summed up the conversation about the national idea.

A brief, accessible summary of the author's modern ideas and theoretical views on the essence of personality, its structure, mechanisms of development and relationships with the outside world.

Particular attention is paid to the inner world of the individual - its value-semantic sphere - and the mechanisms of personal maturity, autonomy and self-determination.

Psychology of freedom

“In concluding this article, we leave it open. Our task was limited to posing the problem and indicating the main guidelines for its more detailed development. What we consider most important is a shift in the perspective of viewing human actions, the need for which is undoubtedly overdue. This was noticed three decades ago. “It is a mistake to think that behavior should be the dependent variable in psychological research. For the person himself, this is an independent variable.

Psychology of meaning

The monograph is devoted to a comprehensive theoretical analysis of semantic reality: aspects of the problem of meaning, forms of its existence in human relations with the world, in human consciousness and activity, in the structure of personality, in interpersonal interaction, in artifacts of culture and art.

Modern psychology of motivation

A collection of works by scientists representing the scientific school of the Faculty of Psychology of Moscow State University, which are devoted to modern problems of the psychology of motivation. The articles in the collection contain theoretical reviews, theoretical, experimental and applied research based on new trends in the psychology of motivation and self-regulation that have emerged in the last two decades.

Thematic Apperception Test

The book is the first domestic complete guide to working with one of the most complex and interesting psychodiagnostic techniques. It outlines the history of the development of the TAT, provides a theoretical justification, an overview of related methods, detailed instructions for working with the subject, a detailed interpretation scheme, a description and analysis of a specific case.

Test of meaningful life orientations

Failure in a person's search for the meaning of his life (existential frustration) and the resulting sense of loss of meaning (existential vacuum) are the cause of a special class of mental illness - noogenic neuroses, which differ from the previously described types of neuroses.

The PIL test is an adapted version of the Purpose-in-Life Test (PIL) by James Crumbo and Leonard Maholic. The methodology was developed by the authors on the basis of Viktor Frankl's theory of striving for meaning and logotherapy and pursued the goal of empirical validation of a number of ideas of this theory, in particular the ideas of an existential vacuum and noogenic neuroses.

For professional psychologists - researchers and practitioners.

Leontiev Dmitry Alekseevich
(1960)

Psychology of meaning

Leontiev Dmitry Alekseevich - Russian psychologist, Doctor of Psychology, Professor. Representative of the scientific dynasty of Russian psychologists: son of A. A. Leontiev, grandson of A. N. Leontiev.

Rethinking the psychology of personality, proposed by D.A. Leontiev is an attempt to understand the level of human activity at which, in the words of L.S. Vygotsky, not only develops, but also builds itself. The main theses of the new, "possibility" theory of personality according to D.A. Leontiev:

1. Psychology of personality covers a special group of phenomena related to the field of "possible", and these phenomena are not generated by causal patterns. These phenomena are not necessary, but they are not accidental either; are not purely probabilistic.

2. A person acts and functions as a person only for some periods in his life, realizing his human potential, i.e. he can live now in intervals of the "necessary", now in intervals of the "possible". In the 3rd edition of his book The Psychology of Meaning, D.A. Leontiev presented in a generalized form the structure of regimes on which a person can live. These modes are placed on a scale from fully determined human to completely free, or "self-determined."

YES. Leontier: — “Man has everything that lower-organized animals have, thanks to which he can function at the “animal level”, not including his specific human manifestations. The trajectory of a person in the world is dotted, discontinuous, because segments of functioning at the human level are interspersed with segments of subhuman functioning..

3. Existence in human life, in addition to the necessary, the sphere of the possible introduces into it the dimension of self-determination and autonomy.

Even "meanings", "values" and "truths" in human life are not automatic, self-acting mechanisms; they influence a person's life only through his self-determination in relation to them as a subject.

4. Throughout a person's life, the degree of determinism of the same psychological phenomena may change.

5. Self-determination of one's life activity by a person, as an arbitrary influence of the subject on the cause-and-effect patterns that affect this life activity, becomes possible through the involvement of reflexive consciousness.

6. The level of personal development determines the nature of the relationship between variables in the personality: at a lower level, the nature of the relationship of variables is more rigid, and is deterministic; at a higher level of development, some act in relation to others only as prerequisites, without defining them unambiguously. The very same "personal development proceeds in the direction from genetically determined universal structures to less universal structures that initially exist in the modality of the possible."

7. "An empirical indicator of action in the field of the possible, and not the necessary, is an unprovoked going beyond the limits set by the situation."

This exit is carried out as the personality develops, more and more towards the choice of meaningful and variable possibilities, as opposed to unambiguous needs.

8. As the forms and mechanisms of human life and psychological processes become more complicated and improved, their causes are increasingly being replaced by prerequisites, which, unlike causes, give rise not to the necessary consequences, but to possibilities, while their absence is an impossibility.

9. “Recognition of the psychological reality and significance of the category of the possible takes us from a clear and clearly structured world to a world where uncertainty reigns, and coping with its challenge is the key to adaptation and effective functioning.” Understanding the world in which a person finds himself as undefined in advance is an existential worldview.

10. The introduction of the category of the possible supplements the description of the interaction of a person as a subject with the world with an existential dimension, and in such an “extended” description there is a place for both orientation towards certainty and orientation towards uncertainty.

11. “Opportunities never materialize in reality themselves, it happens only through the activity of the subject, who perceives them as opportunities for himself, chooses something from them and makes his “bet”, investing himself and his resources in the implementation of the chosen opportunity.” At the same time, they assume responsibility for the realization of this opportunity, give an internal obligation to themselves to invest efforts for its realization. In this transition, a transformation occurs: possible - valuable (meaningful) - due - goal - action.

The "possible" theory of personality is proposed to consider people as being on the way to self-realization, the measure of which is people's own steps taken in this direction, as well as the efforts made. However, self-realization here is not the realization of what is laid down by heredity or the environment, but the path of free decisions and choices of the person himself, not determined by the environment and heredity.

The mechanisms for the transition of a personality from the regime of determination to the regime of self-determination are certain psychotechnical actions or “existential psychotechnics” developed in various cultures and meaningful, mainly by existential philosophy, existential psychology, as well as a dialogical approach to understanding a person and his life:

• Stop, pause - between the stimulus and the reaction to turn on and work the reflexive consciousness, during which you can not react in a “natural”, usual way for yourself or the situation, but start building your own behavior.
• Look at yourself from the side. The inclusion of a reflexive consciousness, and thoughtful reflection and awareness of all options and alternatives leads to the ability to make any choice.
• The splitting of the sense of self, the realization of the discrepancy that I am just like that. I as a person am what I choose to be, or what I make myself.
• Identification of the alternativeness of any choice and the search for non-obvious alternatives. The same applies to choices that have already been made, especially those made by a person without noticing it. Choice is not only what a person has yet to do, but what a person really is already doing.
• Awareness of the price that has to be paid for each of the possible choices, i.e. — existential reckoning.
• Awareness of responsibility and investing in the chosen alternative.