Biography analysis scheme
The methods do not compete, but complement each other. Such regional, coordination relations of the methods are reflected in the classification of B. among empirical methods, on a par with well -developed and universally recognized, such as experimental, observation, B. Ananyev placed a biographical method, almost forgotten in science. Ananyev was the first at the present stage of development of psychology to this method paid special attention to this method in connection with the development of the theory of individuality, and individual mental development, in connection with the design of comprehensive human research.
Thanks to him, the biographical method now, as we see, is experiencing a second birth. Ananyev determined the essence of the biographical method, pointing to its specific object - the life path. The biographical method operates with data on objective events and subjective experiences of a person in different life circumstances, on the basis of which it allows us to make conclusions about the nature, self -awareness, life orientation, talent and life experience of the individual.
All these structures relate to personality-biographical and cannot be understood in isolation from the real life path of a person, and, therefore, without a biographical method [9]. Ananyev associated the biographical method with the implementation of one of the two genetic approaches to the development of a person corresponding to its two main forms. The first form is ontogenesis, the evolution of the individual is a psychophysiological organism.
The second is the life path - the history of the personality in society. Along with ontogenetics aimed at ontogenesis of the individual, there is genetic personalistics-“Theory and method of biographical study of the human life path, basic events, conflicts, products and values that are deployed throughout a person’s life in these socio-historical conditions” [2; ]. Genetic personalities, biographics, so that, by analogy with ontogenetics, is based on the materialistic understanding of the personality as a contemporary of the era and a peer of the generation, personality as an object and subject of social relations and the historical process, the subject and object of communication, the subject of social behavior - the carrier of moral consciousness [3].
Personality is a historical phenomenon, “therefore,” writes B. Ananyev, “the study of the personality inevitably becomes a historical study of not only the process of its upbringing and formation in certain social conditions, but also the era, country, social system, contemporaries, associates, employees or, on the contrary, opponents - in general, accomplices of affairs, time and events in which the personality was involved.
A biographical study of the personality, its life path and creativity is a kind of historical study in any field of knowledge - humanity, the history of science and technology, psychology, etc. In well -known comprehensive studies that began under the program of B. Ananyev and under his leadership in G., in fact, the biographical method was used as a means of studying the individuality of specific people in their development, which corresponded to the general genetic and psychodiagnostic orientation of complex research [2; -].
Biographical psychodiagnostics, complementing the laboratory and experimental, is based on the reconstruction of a holistic individual lifestyle, on the identification of sustainable ways of interacting a person with the circumstances of macro- and microenvironment, to identify a set of facts- vital indicators of personal properties. In relation to the goals of comprehensive research, B.
Ananyev set such tasks of biography as determining the origins of the actual psychological status of the studied people, phases and rotary points of development, character characteristics, the structure of abilities and the originality of the inner world of personality. According to his plan, biographical material was compared with data obtained by other methods.
In a complex study, thus, the biographical method exists in the monographic version. However, in addition to the study of “cases” there are statistical options that analyze mass data on the life paths of the group of studied people. The differential-psychological and psychodiagnostic sphere of the application of the biographical method is not the only one. As B.
Ananyev pointed out, in ontopsychology, the biographical method becomes a psychological study of the social being of personality. Here, in the general plan, the history of man as particles of the era, the general laws of the expansion of the life path in historical times, the dependence of the phases of “climax” and the “finish” of life on the “start”, the age dynamics of creativity in connection with the profession and the era, the reflection of the biography in the subjective world of a person, the “productivity of the life path, and the words of B., were, are considered by the terms of a person.
Success in the use of the biographical method in psychology depends on its further development. Ananyev indicated the ways of his improvement in the conceptual and operational aspects. So, the phenomena of the life path B.Ananyev proposed reflecting in such concepts as events, circumstances, social environment, its own development environment, that is, created by the subject of life, an individual lifestyle, etc.
The central concept in this series is perhaps an event, a significant event, more precisely. This is a fact that significantly changes the environment and social situation of development, the lifestyle, the structure of the personality, which becomes a watershed of the phases of life. Ananyev outlined the contours of the operational side of the biographical method-source analysis, biographical questionnaire, interview, content analysis of personal documents and some other specific methods.
Based on the ideas of B. Ananyev, we performed a theoretical and methodological study aimed at improving the biographical method, mainly for the purpose of the differential and psychological study of living people. Some theoretical results of this work were presented earlier [9], [10]. In this article, we intend to highlight the history of the biographical method, its main features and “technology” of the study of the monographic type, in which the originality of the biographical method is most clearly manifested.
The philosophical, ideological orientation of biographers significantly affects the nature of biographies, the selection and interpretation of facts, so that the “correlation” between the characteristics in the studies of different authors related to the same historical person is often very low. Based on the theoretical foundation of historical materialism, on the Marxist ideas about the essence of the personality and its role in history, they achieve genuine scientificity in the study of biographies of great people.
Free from idealism and to a large extent from subjectivity, the biographical genre we regard it as a method received recognition and is considered indispensable for understanding the psychological atmosphere of the era, the personal aspect of the development of science and philosophy [14]. The value of the biographical method in historical cognition is strengthened by the fact that the essential, logical revealed the historian not only through an abstraction, but also through characteristic isolated cases.
A certain place is occupied by a biographical genre in literary criticism, in the study of the creative personality of the writer.
This is due to the fact that the personality-biographical is powerfully invading the creative process and in a transformed form is included in the very fabric of the work of art. In historical science, in literary criticism there is no actually a biographical conceptual apparatus, and orientation to a historical past limits the operational and technical capabilities of the method. According to research technology, the sociological method of studying documents, especially personal, biographical letters, diaries, memoirs currently, this method in sociology is a modest place, however, in the opinion of the sociologists, has a prospect in this science [5], [7].
In history, literary criticism, sociology, recommendations on working with personal documents have been developed. To increase the reliability of the method, criticism of sources should be determined, that is, to determine the origin of the document, authorship, creation conditions, the motives of writing memoirs 1, etc. In different methodological works, it is recommended to take into account the following: and reliability, reliability, completeness of autobiographical material is higher, when the content of the document is limited by a certain topic, does not cover the events too widely; B authors of personal documents with more hunting tell about themselves than about others and surrounding; in it is necessary to check the facts of personal documents, comparing them with the famous; G does not inspire confidence in categorical statements, excessive assessments, meaningful emphasis and repetition; The trust in the document increases when the author is indifferent to the described fact or is negative.
In psychology, the biographical method has passed a considerable path of development. The first generalizing descriptions of this method appeared in E GG. Rybnikova [12], [13]. Abroad, the experience of psychological biography summarized in E GG. Allport [16]. Subsequently, articles and chapters in methodological publications, illuminating the essence, advantages and disadvantages of this method for example, [17], [21], appeared occasionally.
The variety of specific forms and the goals of applying the biographical method is noteworthy. Therefore, we can talk about biographical methods, in the plural. The biographical method played a leading role in the studies of Austrian psychologists, performed under the leadership of S. Buler [20] in the 20s. Studies were aimed at clarifying the general laws of the life path. Despite the idealistic concept of development proposed by S.
Buler, these studies have a lot of instructive, for example, methods of quantitative processing of mass biographical material, graphic methods for displaying the phenomena of the life path. In its most complete version, the biographical method finds application in differential psychology, in psychodiagnostics.Along with laboratory data about a particular person, a significant place is given biography - life history or, more narrowly focused, an anamnesis.
Life stories are attracted as illustrations in characterology and other areas of psychology. Biographical descriptions are useful in that they contribute to the formulation of new problems, lead to hypotheses, contribute to the meaningful interpretation of laboratory data, finally, it is simply useful for each researcher to develop an understanding of a holistic personality.
In conclusion of a brief historical excursion, we note that the biographical method has experienced a strong impact of idealistic theories-psychoanalysis of Z. Freud, personalism by V. Stern, “understanding” the psychology of V. Dilthey, humanistic psychology 2. In contrast to these influences in Marxist philosophy and psychology, the foundations of a scientific understanding of the life path as a socio-historical form of individual life and human development were created.
Currently, this regard is discussed such issues as the laws of development throughout the life of the individual, the nature of the life path and social life, reflecting the structure of the biography in the self -awareness of the subject of life, the psychological time of the person on the biographical scale [1], [6], the new “techniques” of the measurement of biographical phenomena are proposed, for example, causometry [6], multifactorial Statistical-biographical analysis [8].
Based on the experience of its predecessors, summarizing various methodological ideas and finds, we developed and tested the biographical study procedure for the purpose of the psychodiagnostics of individuality and thus tried to systematically and quite fully represent the operational apparatus of the method. In the procedure, we sought to include the main classes of sources of biographical information produced by the studied and others - witnesses of his affairs and days.
The procedure is built on the principle of sequential deepening into an object - from external, formal moments to internal, psychologically substantial. At first, as it were, it should be outlined with a dotted line for the entire life path, then present it in detail in general, and then highlight individual symptomatic moments that can be adequately understood in the context of the entire biography.
The specific methods described below are given in the order of introduction to the study procedure. Personal business. After all the participants in the examination have been determined and business confidence contact with them has been established, you should carefully familiarize yourself with official biographical documents - the personal file of the studied.
It contains the minimum of information that is necessary for preliminary orientation. In addition, documents certified by officials, as a rule, can serve to verify information from other sources. Biographical questionnaire. This method is popular in working with personnel. Answering the exact questions of the questionnaire, a person, as it were, disciplines his memories, gains the installation of strict reproduction of the past.
The questionnaire reveals facts that are often not mentioned in other sources, being uninteresting for the very study 3. It gives an integral idea of the life path. An autobiography, in principle, can be spontaneous or, as in our case, provoked, the selection and composition of the material are provided at the discretion of the “memoirist”, but it is required that it illuminates all the topics proposed in the schematic plan.
Biographical interview. This time -consuming method, on average, has 5 hours per 2-3 doses, gives the most richest material from a psychological point of view. Here are revealed the sphere of experiences, attitude to events, the concept of one’s own life path that has developed in a person. Often, the biographer’s questions are only a starting impetus, in response to which a narrative is deployed that goes beyond the limits of the issue.
Emotional reactions accompanying the story clearly indicate the significance of individual episodes of the past. Further, the newly invented analytical methods were connected to the research procedure, which are biographical statements on the terminology of B. Ananyev and graphic display.